Monday Rap Q&A: Does LIV Golf Finally Have Some Momentum?

LIV Golf welcomed the perfect storm this past weekend. No football. No PGA Tour event. Jon Rahm's debut. The dead of winter. The part you can't script, the actual golf competition, delivered as well, with Joaquin Niemann emerging after a star-studded battle in the dark.
The result: it feels like LIV has some momentum. Granted, we're all prisoners of the moment, and the PGA Tour will undoubtedly take center stage again this week with the WM Phoenix Open. But still…hard to classify this weekend as anything but an excellent week for LIV. With that, let's get to your questions.
What impact to ratings did RAHM have for these TV days? …. Can only associate personally, but I am more engaged and watched 2 of the 3 days /plus highlights. —@chris_n_christy
A perfect place to start. I’m not sure we’ll get proper rating information since LIV stopped reporting it late last year. I’m also fully aware I operate in a golf-nerd echo chamber and I’m not the best person to judge overall public interest in LIV Golf. But I can say that within this little echo chamber this was a very LIV Golf Sunday. This was the first full-field signature event and we're talking about LIV Golf. Now, that's in large part due to the Pebble wash out, but still. With the west coast underwater and the east coast in the heart of winter, I’d guess more people than ever tuned in to the CW for a LIV broadcast.
Before this season, Greg Norman bloviated about the sheer number of top players interested in LIV Golf. Instead, the vast majority of the signing-players budget went to one man: Jon Rahm. It’s money well spent. Rahm’s name on the leaderboard adds significant gravitas, and having him in the mix in his first event, when LIV finally got the stage to itself, was massive. Take him out of the top of the leaderboard and the tournament isn't the same. He's got that much gravitas in the game.
At one point on Sunday you had Joaquin Niemann, Sergio Garcia, Cameron Smith, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka all within three shots of the lead. It’s actually kind of amazing looking at the first LIV Golf field for the London 2022 event and looking at it now.
It’s happened in pieces, but they’ve assembled a really strong group of players. At the end of the day—and maybe I’m just a simple person—but you show me a final-round battle between players of that quality and I’m going to watch and I’m going to be entertained. Especially when the broadcast shows as many shots as it does. It’s way, way more actual golf than a PGA Tour broadcast.
As far as LIV not having history or legacy or meaning, it definitely matters and it’s something they’re gonna have to battle vis a vis general fan interest. But the players are competitors. They wanna beat the other guys. They were into it. It was a good watch, at least for this golf nerd. LIV got a big break with the way things shook out on Sunday and they put on a good show…
…As long as you had the broadcast on mute. I’ve been banging this drum (no pun intended) for a while, but the music blasting in the background of the broadcast is bizarre. I’m all for music while playing golf—it should be fun after all—but this isn’t a fun round with buddies. It is a competition between some of the best golfers in the world, and the announcers trying to build drama for a put while we hear OONTZ OONTZ like we’re in Barstool Scottsdale—it’s distracting, and it makes the whole thing feel unserious. I’ve been to LIV events and the music’s totally fine in person. I refuse to believe the PIF and their 900 gazillion dollars can’t figure out a way to have music on-site for fans but not have Diplo pumping in my living room.
For my money, the entire broadcast is over-the-top. It’s as if the announcers are constantly trying to prove how cool the product is, how revolutionary they are, how intense the drama is. It makes sense why—they’ve spent years getting shit on by the establishment and so there’s an element of WE’LL SHOW YOU. But it’s just all a bit much. The mute button was my best friend on Sunday.

Advertisement
I hear what you’re saying about the team format - right now it’s awful. But imagine if they followed the college golf model - 54 hole stroke play followed by team match play. Team golf HAS to be match play - it’d be electric! —@constantdave
Yep, that’s another thing that stood out from the first event of LIV’s third season. The team thing is just a miss right now. The format is hard to follow. It’s honestly more distracting than anything. You’re absolutely right; team golf simply has to be match play. There has to be a man-against-man component to it. As currently constructed it’s just going on in the background and actually detracts from the individual competition, which is very good, when the announcer keeps trying to hype up the importance of a CRUSHERS putt.
They’ve gotta split up the events in my opinion. Some individual events, some team events. Give us singles match play, best ball, alternate shot, all the fun stuff. It can't just be adding up stroke play scores. Lean all the way into the team competition on certain weeks rather than going halfway every week.
LIV is in an interesting spot with the team stuff. Because if this league is ever going to approach profitability they’re going to have to turn these teams into valuable assets and sell them. That’s the business model. Or at least it was at the beginning. But three years in and the team competition doesn’t really have traction. It’s really, really hard to turn an individual sport into a team sport. Tennis has tried and mostly failed for decades. LIV is at its best when there are world-class players in contention and they’re showing us a lot of golf shots. But that’s not a novel concept. In fact, it’s what fans have been wanting PGA Tour broadcasts to look like forever.
Does Clark's 60 count when you can pick up and place the ball? —@closr9
Lottttt of strong opinions on this online. Mine’s not nearly as spicy: this situation is precisely why the language gods created the asterisk. It counts, with an asterisk. There’s no rule that a course can only have one course record, especially one like Pebble Beach, where in addition to a professional event every year it hosts U.S. Opens, which obviously present a much tougher setup. So the prior record of 61 was also kind of asterisk-ey as it wasn’t in the U.S. Open. A place can have multiple records. Wyndham’s is the best score ever shot at Pebble, with an asterisk that it was preferred lies. Hurly Long’s 61 is the lowest score shot at Pebble playing ball down. 62 is the lowest score shot in a professional event, ball down. Justin Rose and Tiger Woods hold the record for lowest round shot at Pebble Beach in a U.S. Open at 65. All these things can be true at once.
Is it all sunshine and roses for the players on LIV or do you hear about guys regretting their decisions/wanting to return to play in the majors? Niemann’s quote was interesting. —@PierreHoma69
Very telling that Niemann’s first thought after winning that battle over Niemann was about the Masters, which he’s not qualified for since he’s outside the top 50 in the world rankings. He dropped six shots with his victory. I’ve said it ad nauseam: the OWGR is totally outdated and needs to be replaced, quickly. You can’t watch the LIV broadcast on Sunday and say with a straight face that it’s not a golf competition worthy of world ranking points. But they’ve already made their ruling.
The question now is whether the majors start to move away from using OWGR to fill out its fields. It’s not going to happen this year for the Masters as that criteria’s already set. The USGA could, in theory, make a “top 10 players on LIV Golf” category but my gut says they won’t. Niemann (or maybe Talor Gooch last year) is probably the most egregious example yet of a great player that everyone knows is good enough not getting in. But the true superstars—Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Cameron Smith—are all still exempt. So I don’t see the majors deviating from OWGR this year because not having Niemann in the field doesn't change that much.

