Is this the end for LIV? Where does Saudi withdrawal leave golf and the players?
Can LIV find new backers and what are the options for Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Lee Westwood and others?Confirmation that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will cease funding the LIV Golf tour will have huge ramifications, for the future of the tour itself, the players and across golf’s traditional heartlands.Where does PIF’s withdrawal leave them all?Certainly in its present form, as a 14-event entity worth $30m per tournament.LIV was entirely reliant on Saudi Arabian money, to the tune of more than $5bn since 2021.The cash burn rate, albeit slowed down recently, has always been unsustainable.It is feasible that Scott O’Neil, LIV’s chief executive, will find backers for the business at a level which means it can be prolonged in some way.
He has already attracted marquee sponsors and overseen significant revenue growth.LIV needs an equivalent to the Strategic Sports Group, a private equity enterprise which ploughed $1.5bn into the PGA Tour in 2024.O’Neil can point to success in markets the PGA Tour has ignored.However, all the mood music within golf is that the PGA Tour has essentially won its battle with a disruptive competitor.
LIV had financial muscle but no tradition or footprint in the sport.Without PIF’s vast sums of money, the appeal for players will diminish fast.No LIV in 2027 is likely.A tour functioning somewhere in the wilderness or in partnership with others is feasible.O’Neil’s current, base case scenario is the latter.
Quite the range.There are marquee names: Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Cameron Smith, Tyrrell Hatton, Lee Westwood, Dustin Johnson, Ian Poulter and Phil Mickelson among them.There are younger, emerging talents such as José Luis Ballester.Anthony Kim’s return from oblivion has been a fascinating tale.Some golfers looked to be approaching the end of their careers, meaning any demise for LIV after they already received an extraordinary payday will not hurt too much.
The likes of DeChambeau and Rahm want to remain as competitive forces in golf.Laurie Canter turned down a guaranteed PGA Tour card to sign for LIV.The scenarios and positions of players under the LIV umbrella are wildly different.There is a misconception that LIV golfers will automatically want to beat a path back to the PGA Tour.Some have lingering, ongoing problems with the nature or the style of PGA Tour life.
Many have also dedicated a lot of effort and time into making LIV team franchises work.“As long as LIV is here, I would figure out a way for it to make sense,” said DeChambeau recently.Perhaps O’Neil should use DeChambeau to market LIV on this basis.LIV remains in place and so do the commitments signed by the players.While they will naturally ask their agents to ascertain what playing options exist should LIV either disappear or be hugely diminished, walking away at this point and risking a breach of contract dispute is unlikely.
Yes and no,The PGA Tour can flex muscles and portray victory over the rebels if big names shuffle back to its domain,The PGA Tour is also now in a stronger negotiating position than ever in respect of what terms players may have to accept to return,However, the PGA Tour will also be aware of the attitudes of those among its membership who resisted LIV’s strong overtures,Some golfers remain sore that they rejected tens of millions of dollars and committed to the PGA Tour.
Such sentiment will understandably only become stronger if those who took the payday have a form of salvation.Joaquin Niemann, for example, has earned $76.32m with LIV but recorded only one top-10 finish at a major.Just as there are golfers for whom the PGA Tour holds little appeal, the same applies in reverse.The PGA Tour is in the midst of modifying and streamlining its competitive setup.
A lot of golfers will have no obvious route back.The long-time theory that the former European Tour should form a business partnership with Saudi Arabia will end as the kingdom abruptly exits male elite golf.A deal with LIV? Not totally out of the question but very difficult to envisage given the strategic alliance that exists between the DP World and PGA Tours.The PGA Tour can shut off LIV’s European thoughts by extending that deal.LIV had always encouraged players to settle fines due to the DP World Tour for participation on the Saudi-backed circuit.
Umpteen LIV golfers have played on the DP World Tour in recent times with no fuss created at all.The DP World Tour could be a winner out of this debacle, should golfers need either a pre-PGA Tour home or a LIV equivalent.Unlike the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour remains global in its outlook; that chimes with much of the LIV strategy.With extreme caution.Saudi Arabia did not simply sponsor or assist the LIV Tour.
