Brooks Koepka got plenty of practice in at Trump National Doral on Thursday. Koepka waited all day at the Cadillac Championship in Miami, staying sharp and hoping a couple of players might withdraw so he could get a tee time as the second alternate.
Jake Knapp withdrew to get Kristoffer Reitan in, but Koepka needed one more player to bow out. That never happened, so Thursday turned out to be a range day for Koepka, who hasn’t qualified for a Signature Event since he returned to the PGA Tour and has to rely on playing his way into them (he can’t accept sponsor invites). That’s because Koepka, who rejoined the PGA Tour this year via the Returning Member Program after 3 1/2 years at LIV Golf, is still in the penalty box.
He didn’t get in this week’s tournament, but he’s in next week’s alternate-field event in Myrtle Beach as a final tune-up before the PGA Championship, a tournament he’s won three times.
Koepka paid a hefty price to return to the PGA Tour. But what about his former LIV colleagues?
“I think having Brooks back has been great,” Cameron Young told reporters on Thursday, after he shot an eight-under 64 to take an early lead at the Cadillac Championship. “But honestly it’s not for me to decide; I don’t know what any of those guys are thinking about doing. I don’t know what’s going to happen with LIV.”
On Thursday, LIV Golf released a statement saying it’s focusing on securing long-term financial partners for its future. A couple of hours later the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which has bankrolled the league since its inception, said what had been rumored for weeks: “PIF has made the decision to fund LIV Golf only for the remainder of the 2026 season.”
So what happens to LIV now? Or its players? These are questions but without immediate answers. Although players at Doral were asked how they believe PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp should handle it if any plan to return to the PGA Tour this year or in the future. (Golf Digest reported Thursday “representatives for multiple LIV players have contacted the PGA Tour to discuss a potential return.”)
Brian Harman said he thinks there should be a path back to the Tour for them.
“There’s been guys that are going to come back. I can’t speak individually to each of them. Seems like they’re treating them all as a case-by-case basis,” Harman said. “I would think that the fans want everyone to be playing together and, you know, time heals all wounds. There’s still some sentiment out here, especially with all the lawsuit stuff, that stuff’s going to be tough to get past. We play with all those guys in the majors, so, yeah, I think there should be a path back.”
The “lawsuit stuff,” Harman referred to is the antitrust lawsuit a handful of LIV members — Bryson DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson and Talor Gooch, among them — filed against the PGA Tour four years ago.
Some players also had a chance to return via the Returning Member Program, like Koepka did, but that deadline has since passed.
“We were very explicit that that was a one-time situational Returning Member Program, and I stand by that,” Rolapp said at the Players last month. “I don’t know the contractual relationship or the terms of others on the LIV tour, and they have contracts and those should be honored. But we do have a pathway; Patrick Reed is clearly taking advantage of that pathway as he’s out of his contractual commitment. And so I think the LIV players know what those pathways are, and until they change, those are the pathways.”
Added Jordan Spieth on Thursday: “I think there’s a system for Brooks and a system for Patrick Reed — does that stay the same for the guys in the same category as those two coming back? Or does it change now? Does it change for guys who sued or dropped their membership? There’s just a lot of different things that happened in the last four years. I’m kinda glad I’m not in that room. And I trust the guys that are in that room to make the right decision.”
Still, Harman reminded LIV Golf is not over.
“They could secure funding from somewhere else and keep going,” he said. “They have got a lot of big name players over there, guys that move the needle. Until it’s all done, until you’ve got guys that are actually calling and trying to come back to the Tour, it’s not really a problem that we’re dealing with currently.”
Not everyone might be so welcoming though. Wyndham Clark said back in January, not long after the Koepka return was announced, “it’s kind of frustrating that he’s able to get the cake and also eat it. And if you would have told me that I could have gone for a year-and-a-half, make a boatload of money and then be able to come back, play on the Tour, I think almost everyone would have done that.”
Although on Thursday, some players simply decided to stay out of it.
“I just got off the golf course,” said World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, following his 71. “I don’t know what you want from me.” [Laughs]
