[Picture: Richard Heathcote]
LIV Golf made headlines when the league, entering its fifth season in 2026, announced it will expand the league’s format from 54 holes to 72 holes. LIV Golf’s three-round format was initially one of its biggest selling points—both for players, who wanted more “time to spend with their families,” and fans, who were pitched a faster, snappier brand of golf—but it quickly became an albatross as the Saudi-funded circuit pursued OWGR points.
RELATED: Cam Smith, South Australian premier respond to LIV Golf’s move to 72-hole tournaments
Conventional wisdom suggests the move, which should help pave the way for World Ranking legitimacy and reopen traditional major qualification routes for LIV pros, will be popular with stars such as Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Tyrrell Hatton, but as the latter explained on Wednesday, that may not be exactly true.
Interesting from Tyrrell 👇
Said today that at the end of 2024, @LIVGolf players filled in a questionnaire. One question asked if players wanted to move to 72 holes.
Only 3 of 48 players said yes.
Yet, a year later, the league has confirmed it'll now play 72-hole events. pic.twitter.com/pW6PsZD8Iy
— Jamie Kennedy (@jamierkennedy) November 5, 2025
RELATED: LIV Golf hopes moving to 72 holes will help its World Ranking bid. Rory McIlroy isn’t sold
“At the end of my first season, there was a questionnaire that was filled out,” Hatton told reporters at the Abu Dhabi Championship. “One of the questions was about moving to 72 holes, and of everyone who filled it out, I think there was only three guys, initially, who had said [yes] about moving there [to 72 holes].”
That’s a pretty remarkable revelation from Hatton. The Legion XIII pro’s first season on LIV came in 2024, meaning the survey was taken sometime in the past 15 months.
Either way, Hatton said that he’s personally “quite happy” with the change, which makes sense. Unlike many of the league’s big names, such as Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson, Hatton is in the prime of his career. He’s now a two-time Ryder Cup winner, finished T-14 at this spring’s Masters and was in the mix late Sunday at the US Open before ultimately finishing T-4. The next logical step for him is to win his first major, and this change could make qualification for those marquee tournaments easier.
