The Justice Department is reportedly looking into the PGA Tour's handling of LIV Golf defectors on antitrust grounds

• The Department of Justice is reportedly looking into the PGA Tour's handling of LIV Golf defectors.
• Per the Wall Street Journal, the PGA Tour is being investigated for anticompetitive behavior.

The Department of Justice is investigating the PGA Tour's handling of its newfound rivalry with LIV Golf, according to a report from Louise Radnofsky and Andrew Beaton at the Wall Street Journal.

According to the report, the DOJ is looking to determine whether the PGA Tour "engaged in anticompetitive behavior," in its decision to suspend players that have left the Tour to play with the Saudi-backed upstart league.

Per WSJ:

"Players' agents have received inquiries from the DOJ's antitrust division involving both the PGA Tour's bylaws governing players' participation in other golf events, and the PGA Tour's actions in recent months relating to LIV Golf, according to a person familiar with those inquiries."

After several players made the jump from the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf ahead of the new league's first event in London earlier this year, the PGA Tour responded with suspensions. PGA Tour players are not allowed to play in events hosted by other organizations that go against scheduled PGA Tour events without getting a release approved by the Tour.

While many LIV Tour players have been suspended, a few others, including Dustin Johnson, resigned their PGA Tour membership voluntarily before taking part in the LIV event, in an effort to get ahead of the coming punishment from the Tour.

The PGA Tour was previously investigated in 1994 by the Federal Trade Commission regarding similar rules that kept players from competing in non-Tour events. Nothing came of that inquiry.

"This was not unexpected," the PGA Tour spokesman told the Wall Street Journal of the DOJ's current investigation. "We went through this in 1994, and we are confident in a similar outcome."