At this week's 2024 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland, there are 11 LIV Golf players who are competing in the DP World Tour's version of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Those 11 LIV Golf players are: Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Hudson Swafford, Peter Uihlein, Patrick Reed, Branden Grace (though he was recently relegated from the league), Eugenio Chacarra, Dean Burmester, Louis Oosthuizen, Talor Gooch and Tyrrell Hatton.
For the average fan, it might seem shocking that the DP World Tour would allow LIV Golf players to compete on their tour given that the tour has sanctioned and fined members who played in LIV Golf events in 2022, 2023 and 2024 without their explicit permission. (None of them got permission.) However, the reason LIV Golf players are allowed to compete on the DP World Tour this week is multi-faceted.
Some of these players are DP World Tour members, like Jon Rahm, and are subject to paying fines from the DP World Tour for competing in barred events (that is, the LIV Golf League). Players must either keep current on their fines or be in an active appeal (like Rahm) to compete in DP World Tour events.
However, several of these players are not members of the DP World Tour. For the LIV Golf players that don't maintain DP World Tour membership, they're not subject to sanction, fine or suspension for competing on LIV Golf at the same time as this one-off (for them) event. They can come and go as they please -- to an extent -- if they're invited to play.
These LIV Golf players were given sponsor exemptions into this week's event by Johann Rupert, the chairman of Alfred Dunhill's parent company and of the tournament committee. Rupert believes there should be less acrimony in golf, calling for "peace," while courting the investment of LIV Golf bankroller and Saudi Public Investment Fund chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who Rupert invited to compete in the pro-am portion of the event.
Alfred Dunhill bankrolls this event, which features a $5 million purse and is one of the larger tournaments on the DP World Tour schedule. With that investment comes what are known as unrestricted sponsor exemptions, which allows the tournament sponsors and organizers to invite any player they wish to compete in the event. Rupert chose these players to be part of the 168-player field.
