The Idea That LIV Golfers Should Be Allowed To Compete In The Players Is As Contradicting As It Gets
Billy Horschel is a seven-time PGA Tour winner, former FedEx Cup champion, and very much an ambassador for the Tour itself. Given those three checked boxes, one would assume he wouldn't want LIV Golf or its players to be associated with The Players - the flagship event on the PGA Tour - in any way which makes his recent admission of wanting players who defected for LIV added to the field very surprising. It's also incredibly contradicting.
The Players is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week at TPC Sawgrass but will ironically feature what could be the weakest field in its history with many world-class players taking their talents to LIV .
Given the new reality of the tournament undoubtedly losing some of its juice, the conversation about simply letting LIV players into the field to help return it to its ‘fifth major in golf’ status is something that has come up among the media and players leading into Thursday's opening round.
Horschel believes that LIV players should be offered an "olive branch" to tee it up in The Players.
"It's unfortunate that we don't have some of the best players in the world here," Horschel told Sky Sports. "I did have a conversation with Jay [Monahan] about a year and a half ago about if the majors were going to let the guys that went to LIV, shouldn't we maybe let them in?"
"If we see ourselves as a fifth major, which I believe we are, shouldn't we, maybe put out a little bit of olive branch? We had a great conversation about that and I understood his side of it and the PGA Tour side, but I think personally it's tough to say that we don't have all the best players in the world here." Take out the world rankings, take out everything. Everyone knows by the eyeballs test who the best players are in the world and I think, hopefully, a year from now we will have all the best players back here again playing."
(Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Horschel's interests lie with the PGA Tour and his overarching message here is very much pro PGA Tour, or at least he seems to think it is.
Horschel wants The Players - the PGA Tour's premiere event - to have the strongest field possible, and if that means allowing the top-tier LIV players to be added to the field, then so be it.
If you didn't pick up on the layer of contradiction in that previous sentence, let's break it down a bit more.
You don't even have to look beyond the name of The Players to see that Horschel's idea doesn't align with anything the event stands for.
The Players is called The Players because, you guessed it, it is for the players, as in PGA Tour players (and best DP World Tour players).
(Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)
Of course, The Players would greatly benefit if it allowed the likes of Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Joaquin Niemann, Cam Smith, and other LIV golfers into the field, but it would immediately erase tradition and its most basic of standards if it welcomed LIV players.
LIV golfers made the personal decision to leave the PGA Tour. Therefore, they forfeit their right to play in the Tour's premiere event built to celebrate its organization's best players.
As for The Players being golf's ‘fifth major,' that has never been anything more than a marketing ploy, seeing as how it isn't an actual major championship. It's a PGA Tour event run by the PGA Tour.
Golf's four majors, which are governed by four different governing bodies, allowing LIV players into the field is a benefit they each have given that none are attached to the PGA Tour in any way.
The Players is for PGA Tour members, at least at this particular moment in the ongoing war in professional golf. That may mean the tournament has lost some of its prestige, but that blame falls more on the players who bolted from the Tour than the Tour itself.