With the PGA Championship in the books, there are only three more opportunities on the 2025 golf schedule to see the best players in the world, regardless of the tour they play on, compete against each other. The U.S. Open at Oakmont, Open Championship at Royal Portrush and Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black will feature the best players from both the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.
The split of the tours has made the major weeks and Ryder Cup even bigger parts of the golf calendar, but ever since the infamous framework agreement for a merger between the two entities was signed in June 2023, golf fans have been hoping for an eventual reconciliation. In the ensuing two years, there have been few signs of actual movement regarding talks to bring the best players all back under one roof, as every indication of positive momentum is met by news of talks falling apart and the sides digging in further for one reason or another.
After a thrilling PGA Championship weekend that saw Scottie Scheffler fend off charges from two of LIV’s stalwarts — Bryson DeChambeau on Saturday and Jon Rahm on Sunday — it rekindled the desire to see those players compete more frequently than four or five times a year.
Scheffler was asked about the state of talks between the two sides in his press conference at the Charles Schwab Challenge and said that is a question for someone else. But he also made it clear that the “responsibility” for bringing the tours back together lies entirely with those who left for LIV.
“I mean, I don’t really know, that’s for the higher-ups to decide. If you wanna figure out what’s going to happen to the game of golf, go to the other tour and ask those guys,” Scheffler said. “I’m still here playing the PGA Tour. We had a tour where we all played together, and the guys that left, it’s their responsibility I think to bring the tours back together. So go see where they’re playing this week and ask them.”
It’s pretty clear that, at this point, the top players in the game are tired of the questions about what is going to happen. Even Rory McIlroy, who spent more than a year as the outspoken champion of the PGA Tour, mostly shrugs off those questions and points to his desire to just play golf and if the LIV guys eventually come back into the fold, so be it.
From Scheffler’s point of view, there’s nothing for the PGA Tour players to “give” when it comes to these talks because they stayed on and the entire rift is the creation of those that left. So, if they want to come back, it’s on the LIV players to do what is necessary to make that happen and not a situation where the Tour needs to bend over backwards to bring that along.
While it’s a justifiable position to take, it’s certainly not one that signals any changes are coming soon on the PGA Tour-LIV front, and we’ll have to embrace the three more opportunities we have to see the top players all on the same course.