Tom McKibbin relaxed ahead of Irish Open despite uncertain LIV future

Northern Ireland's Tom McKibbin. Pic: Bradley Collyer/PA Wire.

Thirty mile an hour winds buffeted Tom McKibbin as he played Trump International Golf and Links resort for the first time on Tuesday, and he looked anything but ruffled by the experience, or by the storm clouds over LIV golf.

Reports have it that LIV is looking to file for bankruptcy protection now that its Saudi backers have pulled the plug on its ostentatious investment.

Any entity that might survive next season would be a pale shadow, and McKibbin has at least two years left on his contract.

Far from ideal.

“I have to play where I have to play, I guess. And I've enjoyed LIV the last couple of years,” he said with a shrug of the shoulders. “It's been great for me and my game. So yeah, we'll see what they have to have to do.” 

He has good reason to be relaxed about all this. Just 23 years of age, he signed a reported €4.6m deal to sign with golf’s great disruptors after the 2024 season. National Club Golfer estimated in mid-June that his earnings in the tour to that point amounted to over €13.6m.

There have been three top-20 LIV finishes since, plus his part in the team championship win with Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII in Michigan recently. The €180,000 he has earned across five events in 2026 on the DP Tour has been mere chickenfeed.

The man will be okay, whatever happens next.

“I feel like I've just focused on the golf. Once I get to the first tee on Thursdays and play, get that tee shot away, and even in general, I mean, I'm not really thinking about it. It's just golf at the end of the day. I'm always going out there to play the best that I can.”

His form this year has been solid as opposed to spectacular with regular finishes somewhere inside the top 25 on LIV and, maybe more interestingly, a tie for 6th at the Brisitsh Masters at the Belfry only two weekends ago.

“I felt like I was playing worse than I did last year because the results weren't as good. And then when I sat back and looked at it, I thought, no, it's been very consistent. And the last month or so has shown… 

“I stayed very patient throughout that, and the game felt like it's stayed similar. And I've started to put a couple of good results [together], which is definitely exciting me for the rest of the year.”

Rahm was asked for his take on McKibbin just a few hours earlier and it was hardly a surprise that his Legion XIII skipper should have tried to kill the younger man with kindness. The superlatives rolled off the tongue.

The Spaniard hit on his composure and his technique.

“It's a joy to watch him play golf. Every time we're on the range warming up together I always go up to his caddie, Rickie [McCormick] and I tell him, ‘Does he ever get bored of watching the same shot over and over and over, because he really doesn't miss.’”

There have been signs of his ceiling. He won the European Open on the DP World Tour in 2024 and closed out the 2025 season with a commanding seven-shot victory at the Hong Kong Open on the Asian Tour last November.

His Irish Open efforts have produced a T39, T30 and a T20 the last three years and there was no chest thumping when he spoke about the week before as he readjusts to the vagaries of links golf after so long away.

His major efforts haven’t yet set the world alight with four cuts from seven attempts and a tie for 41st at the US Open two years ago his best yet, but Raham, unsurprisingly, put it out there that McKibbin has the game to win one in the years to come..

“He’s got all the tools to win a major and I hope he does some day. Like I said, technically, very few people are better than him swinging the golf club. He'll keep gaining the right experience and definitely give himself a chance some day. He has what he needs to win one.”