LIV Golf has recruited another major champion, according to media reports.
Cameron Smith, the mullet-coiffed Australian who won the Open Championship last month, reportedly has signed a $100 million deal to compete on the rival tour. To put that in perspective, Smith earned $26.78 million in 169 starts on the PGA Tour, including six victories, entering last week’s playoff opener in Memphis.
Fellow Aussie touring professional Cameron Percy confirmed on Australian RSN Radio a report in The Telegraph of London: Smith and Aussie mate Marc Leishman are headed to the Saudi-funded tour.
Asked about the reports before the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, Smith deflected the question. “If there’s something I need to say regarding the PGA Tour or LIV, it’ll come from Cameron Smith, not Cameron Percy.”
Talk of Smith’s impending defection from the PGA Tour circulated last month during the Open Championship, and he tersely dismissed questions while clutching the Claret Jug in the fading sunlight at St. Andrews’ Old Course. Smith reportedly wants to complete the three-week playoffs and also compete for the International team in the Presidents Cup in late September.
Landing Smith could be LIV Golf’s biggest coup yet. He has risen to No. 2 in the Official World Golf Ranking after having won three times in a breakout 2022, including the Sentry Tournament of Champions and Players Championship. A playoff event victory could lift Smith to No. 1.
LIV Golf returns to competition next month with the LIV Golf Invitational Boston on Sept. 2-4 at International Golf Club in Bolton, Massachusetts. It will be the fourth event of an inaugural eight-event schedule.
The PGA Tour will remove players who defected to LIV Golf from the tour’s career money list so that players seeking one-time exemptions for next season via the top 25 or top 50 on the career list will not be adversely affected by the suspended players’ career earnings, according to a memo sent to PGA Tour players and cited in a report by GolfChannel.com’s Rex Hoggard.
Gambling has moved into the mainstream of professional golf in a big way recently, with the PGA Tour and other world tours aligning themselves with oddsmakers as a potential revenue stream. Now, a new twist: Bookies.com offers odds on which players will be the next to defect to LIV Golf. Cameron Smith (see above) is a virtual lock, with players such as Cameron Young and Hideki Matsuyama listed as 50-50 shots to make the jump to the Saudi-funded tour. The longest of longshots: Rory McIlroy.
For all of the disingenuous comments (“grow the game” … “spend more time with family” … “exciting new format”) about why players have chosen to jump to LIV Golf, David Feherty has voiced what had been an unspoken truth: It’s all about the money. Feherty, the witty Northern Irishman who turned a journeyman career on the European Tour into a starring role as a golf broadcaster, told The Blade newspaper of Toledo, Ohio, in a report last week that his decision to leave NBC Sports/Golf Channel after last month’s Open Championship to work for the rival tour was simple: “They paid me a lot of money.” Feherty added: “It’s become more and more difficult, especially in sports broadcasting, to have any kind of character. (NBA analyst) Charles Barkley can say pretty much anything he wants, because it’s, ‘Oh, that’s just Charles.’ And it is just Charles. But I have become more and more guarded over the last few years. There are people waiting around every corner hoping to be offended by something. (Expletive) those people.”
Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned energy company and the financial clout behind the rival LIV Golf tour, posted a 90-percent increase in profit for the second quarter of 2022, according to an Associated Press report. For golf fans who think that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman might tire of dumping millions into his golf dream, consider this fact the next time you fill up: Aramco racked up $48.4 billion in net profit in the three-month period ending in June, a record quarterly number that boosted the company’s half-year earnings to nearly $88 billion. The Saudi economy, which has been boosted by higher energy prices worldwide, will grow at a 7.6 annual rate this year, the best in the world, according to projections by the International Monetary Fund.
The LPGA’s fall Asia Swing has been pared to two events after a second tournament in the Far East was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the LPGA announced.
The Taiwan Swinging Skirts LPGA, which had been scheduled for Oct. 27-30, will not be played. It’s the third consecutive year that the Taiwan event, which dates to 2011, will not be held because of travel restrictions related to the coronavirus.
The news came five weeks after the LPGA canceled its tournament in Shanghai, also for a third consecutive year, because of COVID-19.
The move leaves the LPGA with stops in South Korea and Japan in late October/early November before returning to Florida for the final two events of the 2022 schedule.
Meanwhile, the LPGA announced that Oak Valley Country Club in Wonju, South Korea, will host the 2022 BMW Ladies Championship, the first stop on the truncated Asia Swing. The $2 million, 78-player tournament will be held Oct. 20-23 (READ MORE).
Rachel Heck, Rachel Kuehn and Rose Zhang have been named to the U.S. women’s team for the World Amateur Team Championship later this month in France, the USGA confirmed Sunday.
Heck, 21, of Memphis, Tennessee, is a rising junior at Stanford and the 2021 NCAA champion. Kuehn, 21, of Asheville, North Carolina., is a rising senior at Wake Forest. Zhang, 19, of Irvine, California, is a rising sophomore at Stanford who won this year’s NCAA title and tops the World Amateur Golf Ranking. All three played for the Americans in their recent Curtis Cup victory.
The WATC women’s event is scheduled for Aug. 24-27 at Le Golf National and Le Golf de Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche just west of Paris.
TAP-INS
Dates for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics have been released, setting up a potential conflict with the traditional time frame for the Open Championship. The L.A. Games will be held July 14-30, organizers announced. That fortnight is nearly two weeks earlier than the schedule for the 2024 Paris Games, which are set for July 26-Aug. 11. The Open Championship typically is held on the third weekend of July. Golf in the 2028 L.A. Games will be played at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, the longtime home of the PGA Tour’s Genesis Invitational, formerly known as the Los Angeles Open (READ MORE).
The DP World Tour added two dates to its 2022 schedule, doubling the number of stops on its visit to the Iberian Peninsula. The Mallorca Golf Open will be played Oct. 20-23 at Son Muntaner Golf Club in Palma, Spain, followed by the Portugal Masters on Oct. 27-30 at Dom Pedro Victoria Golf Course in Vilamoura, Portugal (READ MORE).
Golftec, which provides golf lessons and club fittings, announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire SkyTrak, which manufactures launch monitors and simulators (READ MORE).
Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama withdrew before the start of last week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship, citing an ongoing neck injury, but he still is eligible to compete in this week’s 70-man BMW Championship based on his position in the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup standings (READ MORE).
Staff and wire reports