Adam Scott thinks there will be some hard feelings if LIV golfers are welcomed back onto the PGA Tour.
“I wouldn’t be surprised—or I wouldn’t judge anyone, the members—if reunification happened and they weren’t happy with how it happened,” the former Masters champion said to the Associated Press at the Genesis Invitational. “I hope they’re not spending as much time talking about it as I have.
“I wouldn’t hold it against anybody if there were negative emotions attached to it, the thought of players coming back.”
The Australian was elected as Player Advisory Council chairman, which eventually turned into becoming a player director. In that role, Scott and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan met with President Donald Trump two weeks ago to discuss the unification of the sport.
“I’ll be honest, it took a couple of months to wrap my head around stuff,” he said. “Within the first few weeks of me coming on the board, we’re voting for a minority shareholder to take equity in the tour. There aren’t easy answers to any of this stuff. Everyone is entitled to feel something about what’s happened."
“The one thing I do know is we’re not going to please everyone, but everyone should know that I will stand behind these player directors. They’re trying to do the best thing for the entire membership. They’ve been faced with some tough decisions the last two years—tough calls, big consequences—for whatever we vote on.”
Last week, Rory McIlroy said players need to "get over it" for the good of the professional game.
“So I think everyone’s just got to get over it and we all have to say, O.K., this is the starting point and we move forward," McIlroy said. “We don’t look behind us, we don’t look to the past, whatever’s happened, happened. And it’s been unfortunate. But reunification is the best thing for everyone.
“So if people are butthurt or got their feelings hurt because guys went (to LIV Golf) and whatever, who cares? Let’s move forward together and let’s just try to get this thing going again and do what’s best for the game. From my point of view, I don’t think it’s complicated.”
While McIlroy doesn't think it's complicated, Scott believes the exact opposite.
“But it’s not solely the tour’s decision, you know what I mean?” he said. “There’s two people in this discussion, more to be honest—the DP World Tour, a lot of other stakeholders in the pro game. The tour and its representatives talk a lot about it. But we’re not in control of the entire situation. There’s another side to the story.
“It’s not been an easy thing to solve, otherwise we’d have solved it, I believe.”
Whether the players like it or not, there are signals that a deal to unify the professional game in on the horizon. While appearing in the CBS booth during the Genesis Invitational, Tiger Woods said he thinks that "things are going to heal quickly.”
“We're going to get this game going in the right direction,” Woods said. “It’s been heading in the wrong direction for a number of years and the fans want all of us to play together, all the top players playing together and we’re going to make that happen.”
The PGA Tour is in Mexico this week, but all eyes remain fixed on the overall state of the game and the ongoing effort to bring all of the best players in the world together once again.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Adam Scott Believes LIV Golfers Won't Be Welcomed Back to the PGA Tour With Open Arms.