Advertisement
To answer your question more directly, I don’t think any of the major winners listed listed above regret their decision given the money in their bank accounts and the tournaments they still get to play in. It’s guys like Niemann and Gooch who must be getting increasingly annoyed.
A lot of what LIV pitched players has come true. But the lack of OWGR points stands out as the biggest area where LIV officials were wrong. I’m sure Niemann and Gooch didn’t think they’d be shut out from rankings for this long. If they did, and they’re still complaining, then that’s a you problem. If I’m a LIV player, I’m going to management with a united front demanding they make whatever tweaks necessary to get OWGR points. It’s really the only thing keeping them—apart from subjective, intangible propositions like “history” and legacy”—from truly going head-to-head with the PGA Tour.
Opinion on the Sunday finish at pebble? When was the last time the PGA had a 54 hole finish? What implications does this have with LIV 54 hole finish, if any. Was pebble in that bad of shape the couldn’t play tomorrow? —@oggeorgiedix
Are our brains so broken that we have to view literally everything through the lens of the Battle of the Tours? The storm that’s passing through California is no joke. I know this first-hand. Multiple players said it was a genuinely frightening situation. Trees down on roads. No flights getting out. Mud slides.
Of course, trolls are going to take the PGA Tour’s 54-hole finish not as the result of a horrible storm but as evidence of something larger. It’s not. Some things just…are.
Top 10 LIV players vs Top 10 PGA Tour players. Ryder cup style. Who plays, wins, and why? —@TatorThott
Gonna designate Tiger and Phil as non-playing captains. Here’s who I’d pick.
TEAM PGA TOUR
Rory McIlroy
Scottie Scheffler
Viktor Hovland
Xander Schauffele
Ludvig Aberg
Patrick Cantlay
Wyndham Clark
Max Homa
Tommy Fleetwood
Collin Morikawa
Team LIV Golf
Jon Rahm
Cameron Smith
Brooks Koepka
Joaquin Niemann
Talor Gooch
Bryson DeChambeau
Tyrrell Hatton
Sergio Garcia
Dustin Johnson
Louis Oosthuizen
As for who win? Who know with the vagaries of match play golf? The PGA Tour team would be favorited, I’d guess somewhere in the -160 range.
With this new deal, PGA Tour purses are funded for three next five years. Then what? —@LeventAkizil
By then, ideally, PGA Tour Enterprises will be profitable and able to support itself with the money it brings in. That’s the whole idea here. I do believe part of the reason the Strategic Sports Group investors made this deal is because they love sports and they love being involved in sports, but they also view the tour as an underutilized asset that they can tweak and improve. Max Homa put this well when he was asked on Twitter about why fans should care about a deal that, on the surface, just looks like the rich getting richer.
“Because this investment group isn’t just donating money,” Homa wrote. “They want to make money. So they need people to watch golf to make money. So they’d better do a damn good job to make this more watchable and entertaining for the fans.”
A lot of players, particularly the non-superstars, are frustrated with the tour right now. They don’t like the limited-field events and they feel like it’s become more of a closed system that disproportionately benefits the big-name players. There’s no shortage of guys bitching. But the general consensus I’m sensing from talking to guys across the board is cautious optimism. The path the tour was on simply wasn’t sustainable. This gives them an influx of cash, a safety net to start to build something new.
How good was Caylab Surratt final round as a whole? —@jacob_j33598
That’s a really creative way to spell Caleb. But yes, the 19-year-old showed very well in his first start after leaving Tennessee midway through his sophomore year. It’s further evident of just how elite the competition is at the college level. Two weeks after Nick Dunlap became the first amateur to win on the PGA Tour in 33 years, Surratt finished his final round with five consecutive birdies for a T13 finish. Combined with the team victory that's nearly $1.1 million in earnings in his first week as a professional, not to mention whatever guaranteed money he got for his signature. It’s easy to see why LIV is so enticing to an elite amateur. It’s a much more direct path to millions of dollars.

Advertisement
Nick Dunlap, on the other hand, finished dead last at Pebble…but made $32,000 in the no-cut event. Contrast that with the $0 paycheck he earned for winning the American Express. But worry not, young Nicholas is doing just fine in the sponsorship and money department.
You’re the commissioner of the PGA Tour for 24 hrs. What’s the first change you’re making? —@travdawgks
I’m investing whatever it costs on a premium, subscription product that allows fans to watch every player on every hole. The Masters has it. Hell, LIV is going to debut it this summer. People are willing to pay for a premium product, and it’s a joke that hardcore fans can’t watch their favorite players or guys they bet on. PGA Tour Live isn't good enough. It’s such a no-brainer. Let’s hope the Strategic Sports Group people and their cash address this problem ASAP. It’s a layup.
Until next time,
Dan