LIV Golf concluded season II last weekend at Trump National Doral with its perpetual backbeat, a team championship and its public narrative that the revolution is gaining momentum.
From the outside, it sounds as if LIV loyalists are trying to speak something into being – both Bubba Watson and Dustin Johnson said they have potential buyers of their franchises lining up as far away as Singapore – given the obvious lack of traction that LIV has generated here in the land of the free and the home of the PGA Tour.
Why someone would want to buy a franchise in a league that may not exist one year from now is a reasonable question.
Are the RangeGoats really worth tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars?
We will know if and when someone strokes the check.
Give LIV credit for its bullish belief in what it is doing. Money, even Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund money, can do only so much without conviction behind it. In that way, Greg Norman is the perfect CEO because few ever have had more belief in what they are doing than Norman.
LIV has succeeded in spots: in Australia, for instance, where Cam Smith may be the golf version of Taylor Swift and in the PGA Championship at Oak Hill where Brooks Koepka backhanded the popular perception that LIV players have allowed generational wealth to dull their competitive edges.
“All indications are showing that the position of LIV has never been stronger and that the success of our players and our brand has never been in a better place."
Greg Norman
The larger question, however, is whether LIV has become more than it was when it arrived in early 2022.
It doesn’t feel as if it has, at least not here.
Be-LIV-ers will tell you otherwise while acknowledging it’s not perfect.
“It's important that we continue to evolve our product, our presentation. This was kind of the idea at the beginning,†said Phil Mickelson, who has at times sounded like a conspiracy theorist with his cryptic comments about professional golf’s perceived deep state.
“We thought, OK, we'll have the team championship; we'll have the individual part. But all of that is flexible and should be evolved so that based on fans' needs and wants, as well as television and other entities, so it's easier to understand and becomes more appealing.â€
One of LIV’s biggest problems two years in remains its seeming determination to make the golf adapt to it, not the other way around. Before the first official LIV shot was struck in June 2022, the organization had laid out all of the things that would come its way because the golf establishment would bend to LIV’s wishes.
It hasn’t worked out that way as the recent Official World Golf Ranking decision reinforced. The OWGR offered LIV a pathway to the precious points – while keeping the 54-hole, 48-player, no-cut concept – but it will have to be more like other tours than like a private club that invites whom it wants and keeps them based not on performance but on contract stipulations.
Some LIV members have suggested the four major championships should add a special category for LIV’s top players to qualify automatically for the game’s biggest events. No question the majors are enhanced by having all of the best players there, but the game’s ruling bodies have shown no willingness to acquiesce to LIV’s demands, and they shouldn’t in this case.
LIV’s greatest achievement, beyond stuffing the bank accounts of players (many long past their primes), has been the disruption it has created.
Even now, two seasons in, what conversation there is about LIV rarely, if ever, focuses on the golf itself. It’s like a new restaurant intent on pushing the boundaries, but no one talks about the food.
That’s not to diminish Talor Gooch’s breakout season or how good Cam Smith and Koepka continue to be, but it does underpin one of LIV’s continuing challenges, especially here.
Even the proposed agreement between the PIF, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour continues to be marked by tremors and aftershocks. It sounds increasingly unlikely that a detailed agreement will be reached in time to meet the end-of-year deadline, and negotiations are likely to spill into early 2024.
Private-investment entities are interested in buying in – there was no negotiating exclusivity in the framework agreement that was announced in June – and some believe that could give the PGA Tour an acceptable landing spot if PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan asks for too much on behalf of the fund.
Al-Rumayyan is said to be determined to bring team golf into the new world order. Evidently, he does not fully understand the indifference to team golf here.
Making a deal that satisfies everyone – including American lawmakers – always was going to be difficult. When Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, proclaimed his support of the Palestinians after Hamas’ recent terrorist attacks in Israel, it became even more difficult.
Maybe the sides find a way to cooperate, or maybe this uncomfortable coexistence is what we’re left with.
Norman and others insist that LIV isn’t going anywhere but forward. He said it this time last year, and he’s saying it again now.
“All indications are showing that the position of LIV has never been stronger and that the success of our players and our brand has never been in a better place,†Norman told reporters in Miami last week.
Don’t be surprised if he’s selling that again this time next year, too.
E-MAIL RON
Top: LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman continues to be bullish on his disruptive creation.
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