Pro’s sudden exit from LIV Golf raises questions

There has been a lot of movement on the LIV Golf league roster ahead of the 2026 season. While The departure of Brooks Koepka it was the biggest news many more players have joined LIVwas relegated for poor performances or, in Jinichiro Kozuma’s case, unceremoniously left the league shortly before the season.

Kozuma, who played for the Iron Heads last year, had a solid season on the field, missing out on a guaranteed spot for 2026. But last week, Kozuma found out that he had lost his spot at LIV, and he only revealed the news thanks to a post on social media.

Here’s what you need to know.

Jinichiro Kozuma’s LIV Golf career ends abruptly early

Kozuma played in several LIV golf events in the inaugural season in 2022. Then in late 2023, he earned a full league spot finishing in the top 3 at the LIV Promotions eventLIV’s first Q-School style tournament.

For the 2024 season, Kozuma signed with the Iron Heads captained by the former PGA Tour winner Afle is to be..

Kozuma earned a top-10 finish his first full LIV seasonultimately finishing 45th in the final standings. While it wasn’t ideal, it was good enough to avoid the LIV relegation – players ranked 49th or worse who are usually relegated.

In 2025, Kozuma had a much stronger season. The 31-year-old pro, who won the Japan Tour three times, missed the first few events of the season due to injury. When he returned, he finished T7 at LIV Golf Korea and lost to Patrick Reed in a playoff at LIV Golf Dallas.

By the end of the season, he was ranked 32ndthey just miss the first 24th limit for the LIV locking area. Instead, he found himself in the Open Zone, where players can be traded or left entirely.

Its captain, Na, finished 44th, still well outside the Drop Zone. But as the 2026 LIV Golf season approaches, both Kozuma and Na find themselves out of a job. And the Iron Heads team has fallen into the dustbin of history.

So what happened?

Kozuma revealed that he had been dropped from LIV on social media

Bob Harig of Sports Illustrated spoke with Kozuma this week and during the interview the former LIV pro explained how his departure from LIV came about.

Kozuma told Harig that he first heard Na would be removed from the league, which came as “unexpected” news to the pro.

“There were definitely some parts of the process that surprised me. For example, I only recently found out that Kevin Na would no longer be captain, so it was a surprise to me as well,” Kozuma. Harig asked.

But Kozuma was left in the dark long before that. According to him, he received no communication from his LIV team for most of last year, leaving him unable to “fully understand what the situation was”.

“Since last year, I personally have not received any direct communication from the Iron Heads organization. Because of this, it has been a period where it was difficult to fully understand what the situation was like,” Kozuma explained through a translator. “So overall, the way things went was a little bit unexpected, and I was just trying to stay patient and figure out the best next steps.”

Then late last year, Kozuma was contacted by the Iron Heads and received shocking news. They were considering a wholesale re-brand of the team, and there was a chance he wouldn’t have a spot on the new team.

“At the end of last year, I heard that there was a possibility of Iron Heads moving to a Korea-based team. At the same time, I was also told that if that happened, there was a chance that I wouldn’t be able to stay with the team. After that, however, there were a lot of rumors and the situation seemed to change from time to time. So for a while, Kozuma was completely silent on what the final decision would be.”

And he was still a stranger when he opened Instagram on January 12 to find an official team post announcing it Iron Heads would now become the Korean Golf Club. It was only then that Kozuma finally realized that his time at LIV was over.

“The moment I knew for sure that I would not be playing for Iron Heads moving forward was when I saw the official Instagram post announcing the Korean team,” Kozuma revealed. “That’s when it all became clear to me.”

The timing of the news was particularly difficult for Kozuma. It came less than a month before LIV’s season-opening tournament in Saudi Arabia.

Controversially, up to 14 players who finished worse than Kozuma in 2025 still have their LIV Golf spots for 2026.

To read Harig’s full interview with Kozuma for Sports Illustrated, click here.