What’s next for LIV Golf after two seasons?
The breakaway golf tour ends its season in Miami with hype and hope, but few certainties in the months ahead.
DORAL, Fla. — Phil Mickelson outplayed Brooks Koepka at the 2021 PGA Championship not even 30 months ago, but it feels like another era entirely. Back then, Mickelson rode an unprecedented wave of goodwill and good fortune, basking in the love of vast galleries among the dunes at Kiawah Island as he became the oldest major winner in the sport’s history.
What a difference a couple years makes, huh? Mickelson has gone from darling to pariah to provocateur. Koepka flailed and fought his way through injuries, from lost to reborn. Golf itself split down the middle, a breakaway tour and an influx of petrochemical billions presenting the gravest threat to the PGA Tour’s continued existence since its creation half a century ago.
So when Mickelson and Koepka teed it up on Friday afternoon at Trump Doral in Miami to wrap up the second season of the LIV Golf tour, about all that remained of that memorable Sunday at Kiawah were their distinctive swings.
Everything else — from the bleachers that surrounded their first tee to the shotgun start to the constant thrum of club music all over the course — was a visible sign of how much golf has changed in the last two years, and how much change is yet to come. LIV has spent the last 18 months talking the biggest of games, and with upheaval coming over the horizon, it’s time to see if the breakaway tour can live up to its own substantial hype.
Does LIV's perception of itself match reality?
The men’s professional golf game is in a deeply unsettled place right now. The PGA Tour is either a fatted calf or a lean cheetah, depending on whose perspective you believe. LIV Golf has now completed two seasons at a cost of untold millions. A surprise June truce between the Tour and LIV’s financial backer, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, had the effect of halting all litigation between the two, but a so-called “framework agreement” to outline the future, planned to be complete by the end of the year, now appears in serious jeopardy.
Viewed from 40,000 feet above the fray, golf occupies a strange space in the American sports landscape. It’s a niche sport; only Tiger Woods and, on occasion, Mickelson have broken through to the culture at large. Along with tennis, it’s the only high-level professional sport that amateurs still play regularly after high school.
But golf also offers entry into the corridors of power in the Western world — the seventh green at Pebble Beach, the oak tree outside the Augusta National clubhouse, the Big Room of the R&A clubhouse at St. Andrews — that mere wealth can’t access. If you want to understand why the Saudis are investing billions into the game of golf, that would be a good place to start.
For now, let’s zoom in much closer, right to the first tee alongside Mickelson and Koepka. This is the first day of LIV’s season-ending team championship, where 12 four-man teams will compete for a purse of $50 million. The weekend’s format is Ryder Cup stuffed with even more Ryder Cup — teams play two matches of singles match play and one of foursomes, topped with an all-in stroke play event on Sunday.
Fans stack three and four deep around the tee box as Apashe’s “Majesty” rattles everyone’s bones. Greg Norman looks on from beside the tee, a confident grin on his face. This is the kind of moment he’s craved, pitched and promised as he’s sung the praises of LIV: golf’s best challenging golf’s most famous.
According to the Official World Golf Rankings, Koepka is the 18th best player in the world. According to common sense, he’s so much better than that, the defending PGA champion nearing the same Godzilla-stomp level he was when he won four majors in less than two years from 2017 to 2019. He’s moved through this week with alpha-dog confidence, the only of LIV’s 12 team captains to favor Nike instead of his own team’s logo on his clothing.
Indeed, Koepka doesn’t seem to care a whole lot about LIV’s whole team concept in general, in part because he’s been enmeshed in an ugly feud with Matthew Wolff, one of his own teammates. Golfers, by temperament and training, are what’s-in-it-for-me individualists, caring far more for themselves than any potential teammates (see: most recent Ryder Cup performances). Getting them to buy into a team format is like getting feral cats to march in formation.
LIV is trying to help golfers get over their team phobia by just burying them in money. The breakaway tour pushes its team concept hard, with team names (Cleeks! 4Aces! Crushers! Fireballs!) dotting the course. The merch shop just off the 18th green sells everything from golf shirts to scarves to poker chips emblazoned with the various team names. As an exercise in branding, it’s about as subtle as a megaphone in your face.
But this is a loud world, and to cut through the noise, you’ve got to be even louder. LIV is pushing the viability of teams as independent franchises, investment-worthy opportunities all their own, much like NFL or NBA teams. It’s an enticing prospect if you note the hockey-stick graph line of professional franchise values and sales prices.
