Abraham Ancer has raked in huge sums thanks to his switch to LIV Golf back in 2022, but the Mexican-American continues to hold out hope for the chance to compete in the four golf majors
Abraham Ancer still has a strong desire to compete in the PGA Tour’s major championships despite raking in millions through LIV Golf.
The Mexican-American golfer switched to the Saudi-backed rebel circuit in 2022 after several years on the PGA Tour, where he claimed one victory at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational a year before his departure.
As part of the Fireballs GC team, led by former Masters champion Sergio Garcia, the 33-year-old has reaped significant financial rewards from his decision to defect to LIV. Since signing in 2022, Ancer has pocketed £16.4million ($20.1m), with £3.2m ($4m) of his earnings being prize money from his sole LIV tournament win in Hong Kong last year.
Despite becoming significantly wealthier in less than three years on the tour, Ancer confessed that he is still hoping to participate in the majors alongside his fellow LIV golfers. LIV players currently must meet certain qualification criteria to compete in PGA Tour events, with the proposed merger between the two organisations yet to be confirmed despite the announcement of a framework agreement back in June 2023.
Ancer told Golf Monthly: “We will find out if anything changes (regarding Major exemptions). Do we want to play the majors? Of course we do. So, hopefully something happens and there’s a bit of a path. I feel like there’s a bunch of (LIV) players who have a chance to win a major, but we’ll see what happens.
“We definitely saw it this past year and you see the hunger in us wanting to play in Majors”, said Ancer, who had to go through a playoff to qualify for The Open Championship last year.
Ancer admitted that the reality of not being able to challenge for majors was something he recognised when he joined LIV but noted he had hoped there would be a pathway for LIV stars to participate by now.
He added: “It’s something that I don’t really try and think about. I’m happy with my decision (to join LIV) and I knew that may have been a possibility, (of not playing Majors) even though I thought there may have been some type of path created some time ago, but it is what it is. So we’ll see what we’ve got and we’ll keep going.”