A lost generation of young Masters?
Early LIV defectors run risk of never getting to tee it up at Augusta
Is young Tom McKibbin joining Tyrrell Hatton as a teammate on LIV next month? (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
Tom McKibbin didn’t say “no” in Abu Dhabi last week when asked directly about the smoke that’s billowing over the Middle East from the direction of Riyadh regarding his reported likeliness to accept a $5 million guaranteed offer to forgo his place on the PGA Tour and join Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII on LIV.
“I’m not going to make any comments this week,” McKibbin said in a revealing no-comment he issued “out of respect” during the DP World Tour’s Ryder Cup-style bonding/building Team Cup event. McKibbin collected three of a possible four points in Great Britain & Ireland’s 17-8 win over Continental Europe, even partnering with his rumored future LIV teammate Tyrrell Hatton for a Friday four-ball victory.
If true, the 22-year-old’s departure for LIV would mark another blow for the PGA Tour, on which he claimed the 10th and final card from his performance in 2024 on the DP World Tour and was primed to start his rookie campaign on the world’s premier tour as soon as this month after playing this week’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic. LIV’s season opens Feb. 6-8 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Conceivably he could do as Hatton did last year and play at Torrey Pines before making any official LIV announcement, but it’s unlikely he’ll fly across the world to bank one tour start and a few more precious OWGR points before circling back to the Middle East.
By joining LIV, McKibbin — one of Europe’s most promising young players who dreams of following Rory McIlroy’s footsteps from Holywood Golf Club in Northern Ireland to golf superstardom — puts at grave risk the possibility of ever playing in the Masters and joining McIlroy in the quest of becoming the first Irishman to win the green jacket.
As Scott Michaux wrote about Monday in Global Golf Post, McKibbin and a handful of other promising young stars are at risk of becoming a “lost generation” when it comes to the Masters. Other next-generation players like Spain’s Luis Masaveu, 22, Denmark’s Frederik Kjettrup, 25, and Korea’s Yubin Jang, 22, are jumping into the LIV boat with Spain’s David Puig, 23, and American Caleb Surratt, 21, in sacrificing reliable access to the game’s most important events — the major championships — in order to make an easy living on LIV.
Spain’s Eugenio López-Chacarra, 24, best illustrates the cost of taking the money and running. He was LIV Golf’s first prominent next-gen poaching in its inaugural 2022 season, and the former No. 2 amateur in the world went on to win his fifth professional start at LIV Bangkok in 2022 and the Asian Tour International Series event at St. Andrews Bay in Scotland in 2023. He’s banked life-changing money.
But he’s also played in only one career major (2024 U.S. Open as a qualifier) and is a long way from both the Masters and the PGA Tour at No. 325 in the world after not having his LIV contract renewed and now having to wait a year before he is even allowed to compete in any PGA Tour-sanctioned events.
“After I entered second stage of Q School they said you can’t play, you’re banned until a year after you played on the LIV Golf Tour,” Chacarra said in a recent interview with Flushing It Golf posted on social media. “I have a couple of calls this week, with a couple of guys on the PGA Tour and see what the deal is. Where I can play. I’m not even sure if I can play International Series or not. So I want to make sure I’m doing the right thing to get myself on to the Korn Ferry or PGA Tour as soon as possible.”
From the LIV perspective, Chacarra has seen the value of the PGA Tour more clearly than when he came out of college.
“I see what it’s like to win on the PGA Tour and how your life changes,” he told Flushing It. “How you get major access and ranking points. On LIV, nothing changes, there is only money. It doesn’t matter if you finish 30th or first, only money. I’m not a guy who wants more money. What will change my life is playing in Hawaii and qualifying for the majors, qualifying for the Masters, the Ryder Cup.
“When I joined LIV, they promised OWGR and majors. But it didn’t happen. I trusted them. I was the first young guy, then the others came after I made the decision. But OWGR and majors still hasn’t happened.”
Meanwhile, young players who utilized opportunities and access offered by PGA Tour University — Ludvig Åberg, Davis Thompson, Austin Eckroat and Kevin Yu — are already making housing arrangements in Augusta, Ga., to play in the Masters this April. Åberg finished runner-up at Augusta as a rookie last year and is a bona fide global superstar.
Until LIV Golf does what it needs to do regarding access, reapplies and gets accepted into the Official World Golf Ranking, it remains a major gamble for young players like McKibbin who elect to chase money instead of legacy at such a nascent point in their professional careers. They can still go through qualifying to get in the U.S. and British Opens and the PGA has the flexibility to invite players who prove themselves even outside the OWGR top 100, but the Masters is going to be a tough reach.
