LIV Golf will return to Steyn City next year from April 22 to 25, sport minister Gayton McKenzie announced yesterday, adding attempts had been made to block this weekend’s tournament.
McKenzie called the turnout historic, with organisers expecting the gate to total more than 100,000 people by the end of yesterday’s final round.
Notable absentees this week were the Sunshine Tour and GolfRSA, who have declined to work with LIV.
The minister told a press conference there had been an attempt to prevent the tournament taking place, and while he didn’t say who it was, he was talking about the Sunshine Tour at the time.
“They have tried to stop me from having LIV Golf here, but I said, ‘it’s not about you, it’s about the country’.”
But McKenzie spoke highly of former Sunshine Tour commissioner Selwyn Nathan, a long-time stalwart of professional golf in the country.
“Nathan is a fantastic guy; I don’t know the other guys so well,” he said, adding that LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil wanted to work with the local tour. “I will give Nathan a call because I’ve got so much [respect] for him.”
O’Neil said at the press conference he was confident the bodies would eventually work together.
“Sometimes it takes a little time, and that’s OK; at the end of the day, the beautiful thing that aligns us with every federation around the world is that they wake up looking to grow this game, and so do we.
“We will have a relationship, I’m sure, and over time it will be one of our strongest partnerships,” added O’Neil, who is positioning LIV as a global tour while achieving some levels of recognition, like getting the top 10 finishers in each tournament to earn world ranking points.
Sunshine Tour commissioner Thomas Abt has said they can’t work with LIV because they are allied to the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, relationships which provide benefits.
Local players get easier access to DP World Tour events that are co-sanctioned by the Sunshine Tour, and there they can win entry to more tournaments, if not full playing cards.
The PGA Tour’s investment in South Africa includes $1m (R17m) into the upgrading of the Soweto Country Club a few years ago.
But O’Neil didn’t believe the alliances should be a stumbling block. “That’s not how it works. We work with federations all over the world, and they have those relationships [with the DP World Tour and PGA Tour].”
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