'You Need To Speak' - Martin Kaymer Addresses LIV Golf Controversy

Martin Kaymer wishes the PGA and DP World Tours would speak to LIV Golf to work out a way of co-existing together amid the current controversy around PGA Tour suspensions and DP World Tour sanctions that include bans for three tournaments and fines of £100,000.

The German is teeing it up on the DP World Tour this week in his homeland but is now banned from next month's Scottish Open as well as the Barracuda and Barbasol Championships, and he'll also be forced to pay £100,000 to the DP World Tour after making the move to LIV Golf.

In an interview with Sky Sports, he expressed his confusion over how the tours haven't spoken to LIV and says he finds it "very difficult to believe that you can't find a solution together." The former World No.1 and two-time Major winner also said he doesn't see why LIV Golf should be seen as damaging and that he worries for the Ryder Cup.

"I made my choice and I can live with anything that comes my way," he told Sky Sports' Rob Lee. "I'm happy to play golf anywhere in the world. I'm happy to support any tour because I believe in all the tours and in different ways. So if it comes down to this, now if I’m not allowed to play any tournaments then that's what it is.

"I just hope it doesn’t affect the Ryder Cup too much because that has a lot to do with emotions. Not only for players, also for the tour and for sponsors. So hopefully everybody can sit down at the table and find solutions that are good for everybody and not bad for everybody.

"I find it very difficult to believe that you can't find a solution together. And there's no reason why you should be against each other. Because, you know, there’s no tour who owns golf, we should be all working together for the big picture.

"I don't understand why it [LIV Golf taking the 48 best players in the world] would be damaging because it's just another option to play golf. It's not like that we would resign from other tours and the pressure that comes from different tours. I'm not saying, you know, LIV is the best out there and they don't have special rules as well. But the main thing is that, nobody is against each other, but somehow it comes across like everybody is, you know, ‘LIV is taking over, LIV is against the PGA Tour and the European tour’. I never heard that from anybody from LIV."

Kaymer also said that he and other big European names would still play DP World Tour events and even agree to playing in some of the tour's smaller events to help out if the tour could come up with a deal with LIV Golf. But, the bottom line, he says, is that the tours need to speak.

"It’s Fantastic. It’s fantastic for me," he said on potentially playing 14 LIV events anf four Majors in the future. "But I will still play the tournaments in Germany, I would still play for example, the Scottish open, you know, those events that deserve the best players in the world. Obviously, it would be great to have also a plan that the player was a member of the European Tour plays maybe a couple of smaller events, you know, to support that. But the matter of fact is that you need to talk to each other and need to make a plan together. And this is the bottom line, you need to speak."