Everything you need to know about LIV Golf ahead of the LIV Golf Invitational in London tomorrow
Since everyone will not shut up about LIV Golf ahead of their first tournament tomorrow, we might as well bring everyone up to speed on exactly what’s happening ahead of the LIV Golf Invitational at the Centurion Club outside of London.
LIV Golf is funded by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi fund basically has $580 BILLION dollars and has reportedly pledged over $400 million to start the new golf league.
Saudi Arabian Blood Money
A major problem with LIV Golf due to the fact that the Saudi Arabian government just executed 81 people on March 21st thanks to some sham trials in a fucking kangaroo court. I wish I was making this up but it’s true. Almost all of the people killed were imprisoned, tortured, and coerced into false confessions.
The Saudi government said these people were participating in acts of terrorism but all things considered, it appears they were just involved in pro-democracy protests.
You can read about that here >>
Honestly, that’s just the most recent thing the Saudi Arabian government has done. They hate the United Nations, human rights, and believe in sharia law. And if you go back and read some of the documents from 9/11, it looks like they were responsible for that as well.
Now the media is saying that LIV Golf is “sportswashing” a term used for the practice of an individual, group, corporation, or government using sport to improve their tarnished reputation, which is very hard to argue against.
However, like I mentioned above, LIV Golf league is loaded with Saudi Arabian blood money and can literally pay insane amounts of money to get PGA Tour players to defect and join them.
LIV Golf appointed Greg Norman, a former two-time major winner and world No. 1 golfer as their new CEO and commissioner of LIV Golf Investments after Jack Nicklaus reportedly turned down the same offer for $100 million.
Dustin Johnson was the first golfer to defect from the PGA Tour after being offered $150 million to play in the LIV Golf league.
Other names included: Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Kevin Na, Lee Westwood, Louis Oosthuizen, Martin Kaymer, Charl Schwartzel, Graeme McDowell, Talor Gooch
From there, we learned that Phil Mickelson would be joining the LIV Golf league as well and just today, found out that Bryson DeChambeau, the 2020 U.S. Open Champion, and Patrick Reed, the 2018 Masters Champion, are joining the LIV Golf Invitational Series. My guy Rickie Fowler will also be joining LIV Golf and I’m sure there will be plenty of more names to follow. To note, Tiger Woods reportedly turned down an amount nearing $1 billion to play in the league. A true hero.
You can check out the full field of players here >>
How LIV Golf Works
LIV Golf stands for the Roman numeral of 54, which is important because that’s the number of holes each tournament will be and the score a golfer would have if they birdied every hole on a par-72 course.
Not gonna lie, pretty creative.
The golf tournaments will consist of three 18-hole rounds taking place over three days and feature the traditional stroke play format.
One key difference is that all golfers will be playing at the same time on the course, rather than scattered tee times. It will be in shotgun format and for the non-golfers reading this, I don’t mean actual shotguns which you might have thought the Saudi Arabians would have considered, but rather the golf format where players begin on different holes of the course.
There are no cuts in the LIV Golf league.
While a winner will be crowned, LIV Golf also has a team aspect to the tournaments. The 48-man field is divided into 12 teams of four. League appointed captains will pick three players in a snake draft before each tournament.
For the first two rounds of the tournament, a team’s best two scores will count. For the final round, the team’s best three scores will count. The lowest combined score at the end of three rounds will win the team part of the tournament.
Team Logo and Name Failure
Each captain has a team name and logo. If you’re looking for the biggest weakness of LIV Golf, it’s here. The graphics are horrible and the team names are even worse. How embarrassing.
Why are Golfers are Resigning from the PGA Tour?
Ahead of the first LIV Golf tournament tomorrow, players who joined the league are already resigning from the PGA Tour which is basically a ” you can’t fire me if I quit” strategy.
Kevin Na announced his decision to resign Saturday, and four other LIV-ers have followed, as first reported by the Associated Press: Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace. Then, in the first-ever LIV pre-tournament player press conference Tuesday, Johnson shared that he, too, had walked away from the tour that has seen him earn more than $79 million on-course, trailing only Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.
The PGA Tour has insisted that, since it denied all requests for a conflicting-event release to allow players to compete in the LIV event, any of its members that put a tee in the ground at Centurion Golf Club on Thursday will be subject to discipline. That could include suspension or, though unlikely, a permanent expulsion. That punishment will no doubt be challenged in court, either by an individual player or LIV Golf itself, arguing that the PGA Tour cannot tell its members, who are independent contractors, where they can and cannot play. But removing yourself from the PGA Tour ecosystem would seem to pre-empt any of that ugliness.
While the governing bodies for these events themselves have not decided publicly what they think about players competing on the LIV series, they could defer to the PGA Tour’s eligibility rules, meaning a suspension from the tour could include a suspension from the majors. That’s not going to happen, at least in the immediate future. The USGA confirmed as much on Tuesday afternoon, sending out a release stating all qualified players for the 2022 U.S. Open will be allowed to compete.
Basically, companies don’t have to pay players if they are suspended for a breach of moral and ethics. If the PGA Tour decides to classify LIV as such, a resignation would basically counter that decision.
A resignation is also not permanent. At least in theory. The PGA Tour handbook states that a player who resigns his membership can apply for reinstatement after one full season. A player competing on a multi-year exemption—which includes Mickelson and Johnson—who resigns must also sit out a full season, but can rejoin the tour at the beginning of any season and would be entitled to the remainder of his exemption as though he had not resigned. Johnson, for example, is exempt through the 2025-26 season. Should he resign but decide he wants to rejoin, he would have to sit out the 2022-23 season but could apply to rejoin the tour for the 2023-24 season.
Everything about LIV is exciting. Well, almost everything. If it wasn’t backed by the Saudi Arabian government things would be much easier for everyone involved but as we all know, that’s not the case. The PGA Tour has some major decisions to make on how to handle this. I’m excited to see what this league has to offer and the field of players continues to get better and better.
I know the Saudi Arabian government is fucking horrible but when players are offered insane amounts of money to go play golf somewhere, I can see why it’s hard to turn down. I just wish they would be more honest about it and come out and say “hey I’m playing in the LIV Golf League because they offered me millions upon millions of dollars and will set my family up for generations to come.”
Still, taking Saudi blood money is pretty fucking wild, which is why I’m torn on the entire situation.
We’ll see how it all shakes out. First tournament starts tomorrow in London.
