Will Zalatoris backs PGA Tour ahead of latest LIV Golf event: ‘We are the best tour’

Top-ranked PGA Tour player Will Zalatoris shut down rumors last month that he would defect to the rival LIV Golf league and on Tuesday he doubled down, calling it the “best tour.” 

The 25-year-old golfer, who has yet to win on the Tour but finished second at this year’s PGA Championship and U.S. Open, spoke openly about his feelings toward the tension between the two circuits. 

“I’m a Player Advisory Council member, so we talk about it internally a lot,” he said Tuesday, via USA Today. “It’s a wild time for the PGA Tour and I guess golf as a whole, but the changes that I think are going to happen and everything that’s going to come down the road is only going to make us stronger.”

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Zalatoris, who is a favorite at this week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic, didn’t seem too concerned with the effects LIV Golf might have on the PGA Tour, despite its ability to pull in the sports’ top talent with its lucrative signing bonuses and purse sizes. 

“And we are the best tour. Every week we’re playing the best courses on the planet… I just think that just let time come and let everything kind of settle and it will be very clear, but right now with all the changes and how everything has been just so wild and a lot of hearsay, I think that we just need to let the dust settle if you will, and we’ll be just fine.”

Zalatoris will be one of the five players competing in Detroit this weekend that make up five of the top 20 ranked players in the world. LIV Golf will have 10 of the top 50 players in the world competing at the Bedminister Invitational at Trump National in New Jersey – but no player from the top 15. 

Players competing at the Rocket Mortgage Classic are vying for an $8.4 million purse with the winner’s share coming to around $1.5 million while LIV Golf is offering a $25 million purse with a $4 million winner’s share and a $5 million prize for the winning team. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.