Of course, as anyone who’s tried to sell an old baseball card knows, estimated value is one thing, purchase price is quite another. Bubba Watson, captain of the Range Goats Golf Club (by far the best-named team in LIV), raised a few eyebrows earlier in the week when he claimed that he’d heard from “10 to 20” potential investors interested in buying a piece of the Goats.
Maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not, but the facts are these: To date, no one has bought into any of the 12 LIV teams. By contrast, five of the six teams in Woods’ new prime-time indoor golf league have already been sold, to NFL, NBA and MLB owners and also Serena Williams. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it’s not apples-to-motor oil, either.
Koepka has the honors to start the match, and unleashes a cannon shot of a drive. Mickelson’s swing is as pure as it ever was. But his tee shot caroms off a cart path and into a pond. And we’re off.
Mickelson vs. Koepka
Here are two truths about match play: TV hates it, because it’s unpredictable, in both length and outcome; there’s no guarantee that a match will fill out its allotted broadcast time or deliver the most popular winners. Fans love it, exactly because of that lack of guarantees; it’s golf’s purest head-to-head competition distilled to its very essence. Power, psychology, nerve, guts … it’s all on display as two players try to stack up as many holes as they can.
In the first few holes, Koepka jumps out to an early 3-up lead. Mickelson, meanwhile, has reasoned, correctly enough, that at least on this day, he’s no match for Koepka skill-wise. Even though the two of them tied at this year’s Masters, Koepka is at another level right now — off the tee, around the green, with the flat stick, Mickelson just can’t keep up.
So Mickelson is doing what he does best: setting up camp in his rival’s head. Slow play disgusts Koepka; he griped about it in Augusta earlier this year, and he barely even sets his feet before swinging at his shots today.
Mickelson, accordingly, is playing so slowly that you could grab a good nap between the time he approaches his ball and the time he actually starts swinging. He uses his range finder, he walks up to the green and back again from the fairway, he pulls his sunglasses off his hat to clean them — and then puts them right back on the brim. Koepka’s shoulders slump in frustration, and by the turn, he’s actively staring at Mickelson as Phil plods his way around every green.
It’s a hint of what, so far, is a weak spot for LIV: personality. LIV’s format — in which team captains select, in public, which teams they want to face, with the opposing captains on the podium with them — ought to be an overwhelming flood of trash talk, players calling out each other’s lack of trophies or misfires in key situations. Instead, players all too often default back to their traditional pose of beige anonymity.
LIV players certainly have no trouble ripping, say, Rory McIlroy or the golf media. But when it comes to throwing down with one another, “We’ll see how it goes” is about all that most can manage. LIV has the opportunity to break down some of golf’s most tired and crusty traditions, and the mayo-on-white-bread public personas that too many of its players display ought to be right at the top of the list.
Not your traditional golf tournament
Here’s what a LIV Golf tournament is like:
• An incredibly well-funded music festival.
• A state fair, with games, prizes, food trucks and volunteers everywhere ready to make sure you’re having a good time.
• A Super Bowl expo without, you know, the Super Bowl.
Here’s what a LIV Golf tournament is not like:
• A golf tournament.
LIV offers a clear value proposition — golf as just one part of a good afternoon of hanging out around a golf course — to the kinds of people that play golf wearing hoodies, with a Bluetooth speaker in their cart. If that offends you, LIV may not be your jam, but if you’re of a different mindset/generation — and if you don’t factor the humanitarian abuses of LIV’s financial backers into your thinking — then LIV is pretty much genetically created for you.
Out on the course, the Koepka-Mickelson match has drawn the vast majority of golf bros on the property at Trump Doral. One group in particular has an odd fascination with both players’ calves, commenting on them after every hole. (Yep, LIV allows its players to wear shorts.) They’re pounding adult beverages, they’re hooting at every shot, and every once in a while they duck under the ropes to see how close they can get to the players. Again, you can decide for yourself if this environment is right for you; we’re just laying out the facts.
More facts: The Saudi PIF has pumped vast reserves of cash into LIV’s operations; the hospitality facilities, signage, floating video boards and related guest services are the equal of any top-line established sports league. There’s more LIV branding at Doral than Trump branding, and at a Donald Trump-owned course, that takes real work.
Speaking of Trump … there’s not much to say. For the first time since his clubs began hosting LIV events, Trump doesn’t play in the Thursday pro-am. He hasn’t been seen on the property at all, and judging from the relative lack of intense security protocols, he’s not anywhere near Doral. It’s a rough week on the litigation front for Trump — as the tournament is unfolding, news breaks that two of his attorneys charged in the Georgia election-interference case have accepted plea deals. On Wednesday night, Trump had said he wouldn’t be present in court in New York for another of the legal actions proceeding against him because he was headed to Doral, but he didn’t appear to make it onto the property.
