Barely two weeks have passed since Victor Perez chose to sign with LIV Golf rather than fight for his PGA Tour card. In this raw and unfiltered interview, he tells TG about what forced his hand, the showdown he had with Brian Rolapp, and why a full season on the DP World Tour felt like a backwards step…
Victor Perez wants to apologize for taking our video call in his home gym. His 10-month-old daughter is asleep in the next room, and the treadmill and free weights behind him are the last remaining remnants of his former life. “I’ve basically been kicked out of my own house,” he laughs.
It looks like the lair of a man grinding through the off-season, but the coffee he’s tucked just out of frame tells a different story. Perez is enjoying a breather this afternoon and as well he might given all the noise surrounding him since his departure to LIV Golf was made official.
He retreated to Edinburgh in the aftermath of resigning his PGA Tour membership last month and is about to spend a couple of days in London with his family before flying back to the Bahamas for an early Christmas. Then, he says, the real work starts. A five-week pre-season will carry the Frenchman to the Dubai Desert Classic, which will serve as a tune-up ahead of his LIV Golf debut in Riyadh in early February.
“It’s hard to know how my level compares to everyone else’s because it’s my first season,” he tells TG. “I’m obviously very excited and I guess the other guys are going to have to adapt back to 72 holes, which kind of plays into my hands a little bit. I’ve always been really consistent – my scores have been really compact – which is probably something that will be useful on LIV with four scores counting for the team.
“We saw last year with the Cleeks Golf Club that one player could pretty much hold the team down if their performances are not up to the standard, so my goal is to improve my personal level and post some solid scores, one after the other, that will hopefully lift the performance of the team.”
By his own admission, 2025 was as much a struggle for him as it was for the team he has just joined. “It wasn’t that I played poorly,“ he points out, but a single top 10 and a lack of clarity over the PGA Tour’s qualification criteria made it hard to plan and prepare for events. At times, he didn’t know when – or where – he would be teeing it up next, which meant he was often left scrambling for last-minute flights and accommodation while his wife, Abigail, was left tending to their newborn baby.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve had the best two seasons in America,” admits Perez, who earned a promotion to the PGA Tour through his 2023 Race to Dubai ranking. “I played decent, but I didn’t have high enough finishes to be in a position to contend. And I just felt the way the PGA Tour was ranking events was putting me at a huge disadvantage.
“Not being in the Signature Events was a big sticking point my end. I could have played better, obviously, but at the same time, I felt like it was really ‘top heavy’. And once you start falling outside the top 10, you’re not really capitalizing on the weeks, which is a little bit of what happened to me.”
Perez played a career-high 28 events on the DP World and PGA Tours in 2024, but that tally dropped to 25 this year as he failed to qualify for both The Open Championship and the end-of-season play-offs on both sides of the Atlantic.
To retain full status on the PGA Tour, he would have needed a top five in the final event of the fall series to crack the top 100 in the FedEx Cup standings – a drop from 125 the previous year. For Perez, it was another example of the “moving goalposts” on the PGA Tour that were favoring the top tier while squeezing those further down the ladder.
“On a personal note, it was quite difficult to get to the PGA Tour in ’24 and [see] the rules changing right away,” he says, struggling to hide his irritation. “It started with the elevated events, which I wasn’t in, and then this year they were like, ‘Oh, we’re only going to have 100 cards, instead of 125.’ And it seems like another change is coming next season, or maybe the following season. So I struggled with that instability. They changed CEOs, and there are plenty of things that have happened that have made it quite difficult to really believe in the product.”
Midway through the season, Perez voiced his concerns directly to the PGA Tour’s new CEO Brian Rolapp, who failed to offer the kind of reassurances or clarity he was looking for. As a result, he began exploring other avenues – which is what led him to the negotiating table with Cleeks Golf Club.
“Cleeks Golf Club had a player that was struggling more than the other three and it felt like a spot was probably going to be opening up,” Perez, referring to relegated Frederik Kjettrup, admits. “There was some communication between my agents and Jonas [Martensson, Cleeks general manager], and that’s kind of how it started.
“But for me, personally, knowing who was on the team was really important. You spend a lot of time with your teammates and I’ve always had a really good relationship with Martin [Kaymer], who has always been very good to me.
“It was really fitting, too, that I knew Adrian [Meronk] as we were in the same class from ’23 that graduated to go to the PGA Tour. And then I knew Richard [Bland] because… who doesn’t know Richard? It felt like the team matched a lot of the criteria that I was looking for.”
Once rumors surfaced online, his departure moved fast. Two days before the RSM Classic – his last scheduled event on the PGA Tour – his move to LIV became headline news. He never did get the chance to fight for his card – he withdrew later that afternoon – though doing so would have merely delayed the inevitable.
“Five years ago, when I was starting out, if somebody had said that one day I would send an email to resign my PGA Tour membership, I would have not believed it,” he shrugs. “But it is what it is. With where I am at in my career at the moment, I realized the PGA Tour wasn’t what was best for me and my family.
