LIV Golf star Richard Bland risks irking new employers after leaving PGA Tour

Richard Bland has risked upsetting his new employers after explaining why he chose to leave the PGA Tour and join LIV Golf. Bland is one of many players to have jumped ship to the Saudi-backed tour alongside the likes of Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia and Bryson DeChambeau.

Bland, who recently won the US Senior Open, joined LIV in 2022 after mixed levels of success on the PGA and European Tours. Discussing why he decided to make the switch, he risked upsetting his current employers by revealing that he only joined for the money.

“That was purely why I did it,” he told Golf Monthly. “I wasn’t trying to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes. I was honest and up front of why I joined LIV and it was purely for the money.

“I know people have been slated, you know, ‘it’s growing the game, it’s doing this doing that, whatever’. I purely went for one thing and one thing only, and I’m not ashamed to say that.

“I had the opportunity to make my life, my family’s life and whatever we do as a family a lot easier, so as I say, it was a no brainer.”

Bland raked in over £2.7million in his first year with LIV before boosting his bank balance with another £3.4m in 2023. On the LIV money list for 2024, he has picked up a further £1.7m plus £493,000 for winning the Senior PGA Championships and £626,000 at the US Senior Open.

Although he was not afraid to admit he joined LIV for the money, Bland went on to insist that he did not receive any signing-on bonuses and said that big names like DeChambeau and Jon Rahm fully deserved their nine-figure payouts.

“As I’ve said many times, like I know a lot of people who believe me when I say this, but LIV didn’t offer me a dollar, it was just purely the opportunity to play,” he added.

“No matter what people might think, whether I’m lying or not telling the truth on this side, I’ve got nothing to hide. I never have. So it was just purely the opportunity to play and I had to play well enough to stay on LIV.

“Obviously it was a decision that I had to talk to my wife and to my family about and in the end it was quite an easy decision for me. I didn’t sign for one penny and that was fine. I don’t begrudge the guys that signed for tens of millions or whatever, they earned it. That’s fine.”