11/4/25
LIV Golf announced a sweeping change to its format for the 2026 season. The league will be changing from three-day 54-hole competitions to traditional four-day 72-hole competitions.
The league has sparked controversy before its inaugural tee shot was hit, and the format was one of the hot topics for pro-PGA Tour fans. The Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) has previously rejected LIV Golf’s application for status, but interestingly didn’t highlight the format as a reason for rejection. As it stands, LIV Golf competitions do not receive OWGR points, which is how players can play their way into the majors and other events. The league has ensured its shotgun starts and concurrent team events will continue as it has for its previous four years.
There are still many questions that remain, the biggest one being will the PGA Tour and LIV Golf will agree to some sort of “merger” or simply work together moving forward to bring more unity to men’s professional golf. Since LIV Golf launched in 2022, there has been a fracture in men’s professional golf, with some players opting to sign lucrative contracts with LIV while other players have decided to stay playing on the PGA Tour. The players who have gone on to LIV have been fined, faced suspensions from the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, while others have had their status with the Ryder Cup dropped.
Whether this change in format does much to bring men’s professional golf to a better place, who knows? The fans are ultimately the ones who are hurting the most. They want to see the best players in the world compete against each other as frequently as possible. If we’ve learned anything over the last half-decade, it’s to expect the unexpected. LIV Golf used the 54-hole format as a reason why it was better than the 72-hole format, but is now applying it. The PGA Tour said cuts were vital to their tour, but they are doing everything they can to eliminate cuts from all events, and have essentially dropped cuts from their biggest events.
As Kelly Price sang in the famous Notorious B.I.G. song “Mo Money Mo Problems”, “It’s like the more money we come across, the more problems we see, I don’t know what they want from me.” The current state of men’s professional golf typifies those lyrics.
www.elisportsnetwork.com
