It was indeed a daring move by many of the then-PGA Tour pros to leave the league and tee up at something different from the Tour. There were questions and rumors about the PGA Tour’s reaction. Eventually, all of the golfers were suspended, and things got messy with the lawsuits. A year later, Jay Monahan surprisingly shook hands with PIF’s head, Al-Rumayyan, for a merger. And while that is still not finalized, the PGA Tour signed a $3 billion deal with the Strategic Sports Group. This deal was probably done to keep up with LIV Golf’s increasing threat, as they had lucrative purses.

So the PGA Tour increased its events’ prize money too. All of it from the surface looks to be done for the golfers. But what about the fans? What has been done for them? At the Any Monday Given podcast, host Ryan French noted fans have been neglected for the past couple of years. The 8-time PGA Tour agreed but he shared his surprise that he never expected: “Two years later, the fans would be so disenchanted with where the game of golf is going forward.” Horschel explained that making the PGA Tour smaller like LIV Golf’s 54-player roster would not increase the fans’ experience.

But he pushed that there was a need to create a better TV product. How so? Horschel added, “Doing different things at tournaments that create, you know, the fan engagement with players. We need to do more of that.” Without revealing much, the golfer expressed that there were many other things at the top of the PGA Tour list for fans and reassured the supporters that it wasn’t being swept under the rug. He said, “The Tour knows that. SSG knows it. TV knows it. They all know that they need to do a better job of looking after the fan going forward, to continue to have their involvement in the game of golf to continue to have their engagement in the game of golf.”

Because, without them and the sponsors, Horschel noted that he would just be playing golf without a “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” So, notably, the $3 billion investment by SSG wasn’t only for increasing the purses, but for behind the scenes, the PGA Tour has also been preparing stuff for the fans. The mystery is when we will get to see them.

Nonetheless, while talking about fans’ dilemmas, Horschel also shed light on the things he disagreed with about LIV Golf and one positive change that fans may see in the PGA Tour after the breakaway league’s existence.

Billy Horschel reveals one positive change because of LIV

Horschel rolled it back to 2022 when a few guys left for LIV Golf. He said he never expected that to happen. He didn’t have any issues with pros taking the money route. His problem was, as he recalled, “They smeared the wall when they left, which I didn’t think was right. And they said stuff that was completely false—some of the guys, some of the stuff they said was completely false.” Horschel clarified that he never said anything about the LIV Golf backers, Saudi Arabia’s PIF, or called it “sports washing, or blood money, anything like that.” 

But he had another disagreement with LIV Golf defectors. Horschel described it as them saying, “LIV was the future of the game of golf.” The 37-year-old was flabbergasted by the claim that a 54-hole shotgun start event would take over the golf world. On the other hand, he revealed that the team stuff did have some merit.

And surprisingly, even some golfers on the PGA Tour have asked for more team events to be added to the schedule, and it may come in the future. So whatever the future of golf was, the PGA Tour did have fans’ interest at heart, and after taking in $3B from SSG, they are working towards a better product; hopefully, that could be seen in 2025.