What Will Golf Look Like in 10 Years' Time?

As things stand the short-term future of professional golf is a fairly grim place with legal action hanging in the air and seemingly weekly fall-outs taking place all over the world. Players who began the year as heroes to many of us are now rarely seen and, when they are heard, it's all fairly tiring and PR led.

There are still, though, plenty of sound voices in the game, one of whom is Patrick Cantlay. The American might not be the most thrilling player to watch but, under the bonnet, is a very shrewd character. He has been repeatedly linked to LIV Golf but the World No. 4 is still part of the old firm and this week was part of the American Presidents Cup side at Quail Hollow.

And while this year has been all about LIV Golf and its ramifications, Cantlay believes that this is merely a blot on the landscape.

“I think what gets lost in all this is it's been so contentious, and it seems like it just continues to be contentious. I would be surprised if there's not some coming together intervention because I just don't know of any sport, really, that has a legitimate fractured sport," the American said.

“So I feel like if we're 10 years from now, everyone will be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that LIV stuff. I remember that,’ and we'll all be playing at least some of the same events together. I find it funny that people are so amped up about it because I don't - I maybe don't get as emotional about it as everyone seems to be getting.”

So where, in among all the arguments and rumbles, does Cantlay take this optimism from?

"I could be wrong, I'm not saying that I know there's, you know, going to be a coming together. I'm just saying when I look at all other sports, all the best players play together. And I've heard, we had the American Football League. That went away. I mean, nobody continued to play on the American Football League. There's been other stuff in baseball. So I just feel like at some point, when you start looking back on it, people will be surprised to hear, you know, oh, man, it was, you know, really contentious. Because it just, it will feel like a blip on the radar once it's all settled. It's just right now very unknown."

As for the locker room rumours of this player or that player being the next to head to Greg Norman's circuit, Cantlay is simply keeping his head down.

"Yeah, I mean, you hear all the time some new top 10 player's going, right? We've been hearing stuff like that for a year or more. So until it actually happens, I give it basically no credence. I'm just a very, very, very small piece in something that's a lot bigger than me, right? So, you know, if someone asked me, I would give them my honest opinion. But I'm in no position to try and tell someone what they should do. And I think what we've learned through all this is, you know, everybody's motivations are very different."