Occasionally, we find a LIV Golf player popping up in a field on the DP World Tour.
In golf’s current climate, this is rare, given that in April 2023, an arbitration panel ruled in the tour’s favour to allow fines and suspensions to be given to members who joined the LIV Golf League and played in conflicting events without releases.
Patrick Reed was awarded an honorary lifetime membership to the DP World Tour in 2019. In 2025, he played in seven DP World Tour events leading up to the 2025 Spanish Open.
He played in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship after that and is eligible for the DP World Tour Championship, which is the season finale.
Reed used these events to surge up the Official World Golf Rankings, but at one stage, he found himself ranked outside of the top 100, as LIV Golf events still don’t offer world ranking points. He also has a passion for supporting the DP World Tour, as he has made clear in previous seasons.
But why is the 2018 Masters champion and current LIV Golf rebel allowed to play in this week’s DP World Tour Championship, a tournament arranged by a tour that has dished out punishments to members who hopped to the Saudi-funded circuit?
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Why is Patrick Reed on the European Tour?
Although Reed is an honorary lifetime member, a player must be a ranked member to enter tournaments in the normal way. For many of his DP World Tour starts in 2025, Reed played under category 1, which concerns winners of the Race to Dubai Rankings between 2017 and 2024, and the four majors from 2017 to 2025.
He had no outstanding sanctions for participating in LIV Golf events in those weeks, which is what made him eligible to play, too.
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He finished in the top 70 of the Race to Dubai rankings, which is what you needed to play in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. And now, he is ranked in the top 50, which is what you need to compete in this week’s finale.
Reed has previously been joined in DP World Tour fields by Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, who appealed their outstanding sanctions with the tour for playing in conflicting LIV Golf events, which meant they could compete and fulfil their membership quotas to keep their cards for 2025 and maintain eligibility for the European Ryder Cup team that headed to Bethpage in September.
The appeal process is still ongoing.
Reed is no stranger to playing in DP World Tour events, far from it. He has been arguably the most notable American presence on the circuit since the year of his first professional win in 2013. He even played on the Challenge Tour in 2012.
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How much of the Patrick Reed LIV Golf era have you watched so far? Tell us on X!
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