LIV Golf is still going, but its days seem numbered and probably always were

EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsThere doesn't appear to be much life left in LIV, which, even in the early days of its unlimited cash and immeasurable bluster, seemed inevitable.LIV Golf CEO Scott O'Neil emailed his staff Wednesday that the 2026 season will continue "as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle." That includes this weekend's event in Mexico.He didn't address all the media reports that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund is going to pull funding after dropping about $5 billion in five years on the oil-pipeline-funded pipe dream that it could create the world's preeminent professional golf tour.Whoever first sold the PIF on this idea, sold it a bill of goods. A lot of people got rich off it, golfers mainly, both in huge LIV salaries and eventual PGA Tour reforms. The gravy train was likely always going to end though.Soon enough, sure enough, the losses were going to be too great, the American television ratings too small and the United States-based PGA Tour simply too deep-rooted to be toppled.The initial argument was that the Saudis had a bottomless well of money to waste. Maybe. But what they never had, and no one has, is an endless willingness to be embarrassed for playing the fool.Burning piles of cash is all fun and games until someone realizes that they paid Talor Gooch nearly $70 million. (Good for Gooch, by the way.)Back in 2023, LIV was so convinced of its eventual dominance that firebrand CEO Greg Norman proffered that LIV golfers would hold a group celebration behind the 18th green of Augusta National if one of them won the Masters.Golf traditionalists recoiled at the tackiness. Everyone was spared when Jon Rahm, then of the PGA Tour, won instead. LIV countered by signing him, eight months later, to a deal worth a reported $300 million-plus.Just last week though, LIV was little more than a whimper at Augusta.Critics had long argued LIV's lack of intense competition and high-end courses would soften its stars. While LIV's Tyrrell Hatton finished T-3, big names such as Rahm (T-38) and Bryson DeChambeau (missed cut) disappointed. Then there was Cam Smith, who LIV signed when he was the world No. 2 coming off an Open Championship, failing to make the cut for a sixth consecutive major.Meanwhile, former-LIV/PGA returnees Patrick Reed and Brooks Koepka both finished T-12.LIV made a lot of noise and caused a lot of nervous days at the PGA Tour. It was jarring when a parade of the sport's most marketable names were leaving. At one point, some sort of merger felt inevitable.And LIV was, at times, a positive force. It stages events in Asia and Africa where the sport rarely ventures. Its tournaments are fan-friendly. More golf is never a bad thing.And it forced considerable reform on how the PGA Tour deals with its players. Its light schedule even helped DeChambeau to embrace YouTube and better convey his personality.For most golf fans, though, these were abstract concepts. All they really want is to tune in on Sunday afternoon and see the best play the best on the best courses. Tradition matters in golf. And it's hard to buy.LIV wasn't merely trying to compete with the PGA Tour and deliver a better product, it was trying to change the core tastes of golf fans to deliver a slightly, but noticeably, different product. That's even harder to buy.At some point, most of golf will share a laugh over this, perhaps in some entertaining "30 for 30" that reminds future audiences that this fever dream actually occurred.The 54-hole tournaments. The resort courses. The shorts. The shotgun starts. The way Augusta National so disliked Norman that it wouldn't extend an invitation to the Masters, causing him to buy a badge on the secondary market like any old schlub carrying a folding chair up Washington Road.Oh, and what about the team play? Remember when that was going to be revolutionary?"How I signed up with LIV," Bubba Watson once claimed, with an actual straight face, "is my 10-year-old son [and I] were watching golf on TV, and he knew the Aces. Everybody knows the Aces. They keep winning. He knew the Aces. He knew the Stingers."Actually, almost no one knew the Aces or the Stingers or pretty much anything else about LIV except it was paying big names such as Watson a ton of money to not play on the PGA Tour.At LIV, pretending otherwise was easier than acknowledging reality, though. This was an epic money grab; they caught some rich guys walking slow.LIV is still alive, for now. Maybe the Saudis will recommit. Maybe there are other funding sources. Anything is possible, but most of it is unlikely.The big question now is what the PGA Tour should do with the defectors; LIV and let live, or treat them as turncoats who tried to destroy the tour?Some are old and irrelevant, so it won't matter. For others, maybe there is a sliding scale. No, Phil Mickelson, you're banned for life, but, Gooch, come on back, who can blame you?One suggestion: make them requalify for the Tour by shipping them off to the Korn Ferry for a year; a combination of humble penance and the bolstering of that level of the sport ... one week in Chile or Amarillo or Downstate Illinois at a time.After all, the LIV guys always claimed this was about "growing the game," not champagne and charter flights.Or something like that.