Golfer Davis Love III was the captain of the United States Ryder Cup teams in 2012 and 2016 and will be the captain for the upcoming Presidents Cup in 2022, so he knows a thing or two about the sport. And he’s certainly had a lot to say about the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series that is challenging the PGA Tour.
The Hall-of-Famer has been finding his voice in recent weeks, throwing out some strong ideas on how the PGA can combat the upstart league. He’s also made it clear that he doesn’t see much chance that the two rivals will be able to come together in the future.
Love III recently spoke with Golfweek’s Adam Schupak and said that he’s just getting started when it comes to speaking up about the issue.
“I’m just getting started,” Love said. “I feel like, what do I have to lose? I can tell the truth. Not like the other side, I’m not going to tell a bunch of lies. I’m just going to tell the truth, speak for the Tour and the process.
“You know, Jay got burned for that a couple of months ago saying, ‘Trust the process, guys.’ Well, now, you’ve seen this first court thing, seen behind the curtain of LIV a little bit in court. We need to just trust the process.”
Love said that, as he sees it, LIV Golf is attempting a corporate takeover of the sport.
“We’re in the middle of a corporate hostile takeover of our business,” Love said. “The guys who are staying are realizing I do own and operate this Tour. It’s built for No. 1 through 200 and not just for the top guys. We all have a voice. The problem with what Greg Norman brought up in 1994 and the problem with what he brings up now is it is more money for a few people. It’s not good for professional golf overall. What he wanted back then and what he wants now is for every tour in the world to feed to his tour and those guys make the most money and then cherry-pick the rest of the tours. Nothing has changed since 1994, just instead of $25 million from Fox he has two or three billion behind him now so he can make a lot more noise.
“I keep getting asked why didn’t the Tour sit down with him in the beginning? Why can’t they now? No, he doesn’t want to coexist. He wants the NCAA to feed to them, the Asian Tour, the DP World Tour, the PGA Tour to feed to them and then have the best players in the world to be able to go wherever they want to play outside of their tour. That’s why we’re having a player meeting where Tiger has to fly in (on Wednesday to the BMW Championship).”
It appears that some golfers of the PGA Tour are making moves to counteract the appeal of LIV Golf, so we’ll have to see if their efforts are effective and if golfers will follow in Love’s footsteps and remain loyal to the tour that got them there.
[Golfweek]
