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      For 2022, LIV Golf Was the Story

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      The Saudi-backed tour, which has used big payments to attract players, has upended the gentlemen’s game.Golf is an individual sport, so any year-end reflection is going to be about the people who stood out.But this year many of the top names who defined the year in golf are past their prime or don’t play professionally.Pride of place goes to Greg Norman, the former world No. 1 and two-time major champion whose last PGA Tour win came 25 years ago at the 1997 NEC World Series of Golf. In that victory, Norman beat a young Phil Mickelson, who was just at the start of his career that would include six major championships and more than double the PGA Tour victories of Norman.Now the pair are linked in the creation of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf and roiling the established PGA and DP World Tours. LIV made headlines as much for paying golfers tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to join the league as it did for the source of the support, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.Add to that a rollout and public relations campaign that was bumpy — including one golfer who took $200 million to join LIV, while saying their move was to grow the game — and it made for a very unexpected year.“Golf was puttering along in its normal boring sport way, and then everything exploded,” said Alan Shipnuck, whose book “Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Superstar” and subsequent reporting for The Fire Pit Collective, a golf news site, was at the center of the story. “This was the most fascinating and chaotic season in golf history. The gentlemen’s game has never seen this kind” of news conference sniping.The league brought fresh attention to the human rights records of Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. It also held several events at golf courses owned by former President Donald J. Trump, who didn’t shy away from criticizing the PGA Tour.Phil Mickelson was paid a reported $200 million to join LIV Golf.Patrick Smith/Getty ImagesWhile a rival golf league had been talked about for years, just as LIV was set to start at the beginning of the year, Shipnuck published an interview with Mickelson on The Fire Pit Collective that criticized the Saudi government over its human rights record.“Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it?” Mickelson said. “Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.” He joined LIV in June.From that moment, the story on the men’s and women’s game has been Saudi money and LIV Golf.It overshadowed Rory McIlroy becoming only the second player to win both season-long events on the PGA and DP World Tours in the same year. Henrik Stenson, who now plays on LIV, was the first in 2013.It put the game’s administrators, Jay Monahan, commissioner of the PGA Tour; Keith Pelley, chief executive of the DP World Tour; and Peter Dawson, chairman of the Official World Golf Ranking, front and center.It spilled over to women’s golf, where talk focused on what might happen if the Saudis took a similar interest in top L.P.G.A. players. (The consensus has been Saudi money would decimate a tour that doesn’t have the financial reserves or lucrative television rights to fend off a rival league buying up players the way the PGA Tour has.)And it got young professional and amateur players thinking about their future in professional golf after a few unproven players — namely the 2019 and 2021 U.S. Amateur Champions Andy Ogletree and James Piot and a top-ranked college player Eugenio Chacarra — took LIV money and bypassed the traditional route of trying to make their way on the PGA or DP World Tours.“I spoke to some friends and coaches who said if LIV contacts you go there,” said Filippo Celli, who won the silver medal as the low amateur at this year’s British Open and is trying to play his way onto the DP World Tour.“You go there and even if you finish last in the tournament you can earn $150,000, which is a lot of money, especially at 22 years old,” he said. “When you’re young you’re thinking about the money. It’s normal. My dream is to play on the DP World Tour and then the PGA Tour.”But the threat of a rival league forced changes on both of the main men’s tours. Many of those changes were announced after an August meeting of PGA Tour players in Delaware before the BMW Championship.The increased money was the main issue, more prize money for the top players and also guaranteed minimum pay for golfers still making their way. That helped defer six-figure costs just to compete, and the money was a carrot to the elite players.Of course, plenty of good players have not been asked to go to LIV and have said they are not interested. Sam Ryder, who has played on the PGA Tour for six seasons, is one of them.“I’m not on the players council of the PGA Tour,” he said. “I’ve been trying to stay in my lane and play good golf. I’ve not been concerning myself too much with all that’s been going on. I just know that everything will sort itself out.”His playing status on the PGA Tour has earned him a new multiyear sponsor this year: Ryder, the transportation company. “Both Ryder and Sam Ryder remain committed to the PGA Tour,” said J. Steve Sensing, president of supply chain solutions for Ryder System.Some of the top players have not been as politic in their rhetoric. McIlroy, who reclaimed the world No. 1 spot this year, became the de facto player-defender of the PGA Tour. He and Tiger Woods were at the center of the meeting in Delaware, and he’s spoken forcefully in defense of the tour. Recently, McIlroy and Woods called for Norman to step down as LIV commissioner as a necessary first step in negotiations.Dustin Johnson was reportedly paid up to $150 million to join LIV Golf.John David Mercer/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBut there are knock-on effects of losing older but well-known players, like the future of PGA Tour Champions. It is where many of the game’s greats go to play when they turn 50. Each year the tour gets marquee players who are suddenly relevant again. This year, it was Padraig Harrington, a three-time major winner and Ryder Cup captain, who won four times on the Champions Tour.Yet some of the first players who went to LIV were close to Champions Tour eligibility, including Lee Westwood, Henrik Stenson, and Ian Poulter, with players like Sergio Garcia and Paul Casey not too far behind them. It’s those big names that sell tickets.At a news conference in August for a Champions Tour event in Jacksonville, Fla., Jim Furyk, the 2003 U.S. Open champion and the tournament’s host, talked about the course and the fan experience. He even talked about Notah Begay III, a former player turned Golf Channel commentator who was returning to professional golf on his 50th birthday.What Furyk or anyone else at the event did not talk about was the previous year’s winner: Mickelson. That victory was his third win in four starts on the Champions Tour and augured well for his transition to the tour, and for the tour itself.But right now, the focus is on the main tours and seeing what LIV does next year. There has been little interest in actually watching LIV events. The league has no television contract and worldwide viewership numbers for streaming have declined with each event, particularly after the initial player announcements were made.Still, the PGA Tour, which had been slow to respond at first, seems to be taking no chances. It recently hired a lobbyist in Washington who is close to Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader who hopes to become speaker when Republicans take control of the chamber in January.“The tour has always been all powerful,” Shipnuck said. “Now there’s a competition.” More

