Pat Perez hasn’t played in a LIV Golf event in nearly two years. Yet he’s not eligible to return to PGA Tour-sanctioned competition until Jan. 1, 2027.
The reason? There are a couple.
Last month, Perez was reinstated as a PGA Tour member after spending three years as a player and one as a broadcaster for LIV Golf. When he left the Tour, he never resigned his membership, meaning his penalties are different than those Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed have received as they make (or have made) their returns.
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Perez explained his suspension on an episode of the Subpar podcast this week.
“Those guys resigned from the Tour, which I didn’t resign because I didn’t want to resign,” Perez told hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz. “I just didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. The way I looked at it was if you resigned from the Tour, that means they’re going to have to reinstate you at some point. They don’t actually have to do that. And the way it looked at that point, it didn’t look like they were ever going to be able to do that or want to do that.”
Perez last played for LIV Golf in August 2024, but his work as a broadcaster for the 2025 season is viewed as promoting an unauthorized event, per PGA Tour guidelines. Instead of being able to return later this year, like Reed is, Perez must sit out the entire 2026 season from PGA Tour-sanctioned events, which pushes back his start date on the PGA Tour Champions.
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He turns 50 in March and is eligible to compete on the senior tour thanks to the PGA Tour all-time money list category. Perez made more than $26 million in his career. He’ll also be eligible to compete in three senior majors this year: the U.S. Senior Open, the Senior PGA Championship and the Senior British Open.
“I’m paying the penalty for playing those tournaments,” Perez continued. “Those (other) guys resigned. So they don’t face any penalties because they weren’t members. It’s like this loophole, I guess, where you resign and now you don’t face any penalties because you fall into this non-member category. But then you get to come back, and they told me if you would have resigned, you’d have been able to play in August.
“But they were like, ‘since you stayed in, you violated all these rules.’ So.”
As more players attempt to return to the Tour from LIV Golf, it’s likely the rules will continue to change and adapt. But as Perez explained, there’s no precedent for knowing what was going to happen, and he did what he thought was best at the time.
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This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Pat Perez explains why he’s suspended from PGA Tour until 2027
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