Players who have joined the LIV Golf Series will be banned from next month’s Scottish Open, according to a report in The Telegraph.
The event, which is used as a warm-up for the Open Championship, will be held at The Renaissance Club in North Berwick, Scotland from July 7th, a week ahead of the 150th Open Championship at St Andrews.
The Scottish Open will be co-sanctioned by the DP World and PGA Tours for the first time, and with LIV Golf players currently banned from entering PGA Tour events, it means the likes of Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter will be forced to look elsewhere to prepare for the Open.
While the DP World Tour is still making decisions on an event by event basis, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan acted swiftly when the first LIV Golf Invitational got underway at the Centurion Club near London earlier this month, suspending all PGA Tour members who played.
Since that event, more PGA Tour players have jumped ship, including Koepka, who this week joined his brother Chase at LIV Golf, Mexican star Abraham Ancer, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed.
Should The Telegraph’s report be true, it could be the start of a much closer relationship between the PGA and DP World Tours. Golf Monthly exclusively revealed last month that the two Tours were in advanced negotiations over how best to combat the threat of LIV Golf, and if the players who have opted to join the Saudi-backed series are indeed banned from the Scottish Open, it could be just the start of measures aimed at fighting back.
While banning the LIV Golf players will weaken the field at the Scottish Open, all four current Major champions - Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa and Sheffield’s new US Open champ Matt Fitzpatrick - are set to tee it up.
