Belgium's Thomas Pieters, 34th in the World, to Join LIV Golf

The 31-year-old DP World Tour member has won six times and was an NCAA champion at Illinois.

LOS ANGELES — Belgian golf star Thomas Pieters is headed to LIV Golf and will be announced as one of the new members of the league on Monday, Sports Illustrated has confirmed.

The former standout at the University of Illinois who played for Europe at the 2016 Ryder Cup will be one of the last players added to the 48-player field that will compete in the first event of 2023 next week at Mayakoba in Mexico.

The news was first reported by the website handicap54.golf.

Pieters, 31, had expressed dismay last week on social media about not getting in this week’s Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club, calling it one of his favorite tournaments of the year.

A member of the DP World Tour who has won six times on that circuit, Pieters is ranked 34th in the world. He is not a member of the PGA Tour and the Genesis does not use the Official World Golf Ranking as a qualification criteria for its tournaments.

An individual NCAA champion when he played at Illinois, Pieters was Europe’s best player in a losing effort at the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine, where he was Europe’s best-ever rookie, winning four out of five points.

His last tournament start came at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic, where he tied for sixth.

The team Pieters will play for has yet to be announced. LIV Golf began unveiling some of its players and teams on Thursday and has said that Mito Pereira and Sebastian Munoz will also be new members of the league.