Unpacking LIV Golf’s wild week and uncertain future

Check in every week for the unfiltered opinions of our writers and editors as they break down the hottest topics in the sport, and join the conversation by tweeting us at @golf_com. This week, we discuss LIV Golf’s chaotic week and uncertain future, Matt Fitzpatrick’s win at RBC Heritage and Rory McIlroy’s career Masters prospects.

Early last week, several news outlets reported uncertainty regarding LIV Golf’s future, indicating the Saudi PIF was on the verge of pulling its funding. LIV CEO Scott O’Neil told his staff via email on Wednesday: “Our season continues exactly as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle. While the media landscape is often filled with speculation, our reality is defined by the work we do on the grass.” But O’Neil was more specific about the situation on Thursday, when he said in a TV interview, “The reality is you’re funded through the season, and then you work like crazy as a business to create a business and a business plan to keep us going.” (The clip was deleted but still circulated online.) On Sunday, Jon Rahm won LIV’s sixth event of the season, in Mexico City. What’s your primary takeaway from what was a wild week for the five-year-old league? 

James Colgan, news and features editor (@jamescolgan26): My primary takeaway is simple: The Saudis seem to be getting out of the business of running a golf league, which is a truly momentous takeaway for the entire sport. LIV now enters a period in which it will need to work hard to find a path to survival, and as its CEO, Scott O’Neil, himself said, it seems all options are on the table.

Josh Sens, senior writer (@joshsens): One takeaway is as old as capitalism: that new businesses — even the disruptive variety — are hard to grow no matter how much money you put into them. That said, for Saudi Arabia, getting out of the business of funding a professional golf tour would not have to mean getting out of golf. A new course just opened in Jura. Others are in the works. The ambition is still to grow the country’s presence in the game, but likely now as a host for golf tourism and tour events. Which, in retrospect, seems like it would have been the better path all along.

Josh Schrock, associate news editor (@Schrock_And_Awe): My main takeaway is that if the PIF pulls out, LIV Golf, as we know it, would need to reinvent itself. O’Neil said he would pursue all avenues to get more funding, but it’s hard to see one or several sponsors willing to bankroll the league at a level that would allow for more nine-figure contracts. O’Neil himself said LIV wouldn’t be profitable for five or 10 years without significant changes.  

To Schrock’s point, can LIV continue in its current form without PIF’s deep pockets? If so, what would need to change?

Colgan: Definitely not in its current form. The league has spent more than $5 billion of Saudi funding to date, and, as Josh noted, O’Neil has already said that the league is several years away from any hope of profitability. Depending upon who steps up to help LIV with funding, I’d say any change is on the table.

Sens: Nope, the league would not be viable in its current form, and I have a tough time imagining what other form it might take. A limited series of world championship events with big overseas dollar sponsorships? But is there really a market for more big-dollar professional golf than we already have? The LIV experiment has shown that certain markets — Australia and South Africa, for example — are hungry for golf star power, but, on a global level, building and drawing eyeballs to a new league is a steep hill to climb.

Schrock: LIV could try and merge with the DP World Tour or reconstruct how it did a lot of things when the PIF spigot was on. But the contracts and purses would have to go down, and, at that point, how many players are going to want to continue when the financial payoff isn’t what it was when they initially signed on? A lot of moving parts to consider, many of which we still have limited to no information on. 

If LIV doesn’t survive past 2026, would you expect the PGA Tour to offer LIV’s top players — Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, etc. — a path back to the Tour by way of a similar agreement that Brooks Koepka accepted?

Sens: For the big LIV names, absolutely. If the Tour wants to be a showcase for the world’s best talent, and it does, it will work out a deal with Rahm and DeChambeau and maybe a small handful of others. The rest, I suspect, will have to play their way back in through other smaller tours.

Colgan: In that theoretical, I’d think the Tour can afford to offer a “Koepka Deal” to Bryson and Rahm … and probably leave the rest of the LIV contingent to serve out their suspensions on the DP World Tour. 

Schrock: From a pure cost-benefit analysis, Tour CEO Brian Rolapp would probably love to add Bryson and Rahm back in the fold just as he did with Brooks. But things are not always that easy when you’re dealing with two players who already turned down an opportunity to come back, who might not be as well-liked by the current membership as Brooks, who kept his head down after he left and didn’t take any swipes or recruit other players. The feelings might not be the same toward Bryson, who was a named plaintiff in LIV’s antitrust suit against the PGA Tour and its members, or Rahm, whose departure post-framework agreement rubbed many players the wrong way. Would they immediately add value to the Tour? Yes. But for Rolapp to sell that vision, it’ll be a tricky high-wire act.

Matt Fitzpatrick won the RBC Heritage in a playoff over Scottie Scheffler, who started the day three shots off the lead but caught Fitzpatrick late. Is your Hilton Head takeaway more focused on Fitzpatrick’s second win in the last month, or Scheffler’s second straight runner-up finish?

Colgan: How quickly we forget that Scottie Scheffler remains a U.S. Open victory away from the career grand slam? Kudos to Fitz for another win, and for continuing to reestablish himself as one of the premier players in the sport … but my eyes are already peeking ahead to Shinnecock.

Sens: Like Woods before him, Scheffler has twisted our expectations so wildly out of proportion that a second-place finish somehow gets cast as a failure. Fitzpatrick is on a great run of golf. Scheffler is operating in a different dimension. Whatever “struggles” he went through earlier seem to be behind him. So yeah, as James said, eyes on Shinnecock. But also on Aronimink before that. And frankly, anywhere Scheffler tees it up.

Schrock: The Scheffler “struggles” were blown out of proportion as we tend to do when an elite athlete dips below the level at which we’ve become accustomed to seeing them operate. Scheffler almost erased a 12-shot weekend deficit at the Masters with an ice-cold putter. He’s the best in the world, and I expect him to contend every time he tees it up. To me, this was more about Fitzpatrick. A year ago, he was in a bad spot. His game was “rubbish,” and he was ranked 79th in the world. A year later, he has three worldwide wins and has beaten both Rory and Scottie in separate playoffs. His rise back is impressive, and I think he’s a much better player now than what we thought his ceiling was when he won the 2022 U.S. Open. Expect him to threaten at Aronimink and the Open. 

Speaking ahead of the Senior PGA Championship, major champ Padraig Harrington made one bold claim regarding how many more Masters Rory McIlroy could win given his success at Augusta, comfortability there and the fact that the course allows some players to stay competitive into their 50s. “Rory could win 10 [Masters] at this stage, or five of them, anyway.” While 10 seems lofty, what say you? How many Masters titles will Rory end his career with?

Colgan: I think we do this a lot with star players: we see them win a little, and we immediately assume they can win a lot. It’s so, so hard to win a Masters. I believe Rory could get to three, like fellow late-Augusta-bloomer Phil Mickelson, but I’ll probably hold off before adding any more to the list.

Sens: When Tiger won the Masters by a staggering 12 shots, I remember the talk being that he would never lose that tournament again. He got to five. Impressive. But yeah, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Things happen. Life happens. Four green jackets for Rory doesn’t seem entirely outlandish. Maybe five if all the stars align? But 10 is preposterous. Ain’t gonna happen.

Schrock: We quickly forget that Rory went 10 years without winning a major of any kind. Golf is a fickle, weird game. I think he can win a third jacket and maybe, maybe you can talk me into a fourth at the end of his career. But the real question is how many majors does Rory win? I feel like I want to say nine, but again, we like to be prisoners of the moment with these things.