How can you put the PGA Tour together, LIV apart? Padraig Harrington has a clever solution

Golf legends? They are golf fans, too. What makes them love you. They want the best players in the world to play more often than just a few times a year.

Who are they? This week: Luke Donald and Padraig Harrington, playing in the Irish Open and reflecting on their fatigue with the current state of men’s golf.

Donald, the European Ryder Cup captain, has several players (Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton) from his victorious 2023 team appealing for sanctions to enter DP World Tour events to ensure they can be selected next year. “I think we’re all very patient right now,” Donald said Thursday. “It’s been 15 months since Yasir and Jay Monahan got together. It was frustrating I think for a lot of players to see how slow everything was, and I’m sure it was frustrating for Jon. [Rahm] like that.”

Why? Because Rahm earns a suspension and penalty for every LIV Golf event he plays while a member of the DPWT. Nine months after committing to LIV Golf and 15 months after the PGA Tour and Saudi PIF signed a framework agreement, Rahm isn’t having the best of both worlds. That doesn’t just annoy him; it worries Padraig Harrington, too.

The Irishman and recent inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame is sticking to the rules – he believes Rahm needs to do what he can to support the DP World Tour – but he also wants Rahm on Europe’s Ryder Cup team in a year’s time . no matter what. Amid the still tense times, Harrington has devised a solution.

“As far as I’m concerned, I would suggest that every PGA Tour and European Tour event should have four invitations for LIV players,” Harrington began. “And every LIV event should have four international team invitations. That way we have enough crossover that we can get Jon Rahm to play the European Tour and get Abraham Ancer to play the Mexican Open. When four PGA Tour guys come, it’s not like they’re going to be welcomed with open arms, that creates a buzz at their events.”

Currently, no LIV golfers are permitted to play in PGA Tour events. They are not allowed to play on sponsor exemptions, or enter Monday’s qualifier. Accordingly, there is no room for PGA Tour players to enter the LIV’s 54-player group tournaments.

Discussions to resolve the rift in the men’s game are ongoing, and one of the main topics that needs to be resolved is the ways some LIV golfers are returning to the status quo they left behind. Harrington watches the polls quickly break as a move to build hype.

“If we had four LIV players this week,” Harrington continued, “the focus would be on them, and people would be watching. Some people want them to do good, while others want them to do bad. But that can cause noise; and vice versa, if four PGA Tour players or four international players come to the LIV event, they wouldn’t want that team to win, they wouldn’t want outsiders, so that creates noise for them.”

It’s already clear that finding the best players on the LIV and PGA Tour competing creates chaos. The Jon Rahm-Brooks Koepka 2023 Masters duel saw the best TV ratings since 2018. This year’s US Open Sunday clash between Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau was rated as the best East Coast US Open in more than a decade.

“The majors have never been better because of those rivals, so why don’t we have that this week?” Harrington said. “Why can’t we have a few guys – like, I’m sure Tyrrell playing last week made a lot of noise, two weeks ago at the British Masters. There will be many home fans who want him to do well and there will be a lot of people who don’t want him to do well. In the right situation, that’s good.”

The way he talks, Harrington seems to see this time of anger as an opportunity. He has thought about it many times, but he knows that he is not in charge.

“That’s my solution,” Harrington said, before adding an important qualifier. “I don’t sit at the top table. That’s why I’m sitting in the media center telling you my solution.”