Brooks Koepka Returns to PGA Tour As Part of New Returning Member Program

The rapid reintegration process of Brooks Koepka to the PGA Tour continued on Monday afternoon when the Tour announced the formation of the Returning Member Program. The program allows winners of a major championship or the Players Championship between 2022 and 2025 to return to PGA Tour competition without serving a one-year suspension for playing on LIV Golf. Koepka released a statement in which he indicated he’ll be playing the Farmers Insurance Open and the WM Phoenix Open. 

The announcement stipulates that this is a “one-time, defined window” that expires on February 2, 2026, and offers no guarantee that this pathway will be made available to prospective returning members again. The press release also states that Koepka has agreed to forfeit participation in the PGA Tour’s Player Equity Program for five years and will make a $5 million charitable contribution.  

Koepka, a five-time major winner, left for LIV Golf in June of 2022 shortly after the U.S. Open. At the time, he was dealing with persistent injuries and the long-term status of his career was in question. By the 2023 Masters, he had suggested his decision might have been different if his health had not been so uncertain in the spring of 2022. 

Koepka’s last PGA Tour event was the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play in March of 2022. That event has not existed for almost three years now. Since then, Koepka has played LIV, a mix of International Series and DP World Tour events, and the four majors, winning the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill that also landed him on that year’s Ryder Cup team.

So he has not been a total outcast from the highest levels of professional golf, but coming back to the PGA Tour is a new frontier in this era of friction. The announcement of his departure from LIV came on December 23. News of Koepka’s formal application for reinstatement to the PGA Tour was reported by ESPN last Friday, January 9. That report indicated PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp would make the decision on the reinstatement process, with “thoughtful input” from his board and player directors.

Now, just days later, we have that ruling.

What is the status of Koepka’s game? 

Since signing with LIV Golf in 2022, Koepka has recorded four top-20 finishes in 16 major championship starts. For reference, 21 players have at least five top-20 finishes over the same time span. 

He won the PGA Championship at Oak Hill in 2023 – his most recent top-10 finish in a major. Over the last two seasons, he has just one top-25 finish in a major and missed the cut in three of four major appearances in 2025. 

At age 35, it’s fair to question how much gas remains in Koepka’s tank. Few golfers in the modern era have clung to relevance beyond age 40, and Koepka has sustained his fair share of injuries, most recently a knee injury in 2021. 

His current form is uninspiring; however, Koepka’s play has always been anomalous – he tends to summon form in much shorter order than the majority of his peers. Contending in last September’s Open de France before settling into a fourth-place finish offers a glimmer of hope that Koepka can round back into form and start winning tournaments again. 

At least in his current state, nobody should deem the five-time major winner a top-20 level player in the world. Nonetheless, Koepka has proven himself as one of the game’s finest talents when he is in form. Health permitting, it isn’t unfathomable for Koepka to muster a few years of high-level golf and reclaim a position amongst the top dozen or so players in the world.

Which other LIV golfers are in Koepka’s Position?

As outlined in the Tour’s press release, the Returning Member Program applies only to a narrow subset of players who won either a major or the Players Championship between 2022 and 2025, which aligns with the formation of LIV Golf. Three active LIV golfers meet that criteria: Cameron Smith (2022 Open Championship & 2022 Players Championship winner), Jon Rahm (2023 Masters Tournament winner), and Bryson DeChambeau (2024 U.S. Open winner). 

Notably, Dustin Johnson’s 2020 Masters and Phil Mickelson’s 2021 PGA Championship wins do not fit within the parameters, so neither player has eligibility to return to the PGA Tour if they wanted to via this program.

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What is the impact on LIV Golf?

It’s clear PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp sees this — in the words of Phil Mickelson — as a once-in-a-lifetime leverage opportunity. LIV could, in theory, survive if Koepka, DeChambeau, Rahm, and Smith accepted this deal, but in terms of narrative, it would be a devastating blow. The PGA Tour knows that, and is pushing a lot of chips into the middle of the table. It certainly puts Rahm in a bind. He took LIV’s money with the assumption he would be the catalyst that unified the two Tours. His return to the PGA Tour would be like admitting he chose the losing side. He’d not only be walking away from hundreds of millions of dollars, he’d likely be entering into a protracted legal battle with LIV’s lawyers. It’s clear he misses part of PGA Tour life, but he’s going to have to miss it an awful lot to take this deal. 

