Bryson DeChambeau and Lee Westwood pay price for bold LIV claims.

Bryson DeChambeau and Lee Westwood have done themselves serious damage with what they said before LIV Golf's collapse.

Both players made public statements backing the rebel league's future.

Now that future is gone.

BC Partners, the investment firm that was set to bankroll LIV 2.0, has pulled out.

The deal required 30 to 40 players to commit to the new tour.

LIV reportedly got close to that number, but not close enough.

Without a last-minute savior, the tour will likely liquidate.

LIV 2.0 is over before it even began.

DeChambeau and Westwood are now the biggest losers from the collapse.

Here is why.

WHY DECHAMBEAU IS IN TROUBLE

DeChambeau had a chance to leave LIV this offseason.

Jon Rahm, Joaquin Niemann, Tyrrell Hatton, Lucas Herbert, Sergio Garcia and Ian Poulter all jumped ship.

They pledged allegiance to the PGA Tour or DP World Tour.

DeChambeau did not.

Instead, he became one of the leading figures trying to keep the rebel league alive.

"The business model makes a lot of sense," he said on the Figuring Out podcast.

"We're actually working through that right now for this new model."

"It will make full financial sense. No funny business, no nothing."

"It's going to be done right and this is going to be a league that exists hopefully forever."

Those words now look disastrous.

DeChambeau declared his intention to stay on LIV for 2027.

He turned down the opportunity to walk away while the tour declared bankruptcy.

Now if he tries to return to the PGA Tour, the tour knows he never would have left LIV if it still existed.

That makes his path back much harder.

WHY WESTWOOD IS IN TROUBLE

Westwood, once a DP World Tour legend, is in a similar bind.

This week, he spoke out after Rory McIlroy and DP World Tour CEO Guy Kinnings claimed LIV Golf intended to destroy the European circuit.

Kinnings first made the claim in an interview with The Scotsman.

"We have to protect the Tour against an entity who spent, so we are told, over $7 billion, with one of their aims being to 'destroy the DP World Tour'," Kinnings said.

McIlroy backed him up at the Abu Dhabi Aldar Championship on Wednesday.

"I agree with Guy," said McIlroy.

"They took players; they took sponsors; they turned professional golf into an arms race."

"They were going around Augusta saying they wanted to destroy the European Tour."

"Yeah, I agree with everything."

"I think people that don't agree are probably very shortsighted."

Westwood fired back on TalkSport a day later.

"Rory made that statement earlier this week. Obviously regurgitating what Guy Kinnings had said about LIV wanted to kill the DP World Tour," Westwood said.

"I have never heard any players who play on LIV say that they want to kill the European Tour."

"Why would they do that? Most are actually playing on the European Tour as well, that was the main source of world ranking points."

"Why would you want to kill a tour that you is filling up your schedule?"

Westwood then questioned the timing.

"Maybe someone else was going around saying that at Augusta. Why would you bring it up now, why now bring it up right after it happened at Augusta?"

"The statement there seems to me that we are going to try and blame LIV for everything now it is going."

"Maybe Guy is about to break some bad news to his membership and needs an excuse."

Westwood was speaking just as news broke that BC Partners had walked away.

The 53-year-old confirmed he opted not to sign with LIV 2.0.

"I currently am unemployed," he told The Chipping Forecast podcast.

"I haven't signed up to anything anywhere."

"I haven't made a decision on anything yet."

"Deadlines have come and gone, and I've heard nothing, whether I have to sign or I don't have to sign."

"I haven't signed 2.0. I haven't signed anything."

"This Restructuring Support Agreement everybody talks about, I haven't signed that."

"So literally, I'm unemployed."