Pat Perez was a journeyman pro, better known for his acerbic sense of humor than his play on the PGA Tour, before he was among the first American players to defect to LIV Golf in 2022. Perez stayed a journeyman, never coming close to winning on the Saudi-backed circuit, though he was the poster guy for the league\u2019s easy money when his Dustin Johnson-led 4Aces team won the $16 million first prize in the inaugural season.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the push-back, all the negative comments, everything we\u2019ve gotten, at this point I really don\u2019t care. \u2026 I\u2019m paid. I don\u2019t give a damn,\u201d Perez said at the time.<\/p>\n
With a 48th-place individual finish in the 2024 season, Perez lost a team spot on LIV for \u201925 and became an on-course commentator.<\/p>\n
There has been speculation of late that Perez would be held back from re-joining the PGA Tour because of that broadcast duty, yet the tour confirmed, first to Sports Illustrated, that Perez has been reinstated as a tour member, though the organization is not saying when Perez will be able to compete again.<\/p>\n
Perez turns 50 in March and could be eligible to compete on PGA Tour Champions if the tour eventually gives him the go-ahead. Perez is already eligible to play in the U.S. Senior Open, Senior PGA Championship and Senior British Open.<\/p>\n
Because he didn\u2019t win a major or Players Championship from 2022-25\u2014he had one top-10 all-time in 27 majors\u2014Perez doesn\u2019t qualify for the recently announced Returning Member Program that brought Brooks Koepka back into the fold. Current LIV players Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Cam Smith were eligible, but said on Tuesday they will stick with LIV.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt his request, Pat Perez was reinstated as a member but is not eligible to participate in PGA Tour-affiliated tournaments at this time,\u201d the tour said in a statement. \u201cThe PGA Tour does not comment on disciplinary matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pat Perez was a journeyman pro, better known for his acerbic sense of humor than his play on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,755,138747,44,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-412557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-golf","12":"tag-golf-digest","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}