Viktor Hovland feels the PGA Tour has set a dangerous precedent after they allowed Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed to return following their departures from LIV Golf.
Koepka teed it up in last week’s Farmers Insurance Open and will do so again at the Waste Management Phoenix Open while Reed will be allowed to play as a non member from August 25th before retaining full membership in 2027.
Hovland, who once toyed with a move to LIV himself, believes the immediate return of Koepka boosts the PGA Tour product but that it might not sit well with some other players.
“I mean, just for my personal standpoint, I would say I enjoy playing against those guys,” he said. “I think obviously Patrick Reed being a major champion and great player and Brooks a five-time major champion, that’s a great addition to the PGA Tour. They’re great players and I want to compete against the greatest players out there.
“I think it just makes the products, the fields better.
“However, it does kind of put the Tour in a tricky position now. You’ve said one thing for a long time and now we’re changing things. What precedent are you setting then to the future players now if I can go to a rival tour, get paid, and now seemingly come back again without the biggest consequences.
“I don’t really have an opinion on that, to be honest. That’s something the Tour has to figure out. I’m sure there is a lot of people not going to be super happy about that, but at the end of the day, I just want to compete against the best players in the world.”
When pressed on whether recent developments have prompted the Norwegian to reconsider his playing future having previously sought out a LIV deal before deciding the PGA Tour was the best place for him, Hovland wasn’t willing to give too much away.
“Not really,” he said. “I just see the news and I go, oh, that’s interesting, and then I just go about my day.
“I’ve got stuff to do, things to figure out, so that’s about the amount of calories I’m spending on reacting to things like that.”
Koepka made the cut on his PGA Tour return last week with a T56 finish at the Farmers Insurance Open after a cold week on the greens at Torrey Pines while Patrick Reed has committed his short term future to the DP World Tour until he can return to the PGA Tour.
Reed won the Dubai Desert Classic and missed out on back to back wins in a playoff at the Bahrain Championship.
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