Richard Bland Blindsided By LIV Golf's Collapse After Pledging Loyalty

Richard Bland has said he was taken by surprise when LIV Golf confirmed it would wind down after five seasons, having publicly committed to the circuit's planned relaunch only weeks earlier.

The Englishman, who joined LIV Golf at its 2022 launch, told The Scotsman's Martin Dempster that he learned of the news on social media. "Yeah, I was surprised. I read it for the first time yesterday on social media when I woke up," he said.

Bland added that nothing in his dealings with the league had suggested trouble was brewing. "Everything I was aware of was positive and it looked like it was going to move forward. So, yeah, to wake up to that was not what I was expecting," he said, according to Golf Monthly.

The collapse followed confirmation that BC Partners, which had been lined up to back LIV Golf's relaunch after the original Saudi-funded project faltered, had withdrawn its proposed $300 million investment.

That decision rendered moot weeks of speculation over which players might sign up for what had been billed as LIV Golf 2.0. As recently as late October, the circuit had appointed former TaylorMade chief executive Mark King as a senior advisor, a move that pointed towards fresh momentum rather than closure.

Bland was one of only five players who had gone public with their intention to stay on, having said in October that he had "nowhere else to play", with a further 15 reportedly "tentatively" committed, though their identities were never confirmed.

He also said players had been told as recently as January that the league was funded through to 2032, a timeline that makes its sudden demise harder to square.

With LIV Golf now gone, Bland faces a narrowed set of options for next season. Unlike Sergio Garcia and other defectors who have returned to the DP World Tour, Bland indicated he has no plans to follow suit.

"I've kind of closed the book on the DP World Tour and that's fine, I've dealt with that. I've got no desire to go back there and play full time," he said. He pointed instead towards the European Legends Tour and the Asian Tour as more likely destinations.

The end of LIV Golf closes a chapter that Rory McIlroy has characterised as a deliberate assault on the sport's established structures rather than a genuine attempt at building a rival tour.

Speaking at the Abu Dhabi Aldar Championship, McIlroy backed comments made by DP World Tour chief executive Guy Kinnings, who told The Scotsman that LIV Golf had used its financial resources to target events and sponsors with the specific aim of damaging the European circuit.

"I agree with everything that Guy said," McIlroy told reporters, according to Yahoo Sports. "They took players, they took sponsors, they turned professional golf into an arms race."

McIlroy went further, alleging that LIV Golf representatives had been telling people at Augusta National during this year's Masters that they intended to "destroy the European Tour", a claim reported by Today's Golfer and relayed by Yahoo Sports.

He suggested the Saudi-backed investment had never been about sustainable growth, and that backers ultimately walked away once it became clear a return was unlikely, calling the period a "very strange time" for the sport.

For Bland and the handful of players who had staked their immediate futures on LIV Golf's survival, the practical consequence is a scramble for playing opportunities outside the two tours that dominated the pre-LIV landscape, with the Asian Tour and European Legends Tour now the most realistic routes back into competitive golf.