LIV Golf players will still be allowed to wear shorts at some tournaments this year, Front Office Sports has learned, despite reports that pants would now be required 100% of the time.
The 2025 LIV season began last week, as Adrian Meronk bested Jon Rahm and Sebastian Muñoz by two strokes in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to win the $4 million individual first-place prize. Rahm’s Legion XIII won the team competition, which paid out $3 million.
But before the action teed off on Thursday, new LIV Golf TV analyst Pat Perez (who has transitioned from being a player the past three seasons) made waves by claiming that the league would no longer allow players to wear shorts—one of its staples since launching in 2022.
“I’ve heard the players are wearing pants all year,” Perez said on an official LIV podcast, Fairway to Heaven. “I got it confirmed the other day that the players are wearing pants, and the first place I thought about was Singapore.”
However, some players did wear shorts in Riyadh. Most wore pants and even long sleeves as all three rounds were played at night under the lights, and temperatures dropped into the 60s and 50s at times.
A LIV Golf spokesperson told FOS that shorts are not banned entirely, but that there is a new dress code policy going into effect after the Hong Kong tournament which takes place from March 7–9.
“Players have the option to wear shorts on tournament days when the heat index is 90 degrees (F) or above, as well as during practice rounds, including Pro-Am days, if they choose,” the spokesperson said.
This coming weekend, LIV plays in Adelaide, Australia, where temperatures aren’t forecasted to be higher than the 70s. The first tournament for which the new shorts policy will officially be in effect will be the Singapore event that Perez alluded to, which will be played March 14–16.
The new dress code is not the only change for LIV, which has entered its fourth season.
This season, every player’s score in every round will count toward his team’s total score at each regular season tournament. Previously, only three players’ scores counted for each team during the first two rounds, and all four counted during the final round.
Each LIV tournament has a $5 million team purse ($3 million for first, $1.5 million for second, and $500,000 for third) for the league’s 13 squads, in addition to the $20 million up for grabs in individual prize money.
Fox Sports officially began its multi-year U.S. media rights deal, airing all three rounds of the Riyadh tournament on FS2 from roughly 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET Thursday through Saturday.
