PGA Tour, LIV Golf lawyers are on the tee as 11 LIV Golf members challenge suspensions

Gentlemen ... start your litigation.

Eleven former PGA Tour members who joined the LIV Golf Series have sued the PGA Tour, challenging their suspensions after they defied the Tour's rules on seeking permission to play outside events.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the suit on Wednesday.

Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Abraham Ancer, Jason Kokrak, Carlos Ortiz, Pat Perez, Ian Poulter and Peter Uihlein are the plaintiffs in the suit.

Three other LIV members, Hudson Swafford of St. Simons Island, Ga., Talor Gooch and Matt Jones are seeking a temporary restraining order so that they can play in the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup Playoffs, which begin next week.

Gooch, Jones and Swafford were qualified for the playoffs before leaving for LIV.

The lawsuit, obtained by Golfweek, states:

"As the Tour’s monopoly power has grown, it has employed its dominance to craft an arsenal of anticompetitive restraints to protect its long-standing monopoly. Now, threatened by the entry of LIV Golf, Inc. (“LIV Golf”), and diametrically opposed to its founding mission, the Tour has ventured to harm the careers and livelihoods of any golfers, including Plaintiffs Phil Mickelson, Talor Gooch, Hudson Swafford, Matt Jones, Bryson DeChambeau, Abraham Ancer, Carlos Ortiz, Ian Poulter, Pat Perez, Jason Kokrak, and Peter Uihlein (“Plaintiffs”), who have the temerity to defy the Tour and play in tournaments sponsored by the new entrant. The Tour has done so in an intentional and relentless effort to crush nascent competition before it threatens the Tour’s monopoly."

LIV Golf has now staged three events and ahead of each, a new group of PGA Tour and DP World Tour players have joined the upstart circuit backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. And each time, the Tour has suspended them.

Saudi Arabia has been accused of wide-ranging human rights abuses, including politically motivated killings, torture, forced disappearances and inhumane treatment of prisoners. And members of the royal family and Saudi government were accused of involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist.

“I just wish it wasn’t this way. I think wherever you qualify, you have the credentials to play somewhere, you should be able to do so,” Ancer said to Golfweek last week at the LIV Golf Invitational Series event at Trump National Bedminster. He also thinks he’d play in the playoffs if given the chance. “Everything is changing day by day, so I don’t even know what’s happening. I’m committed to LIV, but I’d like to play all over the world. We’ll see what happens.”

Matthew Wolff was unable to give a definitive answer to whether or not he’d compete in the playoffs when asked at Trump Bedminster, but said he’d “absolutely” consider it.

On the other side of the issue was two-time Players champion Davis Love III of St. Simons Island, who said last week at the Rocket Mortgage Championship in Detroit that PGA Tour players could elect to strike major championships that allow LIV Golf members next season.

Love mentioned the U.S. Open and said on Tuesday at the site of the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C., that he didn't intend to single out that tournament.

But he said there could be an action of some kind from PGA Tour members.

"I didn't try to single out the U.S. Open as the players striking or not -- threatening not to play," he said at the Sedgefield Country Club. "I was saying that if the

LIV guys sue and are allowed to play on the PGA Tour, that the players are enough fed up with it, we understand that we make the rules on the PGA Tour and the commissioner's enforcing our rules and we don't want those guys playing ... come and cherry picking our tournaments, that we hold all the cards. They

don't hold all the cards, we hold all the cards.

"The nuclear option is to say, 'well, fine, if they have to play in our events, we just won't play,'" Love continued. "I think the Tour players, the Max Homas and Rory McIlroys have done a good job. I think the undercurrent of guys are getting more and more fed up with it, that these guys are threatening our way of life, they're trying to take money out of our pockets and cherry pick our best tournaments. The majors have to make their own decisions ... but the PGA Tour players, we support the PGA Tour and we support the rules and we need to stand up for them.”

Garry Smits of the Times-Union also contributed to this report.

Contact Garry Smits at gsmits@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: PGA Tour, LIV Golf lawyers are on the tee as 11 LIV Golf members challenge suspensions