Anirban Lahiri has rejected one of the dominant narratives of the LIV-PGA Tour standoff, telling The Times that the picture of LIV golfers desperate to rejoin the American circuit is fiction — and saying he personally knows at least a dozen players who would rather walk away from professional golf than go back.
"That is the biggest joke ever," the Indian veteran said. "I will not name names, but I know at least a dozen players who'd rather not play golf than go back to the PGA Tour."
Lahiri's comments cut directly against a press cycle that has run at near-constant volume since reports earlier this month that LIV's Saudi-based backer, the Public Investment Fund, planned to wind down its direct funding of the breakaway league after 2026. That speculation has since been complicated by Joaquin Niemann describing the funding cut as good news that finally put pressure on the project to operate like a real business, and by Tyrrell Hatton dismissing the demise rumours altogether at Quail Hollow this week. Lahiri's intervention is the strongest pushback yet from inside the LIV locker room.
"I'm sure others have different opinions of it and I respect that as well," he said, "but to generalise that everybody is falling over backwards to come back to the PGA Tour is the same kind of propaganda we've had for four years."
Lahiri's own status sharpens the point. The 38-year-old narrowly missed an automatic 2026 LIV spot in the league's relegation cycle and has been working through alternate pathways. "I don't have status with the DP World Tour and I'm 100 per cent certain the PGA Tour is not going to welcome any of us back with open arms," he said. The implication is direct: he is making the case for staying inside the LIV ecosystem from a position where, on paper, he has the clearest motive to lobby for a return.
His frustration with the PGA Tour's transparency was the broader complaint behind the original move four years ago, and he repeated the diagnosis. "A lot of players moved from the PGA Tour because the lack of transparency there was just annoying," Lahiri said.
He also pushed back on the framing of LIV's challenges as primarily an investor problem. "It's not so much about finding investment, I think it's more about creating the right business plan," he said — a line that lands differently coming from a player than from LIV CEO Scott O'Neil's own "transaction, transaction, transaction" pitch in Virginia earlier this week.
Lahiri has emerged in 2026 as one of the LIV roster's most articulate commercial voices, having spoken openly about life inside the league while many higher-profile players have stayed on message. His comments to The Times shift the conversation away from "who wants to come back" and onto a question PGA Tour and PIF negotiators have spent two years trying to avoid: who, on the LIV side, has any incentive to bend at all.
The political backdrop is busy. The PGA Tour's leadership team of Brian Rolapp and Scott O'Neil met PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan at Augusta in April for what insiders described to Trey Wingo as "a game of half-truths." PGA Tour player Billy Horschel has gone on record saying he sees "no road" back to the Tour for Phil Mickelson; Thomas Pieters has said openly he would not return if LIV folded; Niemann has framed the funding pressure as healthy.
Lahiri's contribution adds the most blunt version yet. The dozen players he says exist — committed to never returning even at the cost of their careers — are the variable any negotiated reunification has to navigate. If he is right about how many of them there are, the deal everyone has been talking about for two years is harder to put together than the public narrative implies.
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*Originally published on [Golf News Global](https://golfnews.global/article/anirban-lahiri-pga-tour-return-biggest-joke-liv-times-interview-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
