LIV golf may be nearing its off-ramp

LIV Golf (LIV is Roman numeral 54) started in 2022 with billions of Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund money with the intention of disrupting the existing structure of men’s professional golf – i.e. PGA Tour – and a strategy of stealing the game’s top stars so they wouldn’t have to start from the bottom up.

Four years later the LIV tour’s future is seriously in doubt. As it became known in mid-April, reported by CBS Sports online, LIV executives convened in an emergency meeting in New York with members of PIF. That caused the internet and social media to explode with speculation of LIV tour’s demise.

In an effort to squelch all the rumors, LIV Golf’s CEO Scott O’Neil emailed his staff that the 2026 season will continue as planned, without pause, as the league is fully funded through the rest of this year.

Critics have accused LIV Golf of serving as a “sportswashing” arm for Saudi Arabia, which is a means of improving the country’s reputation as a flagrant abuser of human rights. The Saudis also fund Formula 1 auto racing and professional soccer.

Many believe LIV Golf’s future is tenuous after recent years of failures to recruit more star golfers as well as its inability to establish a firm audience base. Early this season, five-time major champion Brooks Koepka and 2018 Masters champion Patrick Reed pulled out of the LIV league; Koepka back to the PGA tour after donating $5 million to charity, and Reed to the DP World Tour for one year.

The two remaining LIV stars are two-time US. Open winner Bryson De Chambeau and two-time major champion Jon Rahm, both of whom have declined the opportunity to leave LIV.

According to CBS online posts the PGA Tour is ready to create paths for top LIV stars to return, as shown by deals offered to Koepka and Reed, but it is also mindful of the feelings and wishes of its current membership, “many of whom have declined the get-rich-quicker prospect of signing with LIV Golf to remain loyal and continue playing stateside” (April 15, 2026). PGA tour players have not forgotten who left for LIV and who filed the antitrust lawsuit against the Tour.

One of the biggest critics of LIV Golf since its inception in 2022 has been Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee. 

“Given that the product was so ill-conceived and ended up being worse than anyone could have imagined – with shotgun starts, initially 54 holes, a team concept that was nothing but laughable and tournaments that meant and continue to mean nothing, and such a paltry number of viewers, losing billions along the way – would it surprise anyone if the Saudis came to their corrupted senses and finally euthanized the lame-brained tour,” Chamblee wrote on X in response to the reports that LIV was shutting down.

It turns out that some of the disruption caused by LIV has been a good thing for some redesigning the PGA Tour. Helped by a $1.5 billion infusion by a private sports investment group, the Tour has established a dozen “Signature” tournaments, with limited no-cut fields, and purses of $20 million.

It has pared down the number of players in regular tour events as well as the number of PGA Tour member cards per season, in hopes of bolstering the quality of players.

Ron Green, Jr. (www.globalgolfpost.com, 4-20-26) asks, “(With the) undercurrent of speculation swirling around the future of LIV Golf, where are we now? Some place between the yellow brick road, the road less traveled and what is probably a sudden dead-end off ramp.”

In truth, Green says, it is more likely “sputtering toward its dead-end off ramp and, for many, it can’t get there soon enough.”

Contact Charlie Blanchard at docblanchard71@gmail.com.