The 29-year-old Australian becomes the top-ranked player to join LIV Golf. He will attend the next event in the series, the LIV Golf Invitational Boston at The International Golf Club in Massachusetts.
World No. 19 Chilean Joaquin Niemann, Harold Varner III, Cameron Tringale, Marc Leishman and Anirban Lahiri have also joined LIV Golf.
All participating players will compete in the LIV Golf Invitational Boston, taking place September 2-4.
CNN has reached out to the PGA Tour for comment.
What is LIV Golf?
The controversial LIV Golf Tour has divided the golfing world.
The Breakaway series is funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) – a sovereign wealth fund chaired by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and the man credited in a US intelligence report as responsible for approving the Operation that led to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Bin Salman has denied any involvement in Khashoggi’s murder.
LIV Golf has offered players huge sums of money to leave established golf tournaments – the PGA Tour and DP World Tour – for the new series.
Players who go to the LIV Golf Tour have been suspended from the PGA Tour and criticized for abandoning the fundamentals of golf.
They have also been criticized for accepting money from a country with a dismal human rights record. Human rights groups have protested against the country for carrying out mass executions and treating gay people.
The PIF has pledged to award a total of $250 million in prize money. Each of the first seven events has a total prize pool of $25 million, with $20 million split between each player and the remaining $5 million split between the top three teams at the end of each week.
For each event, players are split into 12 teams, and unlike typical golf events, tournaments are held over three days, not four, with the 48-man field starting with a shotgun start – all at once – in the hopes to be a more engaging, action-packed event.