Fourteen months after winning the 2023 Australian Open, Joaquín Niemann added another title Down Under with his comeback victory in LIV Golf’s premier event in South Australia.
Niemann shot a bogey-free 7-under-par 65, the lowest round of the week at The Grange Golf Club, to erase his starting three-shot deficit behind a trio of 36-hole leaders – Abraham Ancer, Carlos Ortiz and Sam Horsfield – and win LIV Golf Adelaide by three shots on Sunday.
“I knew I needed to do something special,” said Niemann, whose 13-under total was three clear of Ancer and Ortiz. “I got it going at the beginning of the round, was able to keep it going during the day. It just went my way, so it was pretty special.”
It fell Niemann’s way when Mexico’s Ancer, who led for much of the final day, got sideways coming home. Tied with Niemann at 12 under when each of them went to the 17th tee, Ancer finished bogey-bogey while Niemann birdied 18. Ancer’s three bogeys on his last five holes to shoot 71 left him tied with Ortiz for second at 10 under. Horsfield, who led in each of the first two rounds, stumbled to a 3-over 75 on Sunday and slid to seventh.
Ancer’s consolation was collecting a team victory for his Spanish Fireballs Golf Club that also featured David Puig in fourth place at 9 under. Despite having Niemann and Ortiz in the top two, Torque Golf Club finished third in the team standings behind Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII in second.
“It definitely was a fight,” said Ancer. “Extremely proud of what we did as a team, obviously, and individually it was a great week. Obviously the last two holes were rough to finish with bogey-bogey, having a chance to win the tournament. It’s always tough, but I think it’s just fuel for the rest of the season. I feel like my game is trending in the right direction.”
Nobody’s game is trending better than Niemann’s, who follows a strong 2024 season – when he won two of LIV’s first three events in Mayakoba, Mexico, and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and finished runner-up in individual points to Rahm – with another good start to 2025. His win in Adelaide comes two months after topping the Asian Tour’s International Series standings with a win in the PIF Saudi International. He started the new year with a T3 in the International Series India and a T33 in LIV’s Riyadh opener.
In January, the 26-year-old Chilean received a special international invitation to compete in the Masters for the second consecutive year.
“I feel it’s better,” Niemann said of his game compared to last year. “I feel my game keeps improving. That’s something that I keep seeing during my career, that it’s improving every time. I feel like every time I get more experience, I think days like today makes me grow as a player. Yeah, I think there is a lot I have to take from today and learn from it because today was a really good day. If I could have these Sundays more often, chasing leaders, it would talk really good for my game.”
The event at The Grange once again raised the standard of LIV’s potential in golf-starved markets, with raucous crowds flocking again to what remains the breakaway circuit’s most successful event – and with the league agreeing to an extension through 2031. It got off to a rousing start when Patrick Reed aced the par-3 12th “Watering Hole” on just the second hole after the shotgun start in the first round, prompting an eruption from the rowdy crowd that showered the tee box with drinks reminiscent of the 2023 debut event in Adelaide when Chase Koepka aced the same hole.
It was the first Adelaide event held without native Aussie Greg Norman at the helm – though he was on hand in his new role as board member.
“It was unreal. My throat still hurts from it,” said Reed. “The crazy thing was the adrenaline afterwards. I was shaking going back to the tee and just couldn’t kind of calm down and settle into the round after that point. It’s one of those things that you don’t really expect.
“I know the caddies and the guys I was playing with, as they were walking off the green, they were just complaining about how soaked they were. … I couldn’t feel anything at that point. I was just pumped up with adrenaline when that thing went in. I saw cups and beers and liquid flying everywhere.
“That’s what we kind of expected. If somebody makes a hole-in-one on a hole like that, you expect just craziness and chaos, and it was. The great thing, I felt like everyone did it the right way. No one got hurt, which is good. You just never know with stuff flying around out there. I was glad to kind of go ahead and get out there and give them something that they wanted.”
It was the first Adelaide event held without native Aussie Greg Norman at the helm – though he was on hand in his new role as board member. New LIV CEO Scott O’Neil sees nothing but blue skies ahead as a potential deal between Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and PGA Tour appears closer and the league gains narrow exemption footholds in half of the major championships.
“So I see momentum. … I think that right now we are going to the moon and back,” O’Neil said.
Brooks Koepka, who has no issues with access to the majors as a five-time major winner including the 2023 PGA Championship, believes the exemptions granted to LIV into the U.S. Open and Open Championship are a “huge step” toward LIV realizing its full potential.
“Yeah, this is the first step of many I think we’re looking to take,” Koepka said. “The opportunity is there. I think the organizations around the world, the R&A, the USGA, they’re looking at LIV Golf as part of the golf ecosystem now. That is a huge, huge step forward for us.
“Hopefully we have a player that’s not exempt that’s up there ready to go and gets in another major because all it does is just add value to this league and to each team.”
Scott Michaux