A few weeks ago, a LIV schedule leak seemed to hint that LIV would be moving on from Trump courses. When asked by Yahoo Sports about whether LIV would not be competing at Trump courses in 2024, a LIV official declined specific comment, saying only that the schedule wasn’t yet finalized.
Maybe LIV is trying to distance itself from Trump, his ongoing presidential campaign and his many legal challenges. Maybe LIV got better offers to play at other courses. Either way, Trump’s absence is a notable shift for a league that had tied itself so closely to him in 2022 that LIV’s Bedminster event turned into a de facto Trump rally.
Back on the course ...
By the 11th hole, the end is in sight; Koepka is up five, and it’s now just a matter of playing out the string. Mickelson’s approach flies over the green and into the rough on the far side of a greenside bunker. But all that does is give Mickelson the opportunity to unleash a little vintage Phil: a flop shot that arcs impossibly high into the air, like a popup to the pitcher, and thunks hard onto the green close to the pin.
The gallery around Mickelson erupts with nostalgic joy, like they’re watching Keith Richards slash out the opening chords of “Jumping Jack Flash.” That’s part of LIV’s attraction, without a doubt — the ability to get so close to legends like Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Koepka that you can practically grab their tees out of the air.
One of the key questions for LIV going forward will be how to keep that star power glowing. There’s only one Mickelson. And while there are two Koepkas — Brooks and brother Chase — the non-major-winning one just got relegated right out of the league, and will need to play his way back in. Without a guaranteed pathway to the majors, many of LIV’s best players will be locked out of the most prestigious and visible tournaments in the game. For all that LIV offers players — money, time off, money, a relaxed environment, money — the hard ceiling on career legacy remains a visible dealbreaker for many.
At the 14th, the carnage mercifully draws to a close as Koepka wins, 6&4. Mickelson and Brooks Koepka perform the time-honored match play ritual of doffing their caps and reaching out for a handshake. They may or may not be friends, but they’re both extremely wealthy business partners, and they know how this routine works, both on and off the course.
As it turns out, Mickelson’s HyFlyers will end up defeating Koepka’s Smashers when the other two matches turn the HyFlyers’ way. (DeChambeau’s Crushers will end up winning the all-four-scores-count team championship two days later, for those keeping score.)
Are big things really coming?
Mickelson makes his way down to a crowd of a couple dozen waiting on the rope line, signing autographs for kids and a disturbingly large number of sweaty men looming over them. He refuses to sign several Masters items, but he does pose for selfies, and keeps signing until everyone goes away with an autograph.
Afterward, we catch him for a few questions, and in the course of his talk he reiterates his expectation — more than that, his knowledge — that more players are headed to LIV. He seems juuuust about to reveal a name … or, more likely, he just wants us to think he is. LIV is still free to poach PGA Tour players despite the agreement, and Mickelson seems to relish the idea of doing just that.
The overarching question here is, how much of what LIV pumps out is a genuine preview, and how much is just hype? Watson’s promises that he has interest in purchasing his team, Norman’s insistence that he’s not worried about the future of LIV as a series, Mickelson’s pledges to bring aboard new players … they all keep LIV in the news cycle, but they’re all implicit promises, too.
LIV would not be the first startup to proclaim, in earth-shaking terms, that industry-wide disruption is coming. But hype has a short shelf life, and an enterprise can only survive on “big things are coming!” promises for so long before the audience gets wise.
The last time we heard LIV making these grand pronouncements, the players who jumped from the PGA Tour to LIV were … well, let’s be polite and say they weren’t the best-known among golf fans. LIV has marks to hit, from a planned qualifying tournament to a series of offseason team and player moves, and it’s now entirely in the league’s hands to carry through on its promises.
After a couple minutes, Mickelson hops into one of the sleek black LIV golf carts heading back to the icy chill of the Doral clubhouse. After this weekend, when will he, or anyone else on the LIV tour, tee it up again? No one’s saying for certain. Officials have pledged that a schedule release will come in the next couple weeks.
Match play is still happening all over the course, but none of the matches draw the interest that Mickelson-Koepka did. Some matches have no fans whatsoever, shots playing out under massive LIV banners and the enormous smiling faces of LIV players on team signs. It’s a stark reminder that for all the off-course drama, all the saber- and driver-rattling, all the pledges to change the game and change the world through golf … none of it matters if the golf isn’t compelling. LIV grabbed the golf world’s attention; now it has to figure out how to hold it.
At Doral, the club music pulses out over near-empty fairways. For now, the beat goes on, even when there’s almost no one listening.
