LIV Golf makes surprise clothing rule change for 2025 season

Out with the new, in with the old?

The LIV Golf League has made a surprise rule change in 2025 – banning players from wearing shorts during tournament play.

The breakaway league has never been afraid to defy golf convention and relaxed its policy on shorts just three months after its inaugural event at Centurion back in June 2022.

“It’s official, as of tomorrow, LIV Tour players will be able to wear shorts,” then CEO Greg Norman announced before a Boston-based event in 2022. “The first league and tour to make it official.”

But with a new era under new boss Scott O’Neil after Norman’s departure from the top job, that decision has now been reversed.

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Pat Perez, who has now been announced as LIV’s on-course commentator for the new season, revealed the dress code crackdown ahead of the 2025 opener in Riyadh.

“The players are wearing pants all year,” Perez said on LIV’s Fairway to Heaven podcast. “I got it confirmed the other day that the players are wearing pants and the first place I thought about was Singapore.”

bunkered.co.uk has since had the move confirmed by LIV insiders.

The transition from trousers to shorts certainly won’t affect players in Riyadh, where the opening event is being played at night in chillier conditions under the lights in the Saudi capital.

But as Perez, notes, the heat and humidity made shorts particularly popular at the Sentosa Golf Club in Singapore, an event which takes place in March.

The reversal means that, from now on, no tour will give players complete freedom to wear shorts during competitive rounds.

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That ruling was first relaxed on the DP World Tour in 2019 amid the sweltering heat at the Alfred Dunhill Championships in South Africa.

The formerly known European Tour sometimes allow players to wear shorts, but only if the conditions dictate they are necessary. On the PGA Tour, meanwhile, shorts can only be ever worn in practice rounds and must be “knee-length, tailored and neat in appearance.”

It does appear, however, that the Asian Tour will continue to allow players to wear shorts after following LIV by implementing the policy in February 2023.

Former LIV man Eugenio Chacarra was one of a number of players wearing them at last week’s International Series event in India.

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.