Is LIV Golf finished? What recent funding reports mean, landing spots for Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm, where golf goes from here

What has LIV said in response?

LIV CEO Scott O’Neil has acted like all the reporting is wrong, except what he has said—and hasn’t said—has essentially confirmed the reporting is correct. O’Neil, who has repeatedly asserted LIV had funding into the 2030s, changed his tune this week. First in an email to staffers, citing the league is funded only through 2026, and again in a TV interview posted Friday where, when asked about future funding, replied “That’s not how the world works.” He continued that funding is secured through this season and then he has to “work like crazy to keep it going.” (The interview was promptly deleted from social media.) Also in his email O’Neil nodded to the speculation, but instead of dismissing it, he said startups are defined by “moments of pressure.” We don’t know how many startups receive $5 billion, but to each their own.

Aren't they playing this week?

They sure are, in Mexico. There were rumors that the league would not even play this week, although the first round was held on Thursday.

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Harry How

How is that going?

Not great! After commentators Arlo White and David Feherty tried to laugh off the reports, the feed went down for roughly two-and-a-half hours. Earlier in the week, press conferences were canceled. Both incidents were cited as local power outages, but not the best of looks amid reports of vendors not being paid.

What does this mean for LIV players?

The situation breaks into roughly two tiers, and neither is particularly comfortable.

Former PGA Tour members who played LIV are facing a minimum one-year ban from the tour, beginning from the date of their last LIV event. Since most of them are still playing this season, that clock doesn't start until the circuit officially shuts down—meaning the earliest any of them can return is sometime in 2027 at best. Several players have indicated their bans extend beyond a year, with multi-year suspensions tied to the specifics of how and when they left.

For players who never had PGA Tour status to begin with, the calculus is different but not better. They weren't banned from anything—they simply have no standing to return to. Which is its own problem.

But wait, I thought Brooks Koepka was able to come back immediately?

He was.

Uh, why?

Under the "Returning Member Program"—which is a fancy way of saying the tour wrote a new rule specifically to let Koepka back in—he was reinstated without serving any suspension. The program extended the offer to any player who had been away from the tour for at least two years and had won a major or the Players Championship between 2022 and 2025. It was a narrow window by design. Only four players qualified: Koepka, Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Cam Smith. The tour wasn't throwing open the doors. It was cracking them just wide enough for the players it actually wanted back—the ones with major pedigree, marquee value, and enough goodwill remaining that their return wouldn't cause a locker room revolt.

So Rahm, DeChambeau and Smith would come back?

No. The window closed on Feb. 2. The tour's message on the way out was essentially: this offer existed, you chose not to take it, and we are not promising another one. Whether that was posturing or policy was unclear at the time. Given what's happened since, it's looking more like policy.

But isn't the PGA Tour incentivized to have the best players playing their tour?

Absolutely. Brian Rolapp didn't take the CEO job to administer someone else's rulebook. He's made clear his priority is building a better product, and if that means revisiting policies inherited from Jay Monahan's tenure, he's not going to let institutional inertia stop him. The tour has bent its own rules before when it suited the moment and there's no reason to think it couldn't do so again.

That said, it wouldn't be simple. Koepka's return worked in part because of who Koepka is—a five-time major winner who kept a relatively low profile during the war, didn't recruit other players, and didn't spend two years publicly antagonizing the tour. Rahm and DeChambeau did not leave under those conditions. Whatever Rolapp wants to do, he still has a locker room to manage.

Can you please just tell us where Rahm and DeChambeau would go?

Rahm's situation is complicated, and not entirely by forces outside his control.

He's currently locked in a dispute with the DP World Tour over membership reinstatement—a fight that carries real stakes, since his eligibility for the 2027 Ryder Cup runs through the European circuit. The DP World Tour has, somewhat remarkably, been trying to find a path back for him. Rahm has been making that harder. At the Masters he was defiant and showed no signs of bending, which is a strange posture for someone who needs a favor.

The PGA Tour is an even colder conversation. The feeling among players and at headquarters is pointed and specific: Rahm's departure at the end of 2023 may have single-handedly extended the war by a year. LIV was struggling. The framework agreement was in progress. Then Rahm signed, gave the Saudi circuit a credibility injection it desperately needed, and the tour felt ambushed. Talks froze. That damage is remembered, and it has names attached to it.

