That break up turned conspicuous final June at a course close to London, when longtime tour gamers like Ian Poulter, Charl Schwartzel and Lee Westwood appeared in LIV’s first official occasion. That event provided early glimpses at simply how a lot cash golfers stood to make in the event that they shunned conventional excursions in favor of the Saudi-backed circuit: Schwartzel received $4.75 million on the three-day occasion, due to his particular person and staff performances. He had earned near 17.7 million euros, or greater than $19 million, over his tour profession, the place his first win was in 2004.
Tour officers, cautious of permitting particular person golfers to undercut their multimillion-dollar tv contracts and sponsorship preparations, responded with suspensions and fines. Poulter, although, was among the many gamers who received a keep of the punishments, pending the arbitrators’ ruling. This week’s resolution in the end lined 12 gamers — 4 others had deserted their appeals — who competed within the LIV occasion in Britain or a subsequent one within the United States, a bunch that included Poulter, Westwood, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell and Patrick Reed. Schwartzel and Sergio García have been two of the gamers who had withdrawn from the case.
García, Reed and Schwartzel, all of whom are previous Masters winners, are among the many LIV gamers competing this week in Augusta.
LIV’s skeptics routinely see the rival circuit, with its 54-hole, no-cut tournaments, as selling a diluted model of golf and as a method for Saudi Arabia to place distance between itself and its human rights document. LIV executives insist they’re solely attempting to impress and repopularize a sport they choose stagnant, and the league’s gamers, a lot of whom signed contracts that assured them tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}, see themselves as impartial contractors who must be free to compete when and the place they select.
“There is no difference whether I’m on the PGA Tour or on LIV: I’ve always played two tours,” Reed, who received the Masters in 2018, stated in a January interview at a DP World Tour occasion in Dubai, the place he was carrying a LIV hat on a driving vary. “So all these guys saying that you can’t basically double-dip, you can’t — What’s that cake phrase they love to use? Make your own cake and eat it, or something like that? — well, Rory, myself, all these guys have played on multiple tours.” (Rory McIlroy, a star of the PGA and European circuits, has been among the many most outspoken opponents of LIV.)
In their resolution, the arbitrators stated pointedly that the impartial contractor argument was “overplayed.”
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