The PGA Tour will assume operational control of the Australian Open beginning in 2027, formalizing a partnership with Golf Australia that effectively closes the tournament to LIV Golf players and eliminates one of the breakaway league's few remaining pathways into legacy national championships. The deal, announced Monday, positions the Tour as the sanctioning body for what becomes a co-badged PGA Tour–DP World Tour event with elevated status and prize money, though exact purse figures were not disclosed. Golf Australia chief executive James Sutherland called it a "natural evolution" in a statement that did not mention LIV.
The Australian Open has run since 1904. LIV Golf held its Adelaide event in April 2025 and drew Cameron Smith, the 2022 British Open champion and the circuit's most prominent Australian player. Smith played the Australian Open under a conflicting-event release earlier this year, but those releases evaporate once the Tour controls sanctioning. The 2027 handover means Smith and fellow LIV members Marc Leishman and Matt Jones face a choice: skip their national championship or negotiate individual appearances the Tour is under no obligation to grant. A person familiar with the Tour's strategy said the organization views national opens as "non-negotiable heritage assets" and expects other federations to follow Australia's lead.
The move matters because LIV Golf spent 18 months pitching itself as a global circuit anchored by national opens, not American Tour stops. Greg Norman, LIV's commissioner and an Australian, built early credibility by arguing the league would elevate home-country events that the Tour had ignored. The Australian Open was Exhibit A. Now it is a Tour property in all but name, and the DP World Tour's co-sanctioning ensures European players appear without LIV's 54-hole format or team branding. Sponsors who hedged by supporting both LIV Adelaide and the Australian Open now have clarity: the Tour controls the asset, and LIV is a regional exhibition.
The second-order effect is monetary. LIV Golf pays appearance fees in the low-to-mid seven figures to secure marquee players for individual events, and those fees disappear if players can access the same tournaments through Tour membership. The Australian Open will not pay Smith to appear; it will assume he wants to play his national championship and offer Official World Golf Ranking points LIV cannot match. That is the Tour's theory, and Golf Australia's willingness to surrender operational control suggests the theory is being tested at the federation level. The Victorian government, which subsidizes the event, confirmed its funding will continue under the new structure, though a spokesman declined to specify amounts.
What to watch: the 2026 Australian Open, which remains under Golf Australia's current format and will likely be the last edition where LIV players appear without friction. The Tour's partnership officially begins the following year, and Golf Australia has already scheduled a February 2027 date that aligns with the Asian swing the Tour and DP World Tour are building together. The Open Championship's R&A exemption for LIV players expires after 2026 unless renewed, and Norman has not been seen at a major championship since Hoylake in 2023. The timeline is tight.
The deal is not a merger, but it is the merger's preview: the Tour controls the assets LIV Golf needs to be more than a 48-player league with a broadcast contract in the middle of the night.