[Photo: Hector Vivas]
With LIV Golf reportedly losing its financial backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Golf Digest has learned that representatives for multiple LIV players have contacted the PGA Tour to discuss a potential return. People familiar with the conversations say a path back to the PGA Tour will exist, though the conditions are expected to be considerably more restrictive than those granted to Brooks Koepka.
RELATED: Report: Head of LIV Golf Yasir Al-Rumayyan is stepping down as league’s future in doubt
After Koepka announced in January his intention to return to the PGA Tour after his LIV exit, PGA Tour chief executive Brian Rolapp unveiled the “Returning Member Program”. It was a performance-based pathway for “players who have been away from the tour for at least two years and have won the Players Championship, Masters Tournament, PGA Championship, US Open or the Open Championship during the 2022-2025 seasons”. Aside from Koepka, only three LIV players qualified: Cam Smith (2022 Players Championship and 2022 Open Championship), Jon Rahm (2023 Masters) and Bryson DeChambeau (2024 US Open). The window closed on February 2 with no guarantee of a second offer. All three passed.
Golf Digest has learned from a PGA Tour source that with LIV set to inform players and staff as early as tomorrow (Australian time) that PIF is withdrawing its funding after 2026 – and one of the remaining scheduled LIV events already postponed – the Returning Member Program is not expected to be renewed. “The situation is different now,” the source said. Even players hoping for the path Patrick Reed faces – a one-year ban dating to his last LIV appearance – may not get it.
The PGA Tour’s rules and regulations include different categories of membership, and some LIV players violated those regulations on their way out. Reed, for example, resigned his membership. Others never officially did. As a result, the tour will sort returning LIV players into separate categories, such as former members, and those who never played or held status on the tour at all.
The 11 players who joined the antitrust suit against the PGA Tour are expected to face additional scrutiny. That group includes DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson, Talor Gooch and Ian Poulter. Resentment over the litigation persists within the membership. “I don’t necessarily have scar tissue, but there are plenty of people around our tour who do,” Rolapp said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “It has to be accounted for in some shape or form.”
The two interesting cases are DeChambeau and Rahm. Rahm is in an ongoing dispute over membership reinstatement on the DP World Tour, an impasse that has added meaning given that his 2027 Ryder Cup eligibility runs through the European circuit. The DP World Tour has, notably, been working to find him a path back, although Rahm has not made that easy. At the Masters he was unapologetic and gave no indication of softening his position. The PGA Tour is a tougher audience. The view from players and from Ponte Vedra Beach is narrow and consistent: Rahm’s exit at the end of 2023 may have prolonged the conflict by a full year. LIV was on the ropes. The framework agreement was advancing. Then Rahm crossed over, delivered the Saudi circuit the validation it was running out of time to find, and the tour was caught flat-footed. Should LIV collapse in 2027, Rahm’s only option may be a humbled return to the DP World Tour – assuming a door is still open at all.
DeChambeau’s situation is more complicated. In the weeks before the Masters, his representatives approached LIV about a new deal. He remains LIV’s most prominent figure – one of the most recognisable players in the sport and, by most measures, its most commercially valuable. Sources tell Golf Digest that DeChambeau was seeking a figure well above Rahm’s reported $US300 million contract. LIV did not engage at that level. In recent months, DeChambeau has been non-committal about his future, saying that his current deal runs through year’s end and tepidly noting “as long as LIV is here, I would figure out a way for it to make sense”. He was, at one stage, an enthusiastic supporter of the league. Sources say his view has shifted, and that he now regards LIV as having underdelivered on its initial vision. A return to the PGA Tour, the antitrust litigation aside, also presents complications. He has previously described feeling out of place there, restricted by regulations he found at odds with his approach. He is reportedly open to the changes Rolapp has introduced – and The Athletic reported earlier this month that DeChambeau’s representatives have reached out to explore his options – though that openness is conditional.
A PGA Tour that includes Rahm and DeChambeau is, on competitive merits, a stronger product. Both rank among the most accomplished players of their generation, and their presence in fields would meaningfully affect ratings, sponsor interest and the depth of marquee events. Officials around Rolapp recognise that. They also recognise the difficulty of the position. Both players were offered a defined pathway back through the Returning Member Program and elected not to take it. Re-admitting them now – not because they have reconsidered the benefits of the tour, as Koepka did, but because LIV’s collapse has eliminated their alternatives – would carry a different meaning than a routine re-instatement. It would amount to the tour absorbing players on terms set by circumstance rather than by the program Rolapp put in place earlier this year.
With significant structural changes to the PGA Tour’s schedule, governance and competitive model still being finalised, the precedent matters. Internally, there is concern that such a move would signal the tour is willing to revise its own framework under pressure. It’s an impression Rolapp can ill afford as he attempts to consolidate authority and credibility in the early stages of his tenure.
RELATED: The messy truths Brian Rolapp will learn about pro golf
With LIV no longer having the PIF’s funding, whether the league can secure replacement capital to replace it is an open question. PIF has reportedly committed in excess of $US5 billion to LIV since its 2022 launch, with limited evidence of a path to profitability and no meaningful television rights deal in a major market. Any prospective investor would be inheriting a venture that the world’s most aggressive sovereign wealth fund concluded was no longer worth sustaining. A difficult starting point for negotiations, particularly in the current sports media environment, where valuations across leagues and properties have softened. For the players and personnel still under LIV contracts, the timeline is the more immediate concern. Even in a best-case scenario involving new ownership, the process of identifying a buyer, conducting due diligence and restructuring the league’s financial commitments would probably extend well beyond the current funding runway. LIV chief executive Scott O’Neil has already signalled that, should a future exist for LIV, it may not look like the present.
In the interim, there is the potential that LIV contracts may go unfulfilled, more events may be reduced or cancelled outright, and that players weighing a return to the PGA Tour or DP World Tour will be doing so against a closing window. The path off the LIV roster, in other words, may not move as quickly as the path onto it once did.
