LIV Golf – Is Golf Changed Forever or Is This Short-LIVed?

You may think the title is dramatic, but with threats from the PGA Tour and big names like Dustin Johnson making the move over to the LIV golf league, it looks to be more accurate by the day. The first event is this week in London so I’m here to explain it to you and why this has the PGA Tour all up in arms.

Let’s start with the name:

LIV golf – it is called ‘live’ golf. LIV is the roman numerals for 54 (remember not that long ago it was Super Bowl LIV in Miami Chiefs vs 49ers). According to commish, Greg Norman, 54 was used because it is the score you would end with if you birdied every hole on a par-72 course. That number is significant as it is the number of holes golfers will play (a stark difference with the PGA Tour). You’ll also hear this league referred to as the Saudi Golf League as for a while we didn’t know the name and it is indeed backed financially by the Saudis.

How it works:

8 events. 12 teams. 48 players. 54 holes. No cut. Shot gun start.

There will be 7 regular season tournaments where players will play as individuals and teams at the same time. Individual winners of each tournament is determined just like normal, lowest cumulative score wins. But remember its only 3 rounds, not 4. The team competition is a little different. During the first 2 rounds of a tournament, the best 2 stroke play scores count but for the final round, the best 3 stroke play scores count. The lowest overall team score wins the event. An individual winner will be announced at the end of the 7 events by whomever has the most points and prize money. The last event of the year will be the Team Championship match play. That event will be a 4-day, 4-round match play knock out.

This league has also instituted shot gun starts (every player is on the course at the same time but starts at a different place). Each round starts at 2:15pm local time. The perk of using a shot gun start and a smaller field is that you don’t have the drastic differences in players being screwed by the elements just for being on the wrong side of the draw for the weekend.

How the teams work:

The 12 team captains draft their teams in a snake format (those of us that play fantasy know). Drafts will happen on Tuesday before the events and team captains get 54 seconds to pick. Each week, the teams change. There was also the league’s first trade after the London draft. Kevin Na and Peter Uihlein traded Richard Bland and Hideto Tanihara.

Here are the teams for London. 

Let’s explain these for those of you who are like ‘I don’t get it’ on the team names:

• Aces – named after hole in one
• Cleeks – named for a metal headed driving iron back in the day (think of it like a 1 or 2 iron)
• Crushers – named for speed and power hitting the ball
• HY Flyers – named for the loft you want
• Iron Heads – named after the irons in the bag
• Niblicks – Scottish term named for an iron with heavy, lofted head like a 9 iron (used for playing out of bunkers)
• Punch – named for a shot that is a long, hard chip (6/7 iron down to pitching wedge used for the shot)
• Stinger – named for Tiger’s iconic golf shot. A stinger is when you hit the ball with a lower trajectory (def used in heavy winds).
• I don’t feel like I need to explain Smash, Majestic, Torque and Fireballs

Where and when:

8 events:

• London (June 9-11)
• Portland – Pumpkin Ridge (June 30-July 2)
• NJ – Trump National Bedminster (July 29-31)
• Boston – The Oaks (Sept 2-4)
• Chicago – Rich Harvest Farms (Sept 16-18)
• Bangkok (Oct 7-9)
• Jeddah (Oct 14-16) and
• Miami – Trump National Doral Miami (Oct 27-30).

If you wanted to watch in person it would cost you 67 pounds per day but sat is sold out for a grounds pass. There are also 3 different hospitality packages: Club 54 premium (8323+), Club 54 (1962) and Gallery Club (246). Club 54 premium in London offers walking inside the ropes with the players and caddies and a front row seat for the trophy presentation.

Players you might recognize:

Dustin Johnson (former world #1 and 24x winner on the PGA Tour), Phil Mickelson (45x winner on PGA Tour and 6x major champion), Louis Oosthuizen (2010 Open champ and and completed the runner-up grand slam in majors), Sergio Garcia (2017 Masters Champion and 11x winner on the PGA tour) and Ian Poulter (another Ryder Cup favorite). Another name you might recognize is Chase Koepka (brother of Brooks). There are more but those are some of the higher profile names.

The field in London: 1 Hall of Famer. 3 Former World #1s. 7 major champions. 18 players inside the top 100. 15 is the youngest player’s age while 51 is the oldest. 11 Americans. 9 South Africans, 6 AUS & ENG.

Next week: Patrick Reed (aka Captain America during Ryder Cups and Masters Champion) and Bryson DeChambeau (2020 US Open Champion and Dallas native) join the league. Rickie Fowler and Jason Kokrak have also been rumored to join the league although nothing is official yet. Also a crazy rumor, Bubba Watson and Matt Wolfe were featured in the promo video for the LIV tour (1:26 mark)….

Greg Norman is the commish.

Why join this league?

As I touched on in the weekly update, money is the main reason. And it has to be given who is behind the tournament. It is a risk to join this league due to the human rights issues surrounding the Saudi Arabian backers and with the threats of the PGA Tour not allowing you to compete in tournaments (including majors).

DJ is rumored to have received $125MM, which is more then Tiger Woods has made his entire career in official on course earnings. That’s just for agreeing to play! Each event will have $25MM in a prize purse. Every player gets money every round. $20MM gets divided up for the individuals with $4MM to 1^st place all the way down to $120k to 48^th. The top 3 teams also get a pay out each week ($3MM, $1.5MM and $500k). The overall individual champion at the end of the 7 regular season events will win $18MM. 2^nd gets $8MM and 3^rd gets $4MM (min of 4 events played). The Team Champion will win $16MM (divide that by 4 for the money for each person) and all teams get paid, last place 12^th gets $1MM.

So let’s give an example, if you get last in every tournament and last in the team event (you had a terrible year) you still earn $1,090,000 (that’s $120k per tournament assuming you play all 7 and your cut of the last place team ($1MM / 4 = $250k).

Also there are only 8 events and you don’t have to play in them all. They can get paid to play per event. The new league only has 24 posts on the Instagram but already has 71k followers.

PGA Tour response:

The PGA Tour commish, Jay Manahan has made it very clear that you cannot play on the LIV tour and the PGA Tour. Several players like Kevin Na have resigned from the PGA Tour so that they will not face legal action. Breaking news, the PGA Tour has officially suspended 17 players that are playing on the LIV tour. This will make those players ineligible for events like the Presidents Cup. This action was announced less than 30 minutes after those 17 players teed off in the 1st LIV event. However the USGA came out earlier this week that they will not ban players from playing in the US Open. Also note that the Masters is privately held so they could do whatever they dang well please here as well.

This is going to get very very interesting…