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LIV Golf’s future had been in question following last month’s news that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund would no longer fund the league after 2026. The circuit headed to Busan where its eighth event of the season began with LIV dropping one of its key live-streaming features.

By the end of the tournament, Chile’s Niemann defeated Talor Gooch in extra holes after a sublime gap wedge from 149 yards to close range allowed him to drain a birdie putt and claim the title. Two-time U.S. Open winner Bryson DeChambeau finished third after cooling off from an initially hot final-day charge.

“I mean, I would love to describe exactly how it feels to be in that situation,” Niemann said of the gap wedge shot in overtime. “But for me, it’s one of the best feelings ever. We practice every day. We wake up and try to get better, try to get the wedge game better, driving, putting. When we get to that moment on a playoff, we know we can deliver and trust what we practice, trust what we’re feeling and just commit to the shot. I love having that pressure, knowing that you’ve got to hit the shot and you win the tournament.”

WHAT A SHOT.@joaconiemann sticks it close to setup a birdie in the play-off #LIVGolfKorea | @TorqueGC_ pic.twitter.com/kMytHD25es

— LIV Golf (@livgolf_league) May 31, 2026

Niemann and Gooch had carded matching 67s in regulation at the par-70 Asiad Country Club, to finish at 12-under-par 268.

The victory was an anticipated first of the season for Niemann, 27, who recorded five LIV victories last year and two the year prior.

“I just look back to 2025, and it was so easy to win,” Niemann said as he extended his lead for the most wins any LIV player since its inception in 2022. “It just happened. I feel like that’s the way it should be, and I feel like I was forcing everything a little bit too much [in 2026].

“It was fun out there; I really enjoy the feeling of winning again. I love this game. Looking back at today’s round, especially the back nine, I have a big passion for this game. It teaches you every time, how you can improve.

“You’re always learning. You might be in trouble one hole, then the next hole you’re going to hit a heroic shot and make eagle or birdies, and then the next hole it could be something new or different.”

DeChambeau was one shot shy of the playoff following a five-under 65 that was ignited by five birdies in his first 11 holes, only to complete his final seven holes at even par.

“There were times where it felt amazing and times where it just leaked on me a little bit,” DeChambeau said. “I gave myself some chances, just wasn’t my day today.”

DeChambeau’s fellow two-time major winner, Dustin Johnson, (66) was fourth at 10 under.

“Yeah, it’s been a couple years,” Johnson said when asked the last time his game felt this good. “It’s felt close, but it’s like, finally I feel like it’s consistent, like I’m finally driving it like I normally do. So it obviously takes a lot of pressure off the rest of your game. Now I can focus more on my wedges and my irons and chipping and putting.”

Earlier in the week in Korea, DeChambeau was asked about the PIF’s withdrawal from LIV after the 2026 season, to which he answered, “We were surprised that they pulled out as quickly as they did. We didn’t really see that coming. But that’s OK. One door closes, another opens.”

LIV executives have been pitching a new business plan to attract investors and sponsors, reportedly seeking between $250 million and $350 million. A new-look version of LIV Golf would extend equity beyond just the team captains and will have an emphasis on team golf.

The league continues next week with LIV Golf Andalucia at the famed Valderrama course in Spain as the final tune-up for players competing in the U.S. Open.

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The latest headline in the LIV Golf financial saga came Thursday with news that the league has dropped one of its key live streaming features before this week’s event in Korea.

Sports Business Journal reported that LIV Golf cited a ‘strategic decision’ for the reason that it stopped “Any Shot, Any Time” as it continues to plan for a future without the help of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

The streaming feature allowed subscribers to pay $59.99 for the season—or $8.99 an event—to have access to what the title suggests, every shot from any player at any time. LIV Golf is working on refunding customers who purchased the platform.

A source told Sports Illustrated Thursday that Mobii, the company behind the streaming technology, has not been paid for months. It’s not clear if it was Mobii or LIV Golf who scrubbed the feature, but it will not be available for the remainder of the season.

