If you don’t know a sand wedge from a sandwich, chances are that you may have missed the biggest thing that’s happened to golf since the invention of plaid pants: LIV Golf, the new, Saudi-backed golf league that’s become the PGA Tour’s biggest rival and thrown the entire sport of golf into what many have described as an existential crisis.
Founded in 2021 and financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, LIV Golf is part of a larger, trillions-dollar investment strategy with an overall goal to diversify the country’s economy. The tour’s CEO is Greg Norman, a 68-year-old former golfer who was once the top player in the world and won 20 times on the PGA Tour, including two majors.
With all that financial backing, LIV Golf has aggressively pursued many of the game’s biggest stars in an attempt to recruit them and compete with the PGA Tour. The first, most obvious part of the recruiting pitch is money. Typically, like on the PGA Tour, players must perform well in tournaments in order to secure the biggest payouts, and walking away with any prize money at all is never guaranteed.
Phil Mickelson playing at the LIV Golf Invitational.
That’s not the case with LIV Golf. High-profile players like Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson have joined the new tour on guaranteed contracts reportedly worth nine figures — and that’s not counting any money they’d get for winning tournaments. For comparison, the biggest payout for a PGA Tour event winner this season is $4.5 million for the Players Championship. Players on the PGA Tour have no guaranteed contracts with the league itself.
Many critics also point to the ethical concerns that come with being funded by the same governing body reportedly involved in the 2018 murder of Jamal Kashoggi, a journalist from The Washington Post, as well as a lengthy history of human rights issues and violations, particularly against women and LGBTQ+ people. Mickelson and other golfers have faced criticism for joining a venture backed by the Saudi royal family, which has led to some high-tension back-and-forths with the media that are featured in Full Swing.
On a tour-vs.-tour level, there are other differences that have caused some ire among the world’s best golfers. A PGA Tour event is played over the course of four days from Thursday to Sunday, typically with more than 100 golfers at each tournament. After two days, the field is trimmed to what is known as the “cut line.” If you miss the cut, you go home with nothing.
That’s not how it works for LIV, which holds events over just three days instead of four. There are also only 48 golfers at each tournament, and there is no cut line, which means no matter how badly a golfer plays, they’re still allowed to finish. That setup has raised some concerns from LIV Golf detractors about the quality of play.
“What these players are doing for guaranteed money — what is the incentive to practice?” Tiger Woods said in a press conference ahead of the Open Championship in July. “What is the incentive to go out there and earn it in the dirt? You’re just getting paid a lot of money up front… I just don’t see how that move is positive in the long term for a lot of these players.”
If there’s one player who’s become the face of LIV Golf resistance, it’s Rory McIlroy. He’s been the most outspoken golfer to oppose the new tour, preaching loyalty to his fellow players and vouching for the history of the PGA. Outside of Woods, players point to McIlroy as the most influential voice in today’s game.
“I care deeply about our sport. I care about its history, I care about its legacy, I care about the integrity of the game,” McIlroy says in Full Swing. “And there’s a lot of players out here that share those same views.”
Rory McIlroy has been an outspoken proponent of the PGA.
Then there’s the major aspect of it all: How does playing in LIV Golf events impact players’ availability for golf’s most storied and prestigious tournaments? Qualification for any of the four majors — the Masters, the PGA Championship, the US Open, and the Open Championship — can be tied to the accumulation of world golf ranking points, which are accrued by playing in top events from around the world.
Given that LIV is so new to the game, it remains to be seen if (and how) LIV events will factor into the world golf rankings. The possibility exists that golfers who play on the LIV Golf tour will not receive any world golf rankings points, affecting their chances of competing in the majors and creating a weighty conflict between legacy and immediate financial gain. The stakes were raised in June when PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan suspended players who participated in the inaugural LIV Golf event, a group that included Mickelson, Johnson, Ian Poulter and others. Some of the players subsequently filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour.
The PGA vs. LIV battle was in its nascent stages when Full Swing picked up the action, and it’s far from being settled now. But there have been some surprising developments — namely that on June 6, it was announced that the PGA and LIV tours are planning to merge. While no one is certain what will become of this new partnership, one thing is for sure: Things (and let’s face, it, Season 2) are about to get very interesting.
