Lucas Herbert has opened up on the toll that playing on LIV Golf took on a number of players, with the Australian one of those who has confirmed that he is leaving the league.

Several golfers have already announced that they will not be staying for LIV 2.0, with Jon Rahm the biggest name to confirm that he will be walking away.

Herbert will spend next year on the DP World Tour after a season in which he won twice on LIV and led The Open Championship at the halfway stage at Royal Birkdale.

Of course, some players who have left LIV have faced ridicule for some of the reasons they have used for their exits.

Lucas Herbert defends some of the players who have left LIV Golf

Ian Poulter claimed that he wanted to spend more time with his family, having used exactly the same explanation as a reason for his decision to sign with LIV in 2022. Meanwhile, Louis Oosthuizen suggested that he wanted to have more say over his schedule, when several players previously cited the LIV calendar as one of the big plus points.

And Herbert has shed light on just how demanding the LIV schedule became, in an interview with the Tee It Up Podcast this week.

“The thing that’s probably the most appealing to me [on the DP World Tour] is around the scheduling, and this is where I think people get a little lost in the weeds with some of these statements that come out from players who’ve announced they’re leaving, that they want an easier travel schedule with more time with their family,” he said.

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“I think at the beginning when you had 14 events and you were playing a good chunk of them in America, you’re playing three days a week. It was a much easier travel schedule when it came to that side of things. The demands with the LIV schedule continued throughout the last three years, was around the distance between venues. So if you look at this year, we played Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa. That’s a tough travel schedule. For most guys travelling out of the US, we’ve flown out of the US all the way out to Korea, to fly to Spain, to then fly back to the US, and for some guys, being ready to play the US Open the following week. That’s a really tough schedule.

“If that was how the schedule ran on the DP World Tour, you wouldn’t play one of those events, because it’s just too big a travel schedule. The way I guess a more traditional schedule would set up as well, you might have two or three events in that Asian sort of section. So you might play Korea, you might play Japan, and you might play Hong Kong, something like that, and then you go home. It’s a long travel route to get out. We’re Aussies; we’ve done this forever. If you want to go overseas, and it’s not New Zealand, you’ve got to sit in a plane for seven or eight hours. That’s not really an issue, but the load through the year of consistently being jet lagged because we’re playing in such big gaps between venues, that became really hard.”

Herbert’s comments should certainly provide food for thought for those who will have a say in how LIV 2.0 looks.

As things stand, only a handful of players have confirmed that they will be staying. They include Brendan Steele, Ben Campbell, Richard Bland, and Cameron Tringale. It also appears that Bryson DeChambeau remains on board with the project.

They face plenty of challenges to get going in time for the 2027 season. But they surely need to factor in building the kind of schedule that helps players find their best form.

There has arguably never been less reason to play on LIV heading into next year. A vast number of players have confirmed they are leaving, and the riches of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia are nowhere to be seen.

If they are going to stand any chance of attracting players from the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, and the Asian Tour, they need to somehow put together a list of tournaments that create some kind of buzz.