RELATED: Here’s the prize money breakdown at LIV Golf Korea

LIV Golf is at Asaid Country Club in Korea this week—where Bryson DeChambeau, Scott Vincent and Charles Howell III lead after Round 1—its eighth tournament of the season. Jon Rahm, the season points leader, tied for second place two weeks ago at the PGA Championship. The league only has five regular season events remaining before the team championship in Michigan ends the tumultuous year in late August.

After news broke just after the Masters in April that LIV Golf would not have PIF funding beyond this year, the New Orleans event scheduled for late June at Bayou Oaks at City Park was postponed, saying that a new fall date would be targeted. However, there has been no movement on that and it is not mentioned on the LIV Golf website schedule.

CEO Scott O’Neil contends that the league will continue after this year in some form. In the past weeks headlines have ranged from LIV Golf potentially being reduced to a 10-event schedule, to it seeking $250 million from investors, to it potentially laying the groundwork for filing for bankruptcy.

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As uncertainty surrounds LIV Golf, Bryson DeChambeau is adamant he’ll use his star power to help the league raise investment after acknowledging that the decision from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to withdraw funding after 2026 came as a “surprise.”

Last month, the PIF confirmed it would not finance LIV beyond the 2026 season, following a reported spend of between $5 billion and $8 billion since the league launched in 2022.

PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan also stepped down as chairman of LIV’s board in the wake of the withdrawal. The league has since installed Gene Davis and Jon Zinman to lead a restructured board, describing them as “seasoned experts with proven track records for navigating complex situations and unlocking value for global organisations.”

LIV, which postponed an event in Louisiana, scheduled for June, to a slated Fall date, continues this week in South Korea at the Asiad Country Club in the coastal region of Busan. The eighth event of LIV’s 2026 season comes after reports that the league is laying the groundwork to file for bankruptcy.

The league is pressing on, pitching a 10-event schedule to potential investors having officially entered the marketplace this week via New York-based Ducera Partners.

It is believed the target for investment is between $250 million and $350 million, while a new-look version of the league would extend equity beyond just the team captains and will have an emphasis on team golf.

Sources said more than 12 players provided introductions to potential investors, for both the league and its teams.

With all this as context, DeChambeau was asked by reporters about the PIF’s withdrawal from LIV and his optimism for new investment when he spoke with media on Tuesday.

“We were surprised that they pulled out as quickly as they did,” DeChambeau said. “We didn’t really see that coming. But that’s OK. One door closes, another opens. I think that’s the way a lot of us are looking at it. I think we all have optimism that there is a business plan that makes sense for team golf.

“I’m very optimistic with the business plan of team golf compared to other models, in my opinion.”

DeChambeau expanded on how team golf could be a point of differentiation and a catalyst for LIV to survive.

“Other models have worked, as well, so I’m not going to say that one is better than the other. But I do see value in what team golf can provide not only worldwide but also in grass rooting the game of golf. National support, team national support, city local support, we grass root ourselves there. There’s a couple ideas that we have … quite a few ideas that we have that could be interesting.

“We’ll see if investors like it or not. I’m giving all I can to make it happen, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t happen.”

DeChambeau, who won last year’s LIV Golf Korea, was asked how he manages to focus while the league tries to secure its future.

“I go out there on the first tee on Thursday and hit a beautiful drive down the middle of the fairway, hopefully,” DeChambeau said in Korea. “That’s what we’re focused on. In the background, yeah, we’re trying to help where we can, but ultimately, it’s up to executives and everybody banding together. If we all band together, there’s an opportunity here. If not, it’s going to be a different day for all of us.”

If his performance on the course is a way to decipher whether the future of LIV has been a distraction for DeChambeau, the results have been mixed. He won consecutive LIV events in Singapore and South Africa leading into the Masters, only to miss the cut at Augusta National. He finished third at LIV Golf Virginia then missed the weekend rounds at the PGA Championship at Aronimink.

