PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Peter Malnati has been working overtime – on his game so that he can continue living his dream on the PGA Tour, on his role as a Tour player director because he cares about the future of professional golf and feels a responsibility to voice the concerns of the players outside the top 50 and most importantly, as a husband and father of two.
It doesn’t leave much time to talk to the press, but after making eight birdies, including sticking inside 2 feet at 17, and shooting 66 on Saturday during the third round of the 2024 Players Championship, Malnati went on a rant about the state of the professional golf and shared some thoughts on what unification might look like for the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.
“I think something needs to happen for our sport,” he said. “I want to see a unified game where, when we have events like the Players Championship, that we have all the best players in the world and we’re proud to call ’em PGA Tour members. That’s what I want. I don’t know how we get there, but that’s what I want.”
Malnati also voiced what many players surely think but have been reluctant to say about this week’s Players.
“Whoever wins this golf tournament is going to have achieved the most incredible accomplishment, to win on this golf course, against this field, but it would be even better if we had Jon Rahm here. I’ll just say it. It would be even better. It would be an even better win,” he said. “So that’s something that we as a membership and as leaders of the membership, we need to figure that out, how do we make this happen for people to come back, and do it in a way that has some semblance of fairness, some semblance of just, how do we do it in a way that can at least somewhat pass the sniff test and get us to a place where, when we have championships like this, we have a group of the best players – like, we already have a group of the best players in the world – how do we get to a place where we have all of the best players in the world here.”
Players: Leaderboard, tee times, hole-by-hole
Malnati may have best articulated how LIV players would be permitted to return.
“That might be the thing that’s most top of mind for people. You would find opinions that ran the gamut, from guys that just have a line in the sand that say never, and guys – I mean, I think Rory’s been pretty outspoken that he wants to see the best players playing on the PGA Tour – so we’re going to have to…
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