Unless terms of any eventual deal between PIF and the PGA Tour come with increased access to prominent OWGR (and Masters) qualifying events like the ones on the PGA Tour, LIV golfers are fooling themselves into thinking the majors will ever carve out more than a token spot or two for a season’s top finishers on LIV. And there aren’t a lot of special international invitations for the Masters to offer like it has for Joaquin Niemann the last two years.
Currently ranked No. 110 in the world, McKibbin’s status will depreciate in value the minute he joins LIV. After making his major debut last summer at Pinehurst and Royal Troon, making the cut in both, he’ll have to work extra hard to get back into the tournaments that most define a golfer’s career. (He is exempt for the Open this year at Royal Portrush via his top 30 finish on the DP World Tour.)
Maybe it’s worth it for the money, but it could lead to significant regrets down the road if things don’t change.
Nick Taylor rose to the occasion repeatedly on the 18th at Waialae (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Canadian Taylor is made for drama
Nick Taylor seemed like a pretty good lock to make it back to the Masters despite missing the cut in Augusta last April as the No. 24 player in the world. Things in golf, however, can get away from you pretty fast.
A playoff winner at the 2024 WM Phoenix Open, Taylor was riding high before the bottom suddenly fell out after a strong T12 at Bay Hill. He never finished inside the top 25 again for the rest of season, as his hopes of playing a Presidents Cup, qualifying for all the signature events and even retaining major invites as an OWGR top-50 player all steadily slipped from his grasp as his season played-out like a slow-motion car wreck.
“There is a lot of layers to that,” Taylor said of his precipitous slide after his Phoenix win. “Not making top 50 I knew would make the next year just not where I wanted to be. Not making the Presidents Cup definitely hurt. I felt like my play … I had more myself to blame. I felt like I put (captain) Mike (Weir) in a tough situation.
Yeah, on top of that I had to play more in the fall than I had originally planned and away from family a few times.”
The Masters was the furthest thing from his mind when he showed up to start 2025 in Hawaii.
“Not a lot,” he said of the thought he’d given the season’s first major. “I was trying to finish top 60.”
All that changed in Taylor’s trademark dramatic fashion at Waialae Country Club on Sunday, when he chipped in from 60 feet for eagle to vault into a playoff and make consecutive clutch up-and-downs for birdies to dispatch Nico Echavarria in overtime.
“I knew a good week would get me top 50 and probably sneak in to get that invite,” Taylor said of the Masters for which he’s now automatically qualified. “Yeah, nice that I put that on top right now.”
Taylor flies pretty far under the radar for a five-time PGA Tour winner — a number equal to the likes of Luke Donald and Jason Dufner and right on the heels of six-time winners such as Collin Morikawa, Max Homa, Rickie Fowler, Tony Finau, Lucas Glover and Henrik Stenson. His Canadian tour peers — Corey Conners, Mackenzie Hughes, Taylor Pendrith, Adam Hadwin and Adam Svensson — have seven PGA Tour wins combined. Canadian great Mike Weir has eight, including the 2003 Masters.
The Hawaii victory is Taylor’s third on tour in consecutive years — each one via playoffs at the 2023 RBC Canadian Open, 2024 WM Phoenix Open and now 2025 Sony Open in Hawaii. It earns him his second straight Masters invite and third overall. He finished T29 in his only Augusta weekend in 2020 (when he got in for winning at Pebble Beach).
Taylor’s major record has little to write home to his native Winnipeg about. His low amateur medal (T36) at the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage is pretty much his major highlight. As a professional, he’s missed the cut on nine of 12 majors, his best finish that middling 2020 Masters effort.
But that doesn’t stop Taylor from being Captain Clutch in regular tour events when he gets in playoffs. His 72-foot eagle putt on the fourth playoff hole at Oakdale in 2023 Canadian Open set off pandemonium when he beat Tommy Fleetwood and became the first Canadian citizen to win their national open since 1954, and the first born in Canada to win it since 1914.
Last year he outdueled world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and then kept pouring in clutch birdie putts on the 18th hole to beat Charley Hoffman in Phoenix.
Now Hawaii seals his title of “Mr. Playoff.”
“I think I enjoy being in those moments. For whatever reason my mind gets clear in those situations of the shot I'm just trying to hit,” Taylor said.
“It’s kind of like a match play situation. I feel like I’ve always enjoyed match play when I was growing up and had success as well just trying to hit each shot at hand. I’ve worked on that the last couple years of why in those situations am I good and other situations where I am not consistent if I’m in 30th or something.”
As the 88th player to qualify for the Masters, the 36-year-old Taylor gets another chance to bring that mentality to a major stage.