Sir Nick Faldo says LIV golfers who want back into the DP World Tour may have to "eat a bit of humble pie" before they’re allowed through the gate again. That’s the language of a closed shop, dressed up as sporting principle. LIV’s 2026 season ended last Sunday in Indianapolis after this week’s cancellation of the breakaway tour’s Team Championship in Michigan, and the whole mess now lands back on the desks of the DP World Tour’s tournament committee, which met on Tuesday afternoon to decide who gets forgiven and who gets shut out.
The Gatekeepers Decide
Tyrrell Hatton, Tom McKibbin and Adrian Meronk are competing at the Husqvarna British Masters starting on Thursday after accepting a deal that lets them play both tours without sanction this year. That deal matters because it shows how quickly the rules bend when the right names are involved. Hatton, McKibbin and Meronk are DP World Tour members, while other LIV players remain stuck outside the fence, waiting for the people in charge to decide whether their careers can continue.
Faldo, who is promoting the Belfry tournament, told BBC Sport: "I'm hearing there are more players wanting to leave LIV than want to stay. So it doesn't sound good for them for the future." LIV’s boss Scott O'Neil is meanwhile trying to replace Saudi Arabian funding and wants $350m (£258m) investment to keep the league operating next year. The money machine keeps moving. The players get sorted into categories.
Hatton’s walk-on music at the Indianapolis tournament last week was Queen’s I Want to Break Free, which was read as a signal that the Englishman wants to leave the tour that began in 2022. Hatton has recent tournament wins that protect his DP World status. Two-time major champion Jon Rahm also has exemptions that would qualify him for the tour should he quit the previously Saudi Arabia-funded outfit. The exemptions matter. So does the fact that some players have a route back while others don’t.
Start Again, Says Faldo
Faldo said it should not be too easy for LIV players to walk straight back onto the DP World Tour. "How do they actually give them a route back?" he said. "You know, given the way they've disrupted - go and start again. Go back to tour school. Hey, you might have to eat a bit of humble pie and say, well, I want to be a proper golfer again, and so I've got to start back where I'm meant to be and I'll work my way up the good old way with my skills and my scoring."
That’s the language of discipline, not just sport. Faldo’s version of order is clear: if you left the approved structure, you return by crawling back through it. He also said: "We can negotiate. If a player has some form of exemption on the tour already, someone like Rahm would obviously carry it through majors and that sort of thing. But all the other guys, you know, they did cause quite a disruption in the world of golf. You know, they were in a way invited into LIV. And that's not how golf is, is it? We all had to do the good old Monday qualifying back in the day, 50 blooming years ago. I personally think that's the way it should be, you start again and climb the ladder."
A senior tour source said: "It is a difficult jigsaw to piece together and we have to work out how to treat these players should they want to leave LIV and rejoin." That’s the bureaucracy speaking in its natural habitat: not justice, just management. The DP World Tour wants as many big names as it can get because many leading Europeans are based in the United States, but it also says it has to protect the rest of the membership who stayed loyal to the tour. Loyalty gets praised when it’s useful. Then it gets processed.
Money, Exemptions, and the Fence
Chile’s Joaquin Niemann was one of the most successful players on the LIV tour, amassing more than £60m in prize money. But the 27-year-old is currently ineligible for both the PGA and DP World Tours. Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia, all distinguished Ryder Cup players for Europe, are also among those whose status could be up for debate. Exciting young Spaniard Josele Ballester and American Peter Uihlein are LIV golfers who have entered the first stage of DP World Tour qualifying school at Huddersfield on 2 September.
So the system keeps its categories, its exemptions, its punishments, and its selective mercy. Some players are told to start again. Some are allowed to carry their status through majors. Some are left in limbo while committees meet and sources explain the “difficult jigsaw.” The sport calls it governance. It looks a lot like a gate with a committee on the other side.