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      LIV Golf Threw a Sport Into Chaos. It Also Changed It.

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      The Saudi-backed golf series, which will expand next year, has forced the PGA Tour to redesign its economic model. The drama between the two golf entities seems far from over.DORAL, Fla. — To hear the 52-year-old Phil Mickelson’s account, whatever happened this year in his golf career — a greed-fueled rupture, a simply-business parting of ways, an inevitable estrangement, a lucrative exercise in denial and downplaying — has yielded something close to sublime.“I see LIV Golf trending upward, I see the PGA Tour trending downward and I love the side that I’m on,” Mickelson said this month in Saudi Arabia, the country whose sovereign wealth fund bankrolled the new LIV Golf circuit, including a Mickelson contract believed to be worth about $200 million.As the series closes its first season Sunday, when its team championship event is to be decided at Trump National Doral Golf Club and a $50 million prize fund divided, it can credibly claim that it has disrupted men’s professional golf more than anything else since the late 1960s, when what would become the PGA Tour emerged.It has done so with a checkbook that seems boundless, nearly unchecked brazenness and self-assurance, and the political cover of a former American president who has looked past Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights. It has not, though, been a romp without resistance or an instantaneous and definitive dethroning of the old order.The PGA Tour, now redesigning its economic model so urgently that it is tapping reserve funds, still commands the bigger roster of current stars and the loyalties of the tournaments that matter most to history. The tour, less tainted by geopolitics, has lucrative television deals; LIV Golf is on YouTube. Players earn world ranking points at PGA Tour events; they drop in the rankings the longer they compete in the new series. Dustin Johnson knows this well, as he is now No. 30, down from No. 13 when he signed with LIV in May. (But perhaps Johnson does not mind all that much: He captured LIV’s individual championship and has won at least $30 million on the circuit this year, after accruing about $75 million in career earnings during a PGA Tour tenure that started in 2007.)Dustin Johnson’s world ranking has fallen to No. 30 from No. 13 when he joined LIV Golf in May.Ross Kinnaird/Getty ImagesWhat many golf executives are figuring out, though, is that it is possible to revile much about LIV, from its financial patron to its devotion to 54-hole tournaments to its defiant dispensing of starchy atmospheres, and yet recognize that the PGA Tour had left itself vulnerable to at least a spasm of drama. Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who ascended again to the world’s No. 1 ranking after a tour event last weekend, have been two of LIV Golf’s foremost critics — and two leading architects of a new strategy to fortify and reinvent a PGA Tour that had some popular players feeling undervalued and some younger ones struggling for financial breakthroughs.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      Augusta National and U.S.G.A. Drawn Into Justice Department Antitrust Inquiry

