Sergio Garcia has taken the latest step towards playing for Ryder Cup Team Europe once again after rejoining the DP World Tour for the 2025 season.
The Spaniard, who has featured in 11 contests and is the event’s record points scorer, was ineligible to compete in last year’s edition in Rome after resigning his DP World Tour membership.
The decision to leave the Wentworth-based circuit came shortly after he was sanctioned for breaching conflicting tournament regulation by participating on the LIV Golf League.
A stipulation of playing for the European Ryder Cup team is that players must be a member of the DP World Tour to be eligible for the biennial contest.
The 2018 Masters champion has now decided to pay his outstanding fines – totalling over £1million – and will serve tournament suspensions before being eligible to compete on the DP World Tour in 2025.
A spokesman for the DP World Tour confirmed Garcia applied to return to the membership before the November 17 deadline.
"He has paid his fines but will have to serve his suspensions before he can play on the DP World Tour," the spokesman added.
With a suspension still to serve, it’s unlikely Garcia will be able to play at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic in January, but he should return to golf’s global circuit at a later date as he aims to play his way onto Luke Donald’s team.
Just last month, Donald revealed he had spoken to Garcia about his availability.
"Obviously he resigned his membership a couple years ago," Donald said of Garcia, speaking at an event in New York to mark the countdown to next year's Europe-USA Ryder Cup showdown at Bethpage.
"But we have had some chats. He's considering rejoining. He'd have to follow all the rules and regulations like everyone else, and if he does that, again, he will be eligible to partake in the Ryder Cup.
"We chatted on phone a couple weeks ago. He's certainly very interested in doing that. He understands everything that's involved, and again, the decision has to go to him, whether he's prepared to do all that.
"But certainly, we've had that discussion, yes."
The LIV Golf sextet of Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, Patrick Reed, Joaquin Niemann, Dean Burmester and Dubai resident Adrian Meronk also applied for DP World Tour membership before the deadline on November 17.
