There has been a ton 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 relegated for poor performance or, in the case of Jinichiro Kozuma, dropped from the league unceremoniously just before the season.
Kozuma, who played for the Iron Heads last year, had a solid season on the course, just missing out on a guaranteed spot for 2026. But last week, Kozuma found out he had lost his spot in LIV, and he only discovered the news thanks to a social media post.
Here’s what you need to know.
Jinichiro Kozuma career on LIV Golf ends unexpectedly early
Kozuma played in a few LIV Golf events in the inaugural season back in 2022. Then at the end of 2023, he earned a full spot on the league 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 earned one top-10 finish in his first full LIV season, eventually finishing 45th in the final standings. While it wasn’t ideal, it was good enough to avoid 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 season’s end, he was ranked 32nd, just missing out on 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 out of the Drop Zone. But as the 2026 LIV Golf season nears, both Kozuma and Na find themselves without jobs. And the Iron Heads team has been relegated to the dust bin of history.
So what happened?
Sports Illustrated’s Bob Harig 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 dropped from the league, which came as “unexpected” news to the pro.
“There were definitely a few parts of the process that surprised me. For example, I only found out recently that Kevin Na would no longer be the captain, so that was unexpected for me as well,” Kozuma told Harig.
But Kozuma was left in the dark long before that. According to him, he didn’t receive any communication from his LIV team for much of last year, leaving him unable to “fully understand what the situation was.”
“Since last year, I personally didn’t receive any direct communication from the Iron Heads organization. Because of that, there was a period where it was difficult to fully understand what the situation was,” Kozuma explained through a translator. “So overall, the way things unfolded was a bit unexpected, and I was simply trying to stay patient and figure out the best next steps.”
Then late last year, Kozuma was contacted by the Iron Heads and received some shocking news. They were considering a wholesale team re-brand, and there was a chance he wouldn’t have a spot on the new team.
“Toward the end of last year, I heard that there was a possibility the Iron Heads might transition into a Korean-based team. At the same time, I was also told that if that happened, there was a chance I wouldn’t be able to remain 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, I wasn’t completely sure what the final decision would be,” Kozuma said.
And he was still in the unknown when he opened Instagram on January 12 to find an official team post announcing that the Iron Heads would now become the Korean Golf Club. It was only then that Kozuma finally knew his time on LIV was over.
“The moment I clearly understood that I wouldn’t be playing for the Iron Heads moving forward was when I saw the official Instagram post announcing the Korean team,” Kozuma revealed. “That was when everything became clear for me.”
The timing of the news was especially difficult for Kozuma. It came less than one 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 spots on LIV Golf for 2026.
To read Harig’s full interview with Kozuma for Sports Illustrated, click here.
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