How are LIV Golfers playing the 2024 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship? Reasons explored
This week at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, there will be a host of LIV Golf players in the field. The tournament is a DP World Tour event, and those two tours do not share memberships.
There has been a smattering of LIV players in other DP World Tour events, like the Spanish Open, but 14 of them are set to play this weekend. They have different reasons that have allowed them to be part of the event in Fife, Scotland. There's no one blanket pass that has allowed them all entry.
Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, former members of the DP World Tour, are appealing the fines they've been given by the latter, and are granted entry to events while the issue is being adjudicated.
Brooks Koepka was invited to the tournament. Patrick Reed is still an honorary member of the DP World Tour, but he didn't qualify through that since he's not ranked. Instead, he made it on the back of his top-10 finish at the Spanish Open.
David Puig and Eugenio Chacarra are in thanks to Category 0c - a group of eligible golfers that is made up of the leading 10 available players from within the top 30 of the PGA Tour of Australasia, the Sunshine Tour, and the Asian Tour's final Order of Merit from the most recent season.
Louis Oosthuizen, Dean Burmester, Caleb Surratt, Talor Gooch, Peter Uihlein, Branden Grace, Matt Jones, and Hudson Swafford all received tournament invites from the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship Committee.
This committee is run by Richemont, a Swiss company whose chairman Johann Rupert believes in unification for golf moving forward. This is further evidenced by the invites his group has handed to LIV players.
LIV golfers' odds at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship
The Alfred Dunhill Links Championship will be one of the most mixed events for golf in a long while. Of course, there are usually a lot of LIV players in the Majors alongside DP World Tour and PGA Tour players, but this DP World Tour event will have 14 LIV players headlining along with the top DP World Tour stars.
These golfers don't necessarily need to win the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship to ensure future participation in the tournament. Johann Rupert is a proponent of unity, and golf is trending that way with the pending merger as well.
Nevertheless, they will all be competing to win this tournament that's held across three venues. Jon Rahm is the favorite at +550, and he's joined by several others on his circuit with good odds (via Golf Monthly):
- Jon Rahm (+550)
- Rory McIlroy (+600)
- Tyrrell Hatton (+1100)
- Tommy Fleetwood (+1200)
- Brooks Koepka (+2000)
- Shane Lowry (+2200)
- Billy Horschel (+2200)
- Robert MacIntyre (+2500)
- Alex Noren (+3000)
- Louis Oosthuizen (+3000)
- Matt Fitzpatrick (+3500)
- Thriston Lawrence (+3500)
- Rasmus Hojgaard (+3500)
- Patrick Reed (+4000)
- Matt Wallace (+4000)
- Talor Gooch (+4000)
- Niklas Norgaard (+5000)
- Dean Burmester (+5000)
- Thomas Detry (+5500)
- Peter Uihlein (+6000)
Any of these players could put together a good weekend of golf, though they will have to contend with players like Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, and Robert MacIntyre.