Bryson DeChambeau leaves PGA Tour lawsuit

Bryson DeChambeau and Matt Jones have become the final LIV golfers to withdraw their names from the breakaway league’s antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour.

LIV Golf had joined 11 players in the original lawsuit in August last year, claiming the PGA Tour were attempting to monopolise the sport by illegally suspending players who teed it up in the Saudi-backed circuit’s events.

But the rival tour has now become the sole plaintiff in the court battle with each player who attached themselves to the lawsuit gradually dropping out over the last nine months.

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Peter Uhlein was the ninth LIV player to withdraw recently and it has now been confirmed that former US Open champion DeChambeau and Jones have joined him in removing themselves from the lawsuit.

DeChambeau has explained to Golfweek that the lawsuit is “not my fight” as he prioritises his role as captain of LIV’s Crushers GC team during his second season as a LIV player.

“I have a responsibility to grow the Crushers, grow my team, and I really need to focus on golf for the most part,” he said. “It has been a bit of a focus of mine, but it has gotten to a point where it’s going to happen, no matter what. They’ll resolve it, it’ll be figured out one way or the other, and it’s not my fight.”

DeChambeau’s withdrawal, however, marks a notable change in opinion after he told ESPN last year that he was remaining as a plaintiff as a matter of “principle”, stating that he was owed a $1.75million bonus as part of the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program.

In the lawsuit, LIV are claiming “punitive damages for the PGA Tour’s bad faith and egregious interference with LIV Golf’s contractual and perspective business relationships.”

But in a countersuit issued in September, the PGA Tour accused LIV of “using astronomical sums of money to induce (players) to breach their contracts with the TOUR in an effort to use the LIV Players and the game of golf to sportswash the recent history of Saudi atrocities and to further the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s Vision 2030 initiatives.”

DeChambeau is competing in the LIV Golf Tulsa event this weekend before heading to Rochester, New York for the PGA Championship at Oak Hill.

Ben Parsons joined bunkered as a Content Producer in 2023 and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.