Are LIV Golfers still suspended from PGA Tour if merger agreement isn't reached?
Phil Mickelson's social media outbursts may not be worth reading too much into. But one of his recent posts does bring up some thoughtful questions about the suspensions handed down by the PGA Tour and the current timeline to get a merger agreement in place between golf's biggest rivals.
In case you missed the latest tomfoolery: Lefty's latest social media target was Golf Digest, which posted to the X platform this weekend that Rory McIlroy ranks second in career earnings among active PGA Tour golfers. Mickelson scoffed at not being included in the ranking before trading snarky tweets with another user who pointed out Mickelson is not an active PGA player because of his LIV Golf affiliation.
"I played four PGA Tour-sanctioned events this year, have not resigned my membership. I’m suspended, but still active. So there’s that," Mickelson retorted.
While the "suspended but still active" argument completely doesn't hold water — more on that later — it does bring up the issue of LIV Golf players being suspended by the PGA Tour, and those suspensions are only supposed to be valid through the beginning of next year.
If the 2024 golf season starts and an agreement between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund isn't reached, what happens to the LIV players who are suspended?
Unfortunately, like everything else in professional golf these days, it isn't clear what transition LIV Golf players will go through if an agreement is reached between PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and the PIF.
Monahan recently proposed in a memo sent to players that there could be penalties for returning LIV Golf players depending on how they exited the PGA Tour, but that is still only a proposition.
The PGA Tour regular season is now over and the FedEx Cup playoffs are underway, which LIV Golf players aren't eligible for anyways, so those suspensions are still intact.
The suspensions will last through the PGA's fall schedule, but there isn't any indication yet as to whether they will hold up into the winter — especially with the deadline for a merger agreement being set for Dec. 31.
And as for Mickelson's latest tweet?
Not only is he suspended from participating in PGA events, his initial suspension was actually extended into this year. And the four events he played in this year were major championships and not PGA Tour events, which Mickelson is very much not "active" to compete in.
It's even more curious that Mickelson would say he was an active PGA participant since, according to one of his rants a couple of weeks back, he won't be playing in any PGA Tour events anytime soon because "not a single player on LIV wants to play PGA Tour."
At this point, it doesn't appear that even Mickelson knows what his status is regarding the tour he used to play for.
Maybe he will figure out if he's suspended or active by the deadline for the PGA Tour and PIF to reach an agreement on New Year's Eve.
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