The LIV Golf league launched in 2022 and war broke out in a traditionally peaceful sport, save for a Tiger Woods scandal or two.
Australian legend Greg Norman was the face of the Saudi-backed breakaway that threw nine-figure cheques at major champions, unfathomable money to most, to lure them across for a schedule of less events and a questionable new playing format that involved teams with names like Cleeks and Ironheads.
The initial response form the wider golfing world was at best, tepid curiosity and at worst, unbridled disdain.
“I hate LIV,” Rory McIlroy said, more than once, as the leading voice against the new tour that was lashed as another attempt at “sportswashing” by a regime reviled for a historically horrible record of human rights violations.
LIV’s arrival created absolute turmoil, exactly what Norman was chasing, as he sought to be a disrupter, having long challenged golf’s status quo.
After three seasons of LIV, however, the tide has turned, helped significantly by the recruitment of more stars, like Australian Cameron Smith and Masters champ Jon Rahm, as well as bringing the event to Australia where crowds in Adelaide embraced the event.
With music blasting on course, party holes and only four hours of golf a day, the packed fairways gave Norman tingles and his tour the credibility he was chasing.
Now, as the Saudi money men who invested $1bn to get LIV up and going attempt to make peace with the PGA Tour, and bring some unity back to the sport, LIV has achieved a place of acceptance among an initially sceptical wider golfing community.
Yes, the TV ratings remain an issue, so do crowds and access to the best courses.
But as Aussie convert Lucas Herbert explained, having enjoyed the ultimate first season with LIV and the all-Australian Ripper GC team, which took out the season-ending team championship, and the $20m prize, with his earnings exceeding $7.4m, the upside for his own growth as a golfer has been unquestionable.
Giving a peek behind the curtains of life as a LIV player, Herbert, who will play as many as four Australian events in the LIV off-season, including the Australian Open, said questions about ridiculous cheques sapping competitive drive for players who now had “generational wealth”, as Norman called it, were misplaced.
Herbert, a winner on both the PGA Tour and the European Tour before leaping to LIV, said he was much better as a golfer and an athlete because of everything the move had offered him.
GETTING BETTER EVERY DAY.
Herbert said the reduced playing schedule, with only 14 events spaced out from February to September, and breaks of up to three weeks between some tournaments, allowed for better development, for all players, including the established stars who even shared their knowledge willingly to teammates, knowing the better team earnt the bigger bucks.
“I played so much more in 2023, but it’s just a perfect schedule now,” he said.
“You get your time to get away from the game and get your development blocks to be able to get better, not just from a perspective of hitting balls for three or four days and then go to an event, you can actually really work on your game and elevate your skill set rather than just tune it up. I’ve spent 10 months now taking advantage of that opportunity, it’s been awesome.
“I am comfortably, comfortably better this year. I mean, Cam Smith gave me an hour of his time on the chipping ground at the Greenbrier. Can’t imagine that ever happening to any other player when we’re playing individual events on the PGA Tour.
“So just the knowledge I’ve been able to zap from my teammates at various stages throughout the year has been awesome, and my game has massively benefited from that.”
THE TEAM, AND THE TEAM CHATS
Players often speak about the loneliness that can come with being a player on the PGA Tour, and other tours, travelling from event to event, with potentially only your caddie as a companion for months. It impacted Herbert in a big way in 2023 when he took a lengthy break from the game.
But joining LIV meant joining a team, with Smith and fellow Aussies Marc Leishman and Matt Jones, a team that won twice in 2024, including the unforgettable home victory in Adelaide.
With any team comes a team chat, constant messages, banter, which is another significant point of difference, and Herbert is the main contributor.
“Yeah, me putting in absolute nonsense,” he said.
“Most of our group chats are just banter back and forth about any sort of various things that are going on throughout the world. I wouldn’t say that we’re solving any world golf problems in those group chats. We certainly have a few dinners where we all have good conversations.
“Sometimes it’s car rides to the course, sometimes it’s lunches in between rain delays, sometimes it’s just wandering over to each other on the putting green between drills. There’s not as much said as maybe what you think, but when stuff is said, it’s very much taken on-board.
“We don’t really get in each other’s way in terms of telling each other how to practice or how much to practice or where we should play, where we shouldn’t play, any of that kind of thing. Certainly, advice is offered and given when it’s asked for, but we’re definitely not in a dictatorship position where Cam’s telling me what to do in the off-season.
