What Should The Future Of Men's Pro Golf Look Like? Sky Sports Pundit Says It Must Mean More To Win Than To Land The Biggest Check

Sky Sports presenter, David Howell believes "crazy money" in the sport is "close to ruining the spectacle of professional golf" as some players choose to prioritize the largest pay-check possible over competing for meaningful titles.

The split which fans have witnessed over the past few years has centered around the LIV Golf League luring some of the best players in the world over to its shortened tournaments in exchange for less golf and much larger financial rewards than they were previously competing for.

As a result, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour - where Howell has competed for almost 30 years - has become diluted and the product is arguably less entertaining as a consequence.

Howell, a two-time Ryder Cup winner with Team Europe, says the players can hardly be blamed for accepting such extreme sums but is greatly concerned that golf's fractured nature is putting the sport at risk of collapse.

Speaking on Sky Sports' TV coverage during the Pebble Beach Pro-Am's weather delay on Sunday, Howell said: "I would say we're [at] a precipice where I think with this crazy money that's going on, in my opinion, is close to ruining the spectacle of professional golf.

"For the golfers themselves, short-term, they're coining it in aren't they, the good ones especially and some of the low ones down as well. In the short term, if you were a golfer, you might be thinking 'this is this is great, let's jump on the gravy train.'"

The Englishman went on to further illustrate his point by explaining that the money the best male golfers in the world play for could be anything, but the reason the celebrations on Sunday are often so emotional is because of the sentimentality involved - not the figure on the giant cardboard check.

Howell continued: "Nobody cares if Wyndham Clark wins $3.6m, $1.6m or $800,000, they want to see someone holing a putt on the last that means everything. It was the same with Matthieu Pavon last week, it wasn't because he won $1.6m. It was that he achieved a childhood dream.

"The trophies also matter. I mean, LIV have got a good critical mass of players now, but no one cares about the tournaments and no fan cares about that particular LIV trophy. Fans just want to watch players caring about what they're playing in.

"Money is important to everyone, isn't it? But you've got to get it right in the priority of things, and at the moment it's totally out of kilter."

Any chance of the sport healing on the men's side may have been helped by the recent $3 billion investment in the PGA Tour - a deal which could ultimately see LIV's backers, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, included and help to form a path back for those who defected to the 54-hole circuit.

But while people like Rory McIlroy and Greg Norman have called for a world golf tour of sorts to be arranged, Howell is not so sure the world's top-100 players competing against each other week in, week out would be the sweet dream it is being made out to be.

He said: "Holistically, globally, what do we want? We want good tournaments. I don't agree that you want all the best players playing against each other all the time. I don't buy into that, as you want some Cinderella stories along the way, but you want a critical mass of them often enough to make the tournaments really mean something."