LIV Golf brings a championship to Doral, but can’t escape controversy, feud with PGA Tour
LIV Golf would like its inaugural Team Championship to be all about the golf and the way the fledgling, Saudi Arabia-funded league is trying to change the sport. LIV began its weekend in South Florida on Wednesday with a news conference at Trump National Doral Miami, featuring eight of the biggest stars in the sport — captains of eight of the 12 teams in the 2022 LIV Golf Invitational Series — cracking jokes and doing all they could to sell their product, and will continue through Sunday with four days of competitive action in Doral.
Of course, it was never going to last. Once the microphone was in the hands of impartial reporters, the questions started coming about LIV’s ongoing war with the PGA Tour, and the traditional structures of the sport.
A day earlier, Rory McIlroy spoke extensively to The Guardian about the PGA-LIV dynamic. On its biggest weekend of the year, the LIV Golf Invitational Series could not escape its constant controversies.
“We can talk about your questions afterwards,” said Phil Mickelson, who became the highest-paid golfer in the world when he left the Tour for LIV, “but this is a unique thing happening in professional golf and it’s pretty exciting.”
The basics of the LIV Golf Invitational Miami go like this: On Friday, teams seeded fifth through 12th play a series of head-to-head matches, with the higher-seeded captains picking their opponents at the press conference Wednesday; on Saturday, the four winning teams play a series of head-to-head matches with the top four teams, all of whom received byes to the weekend; on Sunday, the invitational wraps up with the 16 golfers from the four remaining teams all playing 18 holes, with the team champion determined by combining all four scores.
Golfers get $250,000 just for showing up, with the four champion golfers pocketing $4 million each.
LIV’s unique team aspect was one of its big selling points to fans, along with a looser atmosphere for athletes and spectators, and the final weekend of this LIV Invitational Series is its best chance yet to showcase it, even the LIV Invitational Miami will only air on YouTube and the series’ official website.
The story all year, though, has been the controversies surrounding the sport.
From a political and ethical standpoint, the Saudis’ backing — with their long history of human rights violations, as well as the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi and their government’s alleged role in the 9/11 attacks — has drawn consistent criticism and frequent protests.
Barkley, Djokovic, Lia Thomas: Being sports fan never been harder ... or more interesting | Opinion
From a golf standpoint, LIV’s positioning as a breakaway group dividing the sport, and potentially keeping marquee names out of major championships and events like the Ryder Cup, leaves golfers and fans frustrated.
The latter was McIlroy’s concern Tuesday in his extensive conversation with the British newspaper. He said the defections of Sergio Garcia, Graeme McDowell, Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter for LIV, jeopardizing their Ryder status, was a “betrayal” and the “‘us versus them’ thing has gotten way out of control.”
“I think a lot of Rory. I really have the utmost respect for him,” Mickelson said. “We’ll have three months off after this event to talk about things like that and so forth, but this week something is happening that I don’t want to deflect focus on, which is we’ve never had a team event like this in professional golf.”
This is far from the first time Mickelson and McIlroy, who have both emerged as something like unofficial player spokesmen for their respective leagues, have sniped through the media. After Mickelson said LIV was “trending upwards” and the Tour “downwards” Oct. 13, McIlroy responded last Wednesday by calling the comments “propaganda.”
“I don’t think anyone that takes a logical view of the game of golf can agree,” McIlroy said last week.
Purely from a golf standpoint, both sides have their arguments. LIV has poached more than two dozen top-100 golfers from the PGA — including Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau — but its ratings have also declined precipitously since its summer highs of more than 600,000 viewers and it still doesn’t have a television deal. In fact, LIV is close to a deal in which it would pay Fox Sports to air events on Fox Sports 1, Golfweek reported last month.
The recent declines in ratings, of course, has coincided with a handful of international events, most of which air at odd hours in the United States, so there are reasonable excuses for LIV to make. Still, it sets up LIV Miami as an important litmus test to figure out just where the league sits in golf’s hierarchy, especially since the Tour’s event this weekend doesn’t include any top-15 players.
Ultimately, normal revenue streams like TV advertising and sponsorships don’t matter as much to LIV because of its deep coffers. It gives the league plenty of leeway to keep trying to find an audience.
Mickelson is indisputably correct about one point he makes: LIV isn’t going anywhere.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said stuff like that. I don’t know, but if I’m just looking at LIV Golf and where we are today to where we were six, seven months ago and people are saying this is dead in the water, and we’re past that,” Mickelson said. “Here we are today, a force in the game that’s not going away, that has players of this caliber that are moving professional golf throughout the world, and the excitement level in the countries around the world of having some of the best players in the game of golf coming to their country and competing. It’s pretty remarkable how far LIV Golf has come in the last six, seven months. I don’t think anybody can disagree with that.
