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In many respects, things have worked out pretty well for Mackenzie Hughes in the past few weeks.
After finishing 51st in the FedEx Cup Playoffs in August, the Canadian agonisingly missed out on guaranteed invites to the PGA Tour’s new signature events in 2024.
However, Jon Rahm’s seismic £450million move to LIV Golf dropped the Masters champion out of the rankings, enabling Hughes to move inside the mark and consequently tee it up in the season-opening Sentry tournament in Hawaii this week.
So in that regard, Hughes has been a beneficiary of the divide that continues to drive through the elite men’s game.
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But the two-time PGA Tour winner has wider concerns that extend way beyond his own tournament invitations.
He made headlines after Rahm’s move in an eye-opening Twitter thread in December, stating: “Men’s professional golf is in a sad place. The direction it’s headed right now isn’t healthy or good for the sport.”
Hughes was most troubled about the greed that he believes has consumed the game during a turbulent two-year period.
And he touched on these subjects once again during a candid press conference in Kapalua on Tuesday, weighing in on the idea of PGA Tour players being compensated for staying on the circuit and turning down LIV Golf’s lucrative contracts.
It’s fair to say that Hughes doesn’t agree that players deserve hefty windfalls just for rejecting LIV’s advances.
“I think that also there’s a lot of guys that feel entitled out here,” he said. “Like, you start to see all these big amounts of money flying around and this offer and that offer and people think, ‘Oh, well I stayed loyal, like, where’s my money?’”“You’re not entitled to play the PGA Tour.
“You have the right and you have a privilege to play out here, and it’s an opportunity, but it’s not like anyone owes you anything. No one’s forcing your hand. You don’t have to stay; you can go play over there if you want. So, this whole ‘the-tour-owes-me-something’ attitude, I don’t like either.”
Hughes believes he takes a different stance on his golf career than many of his fellow pros.
“All these guys going to LIV have made it pretty clear that it’s all about money. I mean, ‘growing the game,’ but also money,” he insisted. “So, to me, that’s disappointing. … Like, in 2019, I didn’t pick a schedule based on a purse.
“But now that I’m qualified for these events, obviously it would be silly for me not to play in these events. They are great opportunities. But I just don’t think it’s right. … Again, we have the same product that we had in 2019, yet we want this, like, increased investment, not just increased, but increased in a big way.”
As framework agreement discussions between his circuit and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund (PIF) continue beyond the self-imposed deadline of December 31 2023, Hughes feels most for disillusioned fans.
“They don’t know where certain guys are playing and there’s spats between the LIV and the PGA Tour, and it’s not unified in any way, shape or form,” he said. “There’s negotiations going on that are unclear, they have been dragged on for a long time.
“The fan just wants to watch golf. I think you watch sports for an escape from other nonsense, but I think golf has brought a lot of nonsense onto its plate, and now you don’t get just golf, you get a lot of other stuff going on. It’s a bit of a circus.”
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