LIV Golf: What next for Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau? The routes back to the PGA Tour and DP World Tour

The futures of some of the world's best golfers, including Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau, have been thrust into uncertainty after Thursday's announcement that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) will end its funding of LIV Golf at the end of the 2026 season.

It means that the breakaway tour, which fractured men's professional golf upon its inception in 2021, is now scrambling to find new investors to ensure the league can continue to operate.

Doubts have arisen about who would want to invest in LIV given the league's huge outgoings, burning through around $100m (£73.5m) per month.

Welcoming golfers back would be a complicated process for both tours; each player's return would need to be handled on a case-by-case basis, with the interests of the members who stayed loyal to the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour at the forefront of their deliberations.

Players can be grouped into four categories based on their standing in the game. There are the 'blue-chip' stars, the 'bridge burners', the DP World Tour's eight, and the 'rank-and-file' players. They are likely to play out the remaining seven events of the LIV Season before cancelling their contracts and returning to the regular tours.

But how easy will it be for those players to return to the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?

DeChambeau, Rahm and Cameron Smith are LIV Golf's marquee players. They are all major champions and have a combined 52 professional victories between them. It is no surprise that LIV threw the chequebook at them to lure them away from the PGA Tour, but now they represent a hugely attractive coup for the American circuit.

The PGA Tour's desire to have the best players competing on the American circuit is no secret, with commissioner Brian Rolapp having offered Rahm, Smith, DeChambeau, and Brooks Koepka, the chance to rejoin the tour earlier in the year via the Returning Member Programme.

It was a one-time-only offer, available to players who had won a major title in the last four years. Koepka was the only player to accept the deal and returned to play on the PGA Tour in January, while Rahm, DeChambeau and Smith all chose to fulfil their LIV contracts.

As part of the Returning Member Programme, Koepka was required to pay $5m (£3.6m) to charity and will forfeit any player equity shares for the next five years.