DUBAI — It was just a tease back in March, when Laurie Canter made his Players Championship debut, earning the customary set of Tiffany cufflinks from PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan. It’s a lot more real now, eight months later, that Canter will become the first former-LIV-er to play the PGA Tour in full.
As one of the top 10 not-already-exempt players in the Race to Dubai — which finished tallying points Sunday — Canter receives full status on the PGA Tour next season, a prize he never would have considered three years ago when he played a full season on its rival tour.
It was June 9, 2022, when Canter teed it up as a founding member of Cleeks GC. A few minutes after those opening LIV tee shots, Monahan issued a memo to the golf world: all competitors in the rival tour were receiving a suspension from PGA Tour play. From that moment forward, all LIV events were considered “unauthorized” tournaments, and anyone who played in them would have to wait a full year before trying to receive a spot in a PGA Tour-sanctioned event.
That even applied to non-Tour members like Canter, who found himself caught in an undesirable middle ground of pro golf’s Cold War. He played a full season in 2022 and then served as a LIV wild card in 2023. After two events in early 2024, he was replaced by LIV’s next big thing, Anthony Kim.
Canter didn’t take it personally, but his pro golf options were limited. He took his financial security — having made a comfy $5.6 million in 20 LIV events — and headed back to the DP World Tour, just in time to play the best golf of his life.
Canter won the European Open in June, 2024 and then the Bahrain Championship in March, 2025, earning just enough world ranking points to squeeze into the Players Championship field, which is where he earned those special cufflinks from Monahan.
In his debut at TPC Sawgrass, Canter was the center of attention during first-timer interview day before eventually missing the cut. His year has been feast or famine ever since, with just enough feasting to reach the DP World Tour Championship, contend for the title and carve out one of those 10 PGA Tour cards for 2026.
“It hasn’t been orthodox or, in that respect, it hasn’t been by design,” Canter during that Players debut in March. “It’s just how it worked for me with the opportunities that were in front of me.”
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