The biggest development in the long-running PGA Tour-LIV Golf feud dropped on Tuesday. Reigning NCAA champion Michael La Sasso surprised everyone by joining LIV Golf and surrendering a Masters spot in process.
Later in the day, major champion and longtime LIV pro Graeme McDowell took to X to offer a “hot take” inspired by LIV’s latest signing. That hot take kickstarted a debate between McDowell and a popular PGA Tour pro on X, during which McDowell called the PGA Tour the “most complete tour in the world.”
Here’s what you need to know.
Michael La Sasso gives up Masters spot to join LIV
Last May in Carlsbad, Calif., Ole Miss junior Michael La Sasso triumphed to win the 2025 NCAA Individual Championship title.
The big win earned the promising amateur a spot in the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont, and helped get him sponsor’s exemptions into five other PGA Tour events last season.
La Sasso’s NCAA win also earned him an invite to the 2026 Masters.
It seemed the question was not if La Sasso would turn pro and join the PGA Tour, but when. But now we know he won’t be joining the PGA Tour at all.
On Tuesday, LIV Golf announced it had signed La Sasso to a contract, and he will play alongside Phil Mickelson on the HyFlyers team as LIV’s 2026 season begins in February.
Not only was it a surprise for La Sasso to choose LIV over the PGA Tour, it was a surprise considering what he gave up: his Masters invite.
NCAA champions get to play the next year’s Masters, but only if they maintain their amateur status. Since La Sasso will turn pro to join LIV, he will forfeit his tee times at Augusta National, too.
Graeme McDowell’s ‘hot take’ on LIV vs. PGA Tour
While many questioned why a promising young player would give up a lifetime opportunity to play the Masters in order to join LIV Golf, McDowell had a very different perspective.
In an initial post on X, McDowell wrote that he a “hot take” to offer. The 2010 U.S. Open champion’s theory was simple. He argued that LIV offered a “legitimate” path to the pro ranks for young “superstars.” The PGA Tour, he argued, features a more “perilous” career path.
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“Hot take but LIV is a legitimate pathway for young potential superstars who can get paid to be mentored in their young careers by Tour greats and play a guaranteed schedule,” McDowell wrote on X. “The road to the PGA Tour is increasingly perilous and littered with great talent that never made it.”
And McDowell has a point. If La Sasso were to have rejected LIV’s offer, he’d likely get to play the Masters and another year in college. But nothing after his Masters start would be guaranteed.
To forge a career on the PGA Tour, La Sasso would have to best his fellow college players to graduate through the PGA Tour University ranking. Or he could play Q-School and hope to make it to the Tour or earn Korn Ferry Tour status and start his career there.
Had he not gone to LIV, he likely would have earned more sponsor’s exemptions and could have performed well enough in them to earn Tour status.
But all of those pathways feature a lot of “ifs,” especially in the financial department. By joining LIV, La Sasso gets guaranteed pay and immediate access to LIV’s purses starting in February.
McDowell calls PGA Tour ‘most complete tour’ in debate with pro
McDowell’s take inspired a lot of comments. One of them came from popular PGA Tour pro Michael Kim.
Kim has a big presence on X and regularly shares behind-the-scenes details about his life on the PGA Tour.
When he saw McDowell’s post, Kim decided to chime in with a reply to offer his own opinion publicly.
Kim began saying he didn’t “disagree” with McDowell’s primary argument, but Kim also stated that if a player is good enough, they’ll end up making it to the PGA Tour one way or another.
“I don’t disagree but the PGA Tour is one of the purest meritocracies in sports and if you’re good enough, you’ll end up playing on tour,” Kim wrote. “If you never made it… you just weren’t good enough.”
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McDowell replied with another surprising statement. First, he said that he does not dispute that the PGA Tour “is the most complete tour in the world to play golf right now.”
But he continued by arguing that the Tour is increasingly becoming a “closed shop,” while LIV offers young players like La Sasso guaranteed “cash in their pocket a chance to compete at a high level.”
“No disputing from me that the PGA Tour is the most complete tour in the world to play golf right now. My point is that it is also becoming increasingly a closed shop, like LIV, with harder and narrower pathways to get there,” McDowell wrote on X. “Getting there is arguably harder than staying there and golf is one of the few sports in the world in which the best young talents are not guaranteed their shot on the big stage. Pathways will always be important and LIV is providing a very interesting and compelling opportunity for the next gen player. Cash in their pocket and a chance to compete at a high level in my humble opinion.”
When a commenter replied to McDowell arguing that the path to the PGA Tour is challenging, rather than “perilous,” McDowell explained his point in more detail, calling the pathway to the PGA Tour a “rat race.”
“I mean [the path to the PGA Tour is] a rat race with constant failure on mini tours and the lottery nature of multiple Q school stages,” McDowell wrote. “It’s harder to work your way onto the tour that it is to keep your card assuming you are any good.”
