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LIV Golf is continuing its survival fight in courtroom (Joaquin Corchero/Europa Press via Getty Images)
If there was any doubt as to how LIV Golf would react to the news earlier this week that its players would not be permitted to become DP World Tour members, an attorney made its position clear that the battle is far from over.
On Wednesday in U.S. bankruptcy court, LIV’s attorney Robert Fitzgerald said that the recent move by the European circuit “was a clear attempt to interfere” with LIV’s plans to relaunch, describing anti-competitive concerns.
Fitzgerald also said in the New Jersey court that the league will know by the end of the month whether it will cease operations or be able to continue plans for LIV 2.0, but it was his threat of continuing litigation that stole the headlines.
“It also raises a lot of the same anti-competitive concerns that LIV has expressed previously regarding the way competing leagues have sought to box out and punish market participants — namely these players — from participating in LIV and really only LIV,” he said.
“Player freedom is the reason LIV Golf was created, and it’s the foundation of LIV Golf 2.0, a league built around its players. LIV has been vocal in its belief in free agency and that the best players should have greater flexibility to compete across the ecosystem. It’s unfortunate that another tour is taking an opposite view and pressuring our players with a false choice.”
Last month, the DP World Tour said it would no longer give conditional releases to its members who wanted to compete in LIV Golf events. It went a step further this week when CEO Guy Kinnings said in statement that it would be more restrictive, telling players they had to choose between the two circuits and risk expulsion if they choose LIV.
“Players need to make a choice,” Kinnings said. “As we have said for many years, we have rules and regulations which are there to protect our tour and which our members must all abide by. Players who are not willing to comply with our rules and regulations should not be seeking to join our tour.”
Several players competed in both tours over the past few years but were subject to fines and suspensions when they teed it up in competing events. The DP World Tour relaxed those rules for nine players this year, including Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, who had to settle previous fines and agree to play extra events in exchange for releases not being needed.
Now, players such as Rahm and Hatton — who competed in the 2025 Ryder Cup despite being on LIV and are prime candidates to be part of the 2027 team at Adare Manor — would be prohibited from playing LIV Golf without having their DP World Tour membership rescinded. That would make them ineligible for the Ryder Cup.
“We’re continuing to monitor this situation very closely, and we’re quite concerned by it, frankly,” Fitzgerald said. “We’re reserving all rights and remedies and respect to these statements that are made. Frankly, the timing in particular strikes us as a clear attempt to interfere with our process, with our players, and potentially our reorganization writ large.”
The bankruptcy court judge, Michael B. Kaplan, said he was aware of Kinnings’ comments and said “they do raise concerns.”
How the DP World Tour’s London-based tour has any impact on a U.S. bankruptcy court is an interesting sidelight to all of it. But Fitzgerald used the opportunity to push back against the DP World Tour’s decision.
Also in today’s DD …
Zalatoris will miss another season in 2027 after third major back surgery
Of course, there was much to unpack from Wednesday’s court drama.
When LIV Golf first launched in 2022, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan declared LIV events to be “unauthorized” for PGA Tour members. He cited the PGA Tour’s regulations, which included the long-standing inability for its members to get conflicting-event releases within North America. Of its first eight events, LIV had scheduled five of them in the U.S..
The DP World Tour also sought to enforce its rules and in 2023 won a UK arbitration panel decision that declared it could enforce its rules via fines and suspensions that have continued throughout the five years of LIV Golf.
Kaplan noted player freedom which is a frequent talking point but typically leaves out an important aspect: LIV players are contracted and have been required to play every event on the league’s schedule. That doesn’t allow them to choose a PGA Tour or DP World Tour event instead, if that were possible.
For argument’s sake, what if it was possible to make a choice? LIV tournaments in 2026 were scheduled the same week as both the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship. LIV’s mandatory play rules would have forbidden them from teeing it up in two of the PGA Tour’s biggest events.
So much for “player freedom.”
The DP World Tour clearly has had enough. Its members have been unavailable for a good part of the season while competing for LIV and it felt that the league’s attempt to poach some of its longstanding venues and international opens as part of a new LIV 2.0 was going to negatively impact its business.
Also, DPWT members having equity in a competing league also would appear to be problematic.
Thus Kinnings made a decision to force players to make a choice. A decision looms in three weeks — even though there might have been little reason to do both, anyway.
