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Darren Clarke is confident he still has “a few more decent days left on the golf course” having opted against joining the Saudi Arabian-backed LIV Golf series as a broadcaster.
The 2011 Open champion turned down the opportunity after the PGA Tour said he could not continue to play their senior events if he accepted the offer.
“I could still have gone and done it but it would have basically meant me retiring from playing professional golf. I wasn’t ready to do that just yet,” Clarke said.
The PGA Tour has suspended all members who have competed on the new LIV Golf circuit.
Clarke, who won three events on the PGA Tour’s senior circuit in the 2020-21 season, was facing a similar sanction even if his proposed involvement with LIV Golf was in a non-playing capacity.
“Unfortunately I asked for permission to do it and it was denied, [I am] not allowed to do it as part of my PGA Tour membership,” he said.
“I respect that decision. I would love to have gone and done it and played both but they decided in their rules and regulations that it wasn’t viable for me to do so.
“I want to play. Hopefully I’ve got a few more decent days left on the golf course and I wasn’t ready to hang the clubs up just yet.”
‘It’s like asking if Liverpool can play in Premiership and La Liga’
The LIV Golf series has attracted some of the sport’s biggest names, with £200m in prize money on offer across its eight events.
The DP World Tour, formerly the European Tour, suspended 16 players for joining the breakaway series but faced a legal challenge which saw England’s Ian Poulter cleared to play in last week’s Scottish Open.
“I can understand why the guys have done it. That’s fine, they get paid a lot of money to go and join the LIV tour,” Clarke continued.
“It’s a different question if you ask should those guys be allowed to play. It’s like asking should Liverpool be allowed to play in the Premiership and go play in La Liga at the same time?”
The LIV series appears likely to affect next year’s Ryder Cup, with American and European players required to be members of the PGA and DP World Tours respectively in order to be eligible for selection.
Clarke, European captain in 2016, says the impact will be regrettable with many of those who played last year’s event at Whistling Straights set to miss out on Rome 2023.
“There’s going to be some changes from the teams that we would have thought after Whistling Straits. You would have thought the majority of the Americans would have been there, now there’s some of them that aren’t going to be part of that team going forward.
“As [DP World Tour chief executive] Keith Pelley said, every action comes with consequences. So if you want to go and do this, then you can’t do that.
“It’s not my position to say what’s right and what’s wrong but at the moment the rules are that those guys are ineligible to play.”