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      The Justice Department is investigating the PGA Tour for anticompetitive behavior in its dealings with LIV Golf, the breakaway Saudi-backed league.DORAL, Fla. — The Justice Department’s antitrust inquiry into men’s professional golf — a sport splintered this year by the emergence of a lucrative circuit financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — has in recent months come to include the organizers of some of the most hallowed and influential tournaments in the world, according to people familiar with the matter.The United States Golf Association, which administers the U.S. Open, acknowledged on Wednesday that the Justice Department had contacted it in connection with an investigation. Augusta National Golf Club, which organizes the Masters Tournament, and the P.G.A. of America, which oversees the P.G.A. Championship, have also drawn the gaze of antitrust officials.The federal inquiry is unfolding in parallel with a separate civil suit filed in California by LIV Golf, the new Saudi-backed series, accusing the PGA Tour, which organizes most of the week-to-week events in professional golf, of trying to muscle it out of the marketplace. Moreover, LIV has contended that major tournament administrators, such as Augusta National and the P.G.A. of America, aided in the PGA Tour’s urgent efforts to preserve its long standing as the premier circuit in men’s golf.LIV, for instance, has accused the leaders of the R&A, which runs the British Open, and Augusta National of pressuring the Asian Tour’s chief executive over support for the new series. LIV also said that Fred S. Ridley, the Augusta National chairman, had “personally instructed a number of participants in the 2022 Masters not to play in the LIV Golf Invitational Series” and that the club’s representatives had “threatened to disinvite players from the Masters if they joined LIV Golf.” (A handful of golfers, including Phil Mickelson, joined the lawsuit but later withdrew their names from it, content to let LIV Golf wage the courtroom fight.)LIV executives have also fumed over perceived stalling by Official World Golf Ranking administrators to award ranking points to LIV players, who include Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith. The ranking system’s governing board includes executives from each of the major tournament organizers, as well as the PGA Tour.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      5 Players to Watch at the BMW PGA Championship

