Richard Bland blasts tour over ‘worst possible mistake’

Add Richard Bland to the growing list of people in golf favouring a merger between solely LIV and the DP World Tour.

Bland, who claimed his first DP World Tour win after its 478th start before joining LIV two years ago, has never hidden his disdain for some of the decisions made by his old domain.

“I was never in favour of the DP World getting into bed with America,” he told bunkered.co.uk on Thursday. “I made that publicly clear.”

The Englishman’s gripes have centred around the November 2020 “strategic alliance” that Wentworth HQ brokered with the PGA Tour, and, in particular, the scheme that enables ten players on the Race to Dubai Points list not already exempt to earn full status on the American circuit for the following season.

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“To give away your best ten players every single year is just the worst thing you can do,” Bland reiterated in Riyadh, where he is five shots off the lead midway through the PIF Saudi International.

“I still can’t believe they’ve done it. You could have built the Tour around the Hojgaards, Tom McKibbin, players like that. They were the future of the tour and now you’ve just given them away.

“And you’ve got to do that every single year. It just weakens the tour, all they’re going to do is playing the minimum events.”

Bland, of course, isn’t the first to suggest that the formerly European Tour could ditch its pact with the PGA Tour and team up the Saudis instead to create a lucrative worldwide schedule.

But as a PGA Tour-PIF deal continues to stall under the scrutiny of the US Justice Department, the idea does seem to be gathering momentum.

“If the Tour and PIF do a deal then every strength to DP World,” Bland added. “They should have done it three years ago.

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“The DP World for the last 35 years has been a world tour. LIV is a world tour. Yes we play 50% of our tournaments in America but the other 50% are around the world. It makes perfect sense. Hopefully they make the right decision.”

Regardless of his forthright views, however, Bland won’t be losing any sleep over the eventual outcome.

The 51-year-old has played the best golf of his career during the game’s schism, winning two senior majors and going toe-to-toe with the likes of Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka on the LIV circuit.

He has another LIV season in him and will hope his remarkable Indian summer continues into 2025.

But beyond that, Bland isn’t exactly sure what the future holds.

“I don’t know how much longer it’s going to go on for,” he said. “I want to quit on my terms, whenever that will be. It might be the end of next year or another two years, we’ll see.”

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.