Golf insider makes LIV prediction: "To my mind, that's okay"

LIV Golf has enough players with "nowhere to go" that it could survive its current financial crisis and emerge as a much smaller circuit, according to journalist and author Alan Shipnuck.

The breakaway tour has faced mounting uncertainty over its future since Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund decided to end its direct funding of LIV beyond the 2026 season.

The Financial Times reported last week that LIV was preparing for a potential bankruptcy filing as early 7 September in a move that could allow the league to restructure its financial obligations.

"It discharges all their debts," Shipnuck told the latest episode of Dan on Golf.

"So the $150 million they owe Rahm, the $40 million they still owe DJ ... now they can go back to these guys, they become creditors, and they can say, all right, well, I can't pay the money, but you can own 12% of the league or however they work it out."

Shipnuck said such a restructuring could make LIV more attractive to new investors by removing the burden of its existing player obligations.

"No one, BC Partners or whomever, is going to sign on to LIV if they also owe all these guys all this money," he said. 

"And so I think bankruptcy just makes sense. It's legal. It's smart. 

"It sucks for the players because they have these signed deals, but that's life in the big leagues."

Shipnuck said the result could be a dramatically different LIV, one that no longer attempts to challenge the PGA Tour for supremacy.

"This could give us a LIV 2.0, which will be modest and not so noisy and not so controversial," he said.

"It'll just be the fourth-best tour in the world behind the PGA Tour, Europe and Asia. To my mind, that's okay."

Shipnuck said LIV could still have a role for established players who have limited options elsewhere, particularly those unwilling or unable to return to the PGA Tour or DP World Tour.

"If you're Brendan Steele or Richard Bland or Graeme McDowell, and you have some brand equity, you've won tournaments around the world, you've had decent careers ... you don't want to serve a year's suspension for the PGA Tour, you don't want to pay the fines for Europe," he said.

"It's just a chance you can play 10 events on LIV."

Players could supplement those starts with events on the Asian Tour, Shipnuck said, creating a viable but less lucrative professional schedule.

"It's modest, but it's a way to make a living," he said.

LIV's purses could also fall substantially from the levels that helped define the league when it launched in 2022. 

Shipnuck said the tour was discussing purses of about $8 million to $10 million, which he noted would have been considered significant on the PGA Tour several years ago.

The reduction would reflect a broader shift away from the spending that helped LIV attract stars including Rahm, Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau.

"The false economy, as Rory [McIlroy] called it, has warped expectations," Shipnuck said.

Younger players, meanwhile, could use LIV as one of several options rather than committing their careers to the circuit, Shipnuck said, pointing to 22-year-old Michael La Sasso, who won LIV's Indianapolis event last month and subsequently entered DP World Tour qualifying.

"I think the Niemanns, the super young talents like La Sasso ... they're going to explore all their options, and they're going to try and find an off-ramp," Shipnuck said.

"But there's enough guys who have nowhere to go that LIV could endure."