LIV Golf's Reluctance to Grow Up

If you’re looking for someone to dance on the grave of LIV Golf, you’ve come to the wrong place. For now.

I have made my objections to Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses well known, and I have no interest in rehashing that argument here. For the moment, what’s more interesting to me is imagining the best-case scenario for LIV going forward, because this spring, it feels like there has been a steady trickle of bad news with no silver linings.

The State of Louisiana announced Tuesday that there would not be a LIV tournament in New Orleans this June. Governor Jeff Landry and Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois released a statement that the league was seeking to postpone the event, with the potential to explore rescheduling it in some form this fall. LIV would need to return a portion of the $3.2 million the state had already paid LIV to have an event at City Park Golf Course. This comes just a few weeks after LIV CEO Scott O’Neil told employees in a company-wide email: “Our season continues as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle.”

Perhaps because they were still figuring out how to message this contradiction, LIV waited hours before releasing a statement on Tuesday evening announcing the “strategic decision to explore moving LIV Golf Louisiana to a new window later this fall. This shift allows us to avoid the peak summer heat and crowded global sports calendar while ensuring the course is in championship condition our fans and players expect … Our team is focused on maintaining the strong momentum of the 2026 season and we look forward to sharing finalized dates in the near future.”

Ah yes, moving your golf tournament away from the sleepy summer and into the middle of football season in Louisiana. Makes total sense.

It was yet another bizarre bit of messaging for LIV, but also in line with how they have handled previous bouts of bad news. Which brings me to my larger point: If LIV Golf is going to evolve and survive, can it also learn to grow up?

I understand why everyone associated with the league takes a defensive and defiant stance on its messaging. They believe they’ve been treated unfairly since the league’s inception, and there are some instances where that is true. I have tried, for the last two years, to be aggressively objective about their players, Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm in particular. But LIV has also behaved — repeatedly — like there is a vast conspiracy against them. If the league is going to survive, it’s time to stop acting like you are going to win the narrative by lashing out when the facts don’t support your position.

Take LIV’s event in Mexico two weeks ago. The Athletic’s Brody Miller traveled to Mexico City to report on the state of the league. There were a lot of rumors flying about whether the league would continue after word trickled out that the Public Investment Fund was no longer going to fund the league indefinitely. Instead of welcoming Miller’s presence to set the record straight, LIV had him monitored by a security guard who had a photo of his headshot, then denied knowing anything about it. They said the LIV television broadcast was interrupted by a power outage, even though Miller could see lights and power fully operational on site. When a handful of outlets — The Athletic, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Fox News — reported the news that PIF was pulling its funding after 2026, LIV announcers David Feherty and Arlo White took to the airwaves to attack those outlets as rumor mongers. When O’Neil seemed to confirm in an interview that LIV was only funded through the end of 2026, LIV took the clip down, clipped O’Neil’s comments, then reposted the interview, presumably hoping no one would notice.

All of it comes off as amateurish behavior. The NFL, NBA, MLB, and EPL all regularly face scrutiny from the media, and rarely do any of them blatantly lie when confronted with reporting that paints them in an unflattering light. It happens occasionally, but not consistently. Four years into its existence, the most consistent element of LIV is the way the league bends the truth to suit a narrative, like it’s operating as a political entity instead of a sports league.

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It would probably be healthy for the landscape of professional golf if LIV is able to survive on its own merits, without a sportswashing sugar daddy who inflates player compensation to unsustainable levels. Successful LIV events in Australia and South Africa have shown that those markets are starving for professional golf, and there has to be a way to capitalize on that hunger. The growth of DeChambeau’s YouTube channel is another example of what has worked. It’s unlikely that would have happened if DeChambeau had remained a PGA Tour member. Anthony Kim’s surprise victory earlier this year was the best organic storyline LIV has produced during its tenure. The OWGR handed LIV a big win when it granted top 10 finishers in LIV events world ranking points. Fred Ridley even thanked LIV during the green jacket ceremony at the Masters this year, something that would have been unthinkable three years ago.

But every bit of success ends up being undermined by more grievances. Instead of embracing the progress they’ve made, players, executives, and fans end up undermining it with constant whining and complaining. For every boast about how LIV is the future of golf, there are dozens of examples of the same people acting victimized.

If LIV franchises really are going to be bought for $300 million — as O’Neil predicted — then they need to function like real teams sooner rather than later. They need to be able to make trades that benefit the individual franchise, not just a league that is trying to shuffle around disgruntled veterans. If players aren’t performing, it should be okay to drop them, even if someone still has to pay out their contract. That’s something that regularly happens in every sports league in the world — except LIV. There are some elements of LIV that work as a golf product, but they continue to undermine them.

DeChambeau seems (at times) to believe in the product. There is plenty of smoke that he’s looking at his options, but hasn’t come to a decision yet on whether or not to re-sign. LIV has to find a way to keep him, even if it means gambling its entire future on him. If he departs, the league is essentially dead.

It’s really difficult to build a sports league from scratch. LIV got a $5 billion head start and still doesn’t have much traction to show for it. Perhaps rumors of the league’s demise have been premature, and this is just a blip on an eventual path to prosperity. If that’s the case, then good for the league and especially for those who believed in it. They’ll have a hell of a story to tell someday.

It would be nice if they’d tell it honestly — warts and all — instead of resorting to another round of propaganda.