Life these days looks a bit different for eight-year PGA Tour veteran Hudson Swafford.
The 37-year-old notched three wins on the PGA Tour between 2017 and 2022 before joining LIV Golf, but he’s struggled with injuries for the last couple of years. In fact, Swafford isn’t even playing competitively at the moment. Instead, he’s working in multifamily real estate.
“I had been in a pretty bad place with golf, so doing something new is very refreshing,” Swafford told hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz on this week’s episode of Subpar.
Still, Swafford said he wouldn’t completely rule out a comeback to professional golf, though he admits the road is “blurry” at the moment. The reason? Swafford was relegated from LIV last year after competing for three seasons, and says he’s currently in the midst of a five-year suspension from the PGA Tour.
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“I’ve had some good back and forths with the PGA Tour, but then some wishy-washy,” Swafford said. “It’s still not set in stone. I know they’ve set up suspended until ’27, which I know they’re basing that on a couple of people’s contracts being up after the ’26 season, so then they can kind of change rules in favor of everybody coming back.
“I know some guys that didn’t have any status,” he continued. “And, you know, it’s a hard one-year, no PGA-tour-sanctioned events, but then you can come back and play.”
Swafford said he wonders what his playing schedule would even look like if he returned to the Tour in 2027, given the number of reduced-field events that now populate the schedule.
“I would go ahead and bet and say that the past champions category is pretty much done going forward after this year,” he said. “I mean, we can agree or disagree, but it just seems like that. And they’ve kind of told me that. So I mean, I guess you can sign up for Monday qualifiers, but really I’d be basically suspended until Q-School of ’27.”
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Why did Swafford get slapped with a five-year suspension? He said it’s because he played five LIV Golf events in 2022 during the PGA Tour season that he wasn’t able to get media releases for.
“So they’re giving me a year for each of those and it equaled ’27,” Swafford said.
When contacted for comment and/or clarification on Swafford’s claims, a Tour representative replied: “The TOUR does not comment on disciplinary matters.”
For more from Swafford, including why he decided to leave the Tour for LIV in the first place, check out the entire episode of Subpar below.
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