When the 2024 LIV Golf schedule was released, there were some curious dates that stood out. The league, now in its third season, was going head-to-head with [checks notes] the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (a signature event on the PGA Tour), the WM Phoenix Open (a staple on the Tour), the Arnold Palmer Invitational (signature), the Memorial (signature), the Travelers Championship (signature) and the first round of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
Given LIV’s dismal Year 2 television ratings, this strategy seemed … odd. However, it paid off in a massive way on Sunday at LIV Mayakoba in Jon Rahm’s debut and the first week of the LIV Golf season.
With the golf world primed for the final round from Pebble Beach featuring one of the great fields in that tournament’s history, LIV stole the show. Pebble’s final round on Sunday was wiped out because of weather (Monday got canceled as well), and some golf fans who were tuning in to see Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth and Scottie Scheffler simply changed the channel to see Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Jon Rahm instead.
Though this certainly isn’t how LIV drew it up, and many of the folks who were tweeting and talking about the event on Sunday would not have tuned in if the bigger and better PGA Tour was taking place, the Saudi-backed league was also gifted one of the better finishes — maybe the best finish — in its brief history.
Torque GC golfer Joaquin Niemann and Fireballs captain Sergio Garcia went four holes in a playoff that ended amid darkness. Niemann made a putt of decent length for birdie on the fourth playoff hole — which was basically being lit by a scoreboard adjacent to the green — and was mobbed by teammates with bottles of champagne and cans of beer. It was a legitimate moment for a league that has not had many.
This does not mean LIV’s broad strategy of scheduling against the world’s best at the most historic PGA Tour events is a good one. If given the choice, I have to think almost everyone who meandered over to the LIV broadcast on Sunday will not do so during the final round at Bay Hill or Muirfield Village no matter how good that LIV ending was.
But if LIV had to pick one of their weekends to play out in this manner, it would be the first one. If it got to pick one afternoon to get washed out on the PGA Tour, it would be Rahm’s debut combined with a dramatic four-hole playoff that ended in the dark. If it could choose between this happening at the beginning of February or the end of May or the beginning of July, it would certainly select the beginning of February.
Why? Because the seeds for 2024 have been planted. A shift, albeit slight, has taken place. People can only have interest in what they can see, and LIV got visibility on Sunday afternoon if only a little bit by accident. If only because they were just kind of there, hanging around, waiting for the Tour to miss out on a big afternoon.
It was not a tide-shifting afternoon by any means. LIV does not own the upper hand now. But it was a fortuitous moment for a league that has struggled to gain traction outside of its own self-constructed, self-contained world. Now, on Saturdays and Sundays for the rest of 2024, folks will — perhaps even subconsciously — think of that first LIV Sunday in February. How good the golf was and how much fun it was to watch. With Rahm’s inclusion, not to mention World No. 15 Tyrrell Hatton on his team, the league felt like a real thing, maybe even for the first time.
That does not mean LIV Golf is better than the PGA Tour nor taking it over. But it does mean that headway has been made, even if it’s slight. That matters in a world where two competing leagues are vying for eyeballs. It matters in the ongoing negotiations between the Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia as the organizations potentially merge at some point in the near future. It matters for professional golf. It’s not a massive sea change or tectonic shift, but it didn’t need to be. It still matters.