Chasing a third major after U.S. Open victories in 2020 and 2024, DeChambeau is hopeful of turning his form around in time to challenge for another title at Shinnecock before wrapping up major season at the Open Championship in July at Royal Birkdale.

“I’m playing some solid golf; I’m working on my golf swing quite hard, trying to get back to that 58 level at Greenbrier [he shot 58 during his LIV Golf Greenbrier win in 2023] when I just had this golf swing that was so easy,” DeChambeau said.

“The weeks that I’ve been playing in major championships, I’ve been playing OK, just having nothing happen for me, and that’s kind of the game of golf,” he continued. “The weeks before that I played really well going into them. I won two events going into the Masters and then finished third in Virginia. So it’s not like I’m playing bad golf. I think I’m putting some pressure on myself to play well in those tournaments, and that’s the reality. Nobody is perfect, and I’m still working hard to play as good as I possibly can, and the year before I played really well in the majors, missed one cut there, and it just happens.

“That’s golf, and ultimately excited for the opportunities I have moving forward. There isn’t any quit in me, as you can see. Even at Aronimink, I birdied my first last three holes trying to make the cut there, and it is what it is.

“I’ll tell you this: I played worse golf and shot better scores at majors. It’s one of those scenarios of ebbs and flows in golf. I’m really excited for the future over at Shinnecock and overseas, as well, for the Open Championship. Head down, keep moving forward.”

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Dustin Johnson was asked his opinion on the PIF pulling funding of the league ahead of LIV Golf Korea, and in classic DJ fashion, he offered a lengthy answer:

“Long LIV Golf.”

He’s a man of many words! @DJohnsonPGA @4AcesGC_ @livgolf_league https://t.co/Ya4DRFzpVa pic.twitter.com/yxN2DOnLva

— Flushing It (@flushingitgolf) May 26, 2026

Ahead of this week’s LIV Golf Korea event, Dustin Johnson was asked about the future of LIV Golf following the Saudi Public Investment Fund sudden exit from pro golf. As one of the very first adopters of the league in 2022, Johnson was asked how he personally felt about the uncertain status of LIV’s future and he replied with one of the cringiest golf media moments we’ve seen in a long, long time. Get ready to squirm, folks.

After listening to the question, clearly meant to elicit a thoughtful, considered response from Johnson, the 2020 Masters champion raised the mic to his lips and dropped this nugget:

“Long LIV Golf.”

He paused for a moment for reaction—perhaps he thought he cooked, perhaps he thought that one man in the back would rise and slowly begin to clap, and that others would steadily follow until the room was roaring with hope and defiance. Instead his quip, more fitting for some unfortunate macrame on your aunt’s fridge, was greeted with deafening silence as the former World No. 1 looked to his teammates for help, finding them with their heads down praying to be anywhere else.

This has all the hallmarks of a classic DJ quote, but perhaps the golf world has simply moved on. Perhaps in a world of Rory McIlroys and Scottie Schefflers, we demand pop philosophy from our pros now. Perhaps Cam Young has replaced him as golf’s soft-spoken bomber. Or maybe it’s not golf that’s moved on. Maybe DJ, now 41 and without a clear future in golf should LIV disintegrate, has simply lost a step. That would be sad news indeed, to which we only have one thing to say:

Long live DJ.

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LIV Golf is pitching a reduced 10-event schedule to potential investors as it seeks new financial backing following Saudi Arabia’s withdrawal of support, according to multiple reports.

Sportico and CNBC report that a pitch deck outlines a plan built around international events, with attendance figures from Australia and South Africa used as benchmarks. The league is seeking $250 to $350 million to continue operations and is projecting profitability within three years. Axios reported earlier this week that LIV was targeting profitability in 20 months. In a February interview with the Financial Times, CEO Scott O’Neil said profitability could be five to 10 years away, and in a since-deleted on-air comment, O’Neil said the league had funding only through the end of 2026.

