Thomas Detry is at Trump National Golf Club this week, sitting at T8 through Round 1 of LIV Golf Virginia. On the course, the Belgian is focused so far. Off it, he isn’t happy with the way LIV leadership is. Speaking with Garrett Johnston at LIV Golf Virginia, Detry did not hide his frustration.
“I’m not going to lie. I think it’s been pretty poor. Nobody really knows, and I do think that some of the stuff is out of control, even out of the control of the LIV leadership. It comes from even way above that. So listen, it hasn’t been easy for them to deal with everything, and it hasn’t been easy for us as well,” the golfer said.
On April 27, LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil publicly stated the 2026 season would continue exactly as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle. Less than two weeks later, the New Orleans event, scheduled for June 25-28, was postponed. Louisiana had committed roughly $7 million to the event, with $5 million in hosting fees and $2 million in course improvements at Bayou Oaks in City Park. LIV agreed to return the $1.2 million it had already received. O’Neil’s reassurance aged badly and quickly.
This pattern of players facing a lack of communication from the top is not new to LIV. Back in 2025, Hudson Swafford spoke openly about the league’s lack of transparency during his injury. A 3X PGA Tour winner and early LIV believer, Swafford was candid on the Subpar podcast.
“Things I didn’t like—you know, the lack of transparency, the rule changing… You never knew where we stood week to week. When he got hurt, no formal injury support existed. He had to push for clarity while rehabbing, unsure if his contract would be honored. LIV Golf eventually came through, but Swafford said it was “almost too late.”
The communication failures Detry and Swafford describe point to the same structural gap. LIV positioned itself as player-first from the beginning, but when it matters most, players are learning about their league’s direction from social media and reporters, not from leadership.
With the last currently scheduled event being the team championship in late August, and O’Neil now exploring selling equity in the 13 LIV teams and potentially partnering with national opens to replace PIF funding, the players are waiting for answers that have not come clearly yet.
The information vacuum Detry described also had a visible effect on how players were managing the noise around them.
“I pretty much shut down social media as well because, you know, when you’ve got a little bit of information out there, it all gets blown out in many different versions and scenarios. So, there are so many lies out there and so much untruth that it’s tough to differentiate what’s true and what’s not true.”
After the PIF funding withdrawal news broke, one of the most widely circulated stories was that Bryson DeChambeau was secretly negotiating a return to the PGA Tour. Although he publicly called it completely untrue and reaffirmed his commitment to LIV. Similarly, social media pushed a narrative that LIV was immediately shutting down, but Cameron Smith later stated he had been given “every assurance” the league would continue beyond 2026.
Other LIV players have voiced similarly strong opinions as uncertainty grows.
Not everyone from LIV Golf is racing back to the PGA Tour
Anirban Lahiri made his position clear in an exclusive interview with The Times.
“That is the biggest joke ever,” he said when asked about players rushing back to the PGA Tour, adding that he personally knows at least a dozen players who would rather quit golf than return. “To generalize that everybody is falling over backwards to come back to the PGA Tour is the same kind of propaganda we’ve had for four years.”
Interestingly, Lahiri actually flipped the transparency argument. While Detry criticized LIV leadership for poor communication, Lahiri pointed to the PGA Tour as the one with the transparency problem, saying that is precisely why many players left in the first place and why Brooks Koepka’s return earlier this year still frustrated him.
