LIV Golf’s Phil Mickelson demands Donald Trump’s Justice Department battle PGA Tour over golfer’s suspension

The PGA Tour has reportedly suspended Wesley Bryan for playing in a LIV Golf influencer event two weeks ago and now the Saudi-backed Phil Mickelson is calling on Donald Trump‘s Justice Department to go after his former employer.

‘Here’s a question,’ Mickelson, one of the major PGA stars to defect to the rival LIV circuit, wrote on X. ‘Normally when an entity violates independent contract law, they deny that it happened and forces (sic) the contractor/individual to prove that it did.

‘In this case the PGA Tour blatantly admits they are illegally banning an independent contractor so why doesn’t they [Department of Justice] step in and enforce the law?’ asked Mickelson, who agreed to leave the PGA for the Saudi-backed LIV tour for a reported $200 million in 2022. ‘Why does the individual have to sue to enforcer (sic) the law? DOJ do your fffing job!’

The tour has not commented on the suspension, but DailyMail.com has reached out to PGA spokespeople for confirmation and a response to Mickelson’s post.

Bryan told the website Monday Q he doesn’t know how long the ban will last, although he plans on appealing.

He and his brother, George, have become popular for creating content on a YouTube channel, with videos featuring trick shots. Wesley Bryan participated in two PGA Tour influencer events in the past year, including in March, Golf Digest reported.

But it was a recent event at Donald Trump-owned Doral that appears to have landed Wesley in some trouble with the PGA, which is currently negotiating a merger LIV while banning its own players competing on the Saudi-backed rival.

The event, known as ‘The Duels: Miami,’ featured six LIV golfers and six YouTube creators, all of whom knowingly faced disciplinary action from the PGA as a consequence of participating fin the event, according to the Monday Q report. In the end, only Wesley Bryan was suspended on the day after The Duels went live on Horvat’s channel.

Bryan, 35, is attending but not competing this week in the Corales Puntacana Championship in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, where he finished second last year to Billy Horschel. It is on the schedule opposite the RBC Heritage, which Bryan won in 2017 in his native South Carolina for his lone PGA Tour victory.

We had this vacation planned for months, so I decided we would still come down,’ Bryan told MondayQ.com. ‘It’s been a long time since we had a family vacation where golf wasn’t involved.’

He no longer has full tour status and has played in three events in 2025 as recently as March, missing two cuts — the exception a tie for 25th at the Farmers Insurance Open in January. Bryan is 169th in the FedExCup standings (31 points) with $75,068 in official earnings.