LIV Golf is dead: How it saved the sport from hypocrisy, boredom, and the PGA

LIV Golf is collapsing in a sea of red ink, lawsuits, and unpaid bills. No one’s mourning its passing — certainly not the PGA Tour, the shockingly woke sports media, or most golf fans. But LIV Golf transformed the sport and everyone who loves the game, from players to fans, owes it gratitude, not scorn.Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has spent roughly $6 billion on LIV Golf since its 2023 launch and pulled the plug on the endeavor earlier this year. Therein lies the primary objection — critics claim that the Saudis were “sportswashing” or using athletics to launder their less-than-stellar human rights record. Since the Saudis were behind the whole thing, the golf world had license to despise it. Not fair, not accurate, and let me show you why.Let’s review the state of play prior to LIV Golf. You had 2,600 golf tournaments a year, most of which featured only a sprinkling of name-brand golfers. Some are named after waste treatment centers. Most are won by guys you never heard of before or after. Bor-ing. Top golfers, competing for chintzy purses, made only as much as second-string NHL defensemen. They weren’t even guaranteed to compete on the weekend, when the TV cameras rolled, because if they didn’t make the cut, they’d be on their way to East Nowhere for next week’s joust. All the sponsorship money, TV rights, and other emoluments went to the PGA and the tournament owners. Unfair to the golfers and doubly boring for the spectators.The sport hadn’t exactly covered itself in glory from a race relations standpoint. In living memory, black golfers weren’t even allowed to enter PGA tournaments. And as recently as 1990, tone-deaf golf leadership announced an important golf tournament at Shoal Creek, an Alabama course whose founder proudly and publicly defended its exclusion of black members. Baseball had integrated in 1947, but news of that event must not have reached the PGA.As long as we’re talking about race, who can forget golfer Fuzzy Zoeller’s 1997 comment after Tiger Woods became the first black person to win the Masters? The winner gets to set the menu for the following year’s Champions Dinner. Zoeller thought it would be hilarious if Woods served fried chicken and collard greens. Zoeller’s sponsors, Kmart and Dunlop, didn’t join in the laughter and dropped him. Yet the PGA did exactly nothing to sanction Zoeller. So the PGA was definitely asleep at the golf cart wheel. And what other sport has guys named Fuzzy Zoeller?Legendary Australian golfer Greg Norman had always wanted to start a rival golf circuit, but it wasn’t until the Saudis stepped up with the cash that his dream came true. LIV Golf innovated mightily. First, they paid fortunes to numerous top golfers to defect. Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Cameron Young, Sergio Garcia, Dustin Justin, Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, and many others competed head-to-head every single week, something the PGA could only offer at a handful of majors each year.Next, LIV Golf went with a 54-hole format, three rounds of golf instead of four (the Roman numeral LIV equals 54; get it?). They went with the shotgun start, so you have excitement from the first moment. You had teams based on nationality, which the players loved because it reminded them of being on college golf teams. You had rock music and a party atmosphere. You had golf taken a tiny bit less seriously while still maintaining the dignity of the game.From the moment it was announced, LIV Golf suffered the enmity of the golf establishment — the PGA, the players who didn’t cross over, and golf reporters, who were beholden to the PGA for contacts and livelihood. Most of the criticism focused on the Saudi connection, but you know what they say about people who live in glass houses. The PGA does $10 billion a year with China, a notorious abuser of human rights and not exactly an American ally. And as many as a dozen major PGA sponsors do business with Saudi Arabia, including FedEx, Amazon, MasterCard, Delta, and Uber. So blasting LIV Golf because it’s Saudi-backed is the ultimate in hypocrisy.What of LIV Golf’s legacy? Higher purses for the top players is the main thing. They’re finally getting the same kind of financial rewards earned by athletes in other sports. “Signature” events now feature large numbers of top pros and no cut. And players have much more of a say in the way tournaments are run. Thank you, LIV Golf.Of course, you won’t hear any of these benefits mentioned in the left-leaning sports media, which is gleefully reporting on the new circuit’s demise.FROM ‘WHITE PRIVILEGE’ TO ‘TRANS INCLUSION’: THE WNBA IS RELEVANT FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONSThere’s still a PGA tour stop sponsored by a waste management company that does business with Saudi Arabia. So LIV Golf won’t survive, but hypocrisy still has a place on the first tee.R.I.P. LIV Golf. Too bad you’ve played your last round, but the sport’s ten times better because you were here.Michael Levin is a two-time New York Times bestselling author.