PGA Tour countersues LIV Golf for exploiting golfers, slams Mickelson and DeChambeau

PGA Tour countersues LIV Golf for exploiting golfers, slams Mickelson and DeChambeau

PGA Tour flag and Phil Mickelson

PGA Tour and the controversial LIV Golf are up against one another once again. According to a lawsuit filed by the PGA Tour, the rebel league has offered players mammoth money to break their contracts in order to improve the image of Saudi Arabia in the public eye keeping their human rights violence in mind.

The Saudi-backed league has filed a lawsuit against the PGA, claiming that they have broken competition laws. LIV filed a lawsuit after the PGA suspended and fined players who chose the controversial league and went to play their tournaments.

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PGA Tour vs LIV Golf saga gets uglier

PGA Tour vs LIV Golf- Credits: IMAGO / Icon Sportswire
PGA Tour vs LIV Golf- Credits: IMAGO / Icon Sportswire

The counter from PGA now states that: “A key component of LIV’s strategy has been to intentionally induce Tour members to breach their Tour agreements and play in LIV events while seeking to maintain their Tour memberships and play in marquee Tour events, so LIV can free ride off the Tour and its platform.”

Additionally, the PGA tour also asserted that LIV has seduced Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau to recruit tour members to join the controversial league. Apparently, the American golfer Mickelson was given a whooping sum of $200m fee for joining the Saudi-backed league.

“The Tour has made these counterclaims in a transparent effort to divert attention from their anti-competitive conduct,” LIV Golf said in response to the PGA Tour’s counter lawsuit. “We remain confident that the courts and the justice system will right these wrongs,” it added.

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In the original lawsuit which was filed in August, eleven golfers from the Saudi-backed league alleged that they are taking this step to file a case against the Tour to “strike down the PGA Tour’s anticompetitive rules and practices that prevent these independent-contractor golfers from playing when and where they choose.”

In the counterclaim earlier this week now the Tour has stated that players’ contracts and the way business is being run by LIV Golf all the claims made by the golfers are “fiction.”

“Golfers who join LIV must sign long-term exclusive contracts that require them to participate in all LIV events and prohibit them from playing in any tour events occurring in the same week as any LIV event [or any conflicting event whatsoever],” reads the counter. “LIV’s statements regarding golfer freedom are a thinly veiled public relations ploy concocted to disparage the tour and deflect criticism from LIV’s own restrictive business model.”

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