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      One of these golfers could win the tournament at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England.Fresh off his comeback on Aug. 28 at the Tour Championship in Georgia, Rory McIlroy is a top contender at the BMW PGA Championship, which begins Thursday at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England.McIlroy captured his third FedEx Cup title by completing the largest final-round comeback in the history of the Tour Championship. He will be a compelling figure at Wentworth, but here are five other players to watch.Shane Lowry plays a second shot on the tenth hole during the first round of the FedEx St. Jude Championship in August in Memphis.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesShane LowryIreland’s Lowry has proved that the course suits him well. In his last five appearances at Wentworth, he has finished no worse than a tie for 17th. His best showing was finishing second to McIlroy in 2014.Lowry, 35, would have qualified for his first appearance at the Tour Championship if either Adam Scott or Aaron Wise had made a bogey on the 72nd hole at the BMW Championship on Aug. 21 in Delaware, but each made clutch pars to secure the final two spots.Lowry shot a 68 on Sunday at the BMW to finish in a tie for 12th but three-putted from about 65 feet for a bogey at No. 17. Ranked No. 23, Lowry has not won an event since he captured the 2019 British Open at Royal Portrush Golf Club in Northern Ireland.Justin Rose during a practice round at Southern Hills Country Club in May in Tulsa, Okla. He was once ranked at No. 1.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesJustin RoseRose, 42, also hasn’t won since 2019 at the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego. Once as high as No. 1 in the rankings, Rose, the 2013 U.S. Open champion, now stands at No. 58.In 18 PGA Tour events this season, he has recorded only two top-10 finishes, and his best finish was a tie for fourth at the RBC Canadian Open in June when he flirted with becoming the first European to shoot 59 on the PGA Tour. He ended up with a 60.His performance in the majors has been disappointing. He missed the cut in the Masters, tied for 13th in the P.G.A. Championship, tied for 37th in the U.S. Open and was unable to compete in the British Open with a bad back.But Rose has experienced some success at Wentworth. He finished second in 2007 and 2012. Last year, he tied for sixth.Francesco Molinari putts on the tenth green during the first round of the Memorial Tournament in June in Dublin, Ohio.Sam Greenwood/Getty ImagesFrancesco MolinariSimilar to Lowry and Rose, Molinari, 39, has had his moments in this event. In 2018, shooting a final-round 68, he won the BMW PGA Championship by two shots over McIlroy. He has recorded six top-10 finishes at Wentworth since 2012.In July 2018, Molinari captured the Quicken Loans National in Maryland by eight shots, closing with a 62, and three weeks later he won the British Open in Carnoustie, Scotland, by two shots, becoming the first Italian player to win a major.He missed a chance to win another major in 2019, when up by two at the Masters he found the water with his tee shot at No. 12 in the final round, which led to a double bogey. He finished in a tie for fifth.In this past season, he recorded only one top-10 finish in 17 appearances on the PGA Tour, missing the cut at the Masters and the U.S. Open. He tied for 15th in the British Open.Billy Horschel plays a second shot on the tenth hole during the second round of the FedEx St. Jude Championship in August.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesBilly HorschelHorschel, who won the BMW last year, picked up his seventh PGA Tour victory in early June at the Memorial Tournament in Ohio, beating Wise by four strokes. He shot a 65 in the third round that put him up by five, and he finished the final round with an even-par 72.Horschel, 35, became only the second American to win the BMW. The first was Arnold Palmer in 1975, when the tournament was known as the Penfold PGA Championship. Horschel, now ranked No. 15, secured the win with an approach shot on No. 18 that came to a rest less than two feet from the cup. He converted the putt to finish with a 65 and a one-shot victory.England’s Lee Westwood during the first round of the British Masters in May. He was one of the first players to join LIV Golf.Paul Childs/Action Images Via ReutersLee WestwoodWestwood, 49, is one of more than a dozen players in this week’s field from LIV Golf, the new series financed by Saudi Arabia.Ranked No. 100, his best finish on the PGA Tour this season was a tie for 14th at the Masters. He missed the cut in the P.G.A. Championship and tied for 34th at the British Open.Westwood, a former world No. 1, has never won the BMW, although he came close in 2011, losing in a playoff to Luke Donald. Last year, Westwood finished in a tie for 71st. He said he planned to play four DP World Tour events in 2023. More

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      Cameron Smith, Winner of This Year’s British Open, Joins LIV Golf

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      Smith’s defection had been expected, but Rory McIlroy tried to stave it off back in July.Cameron Smith, the world’s second-ranked golfer and a player whose exceptional final-round putting carried him to this year’s British Open title, will join LIV Golf, the breakaway series financed with money from Saudi Arabia.Smith is expected to play in LIV’s next 54-hole, no-cut tournament, which will begin Friday in Bolton, Mass., west of Boston. Five other players — Anirban Lahiri, Marc Leishman, Joaquin Niemann, Cameron Tringale and Harold Varner III — will also join a LIV field for the first time, the series announced on Tuesday.The moves by the players were widely expected but still bruised the PGA Tour, which has spent months trying to devise ways to keep players in its establishment fold. Last week, Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, announced changes, including purses averaging $20 million at a dozen events next season, that executives hoped would better position the tour to compete with the allure of LIV, which has enticed players with more relaxed schedules and, in some instances, contracts reportedly worth at least $100 million.Smith, a 29-year-old from Australia who also won this year’s Players Championship, was a leading target for the series, which is underwritten by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The possibility of a Smith defection was such an open secret that a reporter asked Smith about it soon after he won the Open, where he shot an eight-under-par 64 on a Sunday to rally from a four-stroke deficit.“I just won the British Open, and you’re asking about that?” Smith said at a news conference then. “I think that’s pretty not that good.”A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesA new series. More

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      A Triple-Bogey Start Vanquished, Rory McIlroy Captures the FedEx Cup

