U.S. OPEN EXEMPTION AT STAKE\u00a0<\/p>\n
LIV Golf\u2019s exemptions into next month\u2019s U.S. Open will be determined after this week\u2019s Maaden LIV Golf Virginia, with a significant part of the 57-player field still having a mathematical chance to earn a spot in the third major of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LIV Golf has two paths to gaining entry into the 2026 U.S. Open, with both exemptions becoming official on May 18:<\/p>\n
The top player who is not otherwise exempt and in the top 3 of the final 2025 LIV Golf Individual standings<\/p>\n
The top player who is not otherwise exempt and in the top 3 of the 2026 LIV Golf Individual standings<\/p>\n
Torque GC Captain Joaquin Niemann already has earned the first exemption by finishing 2nd in the final 2025 Individual standings, with 2025 LIV Golf champion Jon Rahm already exempt thanks to his 2021 U.S. Open victory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau \u2013 also exempt as a two-time U.S. Open champion \u2013 enter LIV Golf Virginia as the top two in the 2026 Individual standings. Each of those players have two league wins this season and cannot be knocked out of the top three.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, the next 11 players in the standings currently do not have an exemption into the U.S. Open and thus could earn one by moving into the top 3 after this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
First-year LIV Golf player Thomas Detry is in pole position entering Virginia, ranking No. 3 in points behind Rahm and DeChambeau. The Belgian star has two podiums among his four top-10 finishes this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Detry is among six players who can guarantee the exemption with a victory in Virginia. The others include Elvis Smylie (4th in points), Anthony Kim (5th), David Puig (6th), Richard T. Lee (7th) and Thomas Pieters (8th).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Australian Smylie won in his LIV Golf debut in Riyadh in February, with Kim winning in dramatic fashion the following week in Adelaide after moving from Wild Card player to 4Aces GC team member. Kim, who joined LIV Golf in 2024 after more than 12 years in retirement, has not played in a major since 2011.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More than half the field remains mathematically eligible to finish in the top 3 with a win, albeit dependent on how the final leaderboard unfolds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. OPEN EXEMPTION AT STAKE\u00a0 LIV Golf\u2019s exemptions into next month\u2019s U.S. Open will be determined after this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-644004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}