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Zhizhao Wu

A Koepka-style offer for Rahm would be a surprise. The far more likely outcome is a return to the DP World Tour, hat in hand, on whatever terms he can get. His leverage is not what it was—and neither, honestly, is his game. Rahm is still a top-five talent, but he's visibly not the player who won the Masters and the U.S. Open. LIV didn't give him the competitive environment to maintain that level. Sitting out won't restore it.

And Bryson?

Strap in.

In the weeks leading up to the Masters, DeChambeau’s camp pushed LIV for a new deal. Whatever you make of him, he remains the league’s marquee draw—one of the most recognizable figures in the sport and arguably its most bankable personality. Sources tell Golf Digest that DeChambeau was aiming well north of Jon Rahm’s reported $300 million contract. LIV never seriously entertained numbers in that range. In recent months, DeChambeau has struck a deliberately vague tone about his future, noting only that his current deal runs through year’s end and that he’ll reassess when the time comes.

He was once a true believer in LIV. Now, sources say, he sees a league that fell short of its grand promises. Yet a return to the PGA Tour is hardly a clean fit—he felt marginalized there, constrained by a rulebook that clashed with his instincts. He may be open, in theory, to the changes under Rolapp, but that openness has limits.

Which leaves a very real possibility that DeChambeau steps away from organized professional golf altogether next year and leans fully into life as a full-time media force.

You're kidding, right?

Nope. He's invested in a new YouTube golf league. He has enough faith in his game to keep competing at majors until his exemptions run out. And he's genuinely curious about ventures outside professional golf. It is a very real possibility that one of the best golfers in the world simply walks away from a tour.

It's also worth noting what that would mean for the game. DeChambeau has done as much as anyone to bring non-traditional fans into golf—his content reach, his personality, his willingness to be a spectacle. Losing him from the tour ecosystem isn't just a competitive loss. It's a visibility one.

What about the rest of the LIV players?

Some are already eligible to play other tours. Tyrrell Hatton was one of eight players—along with Laurie Canter, Thomas Detry, Tom McKibbin, Adrian Meronk, Victor Perez, David Puig and Elvis Smylie—granted DP World Tour releases earlier this year. LIV has an alliance with the Asian Tour, which is where most of its relegated players have competed the past few years.

But it's worth remembering that many former PGA Tour players either resigned their memberships or have since seen their status expire. The majority of LIV players are well past their primes, were rank-and-file members to begin with, or never had significant tour status at all—the tour can't simply hand them a card. A meaningful contingent of current PGA Tour members are already fighting for enough starts to keep their own cards; dropping ex-LIV players into that mix would cause a riot. That's before you even account for the hard feelings tour players already have about former LIV members returning without penalty.

For nearly all of them, once their one- or multi-year suspensions expire, the path back runs through a mini-tour circuit or Q-School to earn status the conventional way.

Even DJ or Phil?

Dustin Johnson had lifetime membership at the PGA Tour thanks to winning 20 times but resigned his membership. As for Phil Mickelson—given everything he did, recruiting players to LIV, filing a lawsuit against the PGA Tour, relentlessly gaslighting the organization that gave him a home for 30 years—it is highly, highly, highly unlikely you ever see him in a PGA Tour event again.

Can we take a second and admit the "Rhino Jive" is a banger?

Game recongize game; that tune slaps, as the kids say.

What about the LIV teams and franchises?

Gone. The PGA Tour wants no part of them. The LIV league was built around a franchise model, with branded teams and ownership groups that invested in the concept. When the circuit folds, those entities go with it. There's no indication of any mechanism to preserve the teams or compensate franchise owners beyond whatever contractual obligations exist. Get your Range Goats merch while you can.

Would Saudi Arabia be done with professional golf?

Maybe. It would not be surprising if they angle to host an event on the DP World Tour—the very entry point that brought them into golf in the first place—or make another run at investing in the PGA Tour's for-profit arm. Don’t rule out PIF making one more run at DP World Tour funding as well. But the vehicle of LIV Golf is finished.

What does this mean for golf?

For the better part of five years, golf fans watched players and stakeholders trade their passion for paydays, with little apparent concern for where their actions were taking the game. That kind of damage doesn't heal overnight, and real questions remain about the sport's long-term health—fan trust, the tour's competitive depth, whether a generation of casual fans tuned out and never came back.

But this much is true: the game will survive. The PGA Tour bent, made concessions it never wanted to make, and lost players it couldn't afford to lose … but it's still standing. Whether it emerges leaner and stronger, or just relieved, probably depends on what Rolapp would buildd from here.