Bloomberg reported this week that LIV is also laying groundwork for a potential bankruptcy filing. In response, a LIV spokesperson told Golf Digest: “LIV Golf is firmly focused on securing a transaction that positions the organization for the long-term. As we begin presenting our go-forward business plan to prospective capital partners, we are focused on achieving a sustainable future and there are multiple pathways under active exploration. We continue to see great momentum on the course and with support through the 2026 season and a clear plan to raise capital, leadership is focused on identifying the right long-term strategic partners who believe in our mission to grow the game of golf worldwide. These conversations are just getting underway, and as they progress, the company expects to gain further clarity around the structure and timing of a potential transaction.”

Golf Digest has reported that agents for several LIV players have begun contacting the PGA Tour about paths back. Few are expected to receive exemptions comparable to the one extended to Brooks Koepka. Players who joined LIV’s antitrust lawsuit against the tour face additional hurdles, with further discipline a possibility. Bryson DeChambeau, the league’s highest-profile player, becomes a free agent after August and has said publicly he is open to pursuing a career as a full-time content creator.

Last month, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund announced a strategic pivot toward domestic programs, ending its financial commitment to LIV. The fund had invested an estimated $5 to $8 billion in the league since its 2021 launch. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the PIF governor who served as LIV’s chairman, resigned following the withdrawal. The league has since installed Gene Davis and Jon Zinman to lead a restructured board.

LIV has already postponed one event this season, citing summer heat and the World Cup. Its next event is scheduled for South Korea beginning May 28.

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Axios’ Dan Primack reports that as O’Neil shops LIV to outside investors, the league is seeking $250 million, projecting profitability within 20 months. A secondary option exists at $150 million, contingent on team sales and a new media rights deal bridging the gap.

The timing reflects a broader PIF retrenchment. Last month, the sovereign wealth fund announced a strategic pivot toward domestic programs, cutting expenditures on global ventures that have failed to generate returns. PIF is estimated to have injected between $5 and $8 billion into LIV since the league launched in 2021, money that has largely disappeared into a venture that never attracted large outside investors and never approached profitability. O’Neil himself said earlier this year that breakeven could still be a decade away.

The fund’s retreat predates LIV’s crisis, however. Saudi Arabia was already pulling back from promised international investments before the Iran War, squeezed by budget shortfalls and overextended commitments. The U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran accelerated the reckoning. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has slashed Saudi oil exports by nearly half. The kingdom has shuttered most of its offshore fields and this month halted one of the world’s largest petrochemical plants, a staggering blow to a fund whose estimated worth, once pegged near $940 billion, now looks increasingly theoretical.

Against that backdrop, Yasir Al-Rumayyan — PIF governor, LIV’s architect, and chairman of its board — stepped down. The league has named Gene Davis and Jon Zinman to lead a restructured board, describing them as “seasoned experts with proven track records for navigating complex situations and unlocking value for global organisations.”

As LIV stares into an uncertain future, Golf Digest has reported that agents for several LIV players have already reached out to the PGA Tour about paths back. Few are expected to receive the kind of exemption extended to Brooks Koepka. Those who participated in LIV’s antitrust lawsuit against the Tour could face additional discipline.

On the course, LIV has already postponed one event this season, citing summer heat and World Cup scheduling conflicts. Jon Rahm and Cameron Smith both contended at the PGA Championship over the weekend. Bryson DeChambeau, LIV’s marquee attraction, missed the cut for the second consecutive major.

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At a PGA Championship that has played like a U.S. Open, that’s the only thing keeping players upright. And with 18 holes remaining, Rahm is in contention to claim a much-anticipated third major title.

“It’s an extremely difficult golf course. Today is probably the easiest setup of the three, but still with the wind the way it’s going and the greens right now, you have to play really good golf to give yourself a chance out there,” Rahm said after a third-round 67 that leaves him a four under for the championship. “So not surprised the scores are a little bit harder to accomplish in the afternoon, especially the later tee times.

