Ian Poulter and Tyrrell Hatton among trio of LIV players who join the exodus

Louis Oosthuizen one day, and then Ian Poulter and Tyrrell Hatton. The players departing from LIV Golf seem to be increasing by the day with a Sunday deadline potentially looming for other players to decide if they are staying for the new version that no longer includes Saudi money.

Former world No. 1 Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia already have separated from LIV Golf, which is emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy with BC Partners Credit and its $300 million pledge.

Poulter and Hatton both posted Friday on Instagram they will not be part of LIV 2.0.

“I am excited for what the next chapter of my career holds,” Hatton wrote in a brief note to confirm the Englishman is leaving.

Hatton, who has played on the last four Ryder Cup teams, won twice on the European tour and twice on LIV since defecting to the rival league in 2024 to join Rahm on his Legions XIII team.

Poulter, 50, won 14 times worldwide on six tours and is best known for his Ryder Cup heroics, particularly in leading Europe to a record comeback on the road at Medinah in 2012. His son, Luke, is a senior at Florida and is No. 9 in the world amateur ranking and No. 8 in the PGA Tour University ranking.

“Ultimately, the opportunity to spend more time at home with my family, reduce international travel, focus on senior golf and have the opportunity to purse other interests was something that I felt was right for me at this stage of my life and career,” Poulter wrote.

Louis Oosthuizen, a 44-year-old South African, announced Wednesday he was leaving his Southern Guards team in LIV.

“I realized I have a lot more in me, and my biggest fear was that the schedule on LIV 2.0 would be tough to manage,” Oosthuizen wrote in a social media post. ”I feel I have a few more years of good, competitive golf left in me, and the only way to be really sharp and competitive is through a schedule I control.”

Oosthuizen, known for having one of the purest swings in golf, won the British Open at St. Andrews in 2010 and has the Grand Slam of runner-up finishes in all four majors.

Others who have said they would not stick around include Abraham Ancer, David Puig and Adrian Meronk, whose victory in the Dunhill Links Championship gave him renewed status on the European tour.

The European tour issued an ultimatum Oct. 12 that anyone signing up for LIV 2.0 would not be able to hold European tour membership, key for players who want to be eligible for the Ryder Cup.

A New Jersey bankruptcy court last week approved the amended restructuring support agreement with BC Partners, allowing LIV to carry on with restructuring. But it needs ample support from the players, and only four of them — Cameron Tringale, Brendan Steele, 53-year-old Richard Bland and Ben Campbell — have said they are staying put.

BC Partners set a Sunday deadline for players to decide, though it has the right to extend or to waive that deadline. Under the amended agreement the court approved, BC Partners no longer has a set number of players it requires to move forward, giving it some latitude.

LIV has said it would make no comment on players' decisions.

Golf Digest reported 2022 British Open champion Cam Smith of Australia has asked for separation from LIV. Joaquin Niemann has not decided which way he will go, his manager said Friday. Bryson DeChambeau has been a proponent of LIV's future, though he has not indicated what he will do.

The PGA Tour currently offers membership to the leading 10 players from the European tour points list not already exempt, which has created a path back in 2027 for Patrick Reed and Eugenio Chacarra, both no longer with LIV.

The tour has said it is not contemplating a returning members program that Brooks Koepka accepted in January, and which Rahm, DeChambeau and Smith declined. That was three months before the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia said it would no longer support LIV after 2026.

The next bankruptcy hearing for LIV is scheduled for Nov. 5.

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FILE - Captain Louis Oosthuizen of Southern Guards GC hits his shot from the 11th tee during the second round of MAADEN LIV Golf Virginia at Trump National Golf Club on May 8, 2026 in Sterling, Va. (Photo by Jon Ferrey/LIV Golf, File)

FILE - The Great Britain and Ireland team's Luke Poulter, left, walks with his father, Ian Poulter, during Walker Cup golf matches against the USA team at Cypress Point Club on Sept. 7, 2025, in Pebble Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Thien-An Truong, File)

The Oregon man who fatally shot a teenage gunman to end a deadly rampage at an elementary school last week says he was the children's “last line of defense” and that he regrets not arriving soon enough to save them all.

Kaylub Giamanco, whose two daughters attend Silver Rail Elementary, where the Oct. 15 attack occurred, said he feels like he failed the families of those who died.

“I want to apologize for not saving their babies, that’s probably the biggest thing for me right now,” Giamanco told Oregon Public Broadcasting in an interview published Friday. “The gratitude for saving people’s children is awesome. But there were ones that I didn’t save.”

Three children — ages 5, 8 and 11 — and a teacher were killed at the school in Bend, Oregon, last week when a former student there, 16-year-old Griffin J. John II, blasted his way through locked doors with a shotgun and attacked a special needs classroom. Another student was critically injured and a teacher was injured and hospitalized.

Police say another teacher threw her phone at the attacker and wrestled with him before Giamanco shot and killed him after following the gunman into the building.

Giamanco said he dropped off his daughters at the school that morning before driving to work. A few hours later, the 36-year-old carpenter was passing the school again as he was heading home for lunch.

He said he spotted someone wearing black and carrying a long gun fire shots into a pickup truck and at a person mowing the school's lawn before the shooter climbed a fence and headed toward the school building.

Giamanco said “panic fled into my brain.” He grabbed a .40-caliber handgun from his truck's center console and went after the gunman as he dialed 911. He asked the dispatcher to send help before hanging up his phone.

“I said 'I’m sorry I have to go in. People are going to die,'” Giamanco said in the interview.

As he got closer to the building, Giamanco said, he lay on his stomach and used his elbows to crawl across the ground.

“That’s when I started hearing children pleading for their lives,” he said. “And then I started hearing gunfire and I just started army crawling faster and faster. And I told myself: 'This is probably the last thing that I’m ever going to do.'”

Giamanco said he entered the school through a window that had been shot out. Peeking into a nearby classroom, he saw a teacher grappling with the shooter. He said he faced them both in profile, giving him an open shot.

“I felt like I was the last line of defense between him and the rest of the children,” Giamanco said.

He swung the door open, stepped into the room and fired his gun.

Both the gunman and the teacher dropped to the floor. The teacher bolted from the room as the shooter reached for his shotgun.

“He was scrambling for his weapon,” Giamanco said. “I looked at him and I shot him two more times to make sure that he couldn’t move, because I was afraid of him shooting anybody else.”

Police have said Giamanco was carrying his gun legally in his truck and have credited him and the unarmed teacher who confronted the gunman with saving lives. A day after the shootings, President Donald Trump said that Giamanco was a “great hero” who “took care of business.”

A second teacher in the classroom, Becky Drury, said in a statement Wednesday that she lay on the floor, helplessly playing dead, after being struck at close range by a shotgun blast that nearly severed her left hand.

The teacher who struggled with the shooter hasn't been publicly identified. Giamanco told the public broadcaster that she's “a real true hero” whose actions gave him an opening to kill the attacker.

“I can’t tell you what it feels like to take a life … but I can tell you that I genuinely feel like I was supposed to be there,” Giamanco said. “If I wasn’t there, I just don’t know what would have happened.”

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.

Children place flowers at a makeshift memorial outside Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Ore., Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, a day after a deadly shooting. (AP Photo/Joe Kline)

Police tape is placed outside Silver Rail Elementary school, where a shooting took place, on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026 in Bend, Ore. (AP Photo/Joe Kline)