DP World Tour Tells LIV 2.0 Players to Choose: No 2027 Membership, No Ryder Cup

Update, October 19: Thomas Pieters and Charles Howell III are reported to be leaving LIV as well, Pieters via Flushing It Golf and Howell III via Sports Business Journal, and both are said to want DP World Tour golf in 2027 despite holding no status there. LIV has also rejected the existing contracts of 19 players, including Bryson DeChambeau, and told the bankruptcy court to expect a proceed-or-wind-down decision by the end of October. A new section below carries the detail.

Update, October 13: Anirban Lahiri, the first current LIV player to face questions since Monday’s announcement, declined to commit to LIV 2.0 on Tuesday in Delhi, calling the situation dynamic and saying everyone will know within a month or so. The Sports Business Journal reports Abraham Ancer intends to play the DP World Tour in 2027.

The DP World Tour has ended the compromise that kept LIV golfers eligible for the Ryder Cup. In a statement to BBC Sport on Monday, chief executive Guy Kinnings said players need to make a choice, and the tour will not offer 2027 membership to anyone who plays LIV 2.0, GOLF.com reports. For three seasons Europe fined, suspended and then negotiated with its defectors. The negotiating is over.

What exactly has the DP World Tour decided?

That 2026 was the last year of having it both ways. Nine LIV players were granted conditional releases last season, NBC Sports reports, under settlements that required the likes of Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton to pay outstanding fines in exchange for European eligibility, GOLF.com reports. Those deals applied to 2026 only. From 2027, membership applications will ask players to declare which tours they intend to play, stated LIV intentions will not be accepted, and a player who signs a European agreement and then plays LIV anyway faces termination, GOLF.com reports. It lands in the same week that Xander Schauffele described a PGA Tour membership split four ways over Rahm’s return, except Europe has not described a split. It has announced a rule.

Why does the decision reach all the way to the Ryder Cup?

Because the DP World Tour runs Europe’s team and only its members can play in it. Rahm and Hatton were the only two LIV players in Europe’s side at Bethpage Black in 2025, NBC Sports reports, and both kept that eligibility through the release system that has now been withdrawn. Europe defends the cup at Adare Manor next September, the target Sergio Garcia has already told Luke Donald he will do everything to reach. A player who commits to LIV 2.0 is therefore not choosing between two paydays. He is choosing between a LIV contract and the Ryder Cup, which is precisely the leverage the old system was built to avoid using and the new one is built on.

What happens if a player tries to keep both doors open?

The application closes them in sequence. Reporting on the process says a membership application that declares an intention to play LIV will not be accepted, and one that denies the intention can be rescinded if the player then plays LIV, EssentiallySports reports. Even the side doors are shut: Joaquin Niemann, who holds no DP World Tour status, would need qualifying school or sponsor invitations, and GOLF.com reports those routes are also available only to players not playing LIV 2.0. There is no version of the paperwork that leaves a LIV player with a European schedule, which is the point. The tour is not punishing a choice already made. It is pricing a choice that has not been made yet.

Why do the two deadlines collide so badly?

Because LIV’s comes first. Players must commit to LIV 2.0 by October 25, while DP World Tour membership applications close on November 16, GOLF.com reports. A player cannot hold his LIV decision until Europe has ruled on his application, and the application will not be ruled on in ignorance, because it asks the LIV question outright. The sequence is the strategy: every European player LIV wants has to sign, or walk away, three weeks before his European status is decided, with the Ryder Cup sitting on the European side of the scale. It is the hardest deadline pressure applied to LIV since Rahm rejected the relaunch in bankruptcy court and walked away with Meronk and Puig behind him.

Who does this hit hardest?

Hatton, because he is the one who has not moved. Rahm has already rejected LIV 2.0 through his lawyer, Adrian Meronk has confirmed he will be a DP World Tour member instead, David Puig wants a fuller European schedule, and Sergio Garcia’s LIV contract has been terminated. Hatton, a three-time Ryder Cup player and one of Europe’s emotional centres, has said nothing publicly about 2027, GOLF.com reports. Tom McKibbin also played under the 2026 releases. For LIV and its backer BC Partners, the arithmetic is the story: the relaunch needs established European names by October 25, and Europe has just made signing cost those names the Ryder Cup. The financing behind that deadline is tracked in the LIV lifeline and commitment-deadline case.

