EXCLUSIVE: LIV Golf dealt huge blow as DP World Tour signs major deal

The DP World Tour has secured the futures of one of its most storied tournaments – despite the threat from LIV Golf.

The DP World Tour has dealt LIV Golf another blow by securing the future of one of its most iconic tournaments.

TG has learned from multiple well-placed sources that the European-based circuit has agreed a three-year extension to stage the Australian Open until at least 2029. The DP World Tour has co-sanctioned the storied event with the PGA Tour of Australasia since 2022 and last year returned to Royal Melbourne, where Rory McIlroy competed Down Under for the first time since 2015.

McIlroy will be back in Australia this December for the Australian Open’s next staging at Kingston Heath, another vaunted layout on Melbourne’s sandbelt, and the Masters champion is in talks to return again next year as part of his increasingly worldwide schedule. The prize money will remain at AU$2million for this year’s tournament – technically on the DP World Tour’s 2027 schedule – but is expected to rise as part of the new deal.

The DP World Tour’s move to secure the tournament comes at a time where national opens have emerged as one of the key battlegrounds in golf’s ongoing civil war. TG understands that LIV have shifted their interests in recent times from signing elite players to attempting to secure these historic events, with the Australian Open near the top of their agenda.

As LIV fights to secure its future without the multi-billion dollar backing of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the league has been targeting national opens in territories in which they have enjoyed the most interest. The league’s standout success story has been its visits to Adelaide – as well as this year’s inaugural trip to South Africa – and LIV hoped to build on their foundations in the southern hemisphere by completing a deal to stage the Australian Open.

Yet it’s understood the league were knocked back on their initial approach, with a Wentworth HQ deal set to be wrapped up in the coming days. National opens have long been the cornerstone of the DP World Tour and this extension will no doubt be seen as a boon for chief executive Guy Kinnings.

Kinnings told TG last month that the DP World Tour has been holding positive talks with the PGA Tour over a renegotiation of their strategic alliance. The circuit continues to prioritize September to January as its key period of the calendar after the conclusion of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup playoffs.

“You hear all the noise and all you can do is control what you can control,” Kinnings said at last month’s Turkish Airlines Open. “For a long time, we’ve focused on building up our tour as credible, sustainable, strong, and built around national opens. That’s not something you just come in and get like that. It’s decades of building a relationship with the federations.

“We’ve been elevating those and we’ll elevate them still further. The fact that we have support from Augusta and The R&A to give qualifying spots to those events, helps enormously. It’s very much the future.”