PONTE VEDRA, Fla. — It was a deliciously awkward moment.
As is a yearly tradition the day before the Players Championship begins at TPC Sawgrass, the PGA Tour assembles the first-time players in the event on a lawn outside of the clubhouse for interviews, and Tour commissioner Jay Monahan visits each player to give him a small blue box from Tiffany’s with cuff links in it.
Wednesday morning, one of the 25 first-time players Monahan made that special delivery to was Laurie Canter, a 35-year-old Brit who will be the first player from LIV Golf to tee it up in an event sanctioned solely by the PGA Tour.
“I never would have imagined that ever happening,” Canter said with a smile after Monahan presented him with the gift, referring to the well-documented discord between the PGA Tour and LIV.
Canter, who no longer plays on LIV, qualified for the Players through his position inside the Top 50 in the Official Golf World Rankings playing on the DP World tour.
His journey is a fascinating one, because when he agreed to join LIV Golf in 2022, Keith Pelley, then the chief executive of the DP World Tour, told him he was selling out on his dream to play on the PGA Tour by going to the Saudi-backed rival tour.
“He told me in his office at Wentworth that I would never play on the PGA Tour,” Canter recalled.
But Canter, who enters this week’s Players ranked 43rd in the world, is not only competing in the Players, he has a strong chance to play in his first Masters next month if he’s able to stay inside the Top 50 by the week before Augusta. All players in the Top 50 are eligible to participate in the Players Championship and the Masters.
Canter, who spent nearly a decade bouncing between the Challenge Tour and the DP World Tour, joined LIV Golf ahead of its inaugural event in his home country of England in 2022.
“The first year I played LIV, I’d lost my status in Europe, so I was homeless, really,” Canter said. “So, it was just a case of playing where I had opportunity to play. I was very much looking at what the options I had. I was fortunate.”
Canter appeared in seven LIV events in 2022 and earned a little more than $3.5 million. In ’23, he didn’t play as well, but still made $2.15 million in 10 starts.
Because he was at the bottom of the LIV standings in ’23, Canter was forced to compete in a promotions event and lost a playoff to determine the final spot on a team roster for the 2024 season.
With LIV Golf no longer an option, Canter made a full-time return to the DP World Tour, having to pay fines to regain membership.
He captured his first career victory last July at the European Open. And, just over a month ago, he won the Bahrain Championship, then finished runner-up at the South African Open. That result elevated him to No. 42 in the world and secured his spot this week at TPC Sawgrass.
The PGA Tour has a rule in place that states that anyone who participated in any LIV Golf events is banned from competing on the Tour for one year after their last LIV appearance. Canter last teed it up for LIV in February 2024 in Las Vegas, so his ban no longer applies.
Recalling the controversial LIV as the bad guys in golf, Canter joked that, “Maybe the first year it felt like we were sort of being like naughty schoolboys a little bit. But I think it’s evolved since then.”
Canter called LIV “the path that kind of opened up for me, and something that I wanted to pursue and do.
“I feel lucky and kind of grateful I’ve had the opportunities that I’ve had and that I’ve been able to find a way back to playing events like this. It hasn’t been an orthodox path, but it’s not been by design. That’s just how it worked for me, with the opportunities that were put in front of me.
“For obviously the money and the position I was in and where I was in the world rankings, that was the thing that appealed to me. I can be honest about that. As a financial opportunity, it was unrivaled. Just looking at the bottom line, it was an opportunity that I had to take.
“I got to play with a lot of guys who were heroes of mine, some genuinely world-class players, and it ended up being really quite beneficial for my golf.”
