LIV Golf's keen golfer and man holding the purse strings needs to speak out

In truth, we still don’t know what that holds for the breakaway circuit because a “bombshell announcement” that had been predicted on social media didn’t materialise, but, on the strength of LIV Golf executives being summoned to an “emergency meeting” in New York, it’s been difficult to get that proverb about how ‘there’s no smoke without fire’ out of one’s mind.

It’s been claimed that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which bankrolls the rebel tour, is on the verge of cutting its support, which, apparently, had already risen to £3.9 billion and was projected to surpass £4.42 billion by the end of this year. Quite frankly, that sum of money is utterly ridiculous and, though the Saudi pockets may be deep, you didn’t have to be a genius to work out that all that cash splashing was going to come to an end at some point and that could well be on the horizon.

With the likes of Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau as its star turns and some good golfing people involved in the running of the circuit, it’s difficult to imagine that the rug is going to be pulled from underneath it in the middle of the season, where the 2026 LIV Golf campaign will reach with its next event at Trump International in Washington. As has been reported, a more likely scenario is that this season goes ahead as planned then the LIV lights are switched off.

Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that it has a future without PIF support because that’s a non-starter. It simply hasn’t garnered enough attention, particularly in the US, to be an attractive proposition for a new backer to come on board. Its much-vaunted 54-hole team format has been scrapped already and, with all due respect, no-one gives two hoots about Legion XII, FourAces, Majesticks, Cleeks or any other team. In golf, the only teams people care about are Europe and the US when it comes to the Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup and this experiment has only served to hammer that home.

Labour of love for LIV chairman

While Scott O’Neil, LIV Golf’s CEO, did his best last week to try and paint a positive picture at a time when all sorts of rumours were flying around, the man we really need to hear from, of course, is Yasir Al Rumayyan, the circuit’s chairman and the governor of PIF. A keen golfer himself, it’s clearly been a labour of love to be involved in such a project while also playing in events like the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.

It must have been satisfying for Al Rumayyan when a Framework Agreement designed to unify professional was struck between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and PIF, but that was just under three years ago and very little has been mentioned of it recently, which makes you think that it is now dead in the water.

What everyone will be interested to discover, of course, is what the immediate future will hold for LIV Golf players if it has, indeed, run its course and there can be no denying that it will have to be handled very carefully indeed because a) they should have little or no power and b) those who stayed loyal to the traditional tours simply can’t be made to feel under-valued.

With Brooks Koepka having already been handed a PGA Tour lifeline through a Returning Member Programme and Patrick Reed en route to be back playing there, too, later this year, it seems likely that Rahm and DeChambeau would be offered a similar deal again, albeit they both turned down that opportunity earlier this year.

Between them, the pair have claimed 31 LIV Golf trophies - a mix of individual and team victories - and there can be no denying that they’d bring something to the table as the PGA Tour, under new CEO Brian Rolapp, gets set to shake up its schedule from next year. As for lots of others, though, they’d surely need to either re-earn their stripes or, in the case of talented youngsters like David Puig, Josele Ballaster, Luis Masaveu and Caleb Surratt, earn them in the first place, which would be on either the HotelPlanner Tour in Europe or the KornFerry Tour in the US.

It’s often mentioned that LIV Golf is playing a key part in “growing golf”, particularly outside the US. Yes, it may attract big audiences in Australia and also at its first event in South Africa earlier this year, but has the likes of O’Neil forgotten that the DP World Tour has been a global circuit for a long time and the likes of the Asian Tour, Sunshine Tour and HotelPlanner Tour also stage tournaments in regions that the PGA Tour doesn’t cover?

O’Neil also made a comment last week about how he’d like to see LIV Golf partner with national opens around the world, which is obviously off the back of the Hong Kong Open now being part of the circuit, with Tom McKibbin’s win in it this year securing spots in both the Masters and The Open. It’s no secret, though, that the likes of the Scottish Open, French Open, Spanish Open etc are all established on the DP World Tour schedule, so that one was a bit baffling.

It will be disappointing, of course, if people end up losing jobs while the older players in particular could be stumped in terms of opportunities, but, even with a golfer holding the purse strings, it’s difficult not to have come out of that Masters coma - and, yes, now looking ahead to life with a gnome in it - thinking that LIV could be about to die.