Big names who had joined the breakaway LIV Tour are now making their way back to rival tours

A couple of years ago a bookmaker ran an advertising campaign with the tagline: “Loyalty is dead. Live for rewards”. The face of the promotion was Rhodri Giggs, whose wife Natasha had carried on an affair with Rhodri’s brother, Ryan, the former Manchester United star, for eight years. Eventually Natasha sold her story to a newspaper. Now Rhodri was cashing in. The moral high ground was an unconsidered space.

The Paddy Power copywriters have made some calamitous and egregious errors of judgment over the years, but every so often they strike a chord. Their new offering to punters was from the same family as supermarket points: it made you feel like you were getting something back, even as they sucked the blood from your veins. Your loyalty was just another transaction.

In everyday relationships, loyalty is a cherished quality, and because it has no price it cannot be bought or sold. In professional sport, though, it is an utterly debased concept.

In recent weeks it has reared its head in the venal world of professional golf. As LIV Golf teetered between death or continuing in a vegetative state, the rats sent up flares from the sinking ship. The only vessel passing within hailing distance was the DP World Tour.

Over the last couple of months, as the prospect of LIV defectors coming back into the fold crystallised, the rank-and-file of the DP World Tour have raised their voices.

“At the end of the day, they chose to go to LIV. They took the money, they played for big money. They can’t put their hand up and go, ‘I’m coming back now’. Unless you are exempt,” said James Morrison, a journeyman with more than 450 starts on the DP World Tour.

“What about the membership? They go around the world, they support the tour, earn their spot year in, year out. Yes, we don’t put bums on seats and sell tickets, but it is part of the tour.”

Ewen Ferguson, who went to Qualifying School three times before he established himself on the DP World Tour, had a similar perspective. “Hilarious how some of them slammed the tour for so long, not one good thing to say about it, now it’s the best thing since sliced bread and feels like coming home,” he wrote on X.

He made these remarks before Sergio Garcia cleansed his soul about leaving the tour in a breathtaking act of self-ministry.

But even the DP World Tour players who have hoisted red flags about refugees from LIV seeking asylum are conflicted about it. They are acutely aware of the holes in their product. Lee Westwood, who resigned his DP World Tour membership three years ago, pointed out that the tournaments on the DP World Tour in the first half of the year are bereft of star quality and box office appeal. And he’s right.

Sky Sports covers all these events at exhaustive lengths, but they have no way of concealing the absence of galleries, atmosphere and marquee names on the leaderboard. Those tournaments are a loss leader for their year-round coverage and must also be a drain on the resources of the DP World Tour. According to Money in Sport, the tour’s income from television rights fell by 31 per cent in 2025. As Reginald Perrin discovered in the beloved 1970s sitcom, there is only so much grot the public will buy.

In that context it is not surprising that the DP World Tour has been more open to reconciliation with the players who were shills for the Saudi regime. The PGA Tour lowered the drawbridge at the beginning of 2025, with a set of conditions that were designed only to attract Major winners; in the event, the only player who took the bait was Brooks Koepka, who looks as clapped out now as he did before he defected.

He still had to pay fines and work his way back into the most lucrative events on tour. The LIV players who have expressed a desire to return to the PGA Tour in recent months know they will have to serve a suspension and pay fines, at the very least, and there is no real indication yet which ones will be welcome back. For the PGA Tour it is a buyer’s market now.

But loyalty plays no part in any of this. Some of the players who were furiously condemned for their disloyalty when they left are a viable proposition for the DP World Tour now because it represents a good business decision. The lump sum of their betrayal at the time is being written off against the prospect of their usefulness now. If that has knock-on consequences for players who have kept the wheels turning on tour over the last few years, then so be it.

Eddie Pepperell, one of the most thoughtful and interesting players in professional golf, wrote a terrific piece about this conundrum for The Chipping Forecast substack a couple of weeks ago.

“Firstly and most importantly,” he wrote, “I wanted to put myself in Guy Kinnings’ [DP World Tour CEO] shoes as best I can and try to see it from his position. Unquestionably he is in a predicament, borne predominately and precariously out of weakness. I use the word precarious because if you take a look at the recent set of financial accounts from the European Tour Group, you’ll see an operating loss of £64.5M during the last financial year before receiving £59M from the PGA Tour under the ‘Annual Investment Payment’.

“There is increasingly little doubt that without the financial involvement from the PGA Tour, the DPWT faces an uncertain future, and given negotiations are still ongoing with the PGA Tour with regards to the future of the ‘Strategic Alliance’, Guy may well deem it necessary to bolster his fields in 2027 in any way he can, even if it means upsetting some of the membership.”

Pepperell sifted through the names of players who, reportedly, were going to be offered invitations to DP World Tour events next season and choked on the name of Charles Howell III. But he was prepared to accept Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith and Joaquin Niemann, all of whom had pulling power.

Ultimately, though, rank-and-file players will suffer. Days after he wrote the piece, Pepperell finished the season ranked 101st on the DP World Tour, which meant he lost his card by one place and must return to Q School for the third time in four years.

Did it matter that LIV players increasingly dropped in and out of the DP World Tour all season? Did anybody care?

Loyalty is dead. Live for rewards.