LIV’s curtain-raiser in London last year sparked war – but how much has golf changed since?

Twenty-five million dollars will be up for grabs for players competing at this weekend’s LIV Golf event at the Centurion Club in London. 

The winner of the tournament will receive a whopping £3.14million ($4m) with the winning team set to also net a hefty pay check of £2.3m ($3m). 

Those are some staggering numbers and to put them into perspective, the winner of this weekend’s PGA Tour event, the John Deere Classic, will win £1m ($1.3m). 

Since its inception last year, the tournament, which is backed by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), has sent shockwaves through the world of sport, in more than one way.   

Fronted by two-time major champion Greg Norman, the breakaway league has lured in some of the biggest names in golf using that cash, with the likes of Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith and Brooks Koepka all opting to join the new competition.

They’ve received a lot of scrutiny for the move, with many questioning their motives to join the Saudi-backed league, after the Middle Eastern country has been accused of human rights abuses in the past.

It’s been a year since LIV Golf’s inaugural tournament at Centurion Club in London 

A motorcade of London Taxis arrived during the first round of LIV London in Hemel Hempstead

The course has been manicured and is ready to host some of the best players in the world

It is also a year since Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood were awkwardly forced to bat away questions from a journalist, after they were quizzed on the PIF’s involvement, with a reporter asking them: ‘If Vladimir Putin had a tournament would you play there?‘

While things remain unclear about where Norman and Yasir Al-Rumayyan’s golf league will go in the future following the groundbreaking merger, it is clear that the series will likely be here to stay in some form or another, at least for the next little while.   

Just ask Phil Mickelson, who’s team, the High Flyers, have been selling capes, in merchandise tents at events around the LIV Golf circuit. Yes capes. 

‘It’s aspirational,’ the left-hander said on the rather unique piece of merchandise ahead of LIV London. 

‘It’s not for everybody,’ Mickelson, who himself has divided many opinions in the last year, added. ‘But it’s a cool thing about our team, and it’s the creativity of my wife, Amy, and what she brings. We envision a lot of little kids running around the golf course in capes, and that’s kind of what we’re hoping for, and have them dreaming about being a HyFlyer one day.

‘I know we’re only one year into LIV, but where it’s going to be in 10, 15, 20 years, it’s going to be pretty exciting.’

LIV are certainly aiming for the skies and this weekend’s event in London perhaps is a representation of that. Many have questioned whether LIV will still continue to, pardon the pun, live on should the Saudi-backed sports league eventually merge with its rivals, the PGA Tour. 

But how has it changed the golfing landscape in the past year? 

Igniting the touch paper on a year-long feud 

It must be said, the future of both the PGA Tour and LIV Golf is very uncertain and the shocking merger may still not actually happen, depending on an ongoing investigation from the US Department of Justice. 

A year on from the inaugural LIV Golf event that kick-started what’s become one of the most talked about sports leagues on the planet, Greg Norman’s tournament returns to London and right now shows no sign of slowing down. 

‘LIV is and will continue to be a standalone enterprise,’ a defiant Norman told LIV Golf staff last year. ‘Our business model will not change. We changed history, and we’re not going anywhere.’ 

The inaugural event at the Centurion club featured loud music, a war plane fly over and a pair of golfers walking around on stilts with a bag of oversized golf clubs. It was an interesting look for golf to say the least. 

Mixed reviews were given of the tournament. Some hounded the dire broadcast and commentary that was shown on a laggy live stream while spectators on the ground were bombarded by a whole variety of sights unusual of a golf tournament. 

And it earned the detraction of none other than Rory McIlroy who has been one of LIV Golf’s staunchest critics throughout, who hit out at several of the players that went to join up with the breakaway tour.

Lee Westwood (left) and Ian Pouter (right) were involved in a very awkward interview at the London event last season

The Centurion Club will be the first golf course to host two LIV Golf events in the Tour’s history

Last season featured plenty of sights and sounds, with a group of war planes flying over the playing grounds

Phil Mickelson (left) described the tournament as ‘golf but louder’ and that is a fair assessment of LIV which is striving to attract a younger audience with flashing lights and lots of noise

‘We all know why everyone’s playing in London this week, it’s boatloads of cash and it’s money up front and I get it. For some guys I totally get it,’ the four-time major winner said ahead of the tournament. 

Say what you will about LIV, it’s certainly bringing in plenty of spectators, new fans and coverage around the world. Many patrons have flocked to the events, tuned in online, even signed up to play in the competition’s pro-am tournaments too. 

At LIV Adelaide this year, world renowned DJ Fisher was in attendance dancing with players like Smith on the party hole. The tournaments, described by Mickelson as ‘golf but louder’ have been successful and while it may have failed to attract purists of the game, younger audiences are turning their heads to LIV.     

