Almost a third of the world’s top golfers, including Phil Mickelson, have defected to LIV Golf.
Jonathan Ferrey/LIV Golf via Getty Images
It seems you can’t go a week without players from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf berating each other in the press. The most recent edition featured perhaps the two greatest protagonists in golf’s civil war – Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy – discussing which tour represents the future of the game. And that very argument has been at the heart of the fight that’s been tearing apart professional golf since the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Circuit burst onto the scene earlier this year.
From debates over the ethics of supporting LIV Golf in “sports laundering” the Saudi royal family’s human rights abuses, to questions about which pro golfers LIV Golf has granted greater financial leverage, it’s not melodramatic to dismiss the PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf battle like this create a battle for the very soul of the sport itself. But how did we get to the point, in a little less than a year, where an important sport was being torn in two directions?
One of the main reasons the meteoric rise of LIV Golf has created such a huge divide in the sport is simply the magnitude of the names the Upstart Tour has won in such a short span of time. When Mickelson became the first golfer to publicly entertain the thought of retiring from the PGA Tour – in comments to journalist Alan Shipnuck first published in February – he was ranked among the top 100 players in the world (and was the defending PGA -Champion). but he was mostly island roaming as a then 51-year-old whose best days were probably far behind him. In the meantime, however, LIV Golf has managed to significantly upgrade its squad: 44 of the 150 best players in the world (as of June 11) have left for the Rebel Tour:
That group includes 2022 British Open champion Cameron Smith, who defected to LIV Golf in August. While the majority of top golfers still play in the PGA Tour and/or affiliated organizations, the fact that nearly a third have abandoned ship explains the shockwaves LIV Golf has sent through the golfing world.
And if you want to know why they left… well, it’s all about the money. (When isn’t it ever?) We compared the PGA Tour and LIV Golf’s per-tournament earnings for players going from the former in 2020-21 — the last full PGA Tour season without LIV Golf as a competitor — to the latter switched in 2022. and the differences for most players ranged from a modest raise under LIV Golf to an astronomical raise in money for a given event:
For some golfers like Smith, this at least partially reflects the benefits of a well-timed career year. (Smith had nearly doubled his previous career-high earnings in a PGA Tour season before joining LIV Golf.) Some of LIV Golf’s higher payouts per event are also due to more money being spent on fewer events — there were seven since June 11, compared to 19 for the PGA Tour — though most top players only play a fraction of the total events on the calendar anyway. But most of all, it’s a testament to how much money the Saudi government has spent trying to lure elite golfers out of the PGA Tour’s sphere of influence. According to The Athletic, $2 billion of the country’s $620 billion public investment fund has been earmarked for spending on the startup golf tour — and that money has done its bit to talk so far.
In fact, we can also see the impact of LIV Golf’s presence on the pro golf industry by how the PGA Tour has responded to these defectors. At various points throughout the summer and fall, Commissioner Jay Monahan announced that the tour would be working with players to increase prize money for several events on the calendar for future seasons, clearly in an effort to prevent players from moving to LIV Golf.
In response to the response, LIV Golf also announced increased prize pools for its events, sparking what many describe as an arms race between the two competing tours. The increased pressure to attract and retain talent may bode well for high-profile players in the near term, but it’s still unclear where the increasingly bitter battle between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf will ultimately leave the sport.
A successful LIV golf tour will do nothing to discourage the types of human rights abuses critics say the Saudi government is using golf to cover up. If top players continue to defect in greater numbers, LIV Golf could become an even less viable option for the middle and lower tier of players whose status on the Tour is actually the most deplorable. (Also, the younger players who come to LIV Golf straight from the amateur ranks might never qualify for the PGA Tour.) And while there are historical cases of rival leagues forcing mergers and the established organizations with which they once competed, upgrade are also counter-examples where a split has left their sport in tatters.
When the smoke of this battle clears, what exit will Golf find itself in? Only time can tell.
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