Robert TheodorsonLIV is on a short hiatus until March when the league returns to Hong Kong and Singapore to kick off the Asian leg of the tour.
The 2025 season is off to a fantastic start, offering intrigue and excitement with a very much future-focused league that continues to grow.
With Riyadh and Adelaide now in the history books we take a look at some of the revelations from the past two weeks as well as a look into the future.
The Night Golf Experiment
LIV Riyadh was the world’s first professional golf tournament held at night. The scene was a desert oasis under an array of floodlights.
Before the tournament, the field voiced concern that greens would be nearly impossible to read and balls would be lost against the black backdrop.
After the tournament started, the reality was that night golf brought out the best in a lot of the more unheralded golfers and made for great viewing!
Adrian Meronk, who dominated the DP World Tour in 2023 before coming to LIV earned his first career victory on the tour, beating out last year’s individual champion Jon Rahm in a super-tight race that came down to the final hole.
The decision to play at night so US-based viewers could watch during prime time turned out to be the correct move.
New Pathways to the Majors a Good Start, but Not Enough
The US Open and The Open recently announced a new pathway for non-exempt LIV golfers to participate in their two majors based on the golfers’ standing on the LIV leaderboard shortly before each major championship takes place.
Likewise, The Masters and The PGA Championship have begun to issue special invitations to LIