Four LIV Golf Members to Play in Next Week's DP World Tour Event

The rival tour players are permitted to compete because they surrendered DP World Tour memberships before joining LIV or were never members at all.

The field for the DP World Tour's Alfred Dunhill Links Championship next week in Scotland is being finalized and some peculiar names are in the invitational category: LIV Golf members Talor Gooch, Louis Oosthuizen, Hudson Swafford and Peter Uihlein.

The oddity isn’t the fact that all four players are not DP World Tour members, but that all joined the rival tour and are now receiving some of the 26 invitations that are basically controlled by tournament sponsor Johann Rupert, chairman of the Swiss luxury goods firm Compagnie Financiere Richemont which includes the Dunhill brand.

Talor Gooch is one of four LIV Golf players competing next week on the DP World Tour.

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In the case of Uihlein, he was a past DP World Tour member but gave up his membership to attempt to earn his PGA Tour card through the Korn Ferry Tour in 2020.

The former U.S. Amateur champion has played in four Dunhills and in three he made the cut, finishing second in 2013, T18 in 2014 and T10 in 2022.

“Well, I played last year and asked if I could play again since it lined up with my schedule,” Uihlein told Sports Illustrated. “I love the event, almost won it years ago, finished 10th last year and always played it when I was a member, so I’m glad to be going back.”

According to a DP World Tour spokesman, all four players can play because they were either never a member of the DP World Tour or if they were a member, gave up that membership before playing in a LIV event.

Oosthuizen, the 2010 British Open winner, has played in 13 Dunhills including a T10 finish last year. He's the only player of the four that was a recent member of the DP World Tour but had given up his membership before teeing it up in the inaugural LIV event in London.

It’s expected that Oosthuizen and Rupert, who has been a strong supporter of the DP World Tour, having started the sponsorship of the Dunhill Links Championship in 2001 and then changing the name to Alfred Dunhill Links in 2006, will play together next week in the pro-am in Scotland.