If there is tangible progress in talks between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, Justin Thomas didn’t know about it as he vented frustration over the lagging negotiations and limited information available to his peers.
While PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan cited “substantial progress,” Thomas said he’s keeping his head down and playing golf because he’s not sure what else to do as the merger mission approaches its second anniversary.
“I think we’re kind of past the level of exhaustion,” Thomas, 31, said Tuesday in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., site of The Players Championship this week.
“There’s just so many of us, really on both sides, both us on tour and I think the LIV players, that we don’t really know what’s going on and we’re just playing golf and hoping for the best and because there’s a lot that we don’t know and that we can’t control.”
Thomas won The Players in 2021 before Cameron Smith won in 2022 and Scottie Scheffler rattled off consecutive victories at TPC Sawgrass. One week after Rory McIlroy cast doubt about the immediacy of a potential union between LIV and the PGA Tour, Thomas said he understands it might not matter where players stand on what they consider a tired topic.
“It’s not like you or anybody can say, ‘All right, this is what we’re going to do,'” Thomas said. “I think obviously everybody needs to be on the same page, and I think when it gets to that level, I don’t know if the government’s getting involved. There’s just so many things above my pay grade that are involved that I don’t know about, that I probably shouldn’t or can’t speak to.”
Monahan acknowledged the position and leverage held by LIV likely has changed since the framework agreement between the circuits was signed in June 2023.
Thomas said he knows the PGA Tour has been a beneficiary of the breakaway LIV Golf circuit, especially with increased tournament purses and other opportunities that didn’t exist before the golf landscape began to shift. He still doesn’t agree with some of the maneuvers made to get to this point.
“There’s a couple guys like a Phil [Mickelson] or a Bryson [DeChambeau] that how they went about it maybe isn’t exactly how I would have, but they did say some things that had some value to them or had some truth,” the 15-time tour winner said.
“It’s hard to say, has it made the game of golf better? Yeah, maybe done some things on tour that have improved the tour, but the game of golf as a whole, if it’s separated in different [tours] and creating some animosity, then that’s not necessarily better.”
–Field Level Media
