Top Australian to join Cameron Smith’s LIV Golf team

Lucas Herbert will join Cameron Smith’s all-Australian LIV Golf team, marking the most significant signing for the Saudi-backed league since Jon Rahm’s bombshell switch.

World No. 69 Herbert, who has won on both the PGA Tour and DP World Tour in his career, will be unveiled as the fourth member of Smith’s Ripper GC in coming days, according to multiple Australian golf sources familiar with the deal.

It will be a huge boost for Smith’s franchise, which struggled during last year’s LIV Golf season, and lost Jed Morgan to relegation.

Two-time Australian Open winner Matt Jones was re-signed to the roster despite finishing the year as a free agent.

Herbert has long been considered one of the best prospects in Australian men’s golf, and sits only behind Jason Day (18), Smith (30), Min Woo Lee (37), Cameron Davis (45) and Adam Scott (49) as Australians on the world rankings.

Sources told this masthead Smith approached Herbert about a potential switch to Greg Norman’s LIV Golf during the Australian summer, in which Herbert finished seventh at both the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland and the Australian Open in Sydney.

Lucas Herbert will join LIV Golf.Credit: Getty

The parties have been working towards a deal and Herbert will appear alongside Smith, Jones and Marc Leishman at LIV’s opening event at Mayakoba in Mexico next week.

Herbert’s switch means he will forgo any chance of appearing for Australia at the Olympic Games later this year given LIV is still not officially recognised by the global body which collates the world rankings.

Having finished 2023 just outside the top 50, Herbert will also skip the year’s majors, starting with The Masters at Augusta National in April.

But not being eligible for the PGA Tour’s elevated events this year, and with the chance to test himself against Rahm - who signed an eye-watering $900 million deal to join LIV in December - Smith, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau on a regular basis proved irresistible to Herbert.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which bankrolls LIV Golf, and the PGA Tour remain locked in talks about creating a new commercial entity that would end the bitter divide in men’s professional golf.

The parties were supposed to formalise a framework agreement by December 31 last year but agreed on an extension as LIV and Norman forge ahead with plans for a worldwide schedule in 2024.

Herbert will join Smith as the hometown heroes for the second staging of LIV’s Adelaide event from April 26.

Herbert has already won three times on the DP World Tour to go with his maiden PGA Tour victory at the Bermuda Championship in 2021.

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