Gary Player claims he was offered a deal by LIV

It appears that Jack Nicklaus wasn’t the only retired icon to turn down a role at LIV Golf when Greg Norman became the figurehead of the breakaway league. 

Gary Player, the nine-time major champion and great rival of Nicklaus, has told bunkered.co.uk that he too was offered a lucrative deal by Saudi bosses to take up a position in the start-up organisation.

The South African legend, 88, made the revelation as he lamented the “excessive” wealth being thrown around men’s professional golf at a time where the game is still stuck at a crossroads.

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“There is a lot of money and quite honestly I’m not adverse to playing for a lot of money,” Player said at Lustica Bay in Montenegro, where he is designing the country’s first ever golf course. “But I think this high amount of money is hurting the game to a degree.

“We’ve got a golfer from America right now. He’s going to play in the Nedbank Challenge in South Africa and they’re paying him $600,000. Six hundred thousand dollars! And he hasn’t been winning tournaments! [LIV is] giving Jon Rahm $540 million. I think that’s excessive. It’s just my opinion. 

“Somebody would say, ‘Well, Gary would like to have that.’ Well, I was offered money too – in a different capacity – and I turned it down.

“Nicklaus was offered money. Tiger was offered money. We turned it down because we had a dream and an appreciation for what the PGA [Tour] did for us.”

Player, it should be noted, remains an international ambassador for Golf Saudi, a company set up in 2018 to promote and integrate the sport into Saudi Arabian culture. He wore the Golf Saudi logo at the Masters in April while hitting the ceremonial opening tee shot alongside Nicklaus and Tom Watson at Augusta National.

But Player did ultimately reject the chance to align with the LIV series – financed solely by the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) – due to his loyalty towards the PGA Tour.

Nicklaus, meanwhile, told the Fire Pit Collective back in 2022 that he rejected a sum in excess of $100m to be the face of the breakaway for the same reasons, before Norman assumed the role of CEO. Norman later revealed that Woods also rejected a deal worth in the ballpark of $800m to compete in his LIV events.

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Two years on, however, and Norman is still pressing ahead with LIV’s recruitment drive. There are plans to poach more high-profile players from the PGA Tour, despite the league’s backers being locked in talks over a protracted deal with the American circuit.

And with uncertainty still rife, an impassioned Player stressed that the ongoing division across both the boardrooms and the fairways is damaging the sport.

“I’ve got nothing against the LIV Tour, nothing against the PGA Tour, but its a mess,” he claimed. “We’ve got to get everybody together. Any time there’s confrontation in any walk of life its bad. And now we’ve just got to get everybody together. Do I see it happening? It doesn’t look that good. We’ve still not got a conclusion. So I’m very perturbed and it’s not good for golf.

“The public don’t like it and we’ve got to remember its the public that are the reasons why we play. The media and the public are what make the Tour. I never thought I’d ever see this. Who’s right and who’s wrong? It’s a debatable issue. They’ve both been wrong so let’s see what happens.”

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in June that “progress” was being made over a deal that would supposedly unite the sport. Yet various complications are still causing delays – not least the possibility of the Justice Department investigating the Tour’s joint venture with the Saudis over antitrust concerns.

Player is still convinced that reconciliation between the warring factions is the simple answer to the ongoing strife.

“The solution is ‘listen guys, we’ve all got to come together’,” he said. “The LIV Tour will sponsor so many tournaments. The American PGA will sponsor so many tournaments and everybody is welcome to come and play. No division.”

Ben Parsons joined bunkered as a Content Producer in 2023 and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.