January has been an intriguing month in the PGA Tour-LIV battle as Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed—two of LIV’s high-profile major champions—announced their return to the Tour.
Koepka came back at last week’s Farmers Insurance Open while Reed is eligible to return to Tour in the fall. And it isn’t just those two players as the likes of Pat Perez, Hudson Swafford and Kevin Na are due to return after serving bans that will last into 2027.
The path for LIV players to return has been blown wide open. There are suspensions and penalties but nothing particularly punishing. You could argue that these players did well to grab their LIV cash and return with minimal consequence.
Then there is the case of Wesley Bryan.
Bryan never competed on LIV but is being punished more than those who flew the LIV flag feverishly over four years worth of tournaments.
It’s a completely unnecessary suspension based on a technicality.
Given their recent self-proclaimed initiative of listening to what fans want, it’s time for the Tour to swallow its pride and let Bryan compete again.
Bryan received an indefinite suspension
For the uninitiated, Bryan is the co-host of the wildly successful Bryan Bros. YouTube channel that is widely considered among the top few golf channels online.
He earned more than $5 million in his Tour career including a win at the 2017 RBC Heritage.
Bryan has been a consistent presence in professional golf including when he made 18 Tour starts in 2024. He lost full-time status heading into 2025 where he made three starts early in the year.
But after taking part in a LIV Golf: The Duels event last April in Miami—a YouTube match on Grant Horvat’s channel—Bryan was given an indefinite ban from the Tour. The nine-hole scramble match was deemed an unauthorized event given that it featured six LIV golfers and six YouTube creators playing for a $250,000 purse.
Paired with Dustin Johnson, Bryan’s team finished fifth in the match and did not win the $150,000 first-place prize.
It wasn’t the last LIV Duels event he played in as Bryan has 36 holes worth of it on his record, for what it’s worth.
Bryan has stated that the Tour has shot down any conversation about him returning, despite LIV players recently being invited back.
“Unfortunately, Brooks Koepka coming back to the Tour has no bearing on my situation,” Bryan wrote on Twitter. “I have reached out and asked for a conversation to potentially uplift my suspension and I have been told that no such conversation will be given …
“I just wanted to clarify my current situation, as a lot of you guys have been asking. I still love the PGA Tour, and definitely love YouTube. See y’all soon on the internet.”
Bryan’s fans have been upset that he isn’t getting the opportunity to play professional golf at the highest level—especially given the current state of affairs in pro golf.
Reed was a core member of LIV, suing the Tour on his way out the door back in 2022. He was pro-LIV, anti-Tour more than just about any other player … and he’s being welcomed back with virtually no repercussions.
But Bryan? He played a few scrambles and has no path back to the Tour. He has defended the Tour over the past few years and competed in two Creator Classics.
You could say Bryan is just a journeyman pro who has never made a cut in a major before. True.
You could say he is barely competitive on Tour at this stage in his career so he doesn’t exactly deserve even a sliver of the special treatment Koepka or Reed are getting.
However, Bryan would bring more eyeballs to the Tour than 90 percent of the field. I believe that. The Bryan Bros. have more than 750,000 subscribers on YouTube and a reach that extends well beyond that.
A quick search of “free Wesley Bryan” posts make that abundantly clear.
Bryan is being held out of the Tour on a technicality
The short summary here is that Bryan’s punishment is reportedly more severe because he was still a full-time Tour member at the time of participating in LIV Duels.
This is in contrast to a player like Reed who resigned his Tour membership to compete on LIV.
The situation goes beyond that, however.
The ambiguous rule that protects the Tour from its members playing in unauthorized events is written in a way that makes sure Tour players aren’t allowed to compete in organized professional golf tournaments on sanctioned leagues around the world.
The spirit of this rule is not meant to dissuade golfers from creating their own content or participating in someone else’s content. Bryan himself played in the Tour’s own version of LIV Duels.
YouTube golf barely even existed prior to COVID and the Tour has largely botched merging the worlds of professional golf with the rapidly growing world of YouTube (you know it’s bad when LIV, a dying league, is doing it much better).
Here’s an idea to strengthen that bond: let Wesley Bryan play in your events.
It would only be restoring his conditional status and letting him accept sponsor invites to lower-tier events. It’s really not much of a hardship to do that.
I find it interesting that YouTuber Grant Horvat—who also participated in the LIV Duels—still has a close relationship with the Tour. He played in The American Express pro-am last month and was invited to play in a Tour event last year (he declined the invite).
While Horvat has never had Tour membership, which is a key difference, the Tour has no issue “sharing” Horvat’s YouTube influence with LIV. They would do the same thing with Bryan if he wasn’t a member.
That’s quite convenient.
By upholding this ridiculous suspension, the Tour is managing to hurt its product two ways: Bryan doesn’t draw interest in lower-level Tour events that need the publicity … and he doesn’t play in made-for-streaming events like the Creator Classic that have quickly lost steam.
Are the fans really being put first?
The Tour has done a lot of talk in the past few months about how the fans are the top priority.
Credit where credit is due: getting Koepka and Reed back definitely improves the Tour product. Opening the pathway for LIV players to come back is a benefit for Tour fans who forgot these notable players existed. I’m liking where CEO Brian Rolapp is headed here.
But I would make the argument that championing someone like Bryan is even more of a fan-focused maneuver. It’s an easy PR win.
Look, Koepka and Reed have more talent in their pinkies than Bryan has in his whole body. That’s not the point here.
The point is that Bryan makes the Tour better. Even if he plays five times per year and makes just one cut, he’s still someone a large swath of fans care about.
Maybe some of you hate him or are apathetic. Fair, but enough people do genuinely care given his online profile.
If your point is that the Tour would be bending its pre-established rules for one guy, I would then ask what other player would fall into this category?
If Bryson DeChambeau decided to come back to the Tour but wanted to play in random YouTube events, would the Tour not allow that based on an archaic rule? I figure they would find a way to accommodate him.
Bryan is no Bryson but he’s not exactly Hudson Swafford, either.
And given how the Tour just made up the Returning Member Program out of thin air, I’m thinking some of its rules and regulations aren’t exactly sacred.
The Tour and Rolapp are off to a good start to the year.
Take another W, guys.
Free Wesley Bryan.
Top Photo Caption: Wesley Bryan is serving an indefinite suspension from the PGA Tour. (GETTY IMAGES/Richard Heathcote)
Greg
4 months ago
The argument you make to all Wesley Bryan to compete on the PGA Tour is irrefutable. Punishing him like this makes the tour look ridiculously petty and hypocritical, because that’s exactly how they’re behaving. I’d much rather see Wesley Bryan on tour than Patrick Reed.