“As far as me is concerned, that was a fantastic round of golf and thrilled to be in a good position for tomorrow.”

It’s tempting to say Rahm has kept his cool this week, though that framing requires a small asterisk: he did accidentally catch a volunteer in the face with a divot after an angry swipe at the rough, a reminder that the embers are never fully out. But Aronimink has stress-tested everyone in its path, and against that standard, Rahm has been a model of relative composure, absorbing bad breaks, grinding through the difficult stretches and refusing to let one sour moment bleed into the next. The underlying numbers reflect it. He’s second in the field tee-to-green and first around the greens, a combination that suggests a player in command of his instrument even when the music gets difficult.

The putter hasn’t been a weapon; more a reliable foot soldier than a difference-maker. But it hasn’t cost him, either, which at this PGA qualifies as victory.

“They’re hard. The best way I can describe it is you’re going to be … you’re going to see very few major championship golf courses where, if you’re in the middle of the green, you’re going to have as hard a time to two-putt as you can on some of the holes out here, especially with the pin locations,” Rahm said. “Usually being in the middle is a safe haven. This week you need to think about where you’re going to leave the ball because the middle isn’t always the best option with how sloped those greens are. I think a little bit is where I leave myself, what putts I’m leaving myself, for those statistics to change. I didn’t feel like I putted badly on the first day. They just didn’t go in.”

Putting aside, he has looked like the Rahm of the past. Which, frankly, hasn’t been present for some time.

Rahm at majors was once a fixed coordinate on the leaderboard. Eight career top-fives before his departure to LIV, anchored by wins at the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines and the 2023 Masters. Since crossing over, he has approximately zero such finishes. Save for a brief Sunday charge in the PGA at Quail Hollow last year, he has been a non-factor every time the golf world convenes for something that actually counts. Playing in a league that has spent its existence batting away accusations of being a glorified exhibition, Rahm’s major no-shows have served as one of the prosecution’s most compelling talking points surrounding the competitive attrition that sets in when a player trades the pro golf grind for whatever LIV is supposed to be.

The cruelty of it all is what Rahm was before. After slipping on the green jacket at Augusta, he appeared to be on an all-time trajectory. Two majors and 20 wins before his 29th birthday, the first European to hold both the Masters and U.S. Open titles, a player whose gifts had finally caught up with their own promise. He carried, too, the particular weight of being cast as the spiritual heir to Seve Ballesteros, a designation that arrives with expectations no job description could fully prepare you for. For a player of that heft to dissolve into irrelevance at the only events that measure legacy, while running up scores against fields that couldn’t hold tour cards, teetered between disappointment and waste.

Emilee Chinn

Of course, the majors have only been part of the damage. In the non-Phil Mickelson division, no one has been a bigger self-inflicted casualty of golf’s civil war. Rahm was never beloved on the PGA Tour but he was universally respected, and respect, in the long economy of a career, is the more durable currency. He has, to put it mildly, burned through his tender. He denied interest in LIV repeatedly and on the record, then took the money anyway, a reversal that had less to do with principle than with the number of zeroes.

More recently he picked a gratuitous fight with the DP World Tour despite the circuit making concessions to preserve his Ryder Cup eligibility, a quarrel that served no strategic purpose and revealed something smaller than his talent. For a player who billed himself as a student of the game—someone who understood its history and what endures—the self-sabotage was especially hard to reconcile. Arguably, it explains the hollowness of the past three years. He knew what mattered. He chose otherwise. And the record across 10 major starts since then reads like a verdict.

Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that as LIV’s collapse came into focus, something in Rahm has shifted. He has appeared visibly deflated when the subject arises in press conferences, acknowledging at various points that he feels essentially bound by the contract he signed. Less an employee than a man serving out a sentence. Even this week, when asked whether he would do it all again, Rahm did not offer anything resembling a ringing endorsement.

