Can DPWT wrench pry Rahm loose from LIV?
O'Neil has another hurdle to retain talent; Spieth arrives, finally; U.S. Am quarters set
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Telegraph report says Jon Rahm is heading to a breakup with LIV Golf (Jon Ferrey/LIV Golf)
What appears to be an ultimatum put forth to LIV Golf players who also want to maintain membership on the DP World Tour doesn’t have to be one at all. It simply will require LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil to do a work-around to achieve his goal of a global golf calendar.
The issue at hand is the revelation that the DP World Tour is not likely to extend beyond this year its waiver for conflicting events.
The Daily Drive reported on Tuesday that the deal the DP World Tour made with eight LIV golfers in February — and later with Jon Rahm — only extended through this year and the DP World Tour reiterated that it was not intended to be precedent-setting.
The Athletic took it farther on Wednesday, reporting that players and their representatives have been advised by the DP World Tour that the freedom to play LIV Golf without sanctions might not exist in 2027 as part of a LIV Golf 2.0.
Having to workaround this issue is probably not something O’Niel envisioned dealing with as he tries to secure funding and buy-in from players for LIV’s future, but the possibility of making it work does exist if he can first get so many of the other parts of his business in order.
Those are numerous, but this DPWT issue is a key one, too. LIV already runs the risk of losing Jon Rahm, who The Telegraph reported on Thursday appears to be working toward leaving.
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But keeping Rahm and the other DP World Tour players who made a deal with earlier this year — Tyrrell Hatton, Laurie Canter, Thomas Detry, Tom McKibbin, Adrian Meronk, Victor Perez, David Puig and Elvis Smylie — happy and in the fold seems imperative to LIV’s future.
There are a couple of ways to view this.
Those on the LIV side see it as a potential threat as they run the risk of getting fined by the DP World Tour if they continue to play LIV events without releases.
Those on the DP World Tour side see it as business, protecting its events which would not have any ability to draw LIV players if there is a conflicting tournament as healthy LIV players are required to play every event.
All of this comes in the aftermath of O’Neil announcing last week that the league had “reached an agreement” with a lead investor (later learned to be BC Partners) with the hopes of continuing operations beyond this year. The Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund announced in April it was ending its financial support of the league, thus the need for new capital. Reports have stated that the investment is contingent upon LIV retaining its top stars like Bryson DeChambeau and Rahm.
Details were scarce and O’Neil said much would remain private, with the hope of wrapping it up next month.
At the same news conference last week at the LIV Golf New York event, O’Neil expressed a desire to work with the other tours to create a “global” golf calendar. LIV Golf would not comment on whether or not O’Neil had been given a heads up on the pending DP World Tour stance about conflicting releases.
“As we go through this next phase, this next five years, I’m very much looking forward to an era of openness, an era of free agency for our players, an era of cooperation, an era where we work together with the tours to make sure that there’s quite an incredible future for the game of golf and that the pipeline of fans that we’re building and driving that can be additive around the world to all the tours,” O’Neil said.
Unfortunately for O’Neil, that belief does not appear to be shared by the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour. The PGA Tour has shown no inclination to budge from its stance of viewing LIV as unauthorized competing events, with suspensions
