The soap opera that is the world of professional golf has been spinning faster than the globe in the opening to the show “As the World Turns.”
What we know for sure is that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will end its funding of LIV Golf at the end of the year, leaving LIV’s CEO Scott O’Neil scrambling to find some new sugar daddy to keep the renegade circuit afloat.
It has resulted in a rush of stories debating how LIV golfers will be welcomed back and integrated into the PGA Tour should LIV fold. Some pros are willing to let the likes of Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm waltz back in the way Brooks Koepka did because they will increase viewership and thus boost the price tag for the next media rights deal. As long as it helps line players pockets, all is forgiven. But there is also a camp that is saying wait a minute, some of these guys sued us, talked smack against us and tried to bring us down, and it’s retribution time for these mercenaries with shallow core values wishing to come back to the PGA Tour.
Somewhere in the middle is Rickie Fowler, who has been a voice of reason throughout. Fowler has been one of the savviest businessmen in golf, building a brand and a following that has made him arguably the most attractive player to sponsors, especially for a pro with six wins and no majors on his resume.
“I don’t have a problem with it,” Fowler said of LIV players, such as his old Golf Boys pal Bubba Watson, returning to the Tour’s mothership. Fowler understands having the best playing together more often is better for business, and he concedes LIV has a handful of players that golf fans still care about and want to see.
“I’m not against it but it’s not going to be like, ‘Oh, you had full status when you left, well, come on back and pick up where you left off,’” he said.
Those who still have status such as Dustin Johnson, DeChambeau, Rahm and Cameron Smith, he can see being given preferential treatment. “It’s so individual, every one’s situation is different,” he said.
Fowler has been up front he was offered a mind-boggling number to jump ship to LIV. He shared last week that PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan visited him at his house during LIV’s buying spree and made an effort to try to understand why Fowler had met with the upstart league and, of course, attempt to talk him out of leaving, too.
“It wasn’t something he had to do and I told him I never really was in a position where I wanted to go,” explained Fowler, who struck up a relationship with PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan when he played in a DP World Tour event in Abu Dhabi. “What made me want to meet and learn a bit more was that the Tour wasn’t directly meeting with them. I wanted to have a better understanding of why they felt there was a door open into the world of golf. I felt like the Tour had gotten lazy, a little complacent, like, ‘Hey, we’re good, we’re the PGA Tour.’ LIV Golf and Premier Golf League saw that they could tap into the golf space. I wanted to learn why, how and what they were up to. I wouldn’t say it actually worked out the way they envisioned it.”
Money drives many decisions in our lives and Fowler, for one, didn’t express a desire for those who benefited financially with lucrative guaranteed money to feel some pain.
“We’ve all been very fortunate,” Fowler said. While he didn’t directly mention PIP money and inflated purses on the PGA Tour among the knee-jerk reactions the Tour approved to reduce the incentive for players to leave, he implied it. “If you play good golf, you’re going to be fine. If you were in a position to get paid a decent amount, you probably were already doing quite well. How much more is going to change your current lifestyle? It wasn’t going to change things for me, maybe I’d have more money in the bank. But we’re all going to be fine. We’re all playing for a lot of money.”
It’s refreshing to hear a player of Fowler’s ilk with the self-awareness to know that the players (and their agents) have been the only winners during golf’s civil war and the next moves should be about what is best for the men’s professional game and the fans who make the whole thing possible.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Rickie Fowler dishes on LIV Golf players and the PGA Tour