“It wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I tried to speak to an array of people besides just the players. If I gave you the whole list, it would take a while, but there’s definitely been a lot of people that I’ve spoken to who’ve given different kinds of perspectives,” he adds.
Before we can ask how so, he expands on that point. “I mean, everybody knows that on LIV, the travel is significantly more difficult than it is on the PGA Tour. We have a 10-month-old daughter now and we’re all going to travel together, which is going to make it quite challenging. Then it was, does the good outweigh the bad?
“At the moment, access into the majors is probably quite challenging for LIV players. There are opportunities to play well, get recognized and get invites, but there’s really only a select few who are able to do that.
“But, on the other side, you also know exactly which event you’re going to play. You can organize yourself which, in America, I wasn’t able to do. So, tons of things went into it, and when I had a really good idea of what it was going to take and how it was going to be, then I was really happy and comfortable with the decision.”
All of which is not to say that competing and contending in majors and Ryder Cups is no longer an ambition for Perez. It very much is. He still intends to keep his DP World Tour membership, though there’s every chance he may be priced out of doing so should they continue to fine and suspend players for competing in conflicting LIV events without permission.
LIV Golf have already informed their members that they will no longer cover the financial penalties imposed on players from the start of next year, a move that could have major repercussions should the Sports Resolutions arbitration panel rule against Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton in their ongoing appeals of such sanctions.
“In a perfect world, there will be an agreement where we’ll be able to play happily ever after, but it’s still very blurry as far as what both tours are willing to agree on,” Perez says, scratching his chin. “The DP World Tour is in an awkward position where they would really like the players to come back and play, but those players are also paying those hefty fines and that will not unite the game in any way, shape or form.
“I know guys are saying they don’t want to pay the fines, which is understandable. And so this is what it has become, unfortunately, where no one seems to see common ground. No one can get what they want and the compromises are probably too big to give at the moment.”
Golf loves to pretend it’s a gentleman’s game, but Perez has seen enough to know better. After starting on the Alps Tour and grinding his way up the ladder, he’s watched friends struggle to stay in the system while the tour’s powerbrokers preach loyalty and manoeuvre behind the scenes. Put it like that and there is little surprise that Perez has been tying himself up in knots amid so much uncertainty.
For months, he agonised over schedules, pathways and rankings before concluding that the DP World Tour, once his natural home, were offering fewer competitive incentives across a full season and even less stability than before. In that light, a move to LIV began to look less like a gamble and more like an escape route.
“I think you know the events that we’re playing, the competition you’re playing against, the prize money that you’re playing for, all these factors are significantly stronger than playing back on the DP World Tour,” Perez explains.
“Generally, they only get their good players back from September onward, because the majority of the guys [are] obviously focused on the PGA Tour up until August. The strength of field has been, [over] the last few years, historically weaker in Europe. So from a competition perspective, I thought it was going to be a little bit more difficult to feel like I was going to develop.”
He continues: “I always say I wear a bunch of different hats and wearing my business hat, LIV made the most sense because you’re playing 14 events with mega purses, no cuts, and guaranteed money. Then, wearing the performance hat, if I’m not going to be playing on the PGA Tour, LIV’s field includes Jon Rahm, Bryson [DeChambeau], Joaquin Niemann and some guys that have won majors recently.
“Compared to the DP World Tour, which is losing its 10 best players every season, the competition is not really going to drive you until the end of the year. And then there’s the family hat and how I’m going to combine everything. The DP World and LIV schedules are somewhat similar, besides playing in America, so there were all these factors I was looking at and it made a lot more sense to play LIV over DP World.”
Still, it’s impossible to reflect on the 33-year-old’s move without talking more about the money and the $30 million purses he’ll be competing for. He made a little over $4.5 million in America last season, which is only slightly more than he stands to gain with should he pick up a victory on LIV. Surely that came into his thinking more so than anything else?
“It would be crazy to say that it [money] was not part of the balance,” he says with a flicker of a smile. “But I think these opportunities kind of present themselves at certain times in your life. I always say, timing is everything. It’s a multi-year deal that I’m committed to and I was really happy with that. This obviously gives me a little bit more stability for a longer period of time, but it would be foolish to say that I have a safety net and I don’t have to perform.
“It’s still professional sport so I think you have to be a realist. If I don’t perform and I’m in the relegation zone, then why would they keep me? If you look at football, Liverpool won the league last year but if they get relegated, no one is patting them on the back and saying, ‘You guys get to stay for another year.’ Yes, they are all under mega contracts, but every year things get reshuffled so you have to keep performing along the way. It’s the same with every tour.”
In a climate where players are often criticized for evasiveness or spin, Perez stands out precisely because he doesn’t shirk the difficult questions. He’s clear about his motivations and trade-offs, and the benefits that certainty – and financial security – will bring for his young family.
For that reason alone, it’s hard to criticize someone who refuses to sugarcoat his choices having experienced inequality and instability across four different tours. At least he has the guts to be honest, which is more than you can say for most.