Steve Stricker said bluntly last week that a tranche of older LIV stars “would be hits here on the Champions Tour,” then undercut the welcome by adding, simply, “they did leave.”
Stricker, 59, is not a casual observer. He has won 18 times on the PGA Tour Champions, including seven senior major titles, and runs the American Family Insurance Championship in Wisconsin. That record is the weight behind his comment — a host and household name on the over-50 circuit arguing both for and against letting high-profile defections back in.
“There’s two ways of looking at it, right? Sure, to have the guys that are 50 now, or close to it, like Lee Westwood, [Ian] Poulter, Pat Perez, some other guys [Phil Mickelson and Henrik Stenson], they would be hits here on the Champions Tour. This tour could use that,” Stricker told Jim Owczarski in a Milwaukee interview last week, naming a group of well-known players who left for LIV in 2022.
The timing of Stricker’s ambivalence matters now. LIV’s future is uncertain after LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil told reporters on Tuesday he could not guarantee the rest of the season would happen. If LIV falters, aging stars will need a place to play — and Stricker’s view is the clearest public argument yet that they would help the PGA Tour Champions commercially and competitively while still carrying the moral freight of having left.
That freight is not theoretical. The PGA Tour Champions is owned and operated by the PGA Tour, and the PGA Tour’s punishments and restrictions for LIV players extend to the senior circuit. That means even if a player turns 50 and has the résumé to draw crowds, eligibility and access could still be blocked by the same sanctions that followed the LIV departures.
Stricker’s rationale is straightforward: the Champions schedule is built for an older fan base and a limited number of events; recognizable names who can still play would boost interest, purses and television ratings. His counterpoint is also straightforward and personal — these men chose another path. “They would be hits here on the Champions Tour,” he said, and then reminded listeners that “they did leave.”
That contradiction provides the friction. Stricker is arguing from two positions that rarely sit together: a promoter and co-owner of a tournament who wants eyeballs, and a member of the PGA Tour family that has enforced discipline against LIV entrants. His public ambivalence lays bare the choice the senior tour faces between short-term commercial gain and a longer-term enforcement of league discipline.
For the players Stricker named — Westwood, Poulter, Perez, Mickelson and Stenson — the stakes are practical as well as reputational. If LIV folds or its schedule evaporates, older players may not have the game to return to the DP World Tour or the PGA Tour even if restrictions were lifted. The Champions Tour is the natural late-career landing spot, but current PGA Tour rules complicate that route.
What happens next is a concrete policy question that rests with the PGA Tour and its Champions operation: will they carve out exceptions, negotiate reinstatements, or hold the line on penalties that keep former LIV players out? Stricker’s words nudge the debate in two directions at once — they make the case for the audience and purse benefits those names would bring, and they harden the argument that leaving had consequences.
With LIV's season now publicly in doubt, the senior tour will soon face a decision that feels both immediate and symbolic. Stricker provided the most candid framing available from inside the PGA Tour Champions: these players could lift the tour, but their departure can’t be erased by nostalgia or box-office potential. The unresolved question — whether Champions administrators will let them in despite the penalties that followed their exit — is the one that will decide where those players can play next.
