The Break: Is the dam breaking on LIV?

Brooks Koepka is gone. Bryson DeChambeau is using his leverage. Kevin Na is unfollowing LIV on social. What is happening?

Author

Ryan Ballengee
January 05, 2026

LIV Golf is in a strange place

Brooks Koepka is no longer with LIV Golf, walking away from the final year of his five-year deal with the Saudi-owned league.

Apparently there was enough wiggle room on Koepka’s deal to make that possible, and LIV looked to save face by jointly announcing his exit (and Talor Gooch’s appointment as the captain of Koepka’s erstwhile team that he may or may not still technically own a piece of).

The PGA Tour put out a bizarre, sort-of vague statement just minutes after Koepka’s exit became public information. Koepka would need to apply for PGA Tour reinstatement, and then he could be subject to fines and suspension before he would be allowed to play again under his five-year exemption for winning the 2023 PGA Championship. Rory McIlroy has said he would like to see LIV Golf players who still have PGA Tour status (basically, Koepka, Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Cam Smith, since Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson seem happy not returning) get welcomed back in some fashion, if they desire to leave LIV. McIlroy even said he’d like to have Koepka in TGL, though the indoor league requires players competing in SoFi Center to be in good PGA Tour standing.

DeChambeau, who is negotiating with LIV Golf on a potential new deal, gained a ton of leverage with Koepka’s exit. He knows it, too. Speaking to Flushing It, he said he would be fine if he just played YouTube golf and didn’t play on LIV — and, financially, that’s probably pretty accurate. He got what he needed from the LIV Golf experience, which was a chance to reinvent himself and find a way to focus his game on winning another major title. Now, he has all the money, fame and glory he needs. Would the Saudis be willing to stroke a check big enough to retain Bryson? Probably, but it might be a bigger figure now.

Kevin Na is apparently unhappy with LIV about something, as he’s reportedly unfollowed them on a social-media platform or two. That’s obviously a petty act, but it indicates something amiss. Si Woo Kim and Sungjae Im quickly shot down rumors that they would be joining Na’s currently named Iron Heads to form an all-Korean team. Maybe there’s a connection there.

Meanwhile, LIV Golf has expanded to 72-hole tournaments and a 57-player roster for 2026. They have expanded promotion opportunities, adding two players through the International Series on the Asian Tour (up from one spot, which didn’t technically have to be awarded to anyone) and three players through this week’s Promotions event (up from one last year and two the year prior).

LIV has attracted some non-Saudi-owned/influenced companies to sponsor, including HSBC, which was once a PGA Tour sponsor. However, LIV is yet to announce two of their 14 tournaments, and several venues from last year have been replaced.

This isn’t meant to serve as some siren signal that LIV Golf is done and dusted. The Saudis have tightened the purse strings, not only on golf-tour spending but other ventures, too, but they can keep going with this as long as they’d like. However, it does seem like some of their players are now recognizing they hold more power over what happens next with the league than maybe they first thought.

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We don’t have any PGA Tour golf this week, which is a real shame because this would be when The Sentry kicks off the year in Hawaii. A lot has been made of the PGA Tour potentially using this unfortunate situation to exit to Aloha State entirely, but that would be a mistake. Let’s hope PGA Tour golf, in Hawaii, in primetime, in January, is still a thing in 2027.

However, the Korn Ferry Tour season kicks off on Sunday in The Bahamas at Atlantis Resort, with the first of back-to-back events in the island-cluster nation.

LIV Golf’s Q-School, called their Promotions event, starts Thursday with three 2026 spots on the line.

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What’s next for public golf in Washington, DC?

Public golf in Washington, D.C., is now in purgatory after the Trump administration formally terminated the 50-year lease that the National Links Trust signed with the National Park Service in October 2020 (which you can read here).

NLT has agreed to remain as the short-term operator of facilities at East Potomac, Langston and Rock Creek Park so that the courses don’t close. But it’s clear that the administration didn’t have a plan for what happens next after ousting NLT after a successful five-year run. However, the transformative work at Rock Creek has been halted, and the fate of that Gil Hanse-led work is unclear.

We do have a more concise idea now, though, of what the Trump administration has alleged NLT failed to do, resulting in their determination of a lease default. The administration’s three sticking points, even if not well outlined in their Oct. 29 letter to National Links Trust, are:

  • NLT didn’t make capital improvements to the facilities in accordance with a proposed timeline outlined in Exhibit D of the lease

  • NLT owes the National Park Service in the area of $8.8 million in unpaid rent

  • NLT didn’t offer a “reasonable and credible” proposal to respond to the default notice

However, these claims don’t hold up particularly well under scrutiny.

NLT has made $8.5 million in improvements across the three facilities, including millions on getting the Rock Creek project over the regulatory finish line and prepping the site for the work that has now stopped. Just clearing trees alone was a seven-figure expense, with NLT having to fight quite literally for every single tree they wanted to fall. NLT dramatically improved the ranges at East Potomac and Langston, installing TopTracer with the idea of creating easier recurring revenue from the practice facilities. The courses themselves drain better, have bigger greens and are on much better agronomical footing.

While the Rock Creek project didn’t start in 2022, as outlined in Exhibit D, and the work at Langston, which was to start in 2024, hasn’t gotten underway yet. I played in an NLT fundraising event in 2024 at Langston to help raise needed money to get the project going. The administation reads these delays as worth of a default notice, but there’s clear language in the lease (“[T]imeframes are general and subject to change due to compliance timeframes or other circumstances”) to indicate these were not firm deadlines because there was a clear understanding that there could be delays in the regulatory process and in fundraising.

NLT couldn’t be blamed, then, for pointing at their work as a proper response to the administration’s Oct. 29 letter. According to Garrett Morrison with Fried Egg, NLT did spend $1 million in an effort to speed up construction work at Rock Creek Park after receiving the notice. What the administration would consider a proper remedy or response was not made clear in its two-sentence notice.

Finally, the allegation that has stuck with supporters of the administration’s move is the claim of $8.8 million in unpaid rent owed by NLT to NPS. However, that claim doesn’t jibe with the lease. Money spend on facilities improvements are treated as rent offsets, according to the language of the lease:

“The Lessor will offset Rent for Approved Costs of Initial Improvements incurred by the Lessee (i) in accordance with the method and schedule set forth in Exhibit D (Initial Improvements by Lessee) to this Lease and (ii) as otherwise reasonably agreed by the Lessor and Lessee from time to time…”

Further, “The Lessee may request and, the Lessor may approve, Rent Offsets for Approved Costs of Alterations incurred by the Lessee on a project-by-project basis in accordance with the requirements of this Lease. The method and timing of such Rent Offsets will be agreed to by the Lessor and Lessee from time to time…”

NLT had to pay a minimum of $12,500 per month in rent, which was to be 16 percent of gross revenues, before offsets could be applied. However, offsets above and beyond the “balance due and owing for Percentage Rent in any given Lease Year shall be credited to the Lessee and available for future Rent Offsets.”

A $300,000 difference over five years is the result, though it’s more likely that the administration would harp on its interpretation of spending on improvements and offsets approved by NPS.

That’s all to say that NLT seems to have a solid case that they were not in default. While that all plays out, D.C.’s three public golf courses remain in limbo without clear direction of what will happen next.