Once a tour of great stature, the DP World Tour has been vastly diminished by the dominance of American golf and the PGA Tour. As the golf world is currently configured in 2024, the DP World Tour is effectively a feeder tour to the PGA Tour. For example, the top 10 performers on the DP World Tour who don’t have PGA Tour status are granted eligibility the following season on the PGA Tour, which is how players like Bobby MacIntyre and Matthieu Pavon played full seasons on the PGA Tour this past year. Top European players move to America as soon as they receive PGA Tour eligibility in order to compete against the best fields, earn their way into majors, and play for the biggest purses.

However, the current configuration of the golf world is unlikely to persist much longer. What shape it will take on is to be determined. With Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Jay Monahan, and Guy Kinnings all on site this week to compete at this DP World Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, perhaps now is a prime opportunity to make progress on shaping the future of the professional sport.

And with many of the world’s best players on site this week, it’s also an opportunity to hear from players with different perspectives on the current landscape of professional golf. Billy Horschel and Matt Fitzpatrick each took the stand and offered their thoughts on the state of the game.

“The DP World Tour probably hasn’t been taken care of over the last couple years as they should,” said Billy Horschel. “I know the PGA TOUR owns a portion of the DP World Tour, but I understand why those guys would maybe want those talks to falter, and then maybe come back to PIF and do a deal with PIF.”

With seemingly little progress made on a deal between the PIF and the PGA Tour, many have speculated that the DP World Tour might be best off working directly with the PIF to reach a deal of their own. The Strategic Alliance the DP World Tour reached with the PGA Tour in 2020, as well as its expansion in 2022, shored up financial security for the DP World Tour, but in the process it also stripped the tour of its prestige and formalized its inferior standing. Evidently not everyone believes the DP World Tour should’ve done that deal in the first place.

“I personally think that should have happened before. I don’t think the Tour should have gone with the PGA TOUR. I was pretty livid, to be honest, at Wentworth when I found out that there was a handful of PGA TOUR players coming to play Wentworth, and at that point in time, not every person who kept their card last year got in the field, which I think is a disgrace,” said Fitzpatrick. “That’s the Flagship Event. There’s no invites given to European Tour players at The Players Championship. So why are we dishing them out for Wentworth?”

Fair enough! The ink is dry, though. That deal is in the past. But what could the future hold? Assuming all three tours are involved in a deal, how might that future tour be structured? Billy Horschel and Matt Fitzpatrick have similar thoughts on that.

“…you have let’s call it the World Tour, however many guys, let’s call it a hundred; and then you have the PGA TOUR; and then you have DP World Tour and underneath it,” said Horschel. “And then you have The Challenge Tour and Korn Ferry Tour underneath those, and you have a filter system that works up and a filter system that works down.”

“Personally my idea would be you have basically like a Premier League, championship league, of golf, whether LIV is the Premier League or PGA TOUR is the Premier League, whatever it is, and then you can bring everyone together,” added Fitzpatrick. “And there’s more of a relegation promotion, there’s a few more stories there, you can work your way up. If everyone was together, I feel like that would be more beneficial, anyway.”

In the past, Rory McIlroy, who is friendly with both Al-Rumayyan and Monahan, has expressed support for a similar vision. Maybe these are signs of the direction in which pro golf is moving.

Once this deal is agreed upon, should the golfers who signed with LIV Golf pay back any of the LIV money they’ve earned? No, not according to Billy Horschel.

“No, I don’t…I don’t believe that guys on the PGA TOUR that didn’t go should, if PIF comes in, should be paid even more money because they didn’t take that opportunity or weren’t offered that opportunity.”

In fact, apparently Billy has been keen to get LIV golfers back competing on the PGA Tour for quite some time now. After commenting on how the Presidents Cup would benefit from the talents of players like Joaquin Niemann, Horschel offered a look at a telling behind-the-scenes interaction from nearly two years ago.

“(In) January 2023 of Maui, I was having breakfast with Jay…and I decided to bring up The Players Championship…And I just mentioned to Jay, I said, ‘Hey, I think if these majors are going to allow these LIV players to play, I think it would be really good if we do allow them as well. I do believe The Players is the fifth major. I do believe it would be unbelievable if Cam Smith is able to come back and defend his title in ’23.’”

It’s still unclear how many professional golfers are committed to bringing the game back together. But it seems like Billy Horschel, at least, is firmly in that camp.

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