PGA Tour golfers take wait-and-see approach amid LIV turmoil

News that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund will end its backing has raised doubts about the future of LIV Golf (Hector Vivas)

(Hector Vivas/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/Getty Images via AFP)

Golfers who left the PGA Tour for LIV golf should face consequences if they want to return, 2023 British Open champion Brian Harman said Thursday amid news that the breakaway league will lose its Saudi funding.

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) confirmed Thursday it would cease backing LIV after the 2026 season, the announcement coming hours after LIV said it was seeking to secure "long-term financial partners".

The twin announcements sparked speculation that golfers who jumped to LIV and lost their PGA Tour membership in an acrimonious split that spawned lawsuits and splintered the global game, will be wanting to flood back.

Harman, speaking at the PGA Tour's Cadillac Championship at Trump National Doral in Miami, said he expected there would be a path back to the PGA Tour for LIV golfers, but said it was too soon to predict just what it might be.

"I would think that the fans want everyone to be playing together and, you know, time heals all wounds," the 39-year-old American said, although he noted there was "still some sentiment out here, especially with all the lawsuit stuff. That stuff's going to be tough to get past".

PGA Tour loyalists were angered when 11 golfers, including six-time champion Phil Mickelson, filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the tour in 2022 challenging their suspensions by the tour after they signed big-money contracts with LIV when it was founded in 2021.

Five-time major-winner Brooks Koepka has returned to the PGA fold under a returning member program that includes substantial financial penalties.

And Harman is in favor of continued consequences for possible future returnees.

"I think there has to be something," he said, saying it would help ease "bad blood and resentment".

But Harman noted that it was really too soon to say just how many golfers might be abandoning LIV.

"I'm not sure that they're closing shop. The funding's drying up. They could secure funding from somewhere else and keep going. They have got a lot of big name players over there, guys that move the needle," he said.