LIV Golf’s Pat Perez drops out of lawsuit: ‘I have no ill feelings toward the PGA Tour or any of the players’

Three-time PGA Tour winner Pat Perez has dropped out of the antitrust lawsuit initially filed by 11 LIV Golf players earlier this month, saying he “didn’t really think it through.”  

Perez, 46, became the second golfer to abandon the lawsuit, telling Sports Illustrated in an interview that his intentions were not “to go after the PGA Tour.”

“I didn’t really think it through,” Perez said. “I did it to back our guys.”

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Phil Mickelson and 10 other golfers filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour earlier this month, claiming that its indefinite suspensions were aimed at hurting their careers. Three other golfers also filed for a temporary restraining order to compete in the FedEx Cup playoffs, arguing that they qualified before joining LIV Golf – an injunction that was later denied by a federal judge in California.

“I have no ill feelings toward the PGA Tour or any of the players. I’m a LIV guy 100%,” Perez told the outlet. “I’m going to play for them. But I don’t feel any need to go after the PGA Tour. They gave me a wonderful opportunity for 21 years. I’ve got nothing against them, no hard feelings toward anybody. I earned everything I got out there, don’t get me wrong.”

He continued: “I chose to leave and I’m not looking to come back. I’d like to maybe play the Champions tour one day if that can work out and that’s why I have not given up my membership. But there is no benefit to doing this. I have an unbelievable deal with LIV and I’m behind them 100%.”

Carlos Ortiz shared those same thoughts last week when explaining his decision to abandon the lawsuit.

“At the end of the day, I don’t want to have any problems with the PGA Tour,” he said, via GolfMagic. “I’m happy where I am. I don’t want to go back to the PGA Tour now. And that’s why I withdrew from the lawsuit.”

“I’m not against the PGA Tour. I wanted to play the playoffs, if possible.”

Nine other golfers remain in a lawsuit that the PGA Tour and its players have staunchly criticized as a personal attack. 

“I just feel, as do a lot of members of the PGA Tour and a lot of employees of the PGA Tour, a small vindication at this point because it’s not over, but everything that’s been done is correct, and we [the Tour] are within our own right to do what they’ve done,” Billy Horschel said at the St. Jude’s Championship.