LIV Golf set to announce three more signings

The three spaces in the LIV Golf field for this week’s tournament in Portland are set to be filled on Monday with three new signings.

bunkered.co.uk understands that Carlos Ortiz, Matthew Wolff and Eugenio Chacarra will be unveiled as the latest names to defect to the Saudi-funded circuit and will feature in its second $25m event which gets under way at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club on Thursday.

Ortiz, 31, won the 2020 Houston Open on the PGA Tour but has seen his world ranking slip to 115th having started the year in 51st. He will join compatriot Abraham Ancer in the increasingly impressive LIV roster.

Likewise, Wolff, 23, has one PGA Tour victory to his name: the 3M Open, which he won in 2019 playing on a sponsor’s exemption a matter of weeks after he turned professional. 

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The following year, the strange-swinging American ended up in a tie for fourth at the COVID-delayed US PGA. He finished runner-up to Bryson DeChambeau in the US Open a month later. 

Like Ortiz, however, he has endured a tough time of late, missing seven cuts in 13 PGA Tour appearances in 2022.

Chacarra is arguably the most intriguing of the new signings. Ranked second on the men’s World Amateur Golf Rankings as recently as last week, he has forfeited his amateur status to turn pro and commit his future to LIV.

The Spaniard has been a standout for Oklahoma State University on the American collegiate golf scene but, speaking to Spanish newspaper Marca, explained that the opportunity presented to him by LIV was too good to turn down.

“My position is that of a player who is not a member of the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour, and I have not earned money while I have been an amateur, so I can play in this league without problems,” he said. “This contract gives me peace of mind and ensures the future of my family. I had already achieved everything as an amateur, and now I will be able to gain experience as a professional.” 

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LIV’s ability to sign players straight from college – like it has already done with US Amateur champion James Piot – should have alarm bells ringing at PGA Tour HQ. It’s not all that long ago, for example, that Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland, now mainstays of the world’s top-10 and poster boys for the PGA Tour, were in the same position as Chacarra and Piot.  

All three players are expected to be formally unveiled by LIV Golf on Monday. They will join Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Sergio Garcia and Phil Mickelson amongst those to have committed to the controversial Greg Norman-fronted start-up.