Lynch: The PGA Tour needs a plan for when a LIV star comes knocking. The path back isn’t complicated.

As we rake through the embers of 2025, it’s momentarily jarring to realize just how much LIV Golf has receded from relevance. Two years have passed since the league’s last newsworthy signing in Jon Rahm, viewership is stubbornly meager, sponsor support is virtually absent outside of companies protecting an existing Saudi relationship, and the only evident growth is among the ranks of scroungers eager to scoop up coins before the purse strings are drawn closed. As it prepares to set sail for a fifth season, the Good Ship Yasir resembles less a threatening destroyer than a pleasure cruise for geriatrics who also suckered a few kids up the gangway.

But while LIV continues to list, the moment nears when someone aboard starts looking for a life raft.

LIV’s chief executive, Scott O’Neil, was asked recently if Brooks Koepka will play for the league next year. His lukewarm answer—“We haven’t made any announcements on players, but he is signed for 2026”—fueled speculation that the five-time major champion could sit out the season, in effect serving the one-year suspension likely required before he could return to the PGA Tour. Koepka has offered no comment on his future. Perhaps that’s his negotiating strategy for a new LIV contract, or maybe he does want to be free of an employer with whom he’s had a combative relationship. Regardless of whether Koepka competes for the Saudis next season, it’s a reminder that the PGA Tour needs a plan for when one of LIV’s top players comes a knockin’.

There was a time when conversations about how LIV players might be readmitted to the PGA Tour presumed that a pathway would be required for the entire roster, that either LIV would have folded or a deal would have been reached with Ponte Vedra. But Yasir Al-Rumayyan hasn’t yet been called on his folly—an informed industry executive estimates his LIV spend at $8 billion, including a long tail of committed expenses—and there’s been no engagement on an agreement. Both parties are moving on with separate plans but only one party has expensive contracts coming up for renewal, which means the Tour should be readying an à la carte solution if a LIV star signals interest in bolting.

The Tour’s newish CEO, Brian Rolapp, bears no scar tissue from the scuffles of recent years and can be presumed to have a more relaxed attitude to the idea of allowing players to return from LIV. Such a decision would ultimately fall to the Tour’s board, which is controlled by the players, and sentiment is more divided among that group. Not long ago, I asked one Tour veteran how he’d feel if a prominent LIV guy wanted to return. “F*** them,” was his unvarnished response. “They made their choice. If they’re that important, how come no fans followed them to LIV?”

More diplomatic and prescient types would be keen to facilitate a return in the knowledge that it would be a blow to LIV, but they wouldn’t waste the effort on seat-warmers like Matt Wolff or Talor Gooch. It would have to be someone of stature whose defection would be a clear plus for the PGA Tour. Current context also matters. The Tour is shrinking—fewer exempt members, likely fewer tournaments, narrowing access pathways—so selling the locker room on readmitting a LIV defector demands a tightly defined criteria.

It will begin and end with one question: who has status?

Most former Tour members who left for LIV have seen their status expire. The guys who it could be argued still have status are those who’ve won recent major championships—Koepka, Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Cameron Smith, though with several years left on his contract Rahm seems unlikely to be inquiring about his return options. Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson are life members of the PGA Tour with more than 20 victories, but one of them appears short on motivation and the other is about as welcome as diarrhea in a spacesuit.

Any decision on who to readmit, and on what basis, will fall to player-directors on the Tour’s board. They might opt against creating an express lane back, concluding that LIV players become less relevant by the season anyway, and that the Tour is good with its current stars and the coming product changes. After all, Tiger Woods is a loud voice in that room and he has a long memory. But if a Koepka or a DeChambeau knocks on the door of the GloHo, those player-directors would do well to weigh the understandable desire for short-term sanctions against the possibility of long-term security.