{"id":615793,"date":"2026-04-30T19:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T19:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/615793\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T19:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T19:03:08","slug":"stephen-a-smith-accuses-pga-of-forcing-golfers-to-join-liv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/615793\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen A. Smith accuses PGA of forcing golfers to join LIV"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With the future of LIV Golf in doubt, Stephen A. Smith bizarrely believes it\u2019s the PGA Tour that should be offering a public mea culpa.<\/p>\n<p>In recent weeks, it\u2019s widely been reported that LIV Golf\u2019s funding from Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/golf\/liv-deliver-news-saudi-funding-setback.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">will run out<\/a> at the conclusion of the 2026 season. And without a financial backer willing to lose billions of dollars on the league, LIV Golf seems destined to reach its expiration date quickly. The uncertainty around LIV, however, raises similar questions about the future of its golfers.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Trey Wingo joined the Awful Announcing Podcast and said <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/golf\/trey-wingo-phil-mickelson-will-not-rejoin-pga-tour.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">don\u2019t expect the PGA Tour to welcome LIV golfers back<\/a> with open arms. Outside of wanting Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau, Wingo believes the PGA Tour will make it difficult for those who left for LIV to return.<\/p>\n<p>Thursday morning on First Take, Stephen A. Smith countered what Wingo predicted and instead claimed the PGA Tour better welcome LIV golfers back, or else. According to Smith, it\u2019s the PGA\u2019s fault that they left in the first place.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">\u201cIf the PGA decides to punish these (LIV) golfers, we should stay in their ass like white on rice\u2026the players didn\u2019t want to leave the PGA, they were forced to.\u201d \u2013 Stephen A. Smith <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ukVXV2vhKE\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/ukVXV2vhKE<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/awfulannouncing\/status\/2049870151244210282?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">April 30, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the PGA decides to punish these (LIV) golfers, we should stay in their ass like whit on rice,\u201d Smith ranted. \u201cThey should not be punishing anybody. It was their negligence, it was their abuse, it was their taking golfers for granted that forced the existence of LIV to begin with. The players didn\u2019t want to leave the PGA, they were forced to because they were looking for better opportunities because of the manner in which they were treated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll they wanted was to be treated better,\u201d Smith said of the golfers who left the PGA for LIV. \u201cAnd the PGA stuck their nose up like the arrogant people that they were, and they mistreated these guys. Now that this is going away, supposedly, and these players from LIV are looking to come back, I don\u2019t want to hear anything about punishment. They should be embraced, they should be accepted, and PGA should learn from this and treat them more fairly than they did in the past, which forced LIV\u2019s existence to begin with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Smith is making golfers leaving the PGA for LIV out to be like people defecting from authoritarian systems or political oppression in search of freedom. The golfers who opted to leave the PGA did so for nine-figure checks from a country looking to sportswash their history of human rights abuses.<\/p>\n<p>LIV\u2019s existence undoubtedly forced the PGA Tour to pay its players better, and that business model has now been improved. But Smith claiming golfers only left for Saudi money because the PGA was abusing them might be the worst attempt at spinning sportswashing.<\/p>\n<p>\t<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the future of LIV Golf in doubt, Stephen A. Smith bizarrely believes it\u2019s the PGA Tour that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[97420,427,10658,3332,99,3692],"class_list":["post-615793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-first-take","tag-golf","tag-liv-golf","tag-pga-tour","tag-sports","tag-stephen-a-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}