‘No direct communication received’: Pro’s sudden departure from LIV Golf raises questions

There’s been a lot of movement in LIV Golf’s league roster ahead of the 2026 season. While Brooks Koepka’s departure was the biggest news, plenty of other players have joined LIV, been demoted for poor performances or, in the case of Jinichiro Kozuma, unceremoniously dropped from the league just before the season.

Kozuma, who played for the Iron Heads last year, had a solid season on the court and just missed out on a guaranteed spot for 2026. But last week, Kozuma discovered he had lost his spot in LIV, and he only discovered the news thanks to a post on social media.

Here’s what you need to know.

Jinichiro Kozuma’s career at LIV Golf ends unexpectedly early

Kozuma played in a few LIV Golf events in its inaugural season in 2022. In late 2023, he earned a full spot in the competition by finishing in the top 3 in the LIV Promotions event, LIV’s first-ever Q-School style tournament.

For the 2024 season, Kozuma signed with the Iron Heads, captained by former PGA Tour winner Kevin Na.

Kozuma achieved one top-10 finish in his first full LIV season, eventually finishing 45th in the final standings. While not ideal, it was good enough to prevent LIV’s Drop: players ranked 49th or worse, who are typically relegated from the league.

In 2025, Kozuma had a much stronger season. The 31-year-old pro, who won three times on the Japan Tour, 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 32nd, just missing the top-24 cutoff for LIV’s Lock Zone. Instead, he found himself in the Open Zone, where players can be traded or dropped entirely.

His captain, Na, finished 44th, still well outside the Drop Zone. But as the 2026 LIV Golf season approaches, both Kozuma and Na are without a job. And the Iron Heads team has been relegated to the dustbin of history.

So what happened?

Kozuma found out on social media that he had been removed from LIV

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 that Na would be cut from the competition, which came as “unexpected” news for the pro.

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

But Kozuma was in limbo long before that. According to him, he did not receive any communication from his LIV team for most of the past year, which prevented him from “fully understanding what the situation was.”

“Since last year, I personally have not received any direct communication from the Iron Heads organization. Therefore, there was a period when it was difficult to fully understand what the situation was,” Kozuma explained through a translator. “So overall, the way things unfolded was a little bit unexpected, and I just tried to stay patient and figure out the best next steps.”

Late last year, Kozuma was contacted by the Iron Heads and received shocking news. They were considering a rebrand of the wholesale team, and there was a chance he wouldn’t get a spot on the new team.

“At the end of last year, I heard that there was a possibility that the Iron Heads would transfer to a Korean 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. However, after that there were a lot of rumors and the situation seemed to change from time to time. So for a while I wasn’t quite sure what the final decision would be,” Kozuma said.

And he was still in the unknown when he opened Instagram on Jan. 12 and found an official team post announcing that the Iron Heads would now become the Korean Golf Club. Only then did Kozuma finally know that his time at LIV was over.

“The moment I clearly understood that I would not be playing for the Iron Heads anymore was when I saw the official Instagram post announcing the Korean team,” Kozuma revealed. “Then everything became clear to me.”

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

Controversially, as many as 14 players who finished worse than Kozuma in 2025 still have their place at LIV Golf for 2026.

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