LIV Golf young gun Caleb Surratt has found his footing in the breakaway league under Jon Rahm’s tutelage after deciding to quit college after one full season and snub the PGA Tour
LIV Golf’s hopeful Caleb Surratt has big plans for 2026(Image: Mateo Villalba/LIV Golf)
LIV Golf talent Caleb Surratt has called his shot: the former amateur sensation is targeting a “breakout” season in 2026, and he thinks only one thing is holding him back from emerging as an elite contender.
The former University of Tennessee standout has wrapped up his second season with the breakaway circuit after making the bold call to quit college and avoid the tried and trusted PGA Tour pathway taken by many promising young amateurs before him.
Surratt was the No. 10-ranked amateur in the world when he turned professional in January 2024 at the age of 20, making the leap just a few months after becoming the first freshman to win the SEC Individual Championship since Justin Thomas. Surratt’s life was changed by a phone call from Jon Rahm, who recruited him for his Legion XIII team.
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Surratt has spent the past two years under the wings of Legion XIII stars Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton. The American’s first season started brightly with back-to-back top-15 finishes, but he would soon discover the chastening reality of professional golf and fought hard just to keep his place in the league.
Better results followed in 2025. Surratt found greater consistency and snuck into contention on occasion, including at JCB Golf & Country Club in the United Kingdom in July, when he claimed his first top-three finish. That result, in particular, brought validation for the former Vols standout, but there were positives to take from the entirety of his sophomore season on LIV.
Confidence is flowing heading into 2026. He told Mirror US Sports: “I’m hoping this will be my breakout year. I’m not gonna say I’ve learned all there is to learn. That’s not the case. But I’m certainly much better equipped to go out there and do my job. You kind of learn from failing, right? I’ve always told myself, either you win or you learn, and you know, you have to fail in order to win. It’s a necessity.
“You can’t win from the get-go on every single thing in life. It’s something I try to remind myself of. I certainly have gained a lot more confidence this year, even though I still haven’t had my best stuff.
“But it’s certainly when I am playing good, it’s stacked up a lot better. And, you know, I’ve put myself in the final groups multiple times this year. I think I was really kind of afraid of that — not afraid, but like really nervous. I really, really fought it.
Surratt says he has learned so much from Legion XIII teammates Tom McKibbin, Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm.(Image: Jan Kruger/Getty Images)
“Once I started accepting it and put myself in a position to do well, I finally had kind of a breakthrough week at JCB. I know it’s just a third place and it’s not a win, but felt like a lot of hard work paid off.”
It is hard to overstate the boldness of Surratt’s decision to join LIV after just one full season in college. He had years of eligibility left, had been successful in NCAA events, and was a member of the victorious 2023 Walker Cup team at St. Andrews.
Simply put, he was headed for the PGA Tour had he bided his time. But Suratt had no intention of hanging around. He wanted to test himself at a higher level as soon as possible, so when he received the call from two-time major champion and former world No. 1 Rahm, he did not need much convincing.
Of course, there have been cons to making the leap to the unsanctioned league. For young players, the lack of world ranking points is particularly troublesome. While the likes of Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau have the luxury of major wins to lean on for their invites to the four grandest championships of the year, Surratt — part of an influx of young talent signed by LIV over the past two seasons — has had precious few chances to play his way into the majors.
As a result, he has yet to play in his first major championship — although he described newly created qualification routes and renewed efforts from LIV to secure OWGR accreditation as “huge” positives. Time is very much on his side, but does he have any feelings of regret over joining the Saudi-backed breakaway? Surratt believes he could not have received the grounding he has had over the past two years anywhere else.
“It’s been amazing. The way I look at it is the amount of information I’ve learned from being out there over the past two years now is invaluable and there’s no way I would have gotten that same experience playing against the caliber of players that I would have gotten that I’m getting to while I was in college,” he explained.
“So it’s something I’m extremely grateful for. I would absolutely make the same decision again. I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. And there’s no better feeling than being in the mix with some of those guys out there. You always grow up saying you want to play professional golf, and I feel like being able to live that out over the last two years, when I didn’t really think I was going to get to, has been awesome.
“Even through the ups and downs, because, you know, it was hard and it was a big adjustment early on. But I’m really fortunate out there to have guys around me that are actually willing to help me and help me get better.
“It was tough. think early on there was a bit of like, ‘What am I doing here?’ Maybe a sense of not feeling like I belonged. But that’s part of the big benefit to LIV is that those guys have been really good to me and made me feel really at home, really welcome out there. And regardless of whether I feel welcome or not, I’ve started to really learn how to compete and not be as scared of that moment at all.”
So, after establishing himself on LIV and getting more than 20 starts under his belt, what are the next steps he must take to contend consistently? For Surratt, the answer is simple: his short game.
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The North Carolina native has immense confidence in his driver and approach play, and he is happy with the state of his putting. But he says both the data and the eye test confirm that he must improve with his wedges if he wants more weeks in and around the top of the leaderboard.
Surratt ranks in the top 10 on LIV for driving distance, and he was the No. 1 player when it comes to average putts per hole. But in scrambling, he got up and down just 56 per cent of the time in 2025, ranking 42nd of all LIV players.
And according to Data Golf, he ranked among LIV’s weakest players in strokes gained around the greens, losing 0.29 shots to the field each round. Those chipping and pitching woes detracted from the other facets of his game, in which he has demonstrated an abundance of talent.
So if you were to bump into Surratt at some point between now and February’s season opener in Riyadh, there is a strong chance you would find him with a wedge in his hands. The grind, he says, is underway.
“Statistically, I’m a really good driver of the ball. I’m a really good iron player. I’m a really good putter. I think around the greens, I’ve lost, on average, two and a half [strokes] a week, which is severely costing me,” he admitted.
Surratt is focusing heavily on his wedge game over the coming weeks(Image: Jason Butler/Getty Images)
“You look at some of these guys and how good they are around the green. They’ve been on all these different grasses for so long, so many different grasses every week over the course of a 10-year career. So that’s been a harder adjustment.
“I am working to continue expanding my arsenal, get better at that. So this off-season, it’s a lot of getting really, really good with my wedges and getting really, really good around the greens. Because if I can, I know if I can come out next year, if my ball striking holds up the way that it can be that, that’s going to be the difference maker for me from winning and just kind of being around. That’s my goal.
“I’m really ready to break out. I want to be one of the best players in the world and, I’m hoping for a huge year next year. And it all starts with getting better around the greens and starting to wedge it better.”
Surratt is one of more than two dozen LIV players in action this week at the Hong Kong Open, which is part of the Asian Tour’s International Series. The winner will receive invitations to the Masters and The Open Championship after a significant rule change.