LIV Golf and Bryson DeChambeau tee off new era but cannot escape Saudi shadow
Moments before Bryson DeChambeau teed off to open LIV Golf’s first American tournament of the year, at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, the public address announcer bellowed “Long! LIV! Golf!” to try and electrify a modest crowd by the first tee.The irony wasn’t lost on the devoted group who skirted work and school to enjoy a sunny afternoon just 25 miles outside Washington DC: this was the first tournament since the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund confirmed it would no longer fund the outfit that it once imagined as the world’s premier collection of professional golfers.Before that news was finalized, the league postponed a tournament scheduled to take place in New Orleans at the end of June.“We have a good runway through this season fortunately,” LIV’s chief executive, Scott O’Neil, said during a press conference on Tuesday.“And it’s for next year that we’re going to be making some pretty significant, substantive changes.
”The news hung over a predictably quiet Thursday afternoon to open a tournament that Donald Trump is expected to attend on Saturday.Trump, who had publicly supported LIV’s growth after the PGA temporarily refused to hold tournaments at his properties, told reporters that he believes the PGA should welcome back players seeking to leave LIV with its future in question.Among the crowd were two distinct classes of golf fan that LIV has been working for the past years to capture as part of their breathtakingly expensive and ferocious effort to become a viable competitor to the PGA Tour.Perched behind a railing with a pink baseball cap and synthetic golf shirt covered in pastel dots was Riley Robbins, a mustachioed contractor who traveled with his mom and fiancee from Virginia Beach, Virginia to celebrate his 21st birthday by attending all four days of the tournament.“I came here to watch Bryson hit the shit out of the ball,” Robbins said with a chuckle.
“I came here to watch Jon Rahm hit the shit out of the ball.”Robbins is an avowed golf fanatic: he tries to golf every day when he’s not at work and is an avid follower of various YouTube channels.He is especially fond of DeChambeau, who indicated this week that he would rather continue building his YouTube channel instead of trying to rejoin the PGA; (DeChambeau was part of a 2022 lawsuit against the PGA that included fellow defectors Phil Mickelson and Ian Poulter).As a teenager, Robbins remembered DeChambeau as the less likable party in the golfer’s bitter feud with Brooks Koepka.That was before DeChambeau started building his YouTube channel featuring footage of his workouts and personal guide to his life as a pro golfer.
It was this kind of individual brand building and media strategy that LIV welcomed while the PGA only recently loosened its restrictions on what its golfers can post,“I pretty much get everything through YouTube because I’m part of the younger generation,” Robbins said,“I follow live tournaments, but other than that, I am more attracted to the personality-driven side,”The problem for LIV is that Robbins was here to see DeChambeau, not the Crushers team that he captains,Few fans were wearing LIV merchandise despite the outfit’s intense marketing effort to try to popularize the team-based concept that separates it from the PGA.
The course featured team-branded pop-up bars and signs with QR codes encouraging attendees to join specific fan clubs.One team, the Southern Guards, celebrates by doing the “rhino jive” and asked fans to post videos of their best efforts.In the “Fan Village,” attendees could receive a temporary tattoo with their favorite (or newly adopted) team.Maybe fans would be more invested if the tattoos were permanent.If LIV has any future, then it will need the likes of Robbins and other American fans to find a team and start buying merchandise and pledging allegiance to the Rangegoats or Crushers or Hyflyers.
Inside the course’s largest merchandise tent, however, most of the space was devoted to selling agnostic LIV-branded clothing.“I think the team format is transformational,” O’Neil said.“The players as partners is something that doesn’t exist in the world of sports.”O’Neil cited not just the high audience turnout in LIV events in Australia and South Africa, but how those audiences welcomed the national affiliations of teams like the Southern Guards (South Africa), Ripper GC (Australia) and Korean GC (South Korea).Before DeChambeau teed off, four parachuters descended waving the flag of OKGC, a recently rebranded team that is the first to be directly anchored to the United States.
O’Neil insists that several of LIV’s players are dedicated to making the team concept work, and reports have surfaced that a core part of O’Neil’s strategy is finding investors for the 13 existing teams.The team concept hardly resonated with Jeff Eisenhard and Michael Cafferky, two friends from nearby Reston, Virginia who purchased a $29 day pass to watch some of the world’s best players up close.Like Robbins, they also consider themselves obsessed: they play in a fantasy golf league together and have attended several PGA tournaments as spectators.Yet they never check the LIV standings and scoff at the notion that anyone – even those attending that day – pays any attention to the team standings that LIV believes is essential to the league’s survival.“If it was drizzly and cold, I wouldn’t be here,” Eisenhart quipped.
