The current PGA Tour-Liv-Vete is exhausting players, including Justin Thomas.
Getty images
Ponte Vedra Beach, FA.-lasting For more than three years, the top players of the PGA Tour have been peppered with questions about the future of the sport in the midst of the constant fracture caused by the rise of Liv Golf.
The message on the Tour’s flagship event went from denial and resistance to trust and hope, while Commissioner Jay Monahan works to close a deal to reunite the sport. However, there has been no significant movement on a merger for a time and Justin Thomas, for example, has felt fatigue in Tour membership.
“Absolutely,” said Thomas on Tuesday before the 2025 Players Championship on TPC Sawgrass. “I think this is the third time I played this tournament, while this is in some way, shape or shape. Yes, I think we are a bit like the level of exhaustion. At least it does not consume everything we are asked about.
“You just get a few things here and there, but there are just so many of us, really on both sides, both us on tours and I think the LIV players, that we don’t really know what’s going on and we just golf and hope for the best and because there is much that we don’t know and that we can’t check or do the higher ups.”
Thomas understands that the deal is complex, but still thought, or at least hoped, the civil conflict of Golf would have been over now.
“There is just so much that it goes in,” said Thomas. “I am happy that I no longer know, or I have not been invested anymore because I think it would be mentally exhaustive, physically exhausting. It would just be tiring.
“I think it is very clear that we all want to solve it all, but this is something that is pretty serious, so it is not like you or someone, okay, this is what we are going to do without it being perfect.
The rise of LIV led to enveloping wallets on the PGA Tour. The wallet of $ 25 million this week with the players serves as a radiant example of how the escape circuit benefited those who stayed loyal to the PGA Tour.
At the Genesis Invitational, Rory McIlroy said that players, because of raised wallets, benefited from the gorge of Golf. Thomas agrees that the arrival of LIV was some advantage, because it led to necessary changes and gave players more power, but he still disagrees with the methods of those who broke the sport.
“I think you would be stubborn, and as stubborn as I am, to say that, you know, many things that happened, have been through them and what is going on,” said Thomas. ‘There is a handful of boys or there are a few boys like one [Phil Mickelson] or one [Bryson DeChambeau] That how they may have done it is perhaps not exactly how I would have, but they did make many points or say some things that were – who had some value for them or had some truth.
“But it’s exactly how it all happened. I clearly wanted it to just go differently, but that is neither here. But I think many things have happened during our tour and in our game. “
Monahan sounded convinced in recent weeks that a deal with the Saudi Aarabic Public Investment Fund (PIF) was close by, but that tone shifted during the Arnold Palmer Invitational from last week as a whisper in communication between the two parties.
On Tuesday, Monahan gave his annual address and noted that progress has been made in conversations with the PIF, but that “obstacles” continue to exist. Monahan said that the PGA tour will look at the ‘integration’ of parts of Liv Golf in the PGA Tour, but they will not close a deal that ‘is in danger’ which makes the PGA Tour great.
The majority of membership of the PGA Tour, including Thomas, are ready to leave this era behind and for the new reunification age of Golf. But more than three years after the PGA Tour-Liv-Vete, the end seems much further away than a party will admit.
