Better winners, more new signings: LIV Golf takes front-nine lead in 2024 war with PGA Tour

Greg Norman welcomed the latest signing for LIV Golf this week by tweeting: “When I think of Anthony Kim, I can’t imagine a more perfect fit for what we’re trying to do.” The former US Ryder Cup star is another high-profile addition to the LIV rosters following Jon Rahm and Tyrrrell Hatton.

Kim has not played competitive golf since 2012 on the PGA Tour and how he will play in Jeddah is uncertain. But he has form for attracting headlines on and off the course. And his re-appearance in Saudi Arabia will create a guaranteed buzz in the third event of the LIV season which has generated better winners and storylines than the rival PGA Tour so far – and sometimes had stronger, sexier fields.

The first two LIV tournaments were won by Joaquin Niemann – who has since been invited to the Masters – and Dustin Johnson. The first eight events on the PGA Tour this season have seen three first-time winners, including amateur Nick Dunlap. Jake Knapp won his first event at the Mexico Open last weekend ahead of Finnish rookie Sami Valimaki, German Stephan Jager, American Justin Lower and Taiwan’s Pan Cheng-tsung.

It was less a ‘Who’s Who?” of world golfers than a: ‘Who’s That?’ Former PGA Tour winner Mark Lye wrote on X: “I don’t know how the PGA Tour can defend this leaderboard in Mexico. Very good players, but who the hell are they??? This is a new low….”

The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at the start of February was reduced to 54 holes because of the weather to deny a potential final day showdown between winner Wyndham Clark and Ludvig Aberg. Niemann won a thrilling four-hole playoff on the same weekend at LIV Golf Mayakoba and SI.com reported that the LIV Golf YouTube channel had enjoyed a 173.3% increase in viewers at the Mexican event compared to last year. The second LIV event was held in Las Vegas in Super Bowl week.

The Saudi-backed league has succeeded in slowly signing up the biggest and most talked about personalities – if not all the best players – in the game: Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed, Bryson DeChambeau, Rahm, Hatton and now Kim. Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay are all fine players on the PGA Tour but not big box office.

The 2024 LIV Golf season has arrived in Las Vegas in Super Bowl week

This week’s Cognizant Classic at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens has a stronger field – 19 of the world’s top 50 including Rory McIlroy – at the start of the Florida Swing. LIV Golf has tweaked the formula this season with an extra team to fit in Rahm and Hatton and two wildcard players.

There are still big issues with no ranking points for 54-hole, no-cut LIV events which is seeing their players slip down the rankings and become ineligible for Majors. There are currently 13 LIV players in the Masters field – including past champions such as Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia – compared to 18 last year.

It caused world No.449 Talor Gooch, who won three LIV events last season, to claim: “If Rory McIlroy goes and completes his [career] Grand Slam without some of the best players in the world, there’s just going to be an asterisk.”

And the LIV team competition – like not cutting captains like Lee Westwood for finishing at the bottom of the table at the end of the season – still fails to look like real sport. Eddie Pepperell tweeted: “I think the issue for LIV isn’t that the fields are weak, because they clearly are not. It’s that in spite of all the terrific players they have, the product itself is still so poor and hard to watch. Suggests to me anyway something is fundamentally missing.”

But these are uncertain times with negotiations continuing between the PGA and DP World Tours and the Saudi Public Investment Fund. And McIlroy’s refusal to rule out joining LIV Golf this week – albeit with a big smile – suggested anything can happen.

The Ulsterman joining Rahm in LIV would be catastrophic for the PGA Tour. But splitting and diluting the fields is not good for golf – and getting LIV and PGA Tour players competing against each other will attract eyeballs. Any deal to allow LIV players back on the PGA Tour is one sticking point, especially with the US-based tour now bolstered by the $3bn investment front he Strategic Sports Group, which includes Liverpool owners Fenway Sports.

But LIV, a multi-billion dollar sportswashing operation, is only going to grow with the continued backing of Newcastle chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan and his PIF to increase the pressure on the legacy tours to strike a deal.

Bryson DeChambeau teeing off at LIV Golf Las Vegas in February

Before the first LIV event in Mayakoba, DeChambeau said: I don’t know exactly how it’s all going to shake out, when it’s all said and done. I hope at some point we’ll come back together. It needs to happen.

“I hope people can just put down their weapons and come to the table and figure it out because that’s what’s good for the game of golf and for fans in general. It may not be exactly what we all think it should be, but as time goes on, I think things will settle down in a positive way for both.”