Hudson Swafford, the embodiment of the hypothetical question that has consumed professional golf for nearly 2 ½ years, watched last month’s PGA Tour fall finale with a mixture of envy and relief.
“I wouldn’t want to be playing today,” Swafford laughed as the field at the RSM Classic endured brutally cold conditions and winds that gusted off the Atlantic Ocean to 30 mph. “I miss seeing a lot of my buddies, for sure, miss playing at home. Maybe not the weather they’re having today. Time heals a lot of things, for sure.”
Sea Island Golf Club is just a few miles from where Swafford lives on St. Simons Island, Georgia, but on this blustery day the PGA Tour event may as well have been on another planet.
Swafford was one of the original 17 players suspended by Tour commissioner Jay Monahan in June 2022, shortly after participating in the first LIV Golf Invitational Series event, for violating the circuit’s polices on conflicting event and media rights releases.
From that first wave of suspensions, the unanswered question has loomed over the professional game: Would players like Swafford ever be allowed back into Tour-sanctioned events?
The initial memo from Monahan addressed the outsized elephant in the room, saying, “we’re prepared to deal with those questions [if players wish to return to the Tour], and we’ll approach them in the same way we have this entire process: by being transparent and respecting the PGA Tour regulations you helped establish.”
Two-and-a-half years later, that pathway back for players who joined the Saudi-backed league has been anything but “transparent” and, thanks to Swafford, the question is no longer hypothetical.
“I don’t know, the Tour has a hard stance on a [one-] year suspension [for players who joined LIV Golf]; there’s some really grey stuff going on with LIV and I didn’t know if I’d be back with LIV,” Swafford told GolfChannel.com. “I tried to go back [to the PGA Tour] last year, talked to [Jason Gore, the Tour’s senior vice president, player advisor to the commissioner] and [Monahan] and thought I did everything pretty cordially, just told them how I felt. They could never give me an answer.”
To be clear, Swafford wants to return to the PGA Tour. He’s willing to serve whatever suspension the circuit doles out and even pay fines to return. The Tour, however, hasn’t provided Swafford with a clear path, despite numerous requests.
According to documents provided during the disclosure phase of the now-dismissed lawsuit between the Tour and LIV Golf, players were originally told they would be suspended from competing in Tour-sanctioned events for one year following their final LIV Golf event. For Swafford, that would mean he would be eligible to compete in Tour-sanctioned events, including Monday qualifiers and Korn Ferry Tour events, on Sept. 16, 2025.
A Tour spokesperson declined to comment on any potential suspension or fines for Swafford or whether the 37-year-old would retain his status as a past champion.
“Past champions are getting in a bunch of fall events, does my past champion status reinstate in September?” Swafford asked. “I can’t seem to get any answers. It’s pretty frustrating.”
Part of that frustration for Swafford is professional and part is personal. After a difficult year as a “wild card” player on LIV Golf, he finished 55th out of 57 players and is in the circuit’s “drop zone,” which means he will be relegated from the league unless he’s offered a new contract.
“I’ve been playing poorly the last two years with the hip injury. I’ve been struggling, my golf game has been struggling. Not doing what I was good at, struggling with the driver,” Swafford said. “That’s the first thing I want to do is have fun with golf again and then get focused with the opportunities.”
With the lack of clarity from the Tour on a path back, his options are limited to the LIV Golf “promotions” event this month in Riyadh, which would provide a return to LIV, and starts on the Asian Tour’s International Series. His professional limbo is particularly concerning considering that the framework agreement, which was announced in June 2023 and ended the litigation between the Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, specifically laid the groundwork for a pathway back for LIV players to the Tour.
“Subject to execution of the definitive agreement, PIF, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour will work cooperatively and in good faith to establish a fair and objective process for any players who desire to re-apply for membership with the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour … for determining fair criteria and terms of readmission consistent with each tour’s policies,” the agreement read.
Swafford said he spoke with Monahan again in October at the Dunhill Links Championship on the DP World Tour and hopes his plight can pave the way for a broader reunification of the professional game.
“I feel like this is a pretty big deal. I know I’m not the first guy they wanted back, but I feel like they need guys to start coming back,” Swafford said.
What exactly a return to the Tour for LIV players looks like is among the biggest issues slowing the talks between the Tour and PIF, according to one member of the policy board, and Swafford suggested the issue may be even more complicated when it comes to some of the game’s biggest stars who joined LIV.
“I get the hard one-year sit out from the last LIV event, but a guy like Brooks [Koepka] and Bryson [DeChambeau] aren’t going to do that to come back to the Tour. They [the Tour] really don’t know,” Swafford said. “What gets me is guys are returning to the DP World Tour, they paid their fine and now they have free reign. Why are you going to close out big names?”
Players who joined LIV have been allowed to play DP World Tour events provided they pay substantial fines; although, Jon Rahm has challenged those fines and has been allowed access to events during the review process. Swafford said that pathway back from the LIV abyss for European players, along with the PGA Tour’s “strategic alliance” with the DP World Tour, sends players a mixed message.
“I get [the Tour] has taken the hard stance, but DP World Tour has gone the other way. Bernd Wiesberger was pretty much in my situation and went straight back to DP World, his suspension was three events and got to start playing,” Swafford said.
Swafford also said he would be curious what happens if the Tour and PIF reach a deal that is now nearly a year past the framework agreement’s deadline, but he understands that if he wants to return to the Tour, he will have to pay his pound of flesh.
“My first goal is to get my golf game back to where it was in 2021; it’s been miserable and stuff off the course has impacted that. It’s been a roller-coaster ride, no doubt,” he said. “They need somebody to come back, I don’t think golf is big enough to be completely separated. The best players need to play against each other more often than four times a year.”
The pathway back to the Tour is personal for Swafford and he also understands it’s complicated, but as the Tour season wrapped up at Sea Island, Swafford’s desire to return sent a clear message – this question is no longer hypothetical.
