\t\t\t\tAs Bryson DeChambeau enters defining contract negotiations with LIV Golf, Rory McIlroy has pondered the league\u2019s future\u2026<\/p>\n
The eyes of the golf world are fixed firmly on Bryson DeChambeau right now. In truth, they often are. <\/p>\n
But after a dramatic week in which the PGA Tour\u2019s paradigm shift offered Brooks Koepka and three other LIV stars an immediate olive branch to return, the spotlight on DeChambeau is now almost blinding. <\/p>\n
The two-time US Open champion\u2019s LIV contract is up in August, and while he will play at least one more season as Crushers GC captain, Koepka\u2019s reintegration via the Tour\u2019s Returning Member\u2019s Program<\/a> has handed DeChambeau considerable leverage in negotiations to extend his stay.<\/p>\n That much was blatantly obvious in West Palm Beach this week, when DeChambeau was hesitant to commit his long-term future to the league in an exclusive interview with <\/a>TG<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI have no idea what\u2019s going to happen in a year,\u201d he said, \u201cbut what I can tell you is that we\u2019ll do everything possible to make it make sense for both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n DeChambeau holds all the aces in this civil war \u2013 and he knows it.<\/p>\n Rory McIlroy, meanwhile, is certainly an interested observer. Yet the Masters champion believes that even if DeChambeau does indeed re-sign, Koepka\u2019s U-turn is a signal that LIV is in decline regardless.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not as if they made any huge signings this year, is it?\u201d McIlroy told the Telegraph<\/a>\u2018s James Corrigan in Dubai, where he is kicking off his 2026 season<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThey haven\u2019t signed anyone who moves the needle and I don\u2019t think they will. I mean, they could re-sign Bryson for hundreds of millions of dollars, but even if they do, it doesn\u2019t change their product, does it? <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll just be paying for the exact same thing.\u00a0And they\u2019ve lost Brooks, so they\u2019ll be paying out all this money.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n McIlroy hails Koepka\u2019s return as a big win for the PGA Tour and, with LIV weakened, he stressed that the league\u2019s Saudi benefactors will need to pour in more big money just to avoid going backwards.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of these guys\u2019 contracts are up,\u201d he added. \u201cThey\u2019re going to ask for the same number or an even bigger number. LIV have spent five or six billion and they\u2019re going to have to spend another five or six just to maintain where they are.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m way more comfortable being on the PGA Tour side than on their side, but who knows what will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Bryson DeChambeau enters defining contract negotiations with LIV Golf, Rory McIlroy has pondered the league\u2019s future\u2026 The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-374339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}