For the better part of four years now, golf has been spending like there is no tomorrow. Ever since LIV Golf arrived and started handing out the eye-watering contracts, the PGA Tour responded in kind through a revamped business model, from bigger prize money to new signature events. But now that suddenly LIV’s future is suddenly up for debate, the topic of debate is centered around whether the cost of transformation was too high. Well some definitely think so.

Peter Jacobsen is one of the loudest voices in that debate. Speaking on the Monday Q Info podcast, he said many in his generation initially did see LIV as a temporary disruption rather than an existential threat.

“When LIV happened, there were a lot of players in my generation who said, ‘This is a blip on the screen. Ignore it,” Jacobsen said. For him, though, the Tour saw things differently.

“But the PGA Tour, in a game of chicken, they panicked, and they brought in the three billion or two billion dollars worth of investment, which means they sold the PGA Tour.”

Jacobsen then took the criticism a step further, saying, “Now we’re being run by Strategic Sports Group. We really don’t have the autonomy that we used to have.” Then he summed up the state of professional golf in three words. “It’s an arms race.”

As far as LIV goes, he isn’t convinced that it’s around for long. “They’re done. They’re going away.”

That last line is more of Jacobsen’s opinion on LIV’s future and not a verified fact, and the same applies to his claim about who calls the shots at the Tour now. What we do know is that Strategic Sports Group agreed to invest up to $3 billion into the newly formed PGA Tour Enterprises, with an initial $1.5 billion committed at signing. The deal arrived amid direct competitive pressure from LIV’s entry into the sport. Still, it’s not hard to see why Jacobsen views the last few years as an arms race. Because the money does tell a story.

Four years ago, The Players Championship purse sat at $20 million, and then it jumped to $25 million in 2023 and has held on to it since then. Then came the pride of the PGA Tour’s creations, the Signature Events, eight of them as of now, and each has a whopping $20 million purse. The majors have followed suit, with the Masters climbing from $15 million to $22.5 million, and the U.S. Open rose from $17.5 million to match Augusta at $22.5 million this year. Then we have the PGA Championship shifting gears from $15 million to $20.5 million.

​For Jacobsen, though, the issue isn’t just how much money is being spent. It’s where that money is going. Referencing the recent comments from Cameron Smith, he made an argument about how the focus has become a little too narrow. He said:

“Cameron Smith said this a couple of weeks ago. He said, ‘These purses are crazy. Let’s get back to a little bit more sensible purse level, and let’s bring more young players into the game rather than focusing on the top 60 or 70.'”

Now that is not verbatim to what Smith said, but part of it checks out. In June, the former Open champion did tell the Daily Mirror, “It’s time for everything to come back to the way it was.” The rest can be taken as an opinion on the podcast.

But here is the thing, Jacobsen or Smith isn’t the only big name questioning the impact LIV has had on the sport. More recently, Rory McIlroy also made a similar point.

“LIV created this false economy where we had to up prize funds and had to cut fields and try to support the top players and all that stuff,” McIlroy said ahead of the 2026 U.S. Open.

Now no one is saying the same thing. Jacobsen thinks the PGA Tour overreacted to LIV and gave up their independence in the process. McIlroy’s view is that LIV forced changes that never would have been needed in the first place. But they both are essentially at its roots asking the same thing:

What did golf gain from the fight, and what did it lose?