But the resignation—or the hope that he might have an out if the league folds—may also have loosened something. Freed from the weight of his game being read as a verdict on his choices, he has looked like himself again this week. When asked this week whether a strong finish might benefit LIV as the circuit scrambles for emergency funding, Rahm’s answer was blunt: “I’m thinking more about myself.” “I’m not going to take on anything outside what I can control when it comes to competing tomorrow,” Rahm continued. “If I do get it done and I sit here again tomorrow, then you can ask me the same question, and I’ll give you an answer. But what it would mean for Spain as well in the grand slam tally and being the last leg of the grand slam for us as well, there’s a lot of things that would mean a lot, but too much of it is out of my control.”

A victory wouldn’t necessarily rehabilitate his public standing overnight. That ledger has too many entries to be settled in a single week. But it would be a start. Sports fans are front-runners, after all. It would be a marker on the map back toward the player golf once believed he could become, and maybe, on some level, the player he still believes he is.

“As hard as it is to play, the challenge can also be kind of fun if you do well,” Rahm said Saturday. “That’s probably the reason why the leaderboard is so bunched up and it’s going to be such a good Sunday tomorrow.”

He’s right about both. Through three rounds, Aronimink has functioned less as a venue than an interrogator, a course that doesn’t merely expose your game but demands to know what you’ll do when it turns on you. Eighteen holes remain. For the first time in a long time, Rahm looks like he has the answers.

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It had been bad from the start, and at the end it got worse. The ball was barely airborne before Bryson DeChambeau’s right hand came off the club, watching in dazed resignation as his tee shot at Aronimink’s par-3 eighth sailed wide right. His ensuing chip flew over the green and his third was a chunk reserved for Thursday night men’s leagues. When the ball finally found the hole it was a double-bogey 5, dropping the two-time major winner to a position on the leaderboard shared only with club pros. DeChambeau looked skyward before marching to the ninth, that look every golfer knows, when the train has left the tracks and the only remaining question is the body count.

He birdied his closing hole but walking off 18 with a six-over 76, mumbling about how poorly he’d played, the most popular man in golf is staring at his second straight missed major weekend.

This course was supposed to suit him. Aronimink is a Donald Ross, the same architect DeChambeau once apologised to for bombing and gouging his Detroit layout, the same designer whose work at Pinehurst yielded DeChambeau a U.S. Open title. Ross considered Aronimink his masterpiece. With early-week conversation fixated on the course’s forgiving tee shots, DeChambeau arrived primed to once again impose his own artistry on Ross’ canvas.

Instead he came out cold, bogeying two of his first four holes and never recovered. He couldn’t manufacture a birdie before making another bogey at the seventh, and then the eighth finished him. Through two waves, he’s nine back and effectively a bystander.

On its own, one bad round. Except it arrives after DeChambeau missed the cut at Augusta. After another falling-out with a club manufacturer, where he’s now building his own equipment from scratch. After contract negotiations with LIV Golf dragged into the year, making him a free agent. And after, with the Saudi Public Investment Fund no longer interested in losing billions on LIV and the league’s future genuinely in question, DeChambeau publicly argued the PGA Tour—a tour he sued—should welcome him back, while instructing everyone involved to check their egos.

Golf, competitive golf at least, does not care about your YouTube subscriber count or popularity or brand. The card gets signed and the number is what it is. DeChambeau built his legend on that bargain, the physicist-turned-bomber who bent the game to his will at Winged Foot, who solved Pinehurst when no one else could. His identity is rooted in the conviction in himself against this conservative sport’s scepticism. For years, he proved himself right. Now, the verdict isn’t as clear-cut.

DeChambeau has a big choice on the horizon. He can return to the PGA Tour, but the penalties waiting for him will be severe and he has signalled he has no appetite for them. He can stay with LIV, if LIV survives in any meaningful form, a tenuous prospect given its struggles through five years. Or he carves out a third path: full-time content creator, the most famous golfer on YouTube, a man who plays exhibitions and drops social videos and never has to sign a competitive scorecard again. That is a viable life, even a lucrative one, and it is something he already excels at.

