The 2026 LIV golf season gets underway in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on February 4. I’m sure its backers and supporters are hoping for a happy new year but there were a couple of stories which emerged just before Christmas which highlighted the effects LIV has had on the fabric of men’s professional golf.
First, Mito Pereira announced he was quitting as a tour pro at the age of 30. The specific catalyst was his relegation from the LIV tour at the end of last season. Pereira had led the 2022 USPGA Championship as he stood on the final tee of the final round. He then put his drive in the water and lost in a playoff. His career might have panned out very differently had the outcome of that championship been very different. When LIV came calling he felt he could not turn down the signing-fee on offer. He subsequently earned around £13 million in prize-money on the circuit and now feels he is financially secure enough for him and his family to relocate permanently to live in their native Chile. Is this a heart-warming story of a guy making so much money so quickly from golf that he can already afford to retire? Or a cautionary tale about a man who walked away from a career that he might reasonably have expected to pursue for at least another ten years?
Brooks Koepka has won the USPGA Championship three times. (And the US Open twice.) He has now left LIV Golf, citing “the needs of his family”, as his representatives put it. Indeed, I’m sure. But there will also be the golf. As things stand he will be not be able to play on the PGA Tour until August, a year after his last appearance on LIV, but maybe he will show up in Europe; he played four DP World Tour events last autumn. Time will tell how he chooses to proceed from here but, for sure, as a genuine marquee name, his departure is a blow for LIV. Their recent signings of Laurie Canter, Victor Perez and Thomas Detry cannot compensate for that.
Further in the future, the venue for the 2028 Open Championship has not yet been named but its dates have. It will be played between August 3-6. The shift from the customary July dates was effectively forced on the R&A by the timing of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles now that golf is again part of the Olympic programme. The men’s and women’s golf events in LA will both be held in the latter part of July, thus necessitating this rearrangement of the calendar. The move is for one year only.
This coming summer, the United States will be hosting the football World Cup for the second time. (To be accurate, on this occasion it will be co-hosting the tournament with Canada and Mexico.) The first time was in 1994. The Open Championship that year was played at Turnberry, for the third time of its four stagings to date. Those were the days when the course was not in the ownership of Donald Trump. I suspect the US president has not given up on the prospect of his links getting the nod for two years’ hence.
You can follow Robert Green on Twitter @robrtgreen and enjoy his other blog f-factors.com as well as his golf archive on robertgreen-golf.com