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      McIlroy edged out Scottie Scheffler, who had held the lead in Atlanta for almost the entire Tour Championship. Sungjae Im and Scheffler finished tied for second, a stroke behind.ATLANTA — On Thursday, his scorecard a shambles after only two holes at the Tour Championship, Rory McIlroy did not find himself thinking about golf’s comeback magicians or his fellow major champions.Instead, he considered the example of a 20-year-old player, Joohyung Kim, also known as Tom Kim, who won the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C., this month.“He started with a quad and ended up going on to win the golf tournament,” McIlroy, who had opened his Tour Championship with a triple-bogey and a bogey, said then. “It is possible.”So McIlroy proved it himself. Three days after he produced an instant debacle at East Lake Golf Club and six weeks after he faltered at the British Open, McIlroy orchestrated the largest final-round comeback in the history of the Tour Championship and defeated Scottie Scheffler by a stroke on Sunday. Although McIlroy’s win did not end his eight-year drought in major tournaments, he earned $18 million, claimed his third FedEx Cup, a record, and allowed the PGA Tour to close a turbulent season by crowning a beloved stalwart as its champion.“I just felt so close all year,” McIlroy said after his victory in Atlanta, where Scheffler started with the tournament lead Thursday and held it until Sunday evening. “I had a couple wins, but I was just waiting for something. Maybe this was it. I got a little lucky with Scottie not playing his best golf today, and I took advantage of that with my good play.”But, McIlroy added, “I went up against the best player in the world today and I took him down, and that’s got to mean something.”Even though McIlroy trailed Scheffler by six strokes at the beginning of the fourth round, the final two holes of his third round — played on Sunday morning because of Saturday’s weather in Atlanta — suggested he was in fighting form: He birdied both.McIlroy started the final round with a bogey, but he made birdie on No. 3 to bring his score even. Starting with the fifth hole, he stitched together three consecutive birdies that would undergird a 32 on the front nine. Scheffler, McIlroy’s partner in the final pairing, had three bogeys in the first half of the fourth round, which he finished with a three-over-par 73.For as sure-footed as McIlroy so often seemed Sunday, and for as wobbly as Scheffler sometimes was, McIlroy did not assume sole command of the leaderboard until the final putts at No. 16.He might as well have on No. 15, though.Thirty-one feet from the pin, McIlroy tapped the ball and then stood like a statue, his putter barely aloft as the ball broke to the left. Then it swung toward the hole, McIlroy stepping back — and willing, praying, something — a few steps before it rolled into the cup. McIlroy raised his right fist in jubilation as the crowd thundered its approval.Scheffler made a bogey on the next hole and, at last, surrendered the solo lead.“I really fought hard today; Rory just played a really good round of golf,” Scheffler said. “He made some key putts there at the end, and he definitely deserved to win.”Scheffler finished in a tie for second with Sungjae Im. Xander Schauffele was two strokes behind them, and Max Homa and Justin Thomas finished tied for fifth, trailing McIlroy by four strokes.In McIlroy, 33, the PGA Tour got a FedEx Cup winner who has been one of its fiercest loyalists during the year’s upheaval over LIV Golf, the new series that has lured top players with hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.The dramatics over LIV were hardly absent from Atlanta — McIlroy was paired Thursday and Friday with Cameron Smith, the British Open winner who has not publicly denied a British news media report that he intends to defect as soon as this week. But McIlroy’s win was a boon for an entrenched order that has lately been besieged.“Everyone on tour has had to deal with a lot; even the guys that have went to LIV have had to deal with a lot,” McIlroy said before adding, a few moments later: “This is the best place in the world to play golf. It’s the most competitive. It’s got the best players. It’s got the deepest fields. I don’t know why you’d want to play anywhere else.”He could have been forgiven, of course, for thinking otherwise Thursday in the rain in Atlanta. But Sunday, he said his mind had “automatically” wandered to Kim’s resurrection in Greensboro.“I could have easily thought the other way and thought: ‘I’ve got no chance now. What am I doing here?’” McIlroy said Sunday, when he shot a 66. “But I just sort of, I guess, proved that I was in a really good mind-set for the week, and I didn’t let it get to me too much and just stuck my head down and got to work.”By a lone stroke, it was enough. More