Except on Thursday, he played like someone auditioning for that role rather than trying to avoid it.

He remains enormously popular. Casual fans adore him. Even the diehards who bristle at his act stay curious, waiting for the show. The problem is that the show, as of late, has not featured golf at the level his reputation demands, and in this game, popularity does not move the number on the leaderboard. At some point, the gap between the Bryson DeChambeau the culture has decided to follow and the Bryson DeChambeau teeing it up in majors could become too wide to ignore. That point may be arriving faster than he’d like.

After signing his card, DeChambeau went straight to the range and beat balls. It was either penance or desperation, and from a distance, the two look the same.

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“I can admit when I’m wrong,” McIlroy said Tuesday at the PGA Championship, “and that was one that I did get wrong.”

For the better part of two years, McIlroy was the de facto advocate for the PGA Tour in the absence of public leadership. After commissioner Jay Monahan made a secret agreement with LIV Golf’s financial backers, McIlroy took a step back from the schism; though he still did not believe in the LIV product, he felt with the framework agreement already in place it was better for the sport to move forward. However, after a White House meeting that was supposed to consummate the PGA Tour-PIF deal last spring went sideways, the two sides stopped talking, and with new CEO Brian Rolapp taking over tour operations, the PGA Tour had no appetite to revisit discussions.

At the moment, that appears to be the prudent move, as last month PIF pulled its funding from LIV Golf after haemorrhaging billions and failing to gain traction with the American golf populace. The move has left LIV with an ambiguous future, and as Golf Digest reported, several representatives for LIV players have already reached out to the tour about possibly coming back.

McIlroy was asked his thoughts about the matter at Aronimink, and the back-to-back Masters champ said PIF leaving LIV high and dry was “always a possibility to happen.”

“Look, I think everyone knows like with everything that’s happening in the Middle East, that had a lot to do,” McIlroy said about the Iran War accelerating PIF’s decision, “but whenever you have funding tied so much to the geopolitical landscape in the world, that’s a tricky road to navigate.”

The Ulsterman asserted that, in his estimation, it seemed like most in golf had an idea this could happen. Everyone except LIV players.

“I feel like a lot of us in this room, including me, we almost knew before the players did that this was going to happen. Like I was hearing about this back in March, April time,” McIlroy said. “Look, I have friends over there. One of my best friends, Ricky [McCormick], caddies for Tom McKibbin, who’s over there, and I would talk to him all the time about what was going on. I was saying to ‘Ricky, even before Mexico, Have you guys heard any of this stuff?’ He was like, ‘No, everything seems OK over here.’

“It just feels like the rug was pulled from under their feet and everyone was sort of blind sided by it. But again, that’s the risk that those guys chose to take. As I said, it leaves, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the air right now.”

After postponing a New Orleans event due to heat and conflicting soccer games with the World Cup, there are only six LIV events left in the season. There are 11 LIV players in this week’s field, highlighted by Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau.

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The post PGA Championship 2026: Rory McIlroy says ‘we almost knew before (LIV) players did’ that Saudi Arabia was pulling out appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Anirban Lahiri. Doug Defelice/LIV Golf

India’s Anirban Lahiri told The Times of London on Thursday he knows of “at least a dozen players who’d rather not play golf than go back to the PGA Tour.”

Belgian Thomas Pieters said recently he’d retire before going back to the American circuit. And, of course, there’s the case of Bryson DeChambeau, explained expertly today by our Joel Beall.

Rory McIlroy – Ben Jared

For all of them, Rory McIlroy had an unsubtle message after his Friday round in the Truist. The Ulsterman demurred on most questions about LIV and is heartened that some players might return to his “home” DP World Tour. But for those throwing shade on the PGA Tour, McIlroy had this: “If you want to be the most competitive golfer you can be, this is the place to be. And if you don’t want to play here, I think that says something about you.”

Mic drop. Press conference over.

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The post Rory McIlroy delivers cold response to LIV Golfers snubbing PGA Tour appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.