WESTFIELD, Ind. — This week’s inaugural LIV Golf Indianapolis event could mark the end of the line for some of the league’s original players.
Lee Westwood, Henrik Stenson and Ian Poulter are among those straddling the league’s “Drop Zone,” and finishing on the wrong side of it come Sunday night here at The Club at Chatham Hills will mean they’ll need to find a new tour in 2026.
LIV Golf, continuing to seek validation in the golf world in its fourth season, is leaning into its relegation format as evidence that it’s not a closed shop and that player turnover is part of the league. And this season the format has closed loopholes that existed last year when two players finished below 48th in the standings but were saved from relegation.
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RangeGoats captain and two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson kept his spot due to an exemption for captains, and Branden Grace returned to Stinger GC as a “business case.”
Now the pressure is real, with LIV Golf Indianapolis being the season’s final individual event.
“I’m not talking about anything to do with that at all, O.K.?” Poulter said Wednesday on the range when asked about the relegation possibility. “I’m here to play good golf this week.”
The 49-year-old, who has been a part of LIV Golf since its June 2022 debut tournament in his native England, will need a big finish this week. He’s 52nd in points, 1.02 points behind Stenson, the man who sits in the 48th-place cutoff spot.
Points are only awarded to the top 24 finishers and finishing 21st through 24th only earns one point, so Poulter—who has just one finish above T30 this year (a T13 in May in Korea)—needs a top 20 or better just to have the possibility of returning.
Above him in the Drop Zone are Mito Pereira, 49th in points, and Andy Ogletree, 50th, both less than one point behind Stenson.
“You really need to be in that top-15 zone [in tournaments],” said Ogletree, a member of Phil Mickelson’s HyFlyers team. “It’s the same way on the other tours, it’s very top-heavy with how the point systems work and your great weeks have to be great, not just solid weeks.”
Ogletree, 27, has spent the season getting accustomed to a surgically repaired left wrist from the offseason, and his only points-earning finishes have been a T17 in Korea, T18 in the U.K. and T20 in Hong Kong—tournaments where one fewer shot here or there could have made this week far easier.
“I could make excuses all day, but the bottom line is I haven’t played well,” Ogletree said. “I need to go out and have a good week and get some points and see what the other guys behind me and ahead of me do.”
One long-shot scenario this week could see Poulter, Stenson and No. 47 Westwood all end up in the Drop Zone. The three are co-captains of the Majesticks and joined LIV Golf in its first season.
That would be something for the breakaway league.
“That’s sport, isn’t it?” said Paul Casey, 12th in points and a member of the Crushers. “It’s jeopardy, and the players want that. We need that movement, we need churn, we need all these things. So, yeah, let’s talk about [points leaders] Joaco [Niemann] and Jon Rahm, and let’s talk about the guys down the bottom as well.”
But Casey also acknowledged that this isn’t the time to bring up the subject with his former European Ryder Cup teammates.
“I’m not going anywhere near those guys,” Casey said.
