PGA Tour CEO Bryan Rolapp Is Noncommittal on How LIV Defectors Will be Treated

New PGA Tour CEO Bryan Rolapp will not be drawn into a public framework for how returning LIV players get handled. He told the show the Tour is not ready to commit to one, and the reason is structural.

Rich asked the role-play question directly. If a LIV player picked up the phone, what would Rolapp say?

"I don't want to talk about personal conversations," Rolapp said. "But I think it's natural. There's a lot of people trying to figure out what their future might look like."

The Tour, in Rolapp's reading, has the luxury of not deciding yet. LIV has spoken publicly about having funding through the end of its season. Every LIV player is currently under contract. Until that changes, the Tour can keep its attention on what it is building.

"It's not really an issue we need to worry about right now," Rolapp said. "We're not spending a lot of time thinking about it."

What Rolapp did acknowledge is the tension that any return creates. Fans, he said, have been consistent. They want the best golfers playing together as often as possible. The Tour's membership, though, has not forgotten how it got here.

"I don't have a lot of scar tissue for the past, but that sort of still exists, and I have to be conscious of that," Rolapp said.

He pointed to Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed as the precedent. Both got out of whatever LIV commitments they had, signaled they were ready to come back, and found their way onto the Tour. Rich asked the question every other LIV player wants the answer to. Was that a one-time-only deal?

Rolapp's answer was careful.

"That was a particular program for that specific time that has gone away," he said. "We'll react when we have to react depending on the circumstance."

He landed on the line he wanted to leave with the room.

"PGA Tour may not be for everybody," Rolapp said. He praised what the Tour is building, said the membership is excited about it, and added that he would never begrudge a player the business decision they made.

The implication was clear. The door is not closed. It is also not open on terms a returning player gets to pick.