Ex-LIV Golfer Finds Path to PGA Tour, but Divide Still Looms

As the 2025 professional golf calendar winds down, multiple former LIV Golf members have found their way onto the PGA Tour and DP World Tour for the 2026 season, but plenty of challenges still remain around the fractured state of the men’s game. 

Laurie Canter, who made $4.41 million in individual prize money on LIV from 2022 to 2024, earned a 2026 PGA Tour card Sunday after finishing seventh in the DP World Tour’s season-ending standings. For the past three seasons, the circuit formerly known as the European Tour awarded dual PGA Tour membership to the top 10 players not otherwise exempt at the end of the year.

For golfers like Canter, who was never previously a PGA Tour member, there is a one-year ban from events sanctioned solely by the PGA Tour following the most recent LIV Golf tournament they played in. For Canter, 36, that was LIV’s Las Vegas event in 2024. After that, he focused on the DP World Tour, and this past March became the first former LIV golfer to compete in the Players Championship, which is the PGA Tour’s flagship event.

Back in Action

Henrik Stenson, who was stripped of his 2023 European Ryder Cup team captaincy after joining LIV in 2022, is rejoining the DP World Tour next year.

Stenson, 49, received a signing bonus from LIV reported to be worth between $40 million and $50 million, giving the tour notoriety as the 2016 Open Championship winner. He was co-captain of LIV’s Majesticks Golf Club for the past four seasons. But he was relegated from the league after finishing 49th in the final 2025 standings, one spot out of potential safety.

To rejoin the DP World Tour, Stenson paid more than $1 million in fines that he owed for competing in LIV events.

The Divide Continues

Potential reunions on the PGA Tour and DP World Tour for some of LIV Golf’s bigger stars remain more complicated, though.

Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau are entering the final year of their LIV contracts in 2026. But even if they wanted to rejoin the PGA Tour in 2027, the PGA Tour has not stated what penalty former members who left would face in order to return.

Meanwhile, European stars like Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton face fines from the DP World Tour similar to what Stenson had to pay. However, Rahm has said he does not plan to pay those fines after LIV stopped paying them for its players earlier this year. Without a resolution, the outstanding fines could eventually make Rahm ineligible for DP World Tour events and even impact his status for the 2027 Ryder Cup.