Instead of purchasing the four-day grounds pass, they admitted that they would be following this weekend’s PGA Tour event so they could pay attention to their fantasy golf teams.“This team concept is just silliness,” Cafferky said.“Nobody is connected to these teams or franchises.”If LIV hopes to survive, especially without one of the world’s wealthiest backers, then it will need to reach these fans before it runs out of money.
Labour loses control of Birmingham city council after 14 years of leadership
The Labour party’s 14-year leadership in Birmingham has come to an end after Reform, Greens and pro-Gaza independents made significant gains in the UK’s second-largest city.No party has yet won an overall majority at Birmingham city council, one of Europe’s largest local authorities, with the results reflecting wider political fragmentation across England.Labour lost hundreds of council seats in England, many to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which made big gains across the Midlands and the north as well as taking seats from the Tories in the south.Labour was expected to take significant losses in the all-out elections in Birmingham, where 101 seats were up for grabs. The council has been plagued by a series of problems in recent years, from the declaration of bankruptcy in 2023, subsequent cuts to local services and the ongoing bin strike – images of rubbish piled on the city’s streets have made headlines across the world
Cracks showing for Labour close to backyards of Starmer’s top team
Keir Starmer hates to lose. Unsurprisingly, he refused to walk away and end his premiership as Labour’s local election losses began to trickle in on Friday morning. Upon entering Downing Street in July 2024 after leading Labour to a historic general election victory, Starmer promised the public that his government would “fight every day until you believe again”.Now, Starmer is faced with the uncomfortable truth that the frustrated yet united coalition that brought him into No 10 hoping for change is completely fractured and its discontent cannot be dismissed as early midterm blues.The cracks are showing very close to the political backyards of Starmer and his top team
Plaid Cymru wins Welsh Senedd elections, ending 100 years of Labour control
Plaid Cymru has won the Welsh Senedd elections, ending 100 years of Labour dominance in Wales and blocking the momentum of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.The leader of the centre-left Welsh nationalist party, Rhun ap Iorwerth, said he stood ready to become first minister and form the next Welsh government, taking over from Welsh Labour, who have governed in Wales since devolution began in 1999.The Plaid win makes a Welsh independence referendum a future possibility, and means all three of the UK’s Celtic nations will now be controlled by separatist parties.Reform UK came second, pushing Labour into a distant third place. Plaid won 43 seats, Reform 34, Labour nine, the Conservatives seven, Greens two and Liberal Democrats one
Badenoch claims Tories ‘coming back’ despite widespread losses in local elections
Kemi Badenoch has claimed that the Conservatives are “coming back” after winning back Westminster council from Labour in London, despite her party suffering significant losses throughout England in Thursday’s elections.The party also saw off a threat from Reform UK in Bexley. But the Tories suffered a series of losses in Essex, where Badenoch herself is an MP, losing 41 seats while Reform gained 52. They held on to Harlow, securing all 11 district council seats available.In Havering, where the Conservatives had 14 councillors before the election, the party was wiped out
Zack Polanski calls two-party politics dead after mayoral and council wins
Zack Polanski has declared Britain’s two-party politics “dead and buried” as his Green party won its first two mayoral elections and gained councillors across England, winning four councils outright.As Labour losses piled up across the country and the Conservatives endured another disappointing set of results, Polanski sought to present his party as emerging from the results as the most viable option for opponents of Reform.“It is very clear that the new politics is the Green party versus Reform,” he said.Speaking at the Hackney count centre in east London, the scene of the first mayoral success, he added: “I said that the Green party were going to replace Labour. That’s exactly what we did in Gorton and Denton, it’s what we’ve done in Hackney, and we’re seeing that right across the country
Lord Beecham obituary
Jeremy Beecham, who has died aged 81, was an outstanding figure in local government as the Labour leader of Newcastle city council from 1977 to 1994.He built on the work of his immediate predecessors in restoring faith in the integrity of the council following the corruption of the T Dan Smith era, and guided it through the unfamiliar territory of collaboration with the new Tyne and Wear county council.He and his team focused on the basic local government responsibilities of council housing, education and social services – the latter his special interest. Initially these priorities led him to allow council staffing levels to run out of control. As a reporter for the Newcastle Chronicle throughout his leadership, I noted in 1978 that the council was employing more than 18,000 people: in the very different circumstances of 2025, the number of full-time equivalent posts was below 7,000
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