LIV Golf is reportedly adding PGA Tour winner, young pro to roster

With the start of the fifth season one month away, LIV Golf has reportedly agreed to add two players to its roster.

Tom Kershaw of The Times reported on Tuesday that Thomas Detry and Elvis Smylie will join the breakout league.

Detry is the 57th-ranked golfer in the Official World Golf Rankings and won last year’s Waste Management Phoenix Open on the run.

“It’s amazing,” Detry said after winning at TPC Scottsdale, his first on the PGA Tour. “That’s what dreams are made of. The last walk on the last hole was unbelievable. Everything goes so fast that you don’t really have time to enjoy it – luckily, my caddy was there to tell me to enjoy the moment. It’s so special.”

Less than 12 months later, Detry is reportedly set to join LIV in the Saudi-backed league’s top signing as they add Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton in 2024. Per Kershaw, Detry will join the 4Aces along with Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed and Thomas Pieters, and Harold Varner III moving on to Smash.

Smylie is a 23-year-old Australian whose biggest win to date has come at the 2024 BMW Australian PGA Championship; he will be eligible to join the Australian Ripper GC team, which parted ways with Matt Jones after last season. Jones is on stage for this week’s LIV Promotions event.

The reported signings of Detry and Smylie come at the end of a rocky LIV season, which saw the struggling league lose Brooks Koepka, who left the league to spend “more time” with his family.

Koepka’s exit and the uncertainty surrounding his return to the PGA Tour have created several unanswered questions about the future of LIV and the fractured state of professional golf.

Rory McIlroy said if it were up to him, he would welcome Koepka back to the PGA Tour if the five-time champion wanted to. But McIlroy also admitted the decision was more complicated than that.

“Does it make sense if Brooks wants to play the PGA Tour again to get him back as soon as possible? Absolutely,” McIlroy told the Palm Beach Post on Friday after his Boston Common Golf team won its TGL match over Los Angeles Golf Club. “What Brooks has done in the game of golf, it would be good for everyone to have him.

“It’s difficult (because) you can’t treat one person differently than others,” said McIlroy. “And since the Tour would like to treat Brooks differently, it sets a legal precedent, because of the charges that he has been going on and everything else behind the scenes. He is still exempt from the Tour because of his big wins. That is not an obstacle. The obstacle is the way they have treated others who have tried to come back, give suspensions, or whatever is difficult.”

Koepka’s decision to leave LIV also put Bryson DeChambeau’s contract renewal under the microscope.

The two-time US Open champion said he wants to re-sign with LIV, but it’s clear that he understands that he has more power now than before after Koepka’s exit.

“It’s a very different situation,” DeChambeau said Driving it. “As far as Brooks goes, it’s definitely putting in some different things. And look, like I’ve said all along, I want to do this, I want to grow club golf around the world. But it’s got to be good. And there’s a lot of things that have to be done to make it right, you know?

“Things have to change, things have to get better, and I think so [CEO Scott O’Neil] he’s done a great job in the year he’s had. And I think this year will be even better, now he has the right people in place, and he can run the organization the way he wants to do it here. So it will be interesting to see, especially with the new branding coming. It will be interesting to see what happens. I’m not racing this thing at all. I don’t have much to say, to be honest with you. Which is funny, but it is what it is, right? And, you know, sometimes I wish I had more to say, but that’s life and I don’t run an organization and I trust them to do that.”

This off-season also saw LIV expand to 72 holes and add one more place to the league in an attempt to gain Official World Golf Rankings points.

LIV still has a lot of vacancies to fill in its 57-man league. Three places will be up for grabs in this week’s Promotions event. The breakout league added Laurie Canter this offseason. Canter, who played at LIV when it first burst onto the scene, earned his PGA Tour card with the DP World Tour this year but opted to return to the Saudi-backed league. Scott Vincent and Yosuke Asaji earned spots with top-two finishes in the Asian Tour-based International Series season finale. Victor Perez has also joined Cleeks GC this season.

The next season begins in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on February 4-7.