What is going on at LIV Golf? TG visited the league’s latest tournament at JCB Golf & Country Club, where uncertainty reigns…
When Jon Rahm was asked directly whether he would be a LIV Golf player in 2027, the thoughtful Spaniard’s response was deemed in some quarters as cryptic or oblique.
“I’m not going to share anything that I can’t share with you guys right now,” Rahm told reporters at LIV Golf UK, where the beleaguered league is returning for the latest of its $30 million events after a seven-week hiatus. Yet while Rahm says that players “know a lot of what’s going on”, rampant uncertainty over LIV’s future has been the talk of the range this week in the Staffordshire countryside.
Still reeling from the impending loss of multibillion dollar support from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, LIV bosses are racing against time to raise the $350 million required to keep the tour going. In a captain’s meeting at JCB Golf & Country Club on Tuesday, LIV chief executive Scott O’Neil assured players that he has found investors interested in forking out to save the league before a September deadline.
But O’Neil’s words could not assuage the growing concerns held by some players.
“Unfortunately, even Scott, he can’t tell us because he doesn’t know,” Cleeks GC captain Martin Kaymer told TG on Wednesday. “It depends so much on the investors. Hopefully, there’s a lot of interest and it’s looking good. But we’ve all been there. If the signature is not there, then it doesn’t mean anything.”
Speculation intensified at The Open that remaining events on this year’s LIV schedule are in serious doubt. The league indefinitely postponed its New Orleans event in June, hence the long break, and it now appears that the season-ending Team Championships in Michigan next month will not go ahead.
The $40 million tournament has become LIV’s annual showpiece and attracts wider interest as it adopts the under-utilized match play format. But infrastructure has still not been built on the Cardinal course at Saint John’s in Michigan, which had been preparing to stage the season finale on August 27.
A final decision will be made on Tuesday, but Kaymer has only given the event a “five percent chance” of taking place. The German, therefore, is processing the possibility of LIV moving its Team Championships up a week to its penultimate event in Indianapolis.
“It’s important to just finish the season and hopefully we’ll have a plan for 2027,” Kaymer added.
What is certain is that LIV’s next stop at Donald Trump’s Bedminster course just outside New York will go ahead as planned. It is there that players finally expect to learn the league’s fate.
O’Neil is pitching a revamped “LIV 2.0” to prospective investors and there has been positive feedback since taking the league to market. There is confidence in the LIV hierarchy that they will secure the funding it requires, as well as placating star players by dishing out equity in the league.
However, the latest blow to LIV complicates things and was largely unforeseen. While O’Neil was meeting with potential beneficiaries at Royal Birkdale, LIV’s feeder circuit was finalizing a deal to leave the league behind. The Asian Tour’s new global alliance with the PGA and DP World Tours was hailed as “positive news” by Rory McIlroy, but for LIV it was anything but. LIV had partnered with the Asian Tour prior to its launch in 2022 and it provided the league a promotion and relegation pathway to its lucrative tournaments.
The Asian Tour’s Saudi-funded International Series has offered events with $2 million purses for players to keep sharp away from the 14-event LIV schedule. But, as the Asian Tour’s CEO Cho Minn Thant said after the announcement: “Given the circumstances now, we’ve have had to look at other options.”
LIV had discussed supplementing its schedule with national opens and could have leaned on the Asian Tour to do so, but the league now risks being frozen out. News that LIV was about to lose one of its key partners was anticipated by some at the league, but others seemed to be caught completely off guard as the news spread through JCB on Tuesday morning. TG inadvertently informed one player of the announcement when attempting to glean reaction to the deal.
The notion, however, that the Asian Tour’s split will serve as the death knell for LIV is roundly dismissed by league insiders. The plan is still to stage 10 core LIV events next season, which TG understands would carry $10 million purses, a third of the current prize pots. LIV has also been discussing the possibility of bringing in an effective cut to these tournaments by not paying out the last dozen or so players on the leaderboard. As it stands, the bottom 11 players at LIV events each bank $50,000.
Conspicuous in his silence is Bryson DeChambeau, who is continuing to shun requests from reporters after the soap opera at Birkdale. DeChambeau gave the impression at JCB that there is no end in sight to his mainstream media blackout.
The two-time US Open champion is understood to have personally attended pitches for investment since PIF confirmed it was withdrawing its LIV funding at the end of the season. Conversely, though, DeChambeau has also flirted with the idea of full-time YouTube content creation outside of the majors.
LIV sources are relaxed about DeChambeau’s future, but TG understands that multiple other LIV players have contacted the DP World Tour as part of their contingency plans for next season. One player told TG they would attempt DP World Tour Q School this winter if the league folds, or attempt to earn his card on its feeder circuit, the HotelPlanner Tour.
This week, the show will go on at LIV Golf UK, one of the league’s best-attended stops, where Rahm will attempt to wrap up a third successive season-long LIV title. In the meantime, though, many LIV players are looking ahead, preparing for the possibility of this current season coming to a very abrupt end.
“It’s a bit sad because we all invested in this year, and I’m not meaning financially,” Kaymer explained. “We invested time, emotions, hopes, the vision. We were told in February that we are fully funded until 2031, and two months later it all goes down. If it failed that way, it would be a shame.”
