'Death knell' for LIV Golf as Saudi funding withdrawn

LIV Golf looks to be all but over, with players reportedly hours away from being told their Saudi backers have pulled the plug.

According to the Wall Street Journal, players will be told some time on Thursday (US time) the Public Investment Fund will end its financial support of the tour at the end of the season.

"The move sounds the death knell for the upstart that sowed chaos in professional golf," The Journal wrote.

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The news comes just days after the tour's maiden event in New Orleans was postponed by the hosts over financial concerns.

The tour has been on life support for close to a month after the PIF released its five-year investment vision, which more or less omitted sport. Football and esport is expected to be the extent of the fund's focus.

According to The Journal, senior LIV staff will continue to seek outside investment to keep the tour afloat, but given the Saudis have sunk billions into the venture, it would be impossible for it to continue in its current guise.

The news leaves the league's biggest names at a crossroads. Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed both potentially saw the writing on the wall and accepted olive branches extended to them by the PGA Tour, but the likes of Jon Rahm, Cameron Smith and Bryson DeChambeau will face a tougher time of getting their way back onto a tour.

DeChambeau was one of 11 players who in August 2022 filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the PGA Tour over suspensions dished to them for defecting to LIV. While other key names - including Phil Mickelson and Ian Poulter - have since withdrawn from the lawsuit, DeChambeau has not.

Rahm has steadfastly maintained his commitment to LIV, and it's not known what a return to the PGA Tour might look like for the two-time major winner.

DeChambeau, Rahm and Smith were all offered the same olive branch as Koepka, but all refused. PGA Tour chief executive Brian Rolapp has previously declared the offer was not a standing invitation, which has since lapsed.

"There were rules, and they were broken," Rolapp said before the PIF news on Wednesday.

"With rules comes accountability."

What a return to the tour looks like for them now remains to be seen.

For every other player, including the remaining Aussies of Marc Leishman and Lucas Herbert, it's expected the PGA Tour will make them re-earn their cards as if they were restarting their career. Aussie young gun Elvis Smylie never previously held a PGA Tour card, and is unlikely to face the same sanctions as his peers.

But Smylie, who only joined the LIV tour this year, does hold a European PGA Tour card. He's one of several LIV stars who do, and they might be about to have a stack of others.

The UK Telegraph this week quoted an insider who said there was already "a feeling of panic" among the LIV fraternity, and the New Orleans news had "put the frighteners" on players and staff, leading several to sound out the Europeans about playing opportunities for 2027.

When the American tour went scorched earth on the LIV players, the lower-profile European tour allowed their stars to keep their memberships as long as they played a minimum of six events.

Speaking to Today's Golfer before the news broke, European PGA Tour chief executive Guy Kinnings said his organisation was more or less keeping a watching brief on the situation, but suggested they were open to welcoming more players onto the tour.

"We've got members and dual members [of the DPWT and LIV) and we listen to them. Those kind of headlines that we've seen in the last few weeks have got to be concerning for them," he said.

"All we do is control what we can control, make sure our product is as good as it can be. I don't think it can be easy with all of that sort of going on.

"But at the moment, our focus is just on us doing what we can do. We listen to players, listen to their representatives all the time and go from there.

"We've already shown that if people work within the rules – my only job is to make sure we benefit the tour as a whole, every member, all the loyal members have stuck with it. We worked out what is something that worked well on those conditional releases.

"Players coming and supporting at events where it improves the quality of the event and helps the tour as a whole. So we will wait and see how things evolve, but we're obviously listening and we're listening to players and agents and others who have questions about what the future may hold and we'll handle it as we go forward.

"But for sure, I think there's opportunity for us to continue to grow the strength of the tour, which is my only job really."