Without a LIV schedule, it is impossible to know what events might conflict, but assuredly there’d have been at least a few that LIV events played the same week as DP World Tour events. In that case, a DP World Tour player would need a release to play for LIV, one that would not likely be given. In that case, the player who then plays the LIV event anyway would be subject to a suspension of fine, some of which ran in the $100,000 range per event.
When LIV Golf was paying those fines, it was but a nuisance. Now that money would be coming out of the player’s pocket, making it expensive — and perhaps not worth it? —to attempt playing both tours.
Ahead of the DP World India Championship, Rory McIlroy — who is a member of both the DP World and PGA Tour — weighed in on Kinnings’ hard-line approach to future LIV players.
“As the DP World Tour are a members’ organization, just as the PGA Tour is the members’ organization, every year before you play your first event you sign up to abide by the rules and regulations of that members’ organization,” McIlroy said.
“The leadership or the management of those membership organizations, they have e right to change and adapt the rules and regulations where they see fit to protect their business or their rights.
“This is what the DP World Tour are doing. I think with the way the golf landscape is, I know the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour are working really hard to find like a suitable landing to continue with the strategic alliance.
“I think while they’re doing that, LIV is in such a state of flux that — you know, I think the DP World Tour have been more than accommodating to LIV players. They’ve had to maybe do some things that have been conditional to their membership, like play a couple extra events this year, but I think this was always coming down the line. I think the DP World Tour have made a good decision, because the golf landscape, I feel like it’s been constantly changing for the last four, five years. It’s now got to the point where guys are going to have to make a decision and what’s important to them and what they really want to do.”
Meanwhile, Kaplan approved LIV’s procedural motion to reject 19 current contracts, which the league said would not be compatible with the new pay structure. Among those players were Bryson DeChambeau, Cam Smith, Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson.
The judge also approved LIV Golf’s amended restructuring agreement, which would see BC Partners provide as much as $300 million in financing for the new version of LIV, including an initial loan of $4 million to keep the organization going through the bankruptcy process.
LIV is hoping to get players involved who would get equity in the league and in teams.
Previously, the organization said it would have a streamlined 10-event schedule with 75-player fields, 36-hole cuts and purses between $5 million and $9 million. That’s far less than the $20 million individual purses of the last five years, but it’s better than most tournaments on the DP World Tour. A Financial Times report this week suggested LIV would play 17 events, but so far the league has not commented on that validity of that report.
Will Zalatoris’ back has broken his career since 2023 (John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Zalatoris out for ’27 with another back surgery
Will Zalatoris just turned 30 two months ago. Next month, he will shut down his 2027 season before it even starts to undergo his third major back surgery in as many years.
Zalatoris rose as high as No. 7 in the world in 2023 before withdrawing from the Masters with a back injury that prompted his first surgery, a microdiscectomy. The rising superstar who before he turned 26 had finished runner-up in a Masters (2021), U.S. Open (2022) and PGA Championship (2022) came back in 2024 to play 22 events.
But his back issues arose again in 2025, as he shut it down again in May after 11 starts to undergo an artificial disc replacement surgery to repair two herniated discs.
He returned late in 2025 for one DP World Tour start, but after only four PGA Tour starts in 2026 injuries derailed him again. He withdrew from the Cognizant Classic in March citing an ankle injury that he said was related to his back issues. “It was basically the nerve that, the sciatic nerve going down — basically from the ankle down I couldn’t feel anything,” he said. In April after the Valero Texas Open, he was sidelined for the rest of the season by a partial tear of the hip labrum.
On Wednesday for a media day promoting the PGA Tour’s new fall event in Austin, Texas, Zalatoris said he plans to play for the first time in more than six months but will then shut down for all of the 2027 season to undergo a spinal fusion surgery.
“I’ve been through four years of hell so it’s good to have something that will hopefully correct it,” Zalatoris said. “It’s not something you want to do, but when you have three tour physical therapists tell you it needs to be done at some time, you go ahead and do it.”
Zalatoris said he reinjured the back in his last start in Texas and that all of his injuries are related to the same underlying back problem.
“It’s all connected together and I just want to get it fixed,” he said. “I can’t promise anybody anything because of what I’ve been through. I’m the oldest 30-year-old you will ever meet.”
Whoever is behind LIV, be it BC Partners or whoever, would be far better off linking up with the DP World Tour and sponsoring a few tournaments within its orbit, maybe salvaging the best of the former LIV events in Adelaide, South Africa, South Korea or anywhere else worth saving, and undertaking to do in compliance with DPWT rules and regulations. There are a few gaps in the DPWT schedule where they could easily be slotted in if the will was there. Just a suggestion!