The floodgates have opened.
More golfers are ditching the PGA Tour in favor of the lucrative, Saudi Arabia-funded LIV Golf Invitational Series as the breakaway tour prepares for its inaugural event Thursday. According to ESPN’s Mark Schlabach, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed are both joining the new tour, adding two more major champions to a list headlined by Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson.
DeChambeau, 28, has eight PGA Tour victories, with his win at the 2020 U.S. Open tops on that list. He is ranked 28th in the world.
“Bryson has always been an innovator,” DeChambeau’s agent Brett Falkoff said in a statement. “Having the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something unique has always been intriguing to him. Professional golf as we know it is changing and it’s happening quickly.”
Reed, meanwhile, also has a major championship under his belt, winning the 2018 Masters. The 31-year-old has won nine times on the tour and is the No. 36-ranked player in the world.
With DeChambeau and Reed, the LIV Golf series now has nine former major championships who are set to compete on the new tour. The other seven — Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Martin Kaymer, Sergio Garcia, Charl Schwartzel, Graeme McDowell and Louis Oosthuizen — are all playing in LIV Golf’s opener at the Centurion Club in London on Thursday. DeChambeau and Reed, according to ESPN, will make their LIV debuts at the tour’s first event in the United States, at Pumpkin Ridge in Portland, Oregon, beginning June 30.
The 54-hole Centurion event this weekend has a $25 million purse — twice that of next week’s U.S. Open. The overall prize pool for the eight-event LIV series — funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund — is $255 million. Other events on the tour will take place in New Jersey (at former President Donald Trump’s Bedminster club), Oregon, Boston, Chicago, Bangkok and Saudi Arabia.
• Jacob Calvin Meyer can be reached at jmeyer@washingtontimes.com.
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