Bankruptcy Filing Lists a Cameron Young LIV Letter Agreement From 2022

TL;DR: A LIV Golf bankruptcy filing lists a Cameron Young LIV Golf letter agreement dated July 24, 2022, a week after Young finished second to Cameron Smith at the Open at St Andrews. Golf Digest characterises the document as Young having signed an intent to play for LIV, while GolfMagic is more careful: the filing entry does not explicitly confirm Young signed the agreement, only that a formal letter agreement existed. Young never joined LIV. After the 2022 Tour Championship he said plainly that he had decided to stay on the PGA Tour, and the filing now shows how close the other decision came.

This is a story about a document, and the document deserves more care than the headlines are giving it. A bankruptcy filing is not a memoir. It lists agreements, marks them rejected, and moves on. What it lists here is enough to rewrite the history of one of golf’s biggest what-ifs, and not quite enough to settle it. The difference between those two things, a letter agreement that existed and a contract that was signed, is the whole story, and it is worth holding onto while the rest of the LIV exodus rushes past.

What does the filing actually show?

A single entry, spotted on social media and then reported by two outlets. GolfMagic describes it precisely: a court document lists a Cameron Young LIV Golf letter agreement dated July 24, 2022, with its status marked as rejected as of September 8, 2026. That September date is the date LIV filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New Jersey, which is why the agreement is marked rejected then, not because Young rejected it then. The rejection is a bankruptcy event, four years after the agreement was dated.

GolfMagic then adds the qualification that matters most, and that its own headline partly obscures. The entry does not explicitly confirm Young signed the agreement. It indicates that a formal letter agreement existed. Golf Digest goes further, writing that Young signed an intent to play for LIV following the 2022 Open. Both outlets agree on the core facts, the date, the existence of the document, and Young’s eventual decision to stay. They differ on how far the entry can be pushed, and the careful version is the one to trust: a formal agreement existed, and Young did not join.

Why was July 2022 the moment LIV wanted him?

Because Young had just become the most valuable unsigned American in golf. A week before the letter agreement date, he finished second at the 150th Open at St Andrews, eagling the last hole to finish one shot behind Cameron Smith. Smith, the winner, joined LIV later that year. Young, the runner-up, was 25, a rookie season already heading for PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, and a player whose game, long, straight, and fearless, looked built for majors.

The speculation at the time was intense, and Young handled it the way most players in that position did: by declining to confirm or deny anything while the rumours ran. By August, he had changed his mind, or at least made it up. After the final round of the 2022 Tour Championship at East Lake, he confirmed he would remain on the PGA Tour following discussions with LIV Golf, saying frankly that he had decided to stay. He said he had been intrigued by some of LIV’s fresh ideas, but was encouraged by leading PGA Tour players working with officials to improve the circuit, and by the chance to play in team events and major championships. That is a practical reason, not a moral one, and it has held up.

What did staying cost him, and what did it buy him?

Nothing, on the evidence since. Young won his first PGA Tour title at the Wyndham Championship in 2025, then won the Players Championship in March 2026 by one stroke over Matt Fitzpatrick, and added the Cadillac Championship at Doral by six shots. He made his Ryder Cup debut at Bethpage in 2025 and was called up again for the 2026 Presidents Cup team. GolfMagic puts his official PGA Tour prize money since the start of 2023 at about $33.3 million, and notes he has climbed as high as third in the world rankings.

That career is the counterfactual the filing invites. Had Young followed Smith to LIV in 2022, he would have spent the last four years outside the PGA Tour’s structure, outside the majors’ usual pathways, and outside the team events he said he wanted to play in. Instead, he stayed, and the majors, the Ryder Cup, and the Players Championship all came to him. The filing does not prove he would have been worse off on LIV. It proves he was close enough to leaving that a formal document existed, and that the decision to stay, which looked like loyalty at the time, also turned out to be good career management.

Why is this document surfacing in a week of LIV departures?

Because the bankruptcy is doing what bankruptcies do: producing paper. The same filings reported by Golf Digest show LIV paid $15.6 million in retention payments to executives before filing, including a $6.375 million retention bonus for chief executive Scott O’Neil in June, while vendors went unpaid. Deltatre says it is owed nearly $860,000, Fantasy Interactive has filed almost $993,000 in unpaid invoices, and players are among the league’s largest unsecured creditors, with Jon Rahm owed $7.5 million in past-due payments and Tyrrell Hatton $3.4 million.

The departures are the other half of the week. On Friday, Tyrrell Hatton confirmed he will not be part of LIV 2.0, and Ian Poulter, one of the league’s original signings, said the same, alongside Tom McKibbin and Lucas Herbert. The deadline for players to commit to the relaunched league is Sunday, October 25, and Golf Digest reports that only four players, Richard Bland, Cameron Tringale, Brendan Steele and Ben Campbell, have publicly said they intend to continue. Jon Rahm has already rejected the relaunched league in bankruptcy court, and the DP World Tour has told LIV players they must choose for 2027. Young, who chose in 2022, is now the earliest example of the choice every LIV player is making this weekend.

What is still unknown?

Three things, and they are not small. Whether Young signed the letter agreement, what terms it contained, and whether any money changed hands. None of those answers is in the filing entry as reported, and Young has not commented on the filing in the coverage checked. The document’s rejection in September 2026 tells us about LIV’s bankruptcy, not about Young’s intentions in 2022.

That uncertainty should not bury the story, but it should shape it. What is proven is that LIV and Young got far enough in July 2022 for a formal letter agreement to exist, dated a week after the biggest finish of his young career, and that Young walked away from it before the season ended. What is not proven is a signed contract, a fee, or a completed deal. The difference between a negotiation that got formal and a deal that got done is exactly the difference between a good story and a false one, and on this evidence, the good story is the one the filing actually supports.