Multiple representatives for LIV Golf players have started to reach out to the PGA Tour to explore what a path back would look like, a source told ESPN on Wednesday.
A potential return for such players comes amid reports in recent weeks that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will stop its funding of LIV after the 2026 season, clouding that tour’s future.
Earlier Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that LIV is expected to tell its players by Thursday that PIF’s funding will stop at season’s end. The Telegraph reported that captains of LIV’s team already have been informed.
In addition, Sports Business Journal reported Wednesday night that Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of PIF who was behind the creation of LIV, is resigning as the tour’s chairman. The SBJ report said LIV was planning to announce Thursday a strategy for moving forward without its primary financial backer, including a new board and plans to seek outside financial partners.
With LIV’s future uncertain, the PGA Tour is now in a position where it can choose how it wants players to potentially return and even prioritize which players it wants back.
In January, PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp introduced a “Returning Member Program” — a performance-based pathway for players who had been away from the tour for at least two years and who had won either the Players Championship or any of the four major championships from 2022 to 2025. Players had until Feb. 2 to decide if they wanted to come back. Brooks Koepka accepted along with several penalties included within it; the other eligible players — Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Cameron Smith — opted not to take part.
With the Returning Member Program expired, the PGA Tour is exploring plans for specific players to potentially make their way back under new and possibly more stringent restrictions.
“We’re interested in having the best players who can help our tour,” Rolapp told The Wall Street Journal in its story published Wednesday. “Not every player can do that.”
Patrick Reed, who joined LIV in June 2022, did not renew his contract with the tour and instead is serving a one-year ban. He’s eligible to return to the PGA Tour on Aug. 25. Henrik Stenson and Pat Perez also opted to leave LIV and were allowed to return under similar yearlong bans from their last LIV event. Both are now playing on the 50-and-older PGA Tour Champions.
Factors that might influence how the PGA Tour welcomes back specific players could include past performance, whether a player resigned his membership or didn’t (Reed did, for example), whether he played on tour or had status at all and whether he was involved in the antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour. Rolapp told The Wall Street Journal that plenty of people at the tour have “scar tissue” regarding the players who were part of that lawsuit and that he expects that factor to be accounted for “in some shape or form.”
Of the 11 players who were part of that suit, DeChambeau is the most prominent.
DeChambeau, a two-time U.S. Open champion, and Rahm, a two-time major winner, are the players who would likely bring the most value on and off the course to the PGA Tour if they return. DeChambeau is in the last year of his LIV contract, which is reportedly worth more than $100 million; Rahm signed a deal worth over $300 million in 2023.
DeChambeau did say in an interview with the Flushing It social media account earlier this month that “as long as LIV is here, I would figure out a way for it to make sense.”
LIV’s next scheduled event is May 7-10 at Trump National Golf Club in Washington, D.C. Earlier this week, LIV announced a late-June tournament in New Orleans would be postponed, with officials looking at a possible fall date instead.
That path ahead, however, is unclear because of the uncertainty of LIV’s future with PIF’s involvement set to end.
Al-Rumayyan, the now-former board chairman, long wanted a seat at the table with the sport’s leadership. He signed a framework agreement in 2023 with the PGA Tour and European tour and was set to join the PGA Tour Enterprises board if it was approved.
The deal never materialized, except for ending the antitrust lawsuits. PGA Tour Enterprises instead got a minority investment from a consortium of North American sports owners.
Scott O’Neil, who replaced Greg Norman last year as CEO of LIV Golf, told staff in an email on April 15 that the 2026 season “continues exactly as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle.” But he later acknowledged during LIV’s Mexico City event that Saudi funding was good through the 2026 season, and he would “work like crazy” to create a solid business plan, raising questions about how it would keep its top players.
“The reality is you’re funded through the season and then you work like crazy as a business to create a business and a business plan to keep us going,” O’Neil said. “But that’s not different from any other private equity-funded business in the history of man.”
Golf Digest first reported the news of LIV players’ representatives reaching out to the PGA Tour.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
