Professional golf’s most turbulent year closed by offering a window into 2023.
[Photo by Gary Lisbon]
LIV Golf’s turbulent first season came to an end at its Team Championship in late October with a finish – on and off the course – unlike any seen before.
First, Dustin Johnson rolled in a short par putt on the 18th hole at Trump National Doral’s Blue Monster course that secured a win for his 4 Aces squad, beating Cameron Smith’s all-Australian Punch GC by one shot. Johnson’s teammates – Pat Perez, Talor Gooch and Patrick Reed – proceeded to celebrate on the green with their captain by spraying champagne that appeared to have GoPro cameras attached to the bottles. As the 4 Aces were escorted into a nearby gym to conduct a winning press conference, electronic music duo The Chainsmokers kicked off a live concert that concluded the $US50 million affair in Miami. “I don’t care where we do a press conference; we’ve done them in some weird spots,” Johnson said, prompting laughter.
LIV promised via its marketing slogan that it would deliver “Golf, but Louder” in its inaugural campaign, spending approximately $US784 million along the way (and likely to hit $2 billion before the end of 2023). Indeed, the series controversially funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund featured golf, and it was certainly louder. On the final day at LIV’s team finale, Open champion Smith shot the day’s low round of 65 while playing with Johnson. For all the controversy of its inaugural season, LIV had produced a compelling final day – its two biggest recruits in Smith and Johnson going head-to-head.
“It ended up coming down to me and Cam playing the 18th hole to see who wins the Team Championship,” Johnson said. “You couldn’t have drawn up [LIV’s first season] any better.”
The disruption aspect of LIV’s debut season couldn’t have been drawn up any better, either. LIV Golf’s launch, and its subsequent feud with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, evolved into the biggest story in sport. Rumours of top players leaving the PGA Tour for the riches of LIV and its huge, guaranteed contracts created noise. So too did controversial comments made by LIV’s chief executive, Greg Norman, and its most visible recruit, Phil Mickelson. Norman’s remarks earlier this year that “we all make mistakes” appeared to downplay the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate. Mickelson called the controversial Saudi regime bankrolling LIV “scary motherf—-s” given its record of human rights abuses, but saw leverage in the form of “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates”.
Top players did eventually defect from the PGA Tour, and that was the biggest vindication for LIV officials. They lured four former world No.1s in Johnson, Martin Kaymer, Brooks Koepka and Lee Westwood. Twelve Major champions also joined: Mickelson, Johnson, Kaymer, Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Sergio Garcia, Graeme McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen, Patrick Reed, Charl Schwartzel, Smith and Henrik Stenson.
The biggest signing for LIV came when Smith joined in September after the Tour Championship. The 29-year-old had won the tour’s flagship event, the Players Championship, in March before his victory at the 150th Open in July. He wasn’t just a high-profile player but one at the peak of his game.
In his second LIV event, Smith rose to victory in Chicago and said he had proved “to other people that just because I’ve changed tours doesn’t mean I’m a worse player”. It was a nod to criticism from Gary Player and Fred Couples, among others, about LIV’s format of 54 holes and no 36-hole cut.
But after a wild northern summer, LIV appeared to lose momentum in October. Events in Bangkok and Jeddah did not attract the same interest. LIV also still isn’t giving out Official World Golf Ranking points at its events, despite thinking it had outfoxed the OWGR board when it formed an alliance with the little-known MENA (Middle East North Africa) Tour. Moreover, the golf – at times – was not all that compelling, which may well explain the fact that LIV has still not landed a TV deal in the United States.
So what’s next for LIV? What does it intend to do to get louder in 2023? Its fledgling franchise concept will be a good start. The circuit will be renamed LIV Golf League and have 12 teams competing in a 14-event schedule including nine stops in the US and five elsewhere, including a stop in Australia in April. The franchise component will feature an equity stake for captains, a transfer market for players and teams paying for all their operating costs. So far, the camaraderie among the teams has been palpable; most eat meals, practise and socialise together on the road.
This could galvanise Australian fans who will have a refined version of a team they can call theirs, and one that has now proven (in the teams finale, at least) that it can compete with the best. Australians will be able to tune in for each LIV event and know what time their team will be playing and that they’ll be given a decent amount of broadcast time given that it will be led by Smith, who says the team will improve in its second season.
“I feel as though we have a really solid team, but we just didn’t quite gel this whole year,” Smith said. “For some reason or another, we had a bad score in there every day. That just showed what quality we are. We’ll take that momentum into next year. I can’t wait for next year. It’s going to be really exciting. I think LIV Golf is going to be bigger and better and I can’t wait for it to start.”
Smith joining LIV is also set to deliver a LIV tournament in Australia, believed to be in Adelaide. While some golf fans will want to remain loyal to the history and legacy of the PGA Tour, having the likes of Smith, Johnson, DeChambeau and other LIV players contesting a tournament on our shores will only create significant interest in Australian golf in general.
