LIV Golf has taken blow after blow in recent weeks as it races to secure its future. Since the beginning of his Chapter 11 bankruptcy hearings, the league he saw many professors leave him.
After the DP World Tour announced the LIV players will be banned from their events next yearand accelerated departures.
Most of those players are eyeing the DP World Tour for playing time in 2027, with the PGA Tour out of reach, for now.
On Thursday, new reports added two former LIV Golf players to that list: Thomas Peters and Charles Howell III.
Here’s what you need to know.
Thomas Pieters and Charles Howell III will not play LIV 2.0: Reports
The first shoe to drop Thursday afternoon came because of Flushing It Golfwho reported that Pieters would not be signed for LIV 2.0 for 2027.
Hours later, Josh A. Carpenter of Sports business journal reported on X that LIV pro Charles Howell III would also be leaving LIV.
In the reports, both players said that they are looking for DP World Tour to start next year instead.
With its recent rule change, the DP World Tour has forced players to make this same decision: whether to play on the DP World Tour or LIV Golf in 2027.
But Pieters and Howell III are in very different situations when it comes to the European circuit.
Before joining LIV Golf ahead of the 2023 season, Pieters had amassed six DP World Tour wins, most recently at the 2022 HSBC Abu Dhabi Championship. He also played on the European Ryder Cup team in 2016.
In other words, Pieters’ DP World Tour ties run deep.
Not so for Howell III.
The American pro played most of his golf on the PGA Tour before leaving for LIV. He won three times on the Tour from 2002 to 2018. But he almost never played on the DP World Tour.
While he competed in the 2026 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in October, where he missed the 54-hole cut, Howell III’s last DP World Tour start was the 2020 US Open and Masters. You can add to that WGC event in 2020 and another in 2019.
Howell is currently ranked 510th in the Official World Golf Rankingwhich raises this question: how do you expect to qualify for the DP World Tour starting in 2027?
Refusing LIV, he is not prevented from European tournaments. But it still doesn’t have DP World Tour status.
By that logic, Howell III would need an invitation to play in DP World Tour events in 2027, which would remove a spot from other aspiring DP World Tour pros.
This exact scenario is what upset DP World Tour regular Joost Luiten earlier this week, when he criticized the LIV pros trying to play on the DP World Tour in 2027.
“Four years ago they didn’t give as – on the DP World Tour. They made a decision to go after the money. And now, suddenly, the money is gone and they want to come back and act like nothing happened,” said Luiten. Today’s Golfer. “I don’t think that’s fair.”
Bryson DeChambeau among the pros released from LIV contracts
Pieters and Howell III join Jon Rahm, David Puig, Abraham Ancer and Adrian Meronk on the list of former LIV Golf pros who have confirmed they are leaving the league.
Rahm’s decision came in court two weeks agobefore the announcement of the LIV ban from the DP World Tour.
Puig, Ancer and Meronk he announced his departure soon after.
Then, in a bankruptcy court, on Wednesday, the lawyers of LIV Golf said that the decision to move forward with LIV 2.0 or instead “resolve” the operations. is expected to be done at the end of the month.
They also raised “anti-competitive concerns” in relation to the DP World Tour’s decision to bar LIV players from its events.
But that’s not all that happened in court on Wednesday. LIV Golf also rejected the existing contracts of 19 LIV Golf players, among them Bryson DeChambeau.
In doing so, the league officially cut ties with those players. That allows DeChambeau to openly negotiate with other tours about the 2027 season. However, it does not mean that DeChambeau or any of the other players will not sign for LIV 2.0 if it happens.
