LIV and the PGA Tour: One way they could coexist

Remember June 6, 2023? You might if you are a PGA Tour player, a LIV player, or work for the PGA Tour or LIV.  That was the day the PGA Tour announced it had a merger with LIV Golf; the DP World Tour was also a part of the merger.

“Stunning,” was the word the New York Post used to describe the announcement. The golf world had become fractured between the traditional golf powers and the then-upstart LIV Golf. Rory McIlroy, Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Arthur Blank, and countless others made varying statements in the aftermath.

While some details were announced, notably involving the creation of Strategic Sports Group (SSG), details have been extremely light on what the post-merger world would look like. 

With much of the country experiencing a cold and snowy weekend, let’s roll over, go back to sleep, and dream about what a future could look like. 

I see it as realistic to believe that the various professional tours would continue and not be truly absorbed, including LIV Golf. The world of promotion and relegation that exists between Tour membership and the secondary tour (think PGA Tour to and from the Korn Ferry Tour) would continue.

LIV Golf continues as normal, but what would change would be its membership.

Here is how it would change and how it would play out. If you are familiar with the European soccer leagues and how clubs qualify for the UEFA Champions League, this may sound familiar.

All the Tours continue as normal. The top 5 Tours – PGA Tour, DP World Tour, Asian Tour, Sunshine Tour, and Japan Golf Tour, announce their season-long finishers in order. The top finishers on each Tour qualify for LIV Golf the following season. The better the tour, the more players make LIV Golf. 

For example, the top 15 finishers on the PGA Tour, top 12 on the DP World Tour, 8 on the Asian Tour, 3 on the Sunshine Tour, and 8 on the Japan Golf Tour qualify for LIV Golf the following year.  An annual rolling calculation can be created to adjust those numbers and even to decide the top 5 Tours themselves. In addition, the four players on the winning LIV Golf team and the top four individuals retain LIV membership the following year. Alternates and Wild Cards come from the next player on each Tour’s results list.

All players, whether qualified for LIV events or not, are required to play a minimum number of events on their ‘home’ Tour to satisfy membership and, for those who qualify, to satisfy LIV membership or lose membership for the following year.

The result? In the case of the PGA Tour, finishing in the top 15 is the goal. The PGA Tour uses the end of the calendar year, as opposed to the end of the Tour Championship, to determine the final rankings – creating more interest in the fall.

What about the Tour players who are playing LIV events? Simply, they play LIV events AND Tour events. LIV can still make teams, have their events, prize money, and determine their winners. The only way for a LIV player to be certain of qualifying for LIV again the following year is to be on the winning team or a top 4 season finisher. If a player neglects their ‘home’ Tour, they lose their membership on that tour. If someone is relegated from the PGA Tour down to the Korn Ferry Tour, but finished the season on the winning LIV team, that player plays the Korn Ferry Tour, and must meet membership requirements, and LIV the following season.

What would the schedule look like? The LIV schedule is the most interesting in this scenario. Given its international positioning, events in Australia, the Middle East, and Asia fall perfectly for TV as they are unlikely to overlap with PGA Tour telecasts. Even better, if a Tour struggles to find a sponsor, an event needs to skip a year or whatever, that becomes an ideal window to play a LIV event in the footprint of that Tour. LIV can also play an event Monday-Wednesday, like TGL broadcasts or the Korn Ferry events in the Bahamas.

Issues? How would the current LIV players work back onto their Tours? They are all LIV players for the first year and spend the time between the events working their way back onto their Tours via qualifying and world rankings. What Tour events would be okay taking a backseat to a LIV weekend? What about Signature Events and FedEx Cup playoffs? An agreement between the Tours and LIV would have to be brokered to be sure LIV events do not infringe upon the bigger events on the Tours.

Let’s pick three players: Dustin Johnson of the PGA Tour and Ian Poulter of the DP World Tour, and let’s say both qualified to play both their ‘home’ Tour and LIV in 2025. Let’s also pick Tom Kim of the PGA Tour, but he did not qualify for LIV in 2025. Dustin Johnson and Tom Kim are both required to make twenty starts over the course of the year; Ian Poulter is required to make fifteen starts over the course of the year. Johnson and Poulter also must play fourteen more events on LIV, for a total of thirty-four and twenty-nine starts, respectively.

At the end of 2025, let’s say Dustin Johnson finished 26th in FedEx Cup points and was on the winning LIV team, Tom Kim finished 8th in FedEx Cup points, and Ian Poulter finished 33rd in the Race to Dubai but did not finish in the top 4 nor was he on the winning team.  For 2026, Ian Poulter would drop off LIV and play only the DP World Tour (or potentially switch to the PGA Tour); Dustin Johnson and Tom Kim would play both the PGA Tour and LIV.

The major Tours have ways of increasing participation, players have a path onto LIV and its payday, television and sponsorship gets big names together more often, and there is a ‘penalty’ for not performing over the course of the season.

Whatever is decided, let’s hope it comes soon.