Bryson DeChambeau wants to play LIV and PGA Tour. But ‘no merger’ is on horizon
Bryson DeChambeau is “100 percent” confident in LIV Golf’s future after CEO Scott O’Neil announced earlier this week that the league had found a “lead investor” to keep it alive past 2026. But DeChambeau told The New York Post that his bigger goal is not just to grow the rebel league but to get to a place where he can play in both LIV and the PGA Tour simultaneously.
“One hundred percent, no question. As long as the good of the game stays in view going forward, I totally think we can get there,” DeChambeau told Mark Cannizzaro at LIV Golf New York on Thursday when asked if he felt LIV’s future was secure.
“Personally, I’d love to be able to play events on the PGA Tour, too. I think that’s best for golf. I’d love that. It’s not an either/or mentality. It’s ‘can we do both?’ I think that’s where everybody wants to be. There isn’t a golf fan on the planet who doesn’t want to see me play a big Tour event, and I get that. I’d love to go play events that make sense, love to play team golf and love to play wherever they’ll let me.’’
O’Neil declined to say who the investor was, who any additional parties that will invest are, how much money they are committing or exactly what LIV Golf will look like in 2027. But O’Neil did say that players would be the “majority equity holders in LIV Golf” going forward and that things would be finalized in the coming weeks. But while LIV Golf has apparently found a lifeline for 2027, DeChambeau’s hopes of a unified pro golf world aren’t on the horizon.
PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp went on Bloomberg TV and was asked whether any deal had been reached or discussed by the two tours since the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund announced it would withdraw funding from LIV Golf after the 2026 season. While the 2023 framework agreement promised a unified professional golf world, momentum for that has long since petered out, and the PGA Tour is no longer focused on that endeavor.
“There’s no merger, no conversations, we’ve been really concentrated on the PGA Tour,” Rolapp told Bloomberg.
Rolapp, who was hired last year, has been reshaping the PGA Tour since he arrived was asked about the impact LIV Golf had on exposing the flaws in the PGA Tour’s product and noted that big changes don’t happen without disruption.
“Huge innovation usually doesn’t happen without a crisis,” Rolapp said.
Rolapp, who spent two decades working at the NFL before becoming the CEO of the PGA Tour last year, likened the disruption created by LIV and its ripple effects to what took place between the NFL and AFL in the 1960s.
“When I looked at this opportunity, I just saw the AFL-NFL, which essentially created a lot of systemic changes in professional football that started to accelerate the growth,” Rolapp said. “I think we’ve had that moment here. So I think the a lot of shortcomings in professional golf came with a little bit of competition — we’re all Americans, competition is a good thing. So I think we’ve seen that. And we’re trying to build something that outlives all of us here.”
Rolapp went on to discuss the PGA Tour’s new model, which will be a two-tier system beginning in 2028 with the top 120 golfers competing in the Championship Series while the rest compete in the Challenger Series or “Track B.” The PGA Tour’s new competitive model comes with strict promotion and relegation, with players on the Challenger Series being able to play their way up to the top tier while players on Track A, or the Championship Series, will need to perform to avoid falling down to the lower tier.
This “true meritocracy,” as Rolapp calls it, makes the top level of the PGA Tour a true open shop, something that has been a criticism of LIV Golf, where players have been signed to contracts, and only a few who aren’t on long-term deals have faced true relegation. Rolapp was asked about 17-year-old star amateur Miles Russell, and how a young star like that fits into the new model. Rolapp’s PGA Tour will be all about getting the best players, whoever they are, to play each other in an easy-to-understand season-long race that culminates in a postseason model with real stakes that fans can easily follow.
Put simply: Whenever Miles Russell arrives on the PGA Tour, his golf will determine where he plays. Nothing else.
“They will compete for a regular season title that wil be the most prestigious thing in golf,” Rolapp said. ” There will also be promotion and relegation. So, at the end of that, you will be relegated down. We have opened up the meritocracy. So, if [Miles Russell] is that good, we have created a system where he will work his way in. No more sponsor exemptions. No more stuff that has hindered the meritocracy. Where you play is where you earn.”
With Rolapp at the helm, the PGA Tour is full speed ahead toward its new future. LIV Golf and Bryson DeChambeau are as well. But despite DeChambeau’s wish, they aren’t currently heading in the same direction.