{"id":433661,"date":"2025-03-14T10:56:30","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T14:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/?p=433661"},"modified":"2025-04-23T16:39:36","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T16:39:36","slug":"laurie-canter-jumps-from-liv-to-pga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/laurie-canter-jumps-from-liv-to-pga\/","title":{"rendered":"Laurie Canter and Move From LIV to PGA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Among all this discussion between the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/2025\/02\/25\/is-a-pga-and-liv-merger-actually-good-for-the-game\/\" target=\"_self\">PGA-LIV merger<\/a>, and the reunification of players for both leagues, there is finally someone who switched from LIV Golf.\u00a0 That player is Laurie Canter and he will be the first LIV Golfer to defect to PGA.\u00a0 What does this mean for the sport, and will this be the start of a new trend for LIV Golf players?<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Laurie Canter Career At LIV Golf<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Canter started his LIV Golf career in 2022 when the league debuted.\u00a0 At the time he was no. 86 in the world rankings, and from there joined the Cleeks team.\u00a0 That first year, he finished 32nd out of 68 players in the LIV Golf season.\u00a0 The next year Canter became a reserve player and would make bank earning a little over $2 million.\u00a0 However, he would struggle to make the cut in the following two years at LIV.\u00a0 In 2024 he played his final LIV event at Las Vegas, after which he was finally pushed out.\u00a0 Now Canter is playing in PGA events and is beginning to realize some success for himself.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Moving On From LIV Golf<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Canter had to leave LIV, he found himself back in the DP World Tour where he played before signing onto LIV. There, he found himself not only playing stronger games but also winning events. During the year he spent in the DP World Tour, he reached number 42 in the world rankings.\u00a0 He eventually found that his time away from LIV was enough to get him into a PGA event, just one year after the player&#8217;s last LIV event.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In an <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.com\/sport\/golf\/article\/laurie-canter-liv-golf-pga-tour-hb27pjvf0#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI%20honestly%20had%20an%20overwhelmingly,what%20I%20am%20capable%20of.%E2%80%9D&amp;text=Canter%20served%20a%20seven%2Dweek,DP%20World%20Tour%20in%202023.\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">interview with The Times<\/a>, Canter reminisces on his time with LIV as an opportunity he took.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><em>\u201cI can hand on heart say I wouldn\u2019t harbour a grudge against someone who\u2019d taken the opportunity to go and play on LIV, so if anyone feels hostile towards me [at TPC Sawgrass], I won\u2019t be particularly worried,\u201d<\/em> says Canter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cOne of the great things about golf is there\u2019s always been a really good level of respect and camaraderie between the players. That was gone for two years and it was an embarrassing time to be a pro because of the things being said, not just by the players but some of the people in and around the organisations in charge of the sport, but I think that period is over now. The hostility is waning. I\u2019m just excited and really proud to have the opportunity to play in this tournament.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The bit about hostility waning is certainly true.\u00a0 Many players in both leagues are eager to s<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/2025\/03\/05\/pga-liv-merger\/\" target=\"_self\">tart playing with each other again<\/a> after the leagues have been butting heads since 2022.\u00a0 He was clear to say that the money LIV made available to him was just something he could not refuse.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cLIV is a different beast. I was playing for ten to 12 times more money every week against a smaller field. As a financial opportunity, it was unrivalled,\u201d says Canter.\u00a0 \u201cJust looking at the bottom line, it\u2019s an opportunity that I had to take. What I hadn\u2019t foreseen was the experiential element of being around some of those players.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What this Means For LIV and the PGA<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In short, what it means is that if the merger falls through, there will still be a path for players to switch between the two.\u00a0 Given all the discussion about players who are rumored to switch back to PGA, this is good news. Canter is currently competing in the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, and is being referred to as a new &#8220;trivia fact&#8221;.\u00a0 In the future he may be seen as more of a trailblazer by his colleagues.\u00a0 Setting a path amid relieving tensions between the two leagues.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credit:\u00a0 \u00a9 Peter van den Berg-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among all this discussion between the PGA-LIV merger, and the reunification of players for both leagues, there is finally someone who switched from LIV Golf.\u00a0 That player is Laurie Canter and he will be the first LIV Golfer to defect to PGA.\u00a0 What does this mean for the sport, and will this be the start [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4860,"featured_media":433667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,246,200,19],"tags":[295],"class_list":["post-433661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-golf-news","category-liv-golf","category-pga","tag-laurie-canter"],"modified_by":"yobodev","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4860"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}