“It really is a great environment to be in because I think we’re all quite similar minded with where we want this team to go and where we want our games to go and how much it sort of means to us. It becomes very easy to have that bond.”
THE HIGH FIVES
Playing on the same team, at every event, gives a sense of unity and purpose individual golfers don’t get. Bad rounds, good rounds, single birdies matter to more than just the one player.
“Whether it’s a shoulder to lean on after a bad round or some high fives to go around after a good round,” Herbert, fully adorned in Ripper GC gear, told NewsWire after arriving back in Australia this week.
“It’s interesting. The tournaments I’ve won in the past, there’s players waiting for you on the 18th green to congratulate you, and it’s great … but they’re not genuinely happy for you because they wish it was them on that podium, whereas I think it’s quite a different feel out on LIV.
“When you’re having conversations with Leish in the locker room after a round, ‘Oh, hey, mate, how did you finish?’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, you know, birdied the last to finish three under’. And it’s like, there’s high fives, there’s pat’s on the backs like, ‘Mate, great job. Like, team really needed you out there, and like you finished off that so well, a great fightback, great finish’.
“Whatever it might be, just that positive reinforcement where three-under might be middle of the pack and didn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things when you’re playing an individual event, (but) all of a sudden, in a team environment, it feels a hell of a lot more, and it feels like you can really contribute.”
THE LUXURIES
When the investment in LIV started at $1bn, there’s going to be some luxuries afforded to the players.
There’s a pre-tournament party at every stop on the schedule where players are put up in luxury hotels and every wish is catered for. But it’s the little things that matter too, like looking after caddies, and then there’s the access to food.
“We obviously get a lot of things covered, both travel and accommodation, and not on our dollar, which is nice,” Herbert said.
“And then it’s a real players’ first sort of mentality, I guess, with the treatment. We get access to food pretty much 24/7 in various different lounges or the hotel at the course, whatever it is.
“We get some actually really thoughtful player gifts throughout the year and feel taken care of on that side of things. I’ve loved the fact that it feels like a real family out there with LIV obviously.
“If you think of PGA Tour events, 156 players, 156 different caddies, 156 different families, whether it be girlfriends, parents, kids, everything, and then that changes week to week. Players go home, others come out, and you just don’t get the ability to get to know guys as well as you know out here on LIV, it’s like it’s the same 54 guys every week.”
THE COMPETITIVENESS
Massive sporting contracts around the world are not new, but critics argued the staggering money dolled out in the early days of LIV, with reports Bryson deChambeau was offered in excess of $250m, could stifle competitiveness.
The fact deChambeau won the US Open this year, and another LIV player, Tyrrell Hatton, won the Dunhill Links event after returning to the DP World Tour last weekend, is evidence that’s not the case, which Herbert confirmed.
“I think people that come to a LIV event, they experience what it’s like, really understand what’s going on, they can see that,” he said.
“You can call it an exhibition tour if you want, but the guys still care a hell of a lot. And it’s a very good balance between having a having a lot of fun with the fans and with everything that goes on at the events but also really caring about what you’re doing. I think there’s a lot of pride in this for a lot of guys in wanting to start a product that hangs around for a long time and outlives all of us.”
THE COURSES
Apart from not earning world ranking points, inhibiting access to the majors, the one lingering issue for many LIV players is the quality of courses they get access to.
With so many of the courses around the world in bed with the PGA Tour, getting on them is impossible.
As LIV continues to evolve, and the increasing likelihood it will remain in some form even if the pending merger goes ahead, it’s an issue Herbert says needs to be addressed.
“I think that’s definitely something you know that a merger would help with,” he said.
“We’re a bit restricted with golf course access right now, the powers that be probably putting their foot down and making it a very divisive kind of landscape right now if you’re going to host a LIV event.
“We maybe haven’t played the best courses there are to play in the world, but hopefully we get more access to better golf courses as time goes on.
“We could do a little better with our scheduling too. We played a lot of events in some very hot climates this year. I think the players can deal with that, but trying to get spectators through the gate becomes a hard sell when we’re playing at 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
“The league is very much in its infancy, so there’s stuff that we can iron out pretty easily.”
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