Greg Norman would need to step down from his position as CEO of LIV Golf in order to work with the PGA Tour, according to the golfer.
The Augusta National Golf Club said on Tuesday that any golfer who qualified for the Masters tournament based on its previous criteria will be invited to play in the tournament in 2023.
The group that defected from the PGA Tour to the LIV Golf is made up of six past Masters winners.
The chairman of Augusta National Golf Club said that recent actions have divided men's professional golf by diminishing the virtues of the game. "Although we are disappointed in these developments, our focus is to honor the tradition of bringing together a prominent field of golf this coming April."
"As invitations are sent this week, we will invite those eligible under our current criteria to compete in the tournament." Changes to the invitation criteria for future tournaments will be announced in April, as we have said in the past. There is a point in the history of our sport. We have faith that golf, which has overcome many challenges through the years, will survive again.
The Masters will be held in Augusta, Georgia, on April 6-9.
The Open Championship and The Players will be won by Australia'sCameron Smith. The two players were invited due to their recent victories. After being ranked in the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking, Talor Gooch and Joaquin Niemann are in the field.
Six other people, including Abraham Ancer, Harold Varner III, Kevin Na, and Louis Oosthuizen, were invited to attend. Any other player in the top 50 on the week before the event would also be invited.
Whether Augusta National would change its criteria to make it more difficult for LIV golfers to compete in the Masters has been one of the game's pressing questions.
Many of the Tour's most recognizable players have left to join LIV Golf, which is fronted by two-time Open Championship winner Greg Norman and financed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
The PGA Tour was accused of colluding with the four major championships to ban LIV golfers from competing in the sport's most important events when they filed an antitrust lawsuit against the tour in August. The lawsuit accused Ridley of working for the tour.
Augusta National threatened to disinvite players from The Masters if they joined LIV Golf, according to the complaint. In this year's tournament, it was alleged that Ridley told players not to defect to LIV Golf and that he wouldn't talk to Norman about the new circuit's business model.
The three-time Masters champion didn't play in this year's tournament because of his comments about the Saudi Arabian monarchy's history of human rights violations. Lefty was not disinvited to play at the Masters.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
