Right now, all touring professional golfers around the world have to be thinking about where they want to be when the music stops at the end of 2027.
Earlier this week, Jon Rahm, one of the “prize gets” of LIV Golf, confessed he didn’t know where he's going to tee it up next season. He’s probably not alone. And he made that statement before LIV got into another spaghetti tangle of legal issues.
On Tuesday, LIV Golf filed for bankruptcy protection, which means no one owed money gets paid for a while. Maybe never. And it also means that a court must approve the outcome, as it always does in bankruptcy.
Rahm’s status gets more complicated every hour.
Prior to the bankruptcy filing, Rahm was still under contract to LIV. After the bankruptcy filing, reports surfaced indicating that the LIV players decided that they wanted to own LIV. That throws one more monkey wrench into a basket of monkeys, all of them already slinging their own wrenches. Seriously. This is about to become a really complicated mess.
One report said that a deal is being worked out along the lines of the players becoming the new owners of LIV. Maybe they are thinking it will be similar to the new structure of the PGA Tour. But they probably don't realize that they will have to pay to make it happen. Nothing happens for free. When you become an owner, you pay the bills.
Only one thing is clear. The Chapter 11 filing gives the LIV organization a chance to restructure and then operate under that new structure while they are attempting to get new funding sources or new investors or new owners, even if the players become owners. Again, the court has to approve everything.
Right now, there are reports circulating that LIV may even be able to get funding from the Saudi PIF to get them out of this hole.
However, it doesn’t solve Rahm’s where-to-play problem. As of today, none of the LIV golfers have a place to play, as there's no real schedule. Rahm’s not getting paid anything right now. Luckily, he’s not living paycheck to paycheck, but he is not alone in facing these issues.
While the legal wrangling takes place, it’s possible that he and others will try to play on the DP World Tour, which seems to want to bring them back to the fold. As of the last bit of information, which seems to change often, the PGA Tour is not making any sweetheart deals for any LIV player.
This financial upheaval at LIV will make all PGA Tour players think long and hard about their individual situations, too. If they are not in the top 90 at the end of 2027, then where do they play? Is there wiggle room for them in any of the 2028 Championship events? It doesn’t sound like it from the description of the Championship standards.
Then there’s the issue of the purses. Which tournaments pay the most? DP World Tour or the Challenger Series on the PGA Tour? A quick look indicates that most of the regular DP World Tour events have purses less than the $4 million promised by the Challenger Series. There are exceptions, of course.
The Hero Dubai Desert Classic, Genesis Scottish Open, BMW PGA Championship, Abu Dhabi Championship, and the DP World Tour Championship, called the Rolex Series, have $10 million purses. They are the high points of the DP World Tour.
If a PGA Tour player doesn’t qualify for the Championship events, he’ll automatically be sent back down to the minors, the Challenger Series. At least that’s what the rules, as presented, seem to say. There seems to be a bit more pay for the Challenger events than on the DP World Tour, so a pecking order emerges: Championship Series, Challenger Series, DP World Tour, and the rest.
However, it’s important not to forget about appearance fees, which are frequently used to attract big stars in Europe but are forbidden in the U.S. The appearance money has been reportedly as high as $2 million for Rory McIlroy and was even more for Tiger Woods back in the day when he was healthy enough to play, at least according to Golf Digest reports.
So, plenty of ways to get it done. Does a golfer want to play in the U.S. on the “second” tour, or would he rather go to Europe and try his hand at winning there and collecting appearance money? It may depend on whether his home turf is in the U.S. or abroad. It may depend on whether he can get appearance money.
So, when it comes to setting future schedules, a LIV player’s new best friends may actually be his lawyer and his agent. That's because, first, somebody has to sort through all the legal issues created by the LIV bankruptcy and then second, someone needs to arrange appearance fees.
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