Cameron Smith, right, shakes hands with Rory McIlroy. Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

PGA Tour, LIV Golf pros mixed together in PGA Championship groups

By Chelena Goldman | Last updated 5/17/23

Remember back to before the Masters when everyone thought there would be a food fight at the Champions Dinner because PGA Tour and LIV Golf players would be in the same room?

All that appears to be a thing of the past roughly one month later, as pros from the rival leagues are grouped in with each other for Round 1 of the PGA Championship.

Cameron Smith in a group with Jon Rahm? Phil Mickelson with Rickie Fowler? If you'd been living under a rock for the last year and a half, you might think that Greg Norman's breakaway golf league didn't exist.

PGA Championship featured group Tee Times for R1: pic.twitter.com/UWWwUpZyPO
— Underdog Golf (@Underdog__Golf) May 17, 2023

The PGA Championship features a much deeper field than the Masters, with 156 pros competing at Oak Hill Country outside of Rochester, New York this weekend. With so many more participants -- and with no fisticuffs breaking out at Augusta last month -- it's likely that mixing members of every tour together was significantly easier.

The question now is whether any LIV Golf players will finish near the top of the leaderboard this weekend. Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed all finished in the top five in the first major of the season, although none of them are particularly favored by oddsmakers ahead of the tournament.

Koepka, for example, is the LIV golfer with the shortest odds at DraftKings at 20-1, while Patrick Reed is priced at 90-1 and Mickelson is an astounding 250-1 long shot.

The PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club tees off on Thursday, May 18.

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