John Daly was a guest on the Piers Morgan Uncensored show and shortly into the six-minute interview, revealed he really wanted to be a part of the LIV Golf Invitational Series, the breakaway league offering huge signing bonuses, giant purses, 54-hole tournaments and no cuts so that every golfer gets something for their efforts. And Daly wasn’t shy about it.
“I begged Greg Norman to let me be on the LIV tour,” he said.
He went on to explain how much better he thinks the LIV circuit is compared to the PGA Tour or even the PGA Tour Champions, where Daly spends most of his playing time now.
“I played with Brian Harman in a practice round, and with some other guys in some of the practice rounds at the British Open and it’s like, we play pro-ams, we get it. OK. That’s what is the backbone of a lot of our tournaments. But, Brian Harman says, give us a box of chocolates for the effort.
“I play two to three pro-ams every week on the Champions tour and we don’t play for a lot of money on the Champions tour so I almost feel like, ‘OK, I’m not getting a lot out of this. What are we doing?’
“Look, I’d rather play with amateurs than the pros sometimes but we’ve gotta get compensated for that. The LIV tour is giving players that. They play pro-ams, it’s a big party, they play for a lot of money, which these guys that are on that tour, deserve that money. And I think there’s a lot of other guys that deserve that money.
And then using both hands to point to himself, Daly said: “Especially this old man.”
Morgan then mentioned a piece he wrote for the New York Post about the hypocrisy of morality in sports “and a lot of the PGA sponsors, for example, do lots of business in the middle east.”
He then asked Daly his opinion on hypocrisy in sports, particularly golf.
“Piers, let’s not talk about that. They don’t want to be mentioned in that because of, you know, all the labor laws and stuff. It’s unbelievable. The politics is so stupid in this. I could talk about Nike, I could talk about other companies. Little eight-year-olds are building shoes for Nike. OK. We don’t want to get into that, right? You want to talk about labor laws. We’re talking about golf. Guys that are playing golf. It’s an international sport.
“The Prince of Saudi Arabia is a great guy and he’s given so much money to golfers that deserve it. Well, there are some that aren’t deserving because I should be on that tour.”
Daly admitted he’s too old but also seemed to indicate that perhaps Norman may not be inviting any more golfers to LIV.
“Greg says he’s not doing anymore.”
Daly went on to say that Bryson DeChambeau told him at the Open Championship that LIV Golf “is the greatest thing on earth. We still play a pro-am. … we play for a lot of money, which we deserve to play for.”
Saudi Arabia has been accused of wide-ranging human rights abuses, including politically motivated killings, torture, forced disappearances and inhumane treatment of prisoners. And members of the royal family and Saudi government were accused of involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist.
