LIV Golf is wobbling under PGA Tour pressure and one golfer could cause it to crash down

You might think I am referring to Jon Rahm after he was lured to the Saudi-backed breakaway circuit by a colossal sum of money after being told he would be the game-changer for LIV Golf. But, with all due respect, it’s not the Spaniard.

Nor Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia or Phil Mickelson. The key man for LIV Golf is Bryson DeChambeau because, quite frankly, the cards will come crashing down if he decides his time is up as well.

DeChambeau, of course, is very much his own man and has even talked about just churning out content for YouTube going forward. And, in fairness, he certainly attracts eyeballs.

We all know it is nonsense, though, to think he doesn’t want to win more majors and, ultimately, go down in history as one of the game’s greatest players.

That’s not going to happen through anything he does as captain of Crushers, his LIV Golf team, because, as has been the case from the outset, very few people give a damn about the start-up circuit and, in particular, its team element.

Was Brooks Koepka really happy at LIV?

It seems as though Koepka’s return to the PGA Tour was triggered by a family matter but was the five-time major winner really happy as a LIV player? It also can’t be denied that his game had regressed away from the PGA Tour.

As for Reed, you had a feeling that his time was up with LIV from what he had to say on Sunday after winning the Hero Dubai Desert Classic, one of the DP World Tour’s Rolex Series events, and that was, indeed, confirmed by the 2018 Masters champion on Wednesday.

Was it a case of Reed getting greedy in talks about a new contract? Perhaps. There can be no denying, though, that he and, even more so, Koepka are big losses heading into the new LIV season in Saudi Arabia next week.

With all due respect to every single one of them, LIV’s close-season signings have been underwhelming, with no-one likely to have the capacity to move the needle and, let’s face it, that’s what it was meant to do.

Hence why someone like DeChambeau was lured away from the PGA Tour in the first place, but is the grass greener on LIV Golf, after all, with a Returning Member Programme offered to Koepka, DeChambeau, Smith and Rahm as major winners since 2022 clearly designed to ask that question.

Yes, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the circuit’s chairman and the man who bankrolls the tour in his role as governor of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), will be very reluctant indeed to pull the plug on a project that is very much his baby and, in the latest show of the Saudis having very deep pockets, the team prize pot for each event in 2026 is being doubled from $5 million to $10 million.

It’s advantage to PGA Tour at moment

But, with the team element even more important than ever after a decision to scrap the circuit’s much-vaunted 54-hole format for a traditional 72 holes this year, changing a few names is unlikely to make any difference whatsoever.

The PGA Tour had been on the back foot since LIV’s launch - but not any more. It’s “advantage” Brian Rolapp, the US circuit’s new CEO, at the moment and his counterpart, Scott O’Neil, will be worrying about what is coming next, especially if it involves DeChambeau.