It is fair to say that there will be a strong contingent of LIV Golf stars at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship this week, with Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka amongst those set to tee it up in Scotland in the coming days.
The Alfred Dunhill Links Championship is one of the most unique events on the DP World Tour, with the field spread across St Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns over the first three days before returning to the Old Course for the final round.
Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Shane Lowry will be amongst those flying the flag for the DP World Tour, while BMW PGA champion Billy Horschel is also in the field. But there is also more than a handful of LIV Golf stars involved.
As well as Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm; Tyrrell Hatton, Patrick Reed and 2010 Open champion Louis Oosthuizen will be involved. There are also some of the lesser known names such as Caleb Surratt and Eugenio Chacarra in the field.
Ian Poulter expresses his disappointment ahead of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship
But some of the former DP World Tour stalwarts who made the move to the breakaway league will not be there in Scotland this week, with Ian Poulter one of those. And it seems that he is not happy about not receiving an invite for the event.
Poulter resigned his European Tour membership in 2023 after he was fined in the months following his move to LIV. It was sad to see the likes of Poulter, Henrik Stenson and Lee Westwood essentially end their chances of still being involved in the Ryder Cup. But it also means that they are not involved in DP World Tour events even when there is a strong LIV influence.
And after Koepka took to Instagram to express his excitement about playing at St Andrews, Poulter decided to hit out at his former tour…
The situation remains a mess, but hard to have sympathy for LIV Golf stars
From the outside, it is hard to feel for players like Poulter who decided to jump ship to LIV in 2022. You would imagine that paying the fines is not particularly difficult for players of that level, and they should have known that there would have been consequences for making the move.
Poulter will argue that the fines are unfair. But the DP World Tour needed to do all it could to try and prevent players joining LIV. Ultimately, having a pathway between itself and LIV could become dangerous for the tour’s future. It already appears to have become a feeder league for the PGA Tour for the majority of the season before the big names return ahead of The Open Championship and then after the play-offs stateside.
It is not a particularly impressive move from the DP World Tour to see some of the lesser known names on LIV involved this week. And there does appear to have been some inconsistency over time – it is hard to imagine the DP World Tour taking a decision which rules Rahm out of the Ryder Cup, for example – but Poulter’s complaints are unlikely to attract much sympathy.
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