LIV Golf 1.0 — the era of big talk and bigger paychecks — is over. Whatever comes next for the breakaway tour, cut loose by Saudi Arabian funding and now on the hunt for outside investment, the days of "Golf But Louder" are done.
Without a doubt, LIV fundamentally changed the structure of men's professional golf, forcing the PGA Tour into reworking its entire structure, schedule and financial model. LIV altered the professional arcs of some of the game's greatest players, gave others the opportunity to destroy their own reputations, and provided a pathway back to prominence for the once-lost Anthony Kim. LIV also brought the concept of sportswashing into the mainstream of the American sports conversation, forcing sports fans to decide just how much politics they were willing to accept with their sports.
That's a ****** of an impact in just a few short years, but that also leads into another LIV lesson: the impossibility of competing with the established American sports framework. Even a league funded by bottomless oil wealth ultimately couldn't compete with a vulnerable legacy organization.
So what does that mean? Competing with the PGA Tour is a lost cause for LIV, so coexistence is now the only path forward. And if LIV is going to survive and thrive in the years to come, version 2.0 will need to learn from the mistakes of its predecessor. And oh, are there plenty of lessons to learn.
LIV Golf fired off the tee in 2021 with swagger, attitude and arrogance, largely mirroring the personality of firebrand Greg Norman. Longtime PGA Tour antagonists like Norman and Phil Mickelson spoke openly (and in court filings) of wanting to upend the Tour's entire business model, torching the very house in which they'd grown wealthy. That didn't sit well with Tour traditionalists, and the badass playacting came off as more silly than intimidating. You're smacking a little white ball around a field, gentlemen. Let's not pretend this is armed combat.
#golf #american #norman
Without a doubt, LIV fundamentally changed the structure of men's professional golf, forcing the PGA Tour into reworking its entire structure, schedule and financial model. LIV altered the professional arcs of some of the game's greatest players, gave others the opportunity to destroy their own reputations, and provided a pathway back to prominence for the once-lost Anthony Kim. LIV also brought the concept of sportswashing into the mainstream of the American sports conversation, forcing sports fans to decide just how much politics they were willing to accept with their sports.
That's a ****** of an impact in just a few short years, but that also leads into another LIV lesson: the impossibility of competing with the established American sports framework. Even a league funded by bottomless oil wealth ultimately couldn't compete with a vulnerable legacy organization.
So what does that mean? Competing with the PGA Tour is a lost cause for LIV, so coexistence is now the only path forward. And if LIV is going to survive and thrive in the years to come, version 2.0 will need to learn from the mistakes of its predecessor. And oh, are there plenty of lessons to learn.
LIV Golf fired off the tee in 2021 with swagger, attitude and arrogance, largely mirroring the personality of firebrand Greg Norman. Longtime PGA Tour antagonists like Norman and Phil Mickelson spoke openly (and in court filings) of wanting to upend the Tour's entire business model, torching the very house in which they'd grown wealthy. That didn't sit well with Tour traditionalists, and the badass playacting came off as more silly than intimidating. You're smacking a little white ball around a field, gentlemen. Let's not pretend this is armed combat.
#golf #american #norman
2 months ago
