LIV Golf to announce seven new rebels as PGA Tour crisis deepens
LIV Golf will announce seven new players, including Open champion Cameron Smith, immediately after the FedEx Cup play-offs conclude next Sunday in another significant coup for the Saudi-funded series.
Telegraph Sport exclusively revealed earlier this month that Smith has agreed a deal worth more than $100 million to play in Greg Norman’s breakaway league and the St Andrews hero’s sensational switch will be made official on August 29, the day following the PGA Tour’s season-ender.
With six other players joining the Australian in LIV’s biggest unveiling of recruits since the opening event in June, this purposefully-timed exodus will cause huge concern at Sawgrass HQ as the trickle of rebels escalates into a flood.
It is understood the septet will all appear in LIV Boston, the fourth $25 million tournament in the eight-strong series, in two weeks’ time.
The Tour’s nightmare would become yet more gory still if Smith, the world No 2, lands the $18 million FedEx title in Atlanta - just hours before being fanfared as Norman’s prized capture.
All seven golfers are believed to have competed in last week’s opening event of the FedEx play-offs. As soon as they tee off in Boston they will be hit with Tour bans.
The news comes in the week that Tiger Woods jetted into Delaware for an emergency meeting of top players and executives as the PGA Tour scrambles to respond to the ever-increasing threat of the rebel series.
One idea tabled would see the PGA Tour staging 18 tournaments with 60 players each and purses of $20 million.
A $500,000 stipend for all players - seen as a move to appease the lower-ranking members who would be frozen out of the lucrative new tournaments - that would be set against annual prize takings was also suggested. Other ideas floated were for the tour to revoke their charitable status. That would open them to higher tax bills but would give more flexibility as to how the organisation was run.
Woods and Rory McIlory have led the public backlash against LIV, with the American claiming defectors had “turned their back on what has allowed them to get to this position”.
McIlroy, in turn, this week called Woods a “hero” for spearheading the response. “His voice carries further than anyone else’s in the game of golf,” McIlory added. “His role is navigating us to a place where we all think we should be.”
LIV’s arrival has sparked an existential crisis in the sport, which has been dominated by the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, formerly the European Tour, for decades.
None of the sport’s most sacred institutions have been spared, with Henrik Stenson last month quitting as Europe’s Ryder Cup captain to join the fledgling series. His decision appeared to reap immediate dividends when he won the $4 million tournament in Bedminster, New Jersey.
