‘Their attitude has been s***!’ – Tour pro blasts LIV rivals

Uncertainty still reigns across men’s professional golf, but what is becoming increasingly clear is a collective will to unify a splintered sport.

A resolution between the establishment and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund that bankrolls LIV Golf to end the infighting and conjecture is in the works, but does not appear close to being finalised.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan says such talks are “accelerating”, but stresses that “it is complicated and will take time”. Rory McIlroy wants the “the train to speed up so we can get this thing over and done with”. Outgoing DP World Tour chief Keith Pelley, meanwhile, thinks a unified landscape is “inevitable” but intimated that we wouldn’t see it anytime soon.

However, when – and if – the day of peace does arrive, it will take quite some time for the dust to settle. After all, it’s not just the talent pool that has been fractured in the game’s most turbulent period.

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Not all will be automatically forgiven. And as far as some players on the DP World Tour are concerned, some things certainly won’t be forgotten.

Just ask veteran Mike Lorenzo-Vera. The engaging and outspoken Frenchman is now willing to welcome back LIV players back to his circuit, but he still holds resentment over the manner in which some players departed.

“I’m still not happy about the things that have been done from certain players,” he tells bunkered.co.uk. “It’s the way some players have been over there. If you look at Louis Oosthuizen. The guy has gone there with no word. Some guys even said thank you to the DP World Tour and PGA Tour and left.

“But the thing I don’t like is the people spitting on the Tour that has given them a s*** lot of money for years. The players that hammer the tours. If they were angry after Keith, they shouldn’t have said I’m angry at the DP World Tour. How many people work at the DP World Tour?

“Some people have been working for those players for years and feel frustrated about those guys speaking about them. This is my biggest issue. They have been targeting the wrong thing.”

Stalwarts Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood all resigned their cards last May after the DP World Tour’s fines and suspensions imposed on LIV players were upheld.

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And while Garcia is now planning to pay fines of almost £1 million and make his return to the Tour, the former Masters champion may have some making up to do on his old domain.

“Sergio was horrible in Munich,” Lorenzo-Vera says, referencing the Spaniard’s reported explosive locker-room rant at the BMW International immediately after joining LIV, as he threatened legal action against the Tour. 

“He has always been great to me but its that attitude I didn’t get and couldn’t understand. Ego must have been hurt there. The feeling that you can’t play Ryder Cup and can’t come back on the Tour they think they built but they haven’t.

“Some of them gave me a lot of advice in my career which I’m very thankful for, but on this topic, the attitude has been proper s***. Even if they thought they were right. I’m sure there was troubles between the Tour and them, but man you’re getting £50 million to play golf. Just thank everybody and go, no?

“Plenty of people are going to say, ‘You’re jealous.’ Why am I jealous? If one guy deserved all the money it’s him for sure. I could have asked for an invite to the first [LIV event]. I didn’t didn’t like the product and the way its been done.”

The DP World Tour is about to enter a new era as CEO Pelley departs for a new role overseeing the Maple Leaf Sports group back home in Canada, with golf at a critical juncture. 

Pelley will be replaced by his deputy Guy Kinnings on April 2 after eight and a half years in the position, where he build upon a strategic partnership with the PGA Tour, steered the circuit through the pandemic, and dealt with the fallout of the potential Saudi merger.

Lorenzo-Vera, like many of his peers, has the utmost respect for Pelley, crediting the Canadian for “saving the game” on the continent and beyond.

“Look where the Tour was before Covid,” the 39-year-old points out. “The guy has done a tremendous job. Going through Covid the way he did was unbelievable. He saved the game in Europe.

“What was missing was communication with the players. If there was a vote for taking the Saudi money straight away, I think we would have voted positively. But are golfers good enough in business to decide these kind of things? There’s plenty of clever guys but trust me, I’m not part of them.

“The guy has done a great job building almost a global tour. You take the PGA Tour money and put it on the European Tour it’s a worldwide tour, its the World Tour. It looks like the DP World Tour is going to rebound in a great direction.”

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.