The PGA Tour has been known to always be the top place for the best players in the world to go to. But with the PGA tour nothing is guaranteed. If you start to play bad, you could lose your card and be kicked off the pga tour. High risk also means high reward. But thats when a new tour was created to help people make more money and be guaranteed on the tour. Its called the LIV golf Tour. 

On June 9, 2022, coming out of nowhere, a new golf tour was created. LIV Golf. right from the start it started taking the best players in the world from the PGA tour and signing them to contracts. Phil Mickelson, one of the greatest players of all time, decided to jump ship and sign the biggest contract out of anybody that LIV golf signed. He signed a 200 million dollar contract. “He’s a sellout, he is washed and doesn’t deserve this much money,” says sophomore and golf fan Noah Cerimele. 

200 million wasn’t even close to the amount of money LIV Golf offered Tiger Woods. The greatest player of all time was reportedly offered between 700 million to 800 million dollars. Even with all this money that was about to be handed to him, Woods declined, saying that he wanted to stay on the tour where his whole career started. Cerimele says, “ I believe that the PGA tour is the place to be. So the fact that Tiger Woods turned down all that money to stay, is something that I respect him for.” 

A main question asked about this tour is what the differences are between them. Some say it’s the money, with LIV golf giving away huge contracts getting signed and winning a tournament you get over 4 million dollars. That’s a big difference between the PGA tour and LIV golf Tour.

 Also, the LIV Golf Tour has team events. LIV decided who the best players on the tour were and made them captains, later the captains drafted the rest of the players onto their teams. Then in the tournaments the top 3 teams with the lowest combined scores win over 1 million each also. This means in just one tournament players could win over 5 million dollars. That’s 4 million more than the PGA tour offers.

Another big difference between the two tours is the amount of golf played. On the PGA tour there is a tournament every weekend. For LIV golf, there is one every three weeks. This is why a lot of the older players decide to switch to the LIV golf tour. They can’t keep up with the amount of play on the PGA tour. 

Cerimele says, “It makes sense for the old guy so go. They can’t keep up with the young ones. What I don’t understand is why the young players go, especially the ones that go straight from college.” When a lot of the young players talk about why they left, they don’t like to say it exactly but make it noticeable that they go for the money. 

With how big the LIV golf tour has become and the amount of players that they have pulled in, how can the PGA tour compete with them? From what most people have heard, it will come down to money and more PGA tour cards getting handed out. The PGA tour has already stated that starting this year the best college players will have a chance to earn their tour card. 

This helps a lot cause before, it was a long and stressful process to get there. It also makes the top college players not drop out to join the LIV tour but to stay in college and try to earn their PGA tour card that way. The question that will always be talked about is, what tour is the best one to be on?