Legendary coach Butch Harmon has criticized the perceived arrogance of the PGA Tour in its handling of LIV Golf’s emergence.
Harmon gave his opinions on the long-standing fractures at the top of the men’s professional game to Matt Adams on the Golf Channel, where he was asked about the current state of affairs following almost three years of division since the PGA Tour’s big-money rival came on the scene.
He began by saying that, in terms of new talent emerging, the game has never been in a better place, explaining: “We have maybe the best crop of young players we’ve had, maybe ever, and there’s a lot of them, a tremendous amount of them.”
However, according to Harmon, that brings its own issue – a disconnect between TV-watching fans and the frequent success of relatively unestablished players. He added: “The downside to that is when you turn on a TV on Saturday and Sunday and you look at the leaderboard and the novice golf sees these 10 names, he has no idea who any of them are, because it’s not any of the superstars and I think that’s why golf ratings are down.”
Butch Harmon with @MattAdamsFoL this morning on @GolfChannel on the State of Golf right now….”the business side of golf is at the worst it’s ever been””the arrogance of the pga tour thinking they were the best game in town””has to change” pic.twitter.com/zXNCV8dBUNJanuary 14, 2025
Harmon then turned his attention to the ongoing fractures at the top of the game, laying the blame at the door of PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan after his failure to negotiate with Saudi Public Investment Fund governor Yasir Al-Yumayyan before the launch of the circuit it finances.
“I think the business side of golf is the worst it’s ever been,” he explained. “All I know is that if, from what I understand, if the commissioner had taken Yasir’s phone call four years ago we wouldn’t be in this place, but I think the arrogance of the PGA Tour, thinking they were the best game in town and the only game in town and nobody was going to come in and do anything about that – well, we’ve seen what happened.”
Butch Harmon has laid the blame for the divide at the door of Jay Monahan
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Harmon, whose son Claude has coached LIV Golf’s Brooks Koepka, also insisted fans just want to see the best players in the world regularly compete against each other.
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