DeChambeau’s dilemma is different. He’s already collected a considerable portion of his signing bonus from LIV, and there are plenty of indications he’s frustrated he doesn’t control all of his social media. Would he come back to the Tour with guarantees that he’d still be able to create his own content there? 

The most nervous LIV figures, other than CEO Scott O’Neil, have to be prominent players who were not offered a pathway back. The Returning Membership policy applies to players who have won a major since 2022. If you’re Tyrell Hatton, Patrick Reed or Joaquin Neimann, you don’t want to be stuck in an irrelevant league with little chance of earning OWGR points because the fields are so weak. They might be the biggest losers in this. 

Impacts for the Tour

The membership is almost certainly going to be split on a decision like this. Fried Egg Golf reached out to one PGA Tour player for his reaction, and even his own feelings were mixed. 

Some players are frustrated, but some are indifferent, knowing the leadership isn’t interested in weighing their feelings. 

“I have resigned to the fact that these decisions always have been and always will be over my head,” the player said. “Just up to the board and the players on the board. The board is supposed to ‘represent’ all the players but they just talk amongst themselves and their close friends and make the decision. 

This feels like the first big “Look at me, I am the captain now” moment for Rolapp. We know he’s been on the job since last summer, working behind the scenes and pledging to listen and learn at the start. Do we know if he has met with every member yet, as was the initial goal? Anyways, this is his first major public-facing decision, one that would put him front and center and immediately impact his company. Joel Beall reported on Friday in Golf Digest that the Koepka reinstatement decision “will ultimately be made by new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp. He is expected to take guidance from his Future Competition Committee (helmed by Tiger Woods), along with the tour’s policy board.”

Rolapp arrives at this decision with far less scar tissue and a cooler head. He arrives as a new CEO looking at his company from 10,000 feet. He was not here when players left. He was not around during open season of Saudi recruiting, the daily rumors and drama. He was not here when LIV launched, lawsuits were filed, and framework agreements were made. He’s looking at his product and company today, and going forward. So maybe that makes this decision easier for him. 

It will certainly create the first wave of member blowback for him, too. That is a time-honored tradition on the PGA Tour, whether it’s for-profit or nonprofit, you’re commissioner or CEO. Rolapp may have more unilateral power over PGA Tour Enterprises, but the players, those who were there when defections occurred, including Koepka’s, will make him privately and publicly account for his position. It’s his first big flag plant, and naturally, it puts him in the crosshairs. One primary area where his former boss, Roger Goodell, came under heavy scrutiny was with player discipline, either for legal or competitive matters (Deflategate). A league must govern itself, but that’s often where Goodell exposed himself to the most intense criticism, rebuke, and even counteractions. The NFL is a behemoth mostly full of happy days, but those were the minefields for the commissioner. Rolapp is taking the conch here with the Brooks decision and it won’t be without blowback. That blowback likely won’t have major impact on his course, and perhaps shouldn’t. 

This may be a new era with new leadership, but it does continue the recent trend of constant and dramatic change. Since LIV arrived, the PGA Tour has played whack-a-mole, adapting in this fractured era, altering rules each offseason and sometimes even in the middle of seasons, creating new committees and boards, changing structures, and fixing the impacts of hasty changes that have left rank-and-file players in the dark. One player said he has been out there more than five seasons and has yet to play two straight years under the same set of rules. 

So Rolapp is now enacting his own changes, with his own voice, and it’s probably the first of many as he, along with the minds and millions of the Strategic Sports Group, reshapes the PGA Tour. The Koepka reintegration is just the start.

Fried Egg Golf's Joseph LaMagna, Brendan Porath, and Kevin Van Valkenburg contributed to this analysis.