What did the first LIV player asked about the ultimatum say?

Not yes, and not no. Anirban Lahiri, who plays for Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers and has won twice on the DP World Tour, faced the question in Delhi on Tuesday ahead of the India Championship, a tournament he would be barred from next year if he signs for LIV 2.0. He called the situation very dynamic, said the bankruptcy process has to play out, and pointed to his own schedule as the clock: Delhi this week, Hong Kong next, then the Philippine Open, by which time he expects clarity, GOLF.com reports. His one firm line was about how the decision gets made, on the best interest of his family and himself, and his one request was for patience for another month or so. Reuters (Field Level Media) reports the Sports Business Journal has Abraham Ancer intending to play the DP World Tour in 2027, which would move Ancer alongside Rahm, Meronk and Puig in the out column while Lahiri stays, publicly at least, in the undecided one Europe’s deadline squeeze was designed to shrink.

Who are the latest players reported to be heading for the exit?

Thomas Pieters and Charles Howell III, and their cases show the two ends of the problem Europe’s rule creates. Flushing It Golf reported on Thursday that Pieters will not sign up for LIV 2.0, GOLF.com reports, and hours later Sports Business Journal’s Josh Carpenter reported that Howell III will also depart. Golf Digest’s tracker of LIV departures records the same two reports, dating Pieters to October 15 and Howell III to October 16. Both are said to be seeking DP World Tour starts in 2027. Neither has a card waiting for him.

Pieters is the straightforward case on playing grounds and the awkward one on paperwork. He won six times on the DP World Tour before joining LIV in 2023, most recently the 2022 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, and played on Europe’s 2016 Ryder Cup team, GOLF.com reports. His European ties run deep, but ties are not status, and the membership application that closes on November 16 will ask him the same LIV question it asks everyone. Howell III is the harder case. He built his career on the PGA Tour, winning three times between 2002 and 2018, has barely played the DP World Tour, and sits 510th in the world ranking, GOLF.com reports. Rejecting LIV does not bar him from Europe, but without status he needs invitations, and invitations given to returning LIV names are exactly what Joost Luiten attacked in Delhi this week while arguing the places should go to players who never left. GolfMagic’s running tracker now lists six players out of LIV 2.0, Rahm, Meronk, Puig, Ancer, Pieters and Howell III, against five who have publicly committed to staying if the relaunch happens.

The exits are only half of the week’s movement. In the bankruptcy case, LIV rejected the existing contracts of 19 players, DeChambeau among them, GOLF.com reports, which cuts those players loose to negotiate with other tours for 2027 without obliging any of them to leave if LIV 2.0 goes ahead. LIV’s lawyers also told the court the decision on whether the relaunch proceeds or operations wind down is expected by the end of the month, and raised anti-competitive concerns about Europe’s ban. The October 25 commitment deadline now sits inside that uncertainty: players are being asked to commit to a league that has freed 19 of them from their contracts and has not yet confirmed it will exist.

What happens next for LIV 2.0 and Europe?

A fortnight that decides the roster. The bankruptcy case returns to court on Wednesday, October 14, the commitment deadline follows on October 25, and BC Partners’ credit head has said the firm expects a critical mass of players by then, GOLF.com reports. Europe’s announcement is timed to make that mass smaller: any player weighing a LIV offer now has to write off Adare Manor to sign it. The PGA Tour barred its defectors outright in 2022 and has held the line since. Europe held out for three years, then reached for the one asset the PGA Tour does not control. The squeeze has since drawn a response from the other side’s loudest critic: in New Delhi this week, Rory McIlroy said he would vote to welcome LIV players back to the PGA Tour and called the threat over. Delhi has since produced a second money row of its own: Kevin Kisner used a podcast to call McIlroy’s India appearance a money grab and put an unconfirmed $10 million figure on it, a claim McIlroy has since answered in Delhi.

Since this announcement, Eddie Pepperell has called the tour’s reported LIV invite list utterly bizarre, singling out Charles Howell III and arguing that none of the reported names would move the tour’s balance sheet in 2027.

Update, October 25: the LIV money fight widened on deadline day, with more than ten players led by Dustin Johnson seeking over $100 million from the PIF in unpaid contract and severance claims. The details are in the LIV lifeline article’s latest update.