What's happening with LIV Golf?
And how am I supposed to LIV, laugh and love, damnit?
Followers of professional golf, and this space, are undoubtedly aware that back in June (actually, the anniversary of D-Day), the PGA Tour and LIV Golf - it’s former archnemesis and an “exstential threat” - entered into an agreement to … do something.
The details were fuzzy but the “Framework Agreement” seemed at first to signal that LIV and the PGA Tour would stop fighting in court, and find a way to co-exist happily, or at least less litigiously. And then, the PGA finished up its season and the Americans once again lost a Europe hosted Ryder Cup, and that was that for professional golf, right?
Well, no. Were you aware that LIV wrapped up its professional season a week ago? The season long race for both team and individual championships wrapped up, and those results also dictated relegation for next season.
I mean, these are COOL things about LIV that distinguish them from PGA golf. There are teams and individual competitions like Formula 1 as well as amateur golf. There is relegation like soccer. Players can be traded from team to team, also like most other professional sports, but a new thing for golf.
I’m a fairly big golf fan and I think ALL of that is cool. And I have zero idea what LIV is really doing in any of it.
This is in some way a “chicken and egg” situation. LIV Golf is really not shown on TV for a variety of reasons but most of which fall back on the PGA Tour having a chokehold on TV contracts. Most of the golf podcasts I listen to do NOT really give LIV attention on a tournament by tournament basis, and again because it’s hard to watch, often have limited more to offer and discuss.
Would I be more interested in LIV if No Laying Up, Shotgun Start and The Fried Egg gave it a lot more attention? If it was being aired at the same time I normally expect to watch professional golf, on a channel I actually get by default?
Probably. Maybe?
But the other key problem is that for all the cool things that differentiate LIV, the tour is so, so bad (and admittedly, exceptionally new at this) in marketing those things.
Who got relegated? It’s supposed to be the bottom six players at the end of individual points. They then need to play in a tournament with others where the top-3 will play for LIV in 2024. That’s cool, right?
Except Brooks Koepka, captain of Smash GC, has already said his team has three players on it - himself, Jason Kokrak and his brother, Chase. Chase has been relegated but … there’s nothing stopping Koepka from just bringing him back.
Also, two others who fell into relegation are their own team captains and therefore EXEMPT from relegation. Good news for Martin Kaymer and Lee Westwood who got saved by this exemption.
So relegation is SORT of a farce, but also seems to really only impact James Piot, Sihwan Kim, Jediah Morgan. If you know who more than one of those people is, congratulations.
Notably absent from Koepka’s list of teammates is Matthew Wolff, who could have been traded or waived but … we don’t really know WHAT happened. (The LIV Golf site suggests he’s still a member of Smash.)
Hey, who won the individual championship? And what comes with that? Did you know it was Talor Gooch? And that he won $18,000,000 for doing that (in addition to the $12-15 million he made in winnings during the season?) Money is fairly boring, but it’s hard to ignore someone named Talor Gooch winning about $30,000,000 in one season. But did you know this? Could you pick Gooch out of a lineup?
Did you know that Brooks finished 3rd in points, earning an additional $4,000,000 - and by doing so, knocked his former enemy Bryson DeChambeau out of that spot, costing him that same four million? That’s a great and weird story, and I just learned about it when I did a search for a photo of Brooks winning the tournament last week.
As for the team championship, that will be settled at the Apricot Insurrectionist Invitational - sorry, Trump Doral - this weekend. Do you have any idea who is in the mix? It seems to be the 4Aces, Crushers GC and Torque GC. I know that Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed and Pat Perez are in the 4Aces. (Also, it appears, Peter Uehlein.) I honestly don’t know who is in the other two teams and that’s part of the problem.
But I didn’t know ANYTHING about Formula 1 a few years ago, and now I can tell you the teams and drivers in that league, even if it’s been an utter bore this season as Max Verstappen wins everything. So perhaps it’s the fact I can’t really keep up with it like a fan, and not that the product itself is so woefully subpar.
I don’t think I’d be a LIV fan - and nobody is attending these events either, in any real capacity. But I can’t say I honestly know that for sure. Putting the execrable politics of LIV aside, which is impossible to do, is the golf any good? Almost every player I hated watching on the PGA Tour is now on LIV, so that’s not ideal. The courses they play are uninspired and almost intentionally laced with aggressive politics. It doesn’t REALLY seem like everyone is even really trying, though it’s also clear that this doesn’t stop the very best of them from showing up prepared for majors, which shocked me.
The Fried Egg did a great job summarizing the state of LIV and options for where it can go from here - I’d recommend listening to it here.
It will be quite interesting to see where we go from here. It could still end up with the leagues truly merging, or we could soon hear about more PGA players leaving for LIV (which otherwise claims its lineups are mostly set for next year, and both things can’t be true).
Stay tuned.
Apricot Insurrectionist Invitational 😂