And while both tours have played along side each other for the last year, much controversy had followed the Saudi sponsored league’s inception with the inaugural tournament being the ignition on the touch paper of what’s been an explosive year of arguments. 

Battle of the lawyers 

Less than a few hours after LIV London had started, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan sent a letter to all Tour players, stating that the 17 players competing at the Centurion Club were suspended and ineligible to play in future PGA Tour events. 

It was a sign of what was to come, with the DP World Tour following suit later, hitting players like Poulter and Westwood with a £100,000 fine.

Norman subsequently bit back at Monahan following the suit and in his response, he called the PGA Tour’s decision to ban LIV Golfers ‘deafening hypocrisy‘.   

His players also hinted at bringing legal action against the Tour, and it would turn out that LIV players would file an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour that would see eventually see the organization join in too. 

That has since been disbanded following the merger between LIV and the PGA Tour, but it hasn’t been the only legal proceedings we’ve seen in the past year. 

McIlroy’s ‘teegate’ spat with Patrick Reed was sparked by a subpoena served on him by the American, leading to the Northern Irishman throwing a tee at Reed during a practice session last year. 

Meanwhile, the DP World Tour were earlier this year, locked in legal proceedings with players who departed to join LIV. They did, in fact, win their case with the Sports Resolutions panel finding them in February giving them precedent to impose £100,000 fines and suspensions on golfers leaving the European circuit to join LIV. 

In some ways, it was a pretty monumental decision that will pave the way for future sporting organization’s looking to prevent players from departing their leagues or teams in a similar fashion. 

Big names of European golf have all joined up with the rebel tour including Sergio Garcia (pictured) who’s relationship with Rory McIlroy has suffered as a result

Dustin Johnson is another big name who has won several times on LIV’s 2022 circuit and earnt himself $35m (£27m) in his first season with the tour

Leftie has been criticised heavily during the past two years for his own stance on LIV Golf 

The barbs 

And while there has been much back-and-forth between the lawyers, we’ve had no shortage of drama between some of the main characters in this winding epic. 

Shots have been fired between both camps with many PGA Tour players calling out their former playing partners, with some claiming they’ve sold out the Tours that have looked after them for so many years. 

Golf’s split and re-unification has caused some of the ugliest spats in sport, with McIlroy and Sergio Garcia’s long-standing friendship being one of several relationships caught in the cross-fire of golf’s civil war. 

Thankfully, the former Ryder Cup partners have now ended their feud, but we’ve seen several other digs being thrown around, with Mickelson being at the centre of many of them. 

Known for his incendiary comments, he slammed the PGA Tour for its obnoxious greed last year while more recently took a dig at McIlroy after he missed the cut at the Masters back in April saying that no team in LIV Golf would want him.

‘As worn out as McIlroy was after the Masters and his need for an off season, LIV would be perfect for him,’ he wrote on Twitter. ‘Problem is I don’t think there’s a team that wants him on it because they’d have to deal with all his BS.’

Equally there’s been plenty of jabs thrown in the other direction, with Eddie Pepperell landing a ‘haymaker’ on Richard Bland, after the LIV Golfer criticized his compatriot on Twitter. 

After Bland called him out on Twitter, Pepperell wrote: ‘Where to start…’ he wrote. ‘Suppose it’s simple; in my 15 minutes I won more events than you did in 22 years. What the Tour has done (just to name a few); GolfSixes, Heineken hole at Himmerland, Beat the Pro in Holland. The Tour, which you spent 22 years on did ok for you mate.’

Mickelson took a swipe at McIlroy on Twitter following McIlroy’s issues with his swing 

Eddie Pepperell landed a ‘haymaker’ of a comeback against Richard Bland on Twitter 

McIlroy (far right) said the incident came after Reed (third left) lodged a subpoena against him 

Among all of this McIlroy’s long standing feud with Norman has continued to rage on and while things have lately seemed pretty quiet between the two, the Northern Irishman’s war of words with the Australian intensified in October after he won his 21st PGA Tour title at the CJ Cup. 

He eclipsed Norman’s 20 Tour wins and subsequently had a dig at his adversary, saying: ’21st PGA Tour win. One more than someone else and that gave me some extra incentive to get it done.’

In any event, the civil war continues to rage on and it seems some LIV players have been bickering between themselves, with Matt Wolff hitting out at Brooks Koepka this week after he was accused of ‘quitting and wasting his talent’. 

How has LIV impacted the PGA Tour?

Meanwhile, there has been plenty of change in the golfing landscape too. While the seismic merger between the two entities is still unraveling, the PGA Tour and DP World Tour have drastically had to alter the way they operate in response to LIV Golf. 

It actually forced Woods and McIlroy to lead a meeting back in August of last year to discuss how the PGA Tour would compete with LIV Golf.  

Other new golf competitions have been established, including Tiger Woods’ and Rory McIlroy’s new TGL stadium based golf competition. 

LIV’s party atmosphere, loud music and flashing lights aims to attract a new type of audience as well as retain those already in the game and some of what TGL is set to implement will take inspiration from that. 

Equally, the PGA Tour has made several changes to how it’s operated, amid threats from LIV that some of their star players could join the breakaway league. 

The organization has stepped up the amount of prize money available to players, pushing the new average purse up to £15.5m ($20m). 

They have also added missed cut bonuses of (£3,849) ($5,000), something that was unheard of in the competition previously. Equally this year Monahan also announced that the Tour would be implementing limited-field no-cut events that would, similar to LIV, not see players get cut from the competition. 

Norman (pictured) has been the face of the venture, with the CEO also locking horns with McIlroy in the past year, with tensions boiling over between the pair

The Northern Irishman even said he wanted to break Norman’s record having spent 331 days at the top of the Official World Golf Rankings 

Former President Donald Trump (left) is set to host a LIV event at his Trump Bedminster golf course later this year, while Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (right) has been working to secure a deal to merge LIV and the PGA Tour 

The PGA Tour also elevated four more events to the FedEx Cup regular season and will now reward 10 instead of 10 players in their ‘Player Impact Program’, a scheme that rewards players with cash bonuses the more they help to promote the PGA Tour. 

Essentially, the Tour has tried to make itself more lucrative in a bid to compete with LIV Golf, which has been poised to snap up some of the competition’s best players.

Even Tiger Woods has admitted that the PGA Tour may not be able to compete with LIV’s money, saying: ‘They want to be a validated tour with world ranking points and they’re buying up tours around the world and I don’t know what their end game is. It might be just being an official member of the golf ecosystem and being recognised with world ranking points.

‘I think that’s what their intended goal is. You know, they’ve spent probably close to $2billion this year. Who’s to say they can’t spend $4bn or $5bn next year? We just don’t know. It’s an endless pit of money.’

LIV Golf in 2024?

After its maiden season, LIV golf is much the same as it was before. It is still pretty loud but is a lot bigger and is starting to gain the attention of more and more people, especially following the merger. 

While some sponsors had previously ended deals with golfers on the tour, like adidas did with Johnson, some teams are starting to get sponsorship deals with large-scale commercial brands like OKX, who also sponsor Man City, and will this week, be seen on electronic TV screens on cart bags around the course.

That is a clear sign that LIV, as a brand is continuing to grow, and the expansion from eight events last year to 14 again, while securing some monumental courses including Valdarrama in Spain, shows how LIV has continued to push on.

LIV Golf’s future might remain uncertain, but it is clear that many have enjoyed the events, particularly out in Australia

Equally Koepka’s win at the PGA Championship earlier this year was another big win for LIV, and with many of the breakaway league’s players competing in each of the majors this season, it might not be long before we see follow the American’s lead. 

Smith is set to defend his Open Championship title at Hoylake in two weeks time, before LIV Golf will head to Greenbrier, Bedminster, Chicago and Miami before wrapping up the season in Jeddah. 

But much speculation remains over the future of the tournament. Monahan has stated that LIV Golf ‘will continue into 2024‘ and ‘didn’t see a scenario where the series didn’t exist’ but questions have been raised over what direction the rebel, team-based league will go in and how the merger will impact that. 

Sir Nick Faldo recently claimed that the end is nigh for the tournament while delivering a scathing assessment of some of the players who have made the switch to the rebel league.   

‘I don’t think so, because nobody’s really interested,’ Faldo said when asked if LIV would keep going. ‘They’re not going to get the sponsorship that they want. They call it a team (event) and it’s not because it’s stroke play.’ 

He added: ‘It’s only half a dozen (players) that are really current, half of the field I don’t really know and half the field are there for the very nice last-placed money that you still get if you shoot 20 over.’ 

LIV has grown this season from eight events last year to 14 this season, with several more events across the USA and Saudi Arabia still to come on the calendar

How much has golf changed in the last year? Well, the players are relatively the same, and while they may not necessarily be playing against each other as regularly, golf really has grown as a sport in many ways. 

The money that’s now involved, the events that are being played and the relationships between the players have all changed in the last 18 months. In terms of the future though, it is hard to predict what will happen to LIV. 

Equally, it’s very hard to predict what will happen with the PGA Tour in the coming years also. 

Ultimately, it hinges on how the merger between the two entities plays out, but one thing that is pretty plain to see is that, whatever happens, Golf’s civil war will continue to rage on, whether both parties are united or divided. 

Follow MailSport on Threads here: https://www.threads.net/@mailsport