For a large portion of golf fans, the growth of LIFE Golf it has been disturbing. Even if the league relax hereand it may not be, the damage already done will take years to repair. The billions of petro dollars the Saudis poured into the pro game via LIV, too good to be true or sustainable from the start, eventually revealed some opportunism among some of our golfing heroes. The wider pro game has taken a hit.
Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeauPatrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, Jon Rahm and others gently broke away from tradition, the tradition that formed them. And for what, $100 million here and $300 million there? Who would have thought that their loyalty could be bought nothing? Did they not see that LIV Golf, in creating this new hybrid model, was a far cry from the traditional tournament golf, the golf they grew up on? Did they not see that the founding principle of LIV Golf was borrowed The dating game?
we love you We don’t love you.
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The players we LIV left behind, the stars and near-stars of the PGA Tour, lost their way as well. They have decreased. They allowed their fearless leaders—Commissioner Jay Monahan, Tiger Woodsthe investors of the Strategic Sports Group and, most recently, the CEO Brian Rolapp – to throw away what made the tour so attractive: guaranteed nothing. Win it, win it, win it. (I’m surprised Woods even accepted that lifetime exemption in any event — doesn’t sound like the Tiger of old.) Earn the right to play in 2026 based on what you did in 2025, that’s golf. Earn the right to play on Saturday and Sunday based on what you did on Thursday and Friday. Yes. It’s been working forever.
On that basis, Joel Dahmen and Scottie Scheffler started each week as equals. On this basis, each event was a new beginning, with a certain level of meaning (even if it was very localized) baked into Thursday’s starting times. The PGA Tour didn’t need a winning arm. Local charities, different each week, provided golf with all the fuel it needed. LIV Golf tried to turn tournament golf into something it is not, a global spectacle, 14 events in 10 countries this year. Just as all politics is local (Tip O’Neill), so is all fandom. Anyway, the fans are. The British Open belongs to the world. Winter and Summer Games, World Cup, same thing. They are on your calendar and always have been.
LIV Golf played an indirect role in the sunset of the PGA Tour calendar stops in Hawaii. (The PGA Tour, as we know it today, has been recreated in the image of LIV Golf, at least to a point.) Shaking palms in the winter, shaking the players beneath them, trying to kick off the new year. The locals put on a show and the rest of us could watch or not. What was there not to like? More tournaments will be held 86 here, on behalf of Rolapp’s model of scarcity. Fewer tournaments with fewer players for more money. How is it good for. . . us? Or Joel Dahmen? Joel Dahmen is American golf/PGA Tour as much as Justin Thomas is.
American tour golf, from the early years of Ben Hogan nearly 100 years ago to the rise of young Jordan Spieth a quick decade ago, represented the purest and most civilized form of hunting, of capitalism, of sport. A guy can (in Tour parlance) “stay out” until he leaves the Tour. So it was. . . manly (before that word they had cut off his legs). Also beautiful.
Nice game it’s a beautiful and appropriate phrase that has been attached to football for 60 or 70 years now. The whole world plays footballbecause all you need is a ball (any ball) and a field (any field). That’s it. The way the ball and the players move around that pitch is really beautiful. I only wish that we, the dues-paying members of the global tribe of golf enthusiasts, had come up with the phrase first. Because golf is also a beautiful game, simple in theory, confusingly difficult in practice, played on all courses. Any true golf fan knows what I’m talking about here.
That is why we have kept the best players in the highest rating. They did what we did, but on a level we couldn’t understand. Their golf shots were magic tricks. But they also choked like dogs eating grass on the way to the bottom of the 72nd hole. In a four-day tour, one could discover the human experience in all its richness, or close to all of it. In the biggest events – with the best fields on the most demanding courses – this was even more true. Exhibition golf cannot offer this. The Masters last month certainly did.
Back then, before LIV, the money Tour players made was the money Tour players made, out there in agate form for all of us to see. But it never made any particular impression on any of us, other than as convenient shorthand for who played better. Yes, the boys played for huge sums of money, but also, and more importantly, for handsome and often historic trophies. These men played a game. That’s all they did and that was enough. Jordan Spieth created 18-hole scores as Paul and John created four-minute singles. They played and played until it was done. . . thing. A Beatles song. A score, for golfers. A place on the leaderboard. Work? Work was something you did for. . . the money. For Jordan and Co. money was just a by-product. It wasn’t the be all and end all. I grew up with Tom Watson. In his prime, he was a difficult and demanding person. He played golf the right way. I was amazed by it.
Our golfing heroes played a tough game well. They played the game we dreamed of playing. That was and should be the glue of the fan-pro relationship. In that context, those LIV teams – the Crushers and the rest – were always going to be a tough sell. Those TGL teams, rosters filled with your favorite PGA Tour stars, same thing – an empty sideshow. Justin Rose down the stretch, pouring his guts out in a futile (so far) attempt to win a second major, that’s the beautiful game. Is Justin Rose even on a TGL team? A special prize to anyone who can tell me if he is – and why you care.
Hogan, Palmer, Nicklaus, Watson, Tony Jacklin and Lee Trevino, Seve, Faldo, Norman, Tiger, young Jordan Spieth, thousands of others, played the beautiful game. If you halved the prize they played for, would they have done anything else? Of course not. They were like us. First and foremost, they were golfers.
I don’t blame Greg Norman for having a bold idea for a global golf tournament, and having enough confidence and charisma to sell it, ultimately, to Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the boss of Saudi Arabia’s giant sovereign wealth fund, the oddly named Public Investment Fund. (What’s public about it?) The idea of the world’s best players playing each other on a regular basis certainly sounds appealing. American golf fans will watch the British Open, because of its antiquity and to see these royal treeless courses. Japanese golf fans will be watching the Masters, because of The lush beauty of Augusta National and the social memory of the tour. But these events are strange.
As for golfers, most are homemakers. They don’t they want to play the world. The only way to get them to do this is to pay them and that is not good, healthy or sustainable. The answer to golf’s future lies in its past. That is, professional golf, played around the world by the best players in the world. The rest of us can get an appointment online. It is much better than the old system. Shortly after the PIF folks made their announcement about their exit from LIV Golf, a friend sent me a photo depicting golfers on a dirt course. Nice game.
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