Instead, the circuit was entirely reliant on Public Investment Fund backing.It is unclear to what extent the Iran war has triggered a change in approach from the PIF – it was possible sport was being marginalised anyway – but recent weeks have illustrated the danger of being so beholden to a regime answerable to no one.This has been a sudden shift; O’Neil would have been confident of raising significant external funding had he been asked to do so months ago.Instead, he is engaged in a frantic race against time.LIV’s arrival has also overly inflated purses on the PGA Tour, handing players an overstated sense of their own value.
It distorted the commercial basis on which golf is operated.There will now be recalibration across the board.The Ryder Cup has lost potential captains and the legacies of established names have been tarnished by needless name-calling.This has been a grim period for golf, one which should serve as a salutary lesson.
Letter: Desmond Morris obituary
I often saw Desmond Morris and his wife, Ramona, when attending Oxford United FC home games at the Manor Ground, before its move to the present Kassam Stadium in 2001. He was a season ticket holder and at different times a director, vice-chairman and vice-president of the club. Some of these roles were taken up when Robert Maxwell owned the club, but they eventually fell out.However, Morris is probably best remembered for the creation of the inspirational club logo of an ox head, based on a powerful Minoan bull. His undoubted artistic talents have been deployed by the club since 1978 and the logo continues to be used on the shirts worn by players and coaching staff, and related merchandise
Boom! A melodrama fit for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s doomed love affair
“My very first memory is of pain.” More than a touch dramatic, the words could easily be lifted from the script of Boom! Instead, they are a real-life confession by its leading lady, Elizabeth Taylor.When it comes to pain, Taylor is the poster child-star. In her long life, the actor underwent more than 30 surgeries and was supposedly hospitalised on more than 100 occasions. After a bout of pneumonia almost took her out in 1961, it was the pain of nearly losing her that led to her best actress sympathy win at the Oscars
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Antiquities dealer who exposed thefts at British Museum dies aged 61
The academic turned antiquities dealer who exposed the theft of hundreds of artefacts from the British Museum has died aged 61.Dr Ittai Gradel, from Denmark, alerted the British Museum and the police after he was able to buy dozens of museum artefacts on eBay over the course of several years.Gradel died of renal cancer days after receiving a rarely presented medal from the museum in recognition of what its director called his “very significant contribution”, according to the BBC.A police investigation is still ongoing, more than three years after the museum reported the thefts to Scotland Yard after pressure from Gradel. Before his death in a Danish hospice, Gradel – who would have been a key witness in any trial – told the BBC it was “a bit annoying” he wouldn’t live to see the resolution of the case
‘Protected for another century’: experts lift 15-tonne foremast from HMS Victory
There is only one correct way to extricate a 15-tonne wrought iron mast from one of the world’s most famous and beloved warships – very slowly, and with extreme care.Which is precisely how a 30-strong team led by shipwrights and riggers set about their task on Monday night into Tuesday morning when they lifted the foremast from HMS Victory as part of a £42m conservation project.A 750-tonne crane removed the 23-metre mast from the ship in an operation requiring power to lift the wrought iron structure but also a great deal of delicacy to make sure the fabric of the vessel was not harmed.In the coming days, as long as the wind does not get up, two more masts – the mizzen and bowsprit – will also be craned off Nelson’s 18th-century flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar and laid on a Portsmouth dockside ready for conservation work to begin.At daybreak on Tuesday, Patrizia Pierazzo, the deputy project director, hailed it as a “great start”
Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest review – painfully earnest tale of trauma and transition
Kae Tempest’s new novel is dedicated to “you”, the reader. It also comes with a plea: “Be gentle though.” But to whom or what should we be gentle? The book or the writer? Having Spent Life Seeking is Tempest’s second novel, arriving a decade after his first and following a period of considerable personal change, including gender transition. Perhaps inevitably, it is a book full of struggle and soul-searching. It is also painfully earnest: an enervating read with an exhausting intensity that neither relents nor resolves
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