British Open: With LIV Golf standing on its last leg, it needs Jon Rahm or Bryson DeChambeau to show up at Royal Birkdale
LIV Golf is not in a good place entering the final major championship of the season.
Now more than ever, with the Saudi Arabian-backed venture seemingly standing on its last leg, it desperately needs Jon Rahm or Bryson DeChambeau to show out at Royal Birkdale. If they don't, it could speed up the league's already pending demise.
And based on how things have gone for LIV Golf's biggest names in the major championships lately, that actually might be a big ask.
LIV Golf is in a rough shape
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund announced earlier this year that it was pulling funding from LIV Golf after the 2026 season. The PIF backed the league initially and helped it off the ground, and has reportedly invested more than $5 billion into it since 2022. But the venture has struggled to gain real traction, and has even lost multiple notable golfers back to the PGA Tour, so the PIF opted to back out altogether.
What happens next for LIV Golf is very unclear. The league is attempting to move forward with a "LIV 2.0" mindset and tweak the format to both retain top golfers and appeal to investors. They are trying to raise up to $250 million to remain in business next season, too.
But if they can't pull that off, the organization is reportedly laying groundwork for a potential U.S. bankruptcy. LIV Golf is already reportedly running on loans for the rest of 2026, and informed employees of potential mass layoffs.
Oh, and there's a new lawsuit that was filed against LIV Golf, the PIF and others claiming they stole the idea for the league in the first place.
None of that is great, and it's honestly hard to know if the league even has a future beyond the 2026 campaign. There are four events left on the schedule, starting later this month in the United Kingdom. We'll likely know significantly more after the team championship at the end of August. But from what we do no, it's far from an ideal situation.
So, what can Rahm, DeChambeau do about it?
Rahm and DeChambeau can't save the league on their own. At this point, it may even be too late.
But what they can do is provide a massive boost of credibility to the league this week, the final time that most people will even be paying attention to them until next April at Augusta National.
A win, or even a legitimate run at the Claret Jug on Sunday afternoon, would give LIV something to pitch to investors in the coming months. It would mean that LIV Golf still has true stars in the sport to build off of, and that it can still compete with Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and the other big-name counterparts on the PGA Tour. For investors that may be on the fence, a win this week could be everything.
But that's easier said than done. All we have to do is look back a month ago to what happened at the U.S. Open. Rahm, DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson — who failed to qualify for this tournament altogether — all crashed out at the worst time on Friday at that major championship. Rahm and DeChambeau missed the cut completely, while Johnson, after getting within a shot of the lead, went 8-over in a five-hole span in the second round to fall out of contention.
DeChambeau has yet to make a cut at a major championship this season, which is stunning considering he finished inside the top 10 in six of eight major starts before the 2026 season. Rahm has won multiple times on LIV Golf and cracked the top-10 in the world briefly after his runner-up finish at the PGA Championship. But the U.S. Open was rough, and he finished just 36th at the Scottish Open last week in the joint PGA Tour-DP World Tour event. Despite his earlier success in the year, he now has a lot to prove.
There are actually 15 members from LIV Golf this week. Tyrrell Hatton and Joaquin Niemann are among them, though Rahm and DeChambeau are easily the biggest names from that group. Rahm is sitting at No. 11 in the Official World Golf Rankings, and DeChambeau is still inside the top 40 while being about as popular as he has ever been.
If LIV Golf is going to end the major championship season with a massive boost, it'll have to be from either Rahm or DeChambeau. Nobody else in the field has the clout needed at this point to make a big enough impact to help the league that was once so disruptive in the sport.
But if those two fail to make the cut again, it will only add to the questions surrounding LIV Golf as it enters a time where the eyes on the golf world — the ones that remain and don't take a break until early April, that is — will be focused on the rest of the Tour season.
It's now or never.
