Bubba Watson was among the golfers in the LIV ‘Drop Zone’ after Sunday.
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A central irony weighs heavily LIV Golf competitive structure.
You can have a full cast of aging stars, or you can have a fully functioning competitive meritocracy—but you likely can’t have both.
A question arises from this irony: Will the league throw away its stars in the name of competitive integrity, or will it throw away its competitive integrity in the name of its stars?
From a distance, the answer sounds obvious. Competitive meritocracy is central to everything we hold dear in major professional sports, and several centuries of human biology tell us that physical abilities decline with age. The laws of nature demand that a younger and younger cadre of stars replace the old guard.
But the laws of economics say something else. After all, there’s a reason LIV targeted him in the first place senior group of captains: They give the league a certain level of star power, and starpower helps sell tickets. No names like Phil Mickelson and Jon Rahm competing every week, the league may not be able to attract sponsors, television partners or fans to pay attention to its product – and for a league with already nascent fan support, that’s a risk big.
All of which brings us to last week, at the LIV Individual Golf Championship in Chicago, where the league introduced a major update to its competitive structure in the margins of a press release. Starting now, the league said, everyone would qualify for a drop under the so-called “Drop zone” — a rule that discards the league’s bottom five at the end of each year. Including captains.
At first, the news came as a mild shock. In the past, the league has erred on the side of stars, protecting each of its team captains (core to its “franchise model” financially) from relegation. But now the league seemed to be reversing course, and that presented significant concerns downstream. Would Phil Mickelson, the de-facto founder of the league, seriously start LIV if he finished in the bottom five of the league after a year of bad play? What if Jon Rahm or Bryson DeChambeau, competitive future of the leaguesuffered a 12-month tail?
As the questions began, the league quickly announced a later update. The captains can be relegated, but can also be kept on the list, as long as the team’s management has made a competitive business case to keep their captain in the league.
Given a competitive business case is the whole reason for the franchise model in the first place, the clarification reads more like an inversion. The captains were confident. Their inclusion in the Drop Zone gave the league’s franchises little more than a plausible reason to distance themselves from a toxic asset, should one of its captains ever reach that point. But most franchises are made up of longtime friends and business associates of their captains, which seems to make it impossible for a captain to ever be removed from a team against his will.
For better or worse, this theory will soon be put to the test. On Sunday night, LIV confirmed its “Drop Zone” finishers from 2024, and that group included a notable name: Bubba Watson, a two-time Masters champion and team captain for the RangeGoats.
Watson was by far the biggest name among the relegated group, joining brothers Scott and Kieran Vincent, Kalle Samooja and Branden Grace in the Drop Zone. With his demotion, Watson became the first team captain to be included in the Drop Zone, but it remains to be seen whether he will find himself among the players cut after the 2024 season ends this week in Dallas.
Given the language of the league, Watson’s status as a two-time major leaguer, and the reported $50 million signing bonus Watson got in 2022, the “business case” for keeping him on the RangeGoats’ roster always seems and stronger. Would LIV consider making an example of Watson in the name of competitive integrity? Preferably. But it seems far more likely that Watson will be back with the RangeGoats when the 2025 season opens in Riyadh next February.
Right now, this is probably the best for the league, but probably not for long. As the 2024 season draws to a close, the average age of an LIV captain is 40.07 years, much older than the typical competitive golf prime. As the league’s older stars continue to fade, will it be able to fend off those whose games fall further behind, captain be damned? Or will it find itself meekly waiting for its captains to reach that realization themselves, even at the expense of the product in the course?
The day is coming when LIV will have to start making tough decisions. Maybe even sooner than we realized.
