Bryson DeChambeau kept choosing LIV Golf long after it stopped being the easy option. In January, he turned down the one-time PGA Tour return offer that Brooks Koepka accepted. Days before the league’s collapse, he told a podcast that LIV 2.0 would be “done right”. Now the league is gone, and the DP World Tour has put an offer in front of him.
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The Telegraph reports that DeChambeau has been offered “a free route back to the professional game”. His advisers were reportedly told that, as the 2024 US Open winner, he can take up full playing privileges in Europe in 2027.
The offer comes in the wake of LIV’s collapse. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund stopped funding LIV in April, and the league filed for Chapter 11 on September 8. Its hopes rested on a $300 million (£225m) rescue from BC Partners, which depended on enough players committing. Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton and Sergio Garcia opted against the proposed relaunch, and the deal fell apart.
A bankruptcy judge had already rejected DeChambeau’s contract, making him a free agent. On Thursday, the league’s board said in a statement:
“In light of the current circumstances, we believe shifting toward an orderly wind-down is the most responsible path forward for the League at this time.”
So what does the offer actually mean? Bunkered reports that DeChambeau would slot into Category 1 on the tour’s member list, which means no Q-School. He would not need to qualify or rely on sponsor invitations.
Players with no status, such as Joaquin Niemann and Thomas Pieters, must go through Q-School or sign for a set number of sponsor invites. Those deals were open only to players who stayed out of LIV 2.0. The Telegraph adds that DeChambeau is the only LIV player without membership who holds this exemption. Applications for 2027 close on November 16.
Whether he accepts is unknown. Rahm, who left LIV last month, expects to serve a year-long PGA Tour suspension before returning, and the same would apply to DeChambeau. That ban runs from a player’s last LIV start, so it would lapse on August 23, 2027, if he plays no more LIV events.
His PGA Tour exemption runs through 2029. DeChambeau has also suggested he could lean on his YouTube channel while continuing to contend in the majors, an idea experts have dismissed.
Notably, DeChambeau had been one of the few still backing the relaunch. He told the Figuring Out podcast:
“The business model makes a lot of sense. It’s no funny business, no nothing. It’s going to be done right. And this is going to be a league, hopefully, that exists forever.”
That said, Europe is not new territory for him. At the 2019 Dubai Desert Classic, he won by seven shots at a record 24 under, his first victory outside the United States. He took up European Tour membership that season and rose to fourth in the Race to Dubai. His next stop was the Saudi International the following week, in the same region whose money would later fund LIV.
That relationship changed when he joined LIV in 2022. The tour barred LIV players from co-sanctioned events that summer, including the Scottish Open, which DeChambeau had planned to play before The Open. Outside the majors, his last regular start was the JP McManus Pro-Am in July 2022.
His return was already taking shape. In August, he committed to the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa, set for December 3 to 6. He won LIV’s South Africa event earlier this year. Then his management reportedly asked the tour about more starts. That plan hit a wall when CEO Guy Kinnings ruled out dual membership for anyone joining LIV 2.0.
With LIV gone, the Nedbank Golf Challenge may now be the first step of a bigger move.