Charles Barkley Defends LIV Golf During TNT’s PGA Tour ‘Showdown’

Charles Barkley has some thoughts on the fractured state of men’s golf: The PGA Tour and LIV Golf need to merge—and LIV isn’t that bad.

During Tuesday night’s “Crypto.com Showdown,” which saw Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler earn $10 million in CRO cryptocurrency by defeating Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, Barkley repeatedly called for LIV and the PGA Tour to come back together.

“They need to do the right thing for the game of golf, get all these players together,” said Barkley, who was a match analyst on the TNT Sports broadcast. “That’s the only way this thing’s gonna ever get back to normal.”

Professional golf was split in June 2022, when Saudi-backed LIV Golf launched its first season, offering $20 million tournament purses and nine-figure signing bonuses for some top PGA Tour stars like DeChambeau and Koepka. Since then, LIV and PGA Tour players have rarely played in the same tournaments, with only the four annual major championships and the Olympics offering a big stage for members of both tours.

Barkley, who in 2022 was courted by LIV to join the league’s announcing team, defended the players who have joined the controversial tour over the past three years. “I just don’t think it’s fair,” he said. “I think the LIV guys have gotten a bad rap. They’re all free agents. There’s nothing wrong with taking money. But they need to merge.”

Barkley was a supposed neutral voice Tuesday night alongside play-by-play announcer Brian Anderson in the TNT Sports broadcast booth, which also featured analysts David Feherty from LIV and Trevor Immelman, who calls the PGA Tour and major championships for CBS. 

While neither the PGA Tour nor LIV was an organizer of the “Showdown,” Anderson and the other announcers referred to McIlroy and Scheffler as the PGA Tour team and DeChambeau and Koepka as the LIV team throughout the night. LIV Golf ran several commercials during the broadcast, but the PGA Tour didn’t run any. 

When Feherty said Barkley, who has previously played in a LIV pro-am, needed to get back out to an event in 2025, the Basketball Hall of Famer laid his praise of the tour on thick. “I would love to do it,” he said. “I think what you guys are doing is fantastic. I think, clearly, we gotta merge at some point. But I want you guys to be successful, and I’m a big fan.” That was a softer tone than he used toward LIV’s rival. “The PGA Tour needs to get their crap together, and get this thing working,” Barkley said at one point.

Immelman was fairly quiet on the PGA Tour–LIV divide during the match. “This is what the fans have been wanting,” he said at the top of the broadcast. “The best of both tours going up against each other.”

But Feherty, who left NBC Sports in 2022 to join LIV, made no bones about sticking up for his new league and campaigning for more events like this. “You know what I’d like to see? We’ve got two against two here. I would love to see 54 against 54—a 108-man tournament,” he said during the match. “There’s room in the schedule for one of those.”

After the match, McIlroy and Scheffler weren’t asked specifically about competing against LIV players again, but both DeChambeau and Koepka said they hoped they could compete in more similar events soon.