Bryson DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson join Rory McIlroy in call for PGA Tour merger amid LIV Golf ‘disruption’

A little over a week before their re-emergence to mainstream domestic audiences at The Masters, a slew of major champions now playing on the LIV Golf League — including Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, and Brooks Koepka — echoed sentiments recently shared by Rory McIlroy on the need for unification with the PGA Tour.

“I think what’s happening is not sustainable right now,” McIlroy said in comments published this week. “So something needs to happen to try to bring it all back together so we can all move forward so we don’t have this division that’s sort of ongoing.”

McIlroy changed his tune after spending two years lambasting LIV. He resigned from the PGA Tour policy board in late 2023 and has since advocated for unification.

“The fans are what drive this sport,” DeChambeau said Wednesday, before LIV Miami at Trump National Doral. “If we don’t have fans, we don’t have golf. We are not up here entertaining. That’s the most important thing as of right now. The low-hanging fruit. There’s got to be a way to come together. And it needs to happen fast. … Too many people are losing interest.”

At the Players Championship last month, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan expressed optimism about “accelerated” negotiations with LIV’s backer, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), but stressed that finalizing the framework agreement would take time. In January, Strategic Sports Group agreed to invest $3 billion in the PGA Tour.

Last Monday, Tiger Woods — vice president of the newly-formed PGA Tour Enterprises — hosted Monahan, PIF chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan, and player directors in the Bahamas for a summit.

Rahm, the defending Masters champion, has not hidden his dissatisfaction with the splintering of the sport since since signing with LIV for hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Every time I get asked a question like this, I say the same thing: I think there’s room for both,” Rahm said in Miami. ” … A little bit more variety doesn’t really hurt anybody. So I think, properly done, we can end up with a much better product that can take golf to the next level worldwide, and I’m hoping that’s what ends up happening.”

“It’s tough to tell the future,” added Koepka, the 2023 PGA Championship winner and Masters runner-up. “I have no control over anything. Just keep going wherever they tell me to go. Same with the PGA Tour guys. … Nobody knows on this side. Nobody knows on that side. It’s up to people that are more important than me and more important than a bunch of the players to decide. We’ll let them figure it out.”

The Saudi circuit remains unrecognized by the Official World Golf Ranking, limiting the pathways into majors for its members.

13 LIV golfers are in the field for the 2024 Masters, including 10 major champions and Joaquin Niemann, who earned a special invite for his performance in non-LIV events around the world.

Phil Mickelson — who somehow finished T2 at the Masters in 2023 — is hopeful about an eventual deal … once the “disruption” phase is over.

“I’m putting my trust in Yasir and where the game is headed more globally,” Mickelson said. “But at some point, when it gets ironed out, I think it’s going to be in a much better place, where we bring the best players from the world, and it’s going to open up more opportunities for manufacturing, course design, for players in different parts of the world to be inspired and enter the game.

“But right now, we are in the disruption phase, so we are in the middle of the process. And when it’s all said and done, it’s going to be a lot brighter.”