The Daily Observer London Desk: Reporter- Judith Benjamin
DORAL, Fla. — After the paragliders landed, unfurling flags for Aces GC and Crushers GC, the first-tee emcee set the stage. LIV Golf’s team championship was upon us. The entire season had come down to this, he said. Time to get hyped. Three women ran along the rope line, waving T-shirts in the air, the universal sign to make noise. In unison, amid the thumping beat of Khwezi’s “Cyberpunk 2020,” the emcee got things started.
“Miami, get ready to party,” he said. “This is golf, but louder.”
Then, Talor Gooch, Charles Howell III, Mito Pereira and Patrick Reed teed off one by one to some clapping, some whooping. LIV’s finale — 12 teams playing for a $50 million season-ending purse — was underway, with a cool $14 million to the four-man winning team.
Not long ago, it was thought that this — the 2023 team championship at Trump Doral outside Miami — might serve as LIV’s final resting place. In early June, following the PGA Tour’s formal agreement to partner with the near-$700 billion Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, voices were quick to promote the presumptive demise of the tour’s chief rival.
The deal created a for-profit company combining the commercial interests of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour behind a large cash investment from the PIF. Just as importantly, it forged a ceasefire ending the expensive, prying litigation that neither side wanted. LIV, it seemed, was expendable in the deal. A person involved with the negotiation told The Athletic in June: “I don’t know that it’s going to exist. Because the PIF is not running it. Greg Norman certainly isn’t running it. He’s out of a job. Performance 54 isn’t running it. It’s Jay (Monahan). Like, that’s the deal.”
It was, until it wasn’t.
Four and a half months later, it appears the framework agreement between the tour and the PIF is dead, dying, or, at best, will need to be extended past a Dec. 31 deadline for completion. The PGA Tour is in talks with outside investors, including Endeavor, the entertainment and media agency that owns the UFC and WWE, and other private entities. Publicly, officials from both the tour and the PIF will only say they’re still operating in good faith and remain committed to the framework agreement. Privately, voices on both sides cite heavy doubts building by the day. All indications say the seismic shifts in the future of professional golf are far from settled.
Where does that leave LIV? Golf’s great disruptor is now 22 events into its existence. Staff and executives like to say this year’s 14-event slate was Season 1, while 2022’s eight tournaments should be considered Season 0. That means 2024 will be Year 3, and Season 2, if you follow.
