Ian Poulter won’t surrender his PGA Tour membership without a fight.
While several of the notable LIV Golf players suspended by the PGA Tour already had informed the Tour that they were giving up their membership – including Kevin Na, Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia – Poulter said on Thursday that he elected not to resign his membership.
When informed that PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan had lived up to his word and suspended 17 players who had “willfully violated its regulations” by playing in this week’s LIV Golf Invitational Series debut near London, Poulter told the media, “I will appeal, for sure. It makes no sense given how I have played the game of golf for all this time. I didn’t resign my membership because I don’t feel I have done anything wrong. I have played all over the world for 25 years. This is no different.
“I am committed to playing around the world like I have done for so many years so it is a shame if they view this as different. Of course, it’s going to be sad, when you feel you haven’t done anything wrong and want to promote the game of golf. It’s a power struggle and it’s just disappointing.”
Poulter made his comments following the first round of the inaugural event of eight tournaments scheduled for the LIV Golf Invitational Series, which is funded by the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth investment fund of Saudi Arabia and one of the largest in the world. It has backed and is financing LIV Golf Investments, the parent company of LIV Golf.
While Poulter could be headed down the road of future litigation with the PGA Tour, Graeme McDowell explained that he resigned his membership “out of an abundance of caution” and to “keep the moral high ground.”
“I actually resigned about 30 minutes before I teed it up today,” McDowell said. “It was a tough decision. I wanted to keep the moral high ground and kind of remain a member of the Tour because I really didn’t feel like I needed to resign nor that I should have to resign. It was a very difficult decision. I kind of resigned out of an abundance of caution honestly because I feel like it puts me in a less litigious situation regards getting drawn into anything unnecessarily. But like I say, I didn’t want to resign. I love the PGA Tour. It’s been great to me. This is not about the PGA Tour is a bad tour. This is about being able to add on additional opportunities to my golf career. Really hard.
“Unfortunately this is going to be short-term pain, but I think all the players that are here this week have only been strengthened in their confidence that we are making the right decisions here because we feel like the execution level that we’re seeing here, the passion, the love of the game of golf that these guys have at LIV, that’s why we’re here. I feel like confidence has been strengthened. Even in the face of consequences which we knew were kind of on the horizon.”
When told of the ban from playing the Tour, including sponsor invites, Sergio Garcia claimed it didn’t apply to him because he was no longer a member.
“That’s one of the reasons why I resigned because I didn’t want to get into my legal battles,” Garcia said. “I’m very happy to be here for many reasons. It’s going to allow me to do what I love, which is playing golf. It’s going to allow me to see my family more, spend more time with my kids, 4 and 2, spend as much time as I can, and I make a good living doing it. For me it’s a win/win. I’m excited for what’s coming. Excited to finally be here playing and see the reaction of the people and the players and everything. So it’s very exciting.”
Garica confirmed that he has no intention, however, of giving up his membership to the DP World Tour.
“Why haven’t I? Because I would like to still be a member,” he said.
Asked if he still hopes to participate in future Ryder Cups, he said, “Definitely. First of all, I’m European, I love the European Tour. I played it for 23 years. Even though I played on the PGA TOUR, I always made sure that I kept my membership in Europe because I love The European Tour, and that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to stay a member of the European Tour.
And obviously we’re going to have to wait and see what the European Tour does. But I definitely would like to keep my membership there, play at least my minimum, and you know, get my — as good a chance as I can to make The Ryder Cup Team because I love that event. But I guess we’ll see. We’ll wait and see what happens over there.”
McDowell shared Garcia’s hope that Keith Pelley, who heads the DP World Tour, wouldn’t simply follow in lockstep with the PGA Tour and ban the participants in LIV Golf from competing on their home circuit. The second LIV event happens to conflict with the DP Tour’s Irish Open.
“Will Keith follow suit? I hope he doesn’t,” McDowell said. “I think he has a fantastic opportunity here with a lot of European players and European Tour players that would like to subsidize their schedule with other events, especially if we are not allowed to play on the PGA Tour. I really hope The European Tour makes a good decision. They may have to follow suit with what Jay and the PGA Tour are doing, so watch this space.”
