Forty-five days. That’s how long LIV Golf players will need to wait between starts on the breakaway league during the height of the season.
The postponement of LIV’s event in New Orleans has created an uncomfortably long gap in the calendar as uncertainty surrounding the league’s longevity continues. That there is no LIV tournament until the return to JCB Golf & Country Club in late July has at least enabled chief executive Scott O’Neil to focus his attention entirely on securing the $300 million in funding the league needs to survive beyond 2026.
But while those investor calls take place in the background, several LIV players have been forced to scope out other tournaments to remain sharp during a lengthy hiatus at a critical juncture of the season.
Bubba Watson headed a cast list of over 20 LIV players at a recent International Series stop in Morocco on the Asian Tour, while Joaquin Niemann is the biggest name of the seven playing in this week’s DP Italian Open on the DP World Tour, which would have otherwise coincided with the scrapped tournament in Louisiana.
Intriguingly, meanwhile, one of LIV’s brightest talents is taking a different path to get some competitive reps. Caleb Surratt, who made the cut in his US Open debut last week, will now play two tournaments on the HotelPlanner Tour, the second-tier of the European game.
The American is listed in the field for next week’s Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge in France, which carries a $300,000 prize fund, a world away from the $30 million LIV events. TG has learned that Surratt, who plays on Jon Rahm’s Legion XII team, will also play the German Challenge on the HotelPlanner Tour in the following week.
Alongside Tom McKibbin, Jose Ballester and David Puig, Surratt is viewed among LIV’s finest young talents and has received tournament invites for each of his first two starts on the feeder circuit. Surratt, the world No. 274, is also among the notable names listed for Open Final Qualifying at Burnham & Burrow on England’s South West coast on June 30, two days before his HotelPlanner Tour debut in France.
Some LIV players, including Surratt’s LIV colleague Rahm, will have spent a month on the sidelines after the league’s last stop in Valderrama before returning at the Genesis Scottish Open the week prior to the final major of the season. But those LIV players without status on the DP World Tour have had to consider options elsewhere.
TG reported in April that several of the LIV playing contingent have contacted both the DP World Tour and HotelPlanner Tour as part of contingency planning after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund announced it would be pulling its multi-billion dollar funding from the league at the end of the season.
Since then, LIV boss O’Neil has been working tirelessly on what is being called ‘LIV 2.0’, a remodeled circuit with fewer events with a focus on locations in which they have enjoyed the most success, like Australia and South Africa. The model is currently being pitched to potential investors.
Back in April, TG asked DP World Tour chief executive Guy Kinnings about the possibility of more LIV players joining his circuit next season. “We will wait and see how things evolve, but we’re obviously listening and we’re listening to players and agents and others who have questions about what the future may hold and we’ll handle it as we go forward,” he said. “But for sure, I think there’s opportunity for us to continue to grow the strength of the tour, which is my only job really.”
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