Source : ABC NEWS
The starting point for any and all retrospectives on LIV Golf is to acknowledge it represented something different to almost everyone involved.
Those retrospectives will flood in following the news of the week, which isn’t so much “news” as it is confirmation of what we knew a fortnight ago, only this time without the sneering and duplicitous cries of “fake news” from within the breakaway league.
The Saudi money is gone and so is LIV Golf as we knew it and as it sold itself.
Has it been a reformative success? Has it been a damaging failure? That’s largely in the eye of the beholder.
From top to bottom, crown prince to punter, LIV served a different purpose, represented a different dream, rebelled against a different enemy.
For the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, LIV was most prominently part of an overall campaign of image laundering in service to its Vision 2030 and NEOM projects. For the league’s initial chief executive, Greg Norman, it was the logical next step in his decades-long war against the US-focused powerbrokers on the PGA Tour.
For the players, it was about earning a lot of money for a lot less work. Some would go on to use that extra money and free time for the overall betterment of the sport, to their credit, while others plainly would not.
For some fans, mainly those based in the United States, LIV’s affiliation with Donald Trump was another way into the ceaseless 21st-century culture war. For fans just about everywhere else, it represented a glimmer of hope for a true globalisation of a sport beloved in all corners of the globe.
But for each of these parties, no matter their disparate goals and dreams, a certain suspension of disbelief would be required.
To keep this going, everybody had to, to some extent, pretend that Saudi Arabia truly cared deeply about bringing professional golf to Adelaide and Cape Town. That its devotion to the cause would ensure that the bottomless pit of resources it calls its Public Investment Fund (PIF) couldn’t abruptly find a bottom.
That losing more than $1 billion in three years was sustainable, or at the very least ignorable.
That the product was so compelling that it could reshape a sport whose greatest asset is its history and respect for tradition.
Adelaide proved time and again that when LIV Golf was at its best, it was a spectacle to behold. (Getty Images: Mark Brake)
That names like the Cleeks, Ripper GC and Range Goats weren’t absolutely absurd things for sporting teams to be called, and the whole calves-out, DJ-pumping, 54-hole, shotgun-start thing wasn’t all a bit silly and a horribly flawed from the beginning.
One by one, and in inverse order to how they are listed above, those dominoes have now fallen.
LIV Golf may continue to exist in some form beyond 2026. That is the plan of chief executive Scott O’Neil and the new board of directors, to find new investment that will allow the league to survive in some form.
But in what form? Whatever happens from here, without PIF, there is no way LIV can ever look the same again. It was its unreasonable money that drew the players and staged the events, and there is surely nobody who could match the Saudis both in terms of funds available and propensity to light it on fire.
The best players will fight for their careers and likely land on their feet. The lower-ranked ones are likely to populate LIV 2.0, should it exist.
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The PGA Tour, in its panicked initial responses to the LIV threat, is now an equally bloated and convoluted entity, but at least one that makes sense logistically, structurally, historically and, just barely, financially. It has been wounded by this saga but will still emerge from it in a position of strength.
And so the biggest losers, as so often in such instances, are the fans. Particularly the ones in Australia and South Africa, and other golf-mad demographics, once neglected but shown belated love by LIV.
For all that it got wrong, LIV Adelaide was the greatest example of what it could get right. Remarkable crowds, genuinely captivating stories, good golf at a good golf course.
For Norman and all of those who have dreamed of a proper World Tour, it must have brought a tear to the eye. It was right there, within grasp, but made of sand.
LIV promised, “golf, but louder”. It certainly excelled at the loudness, but only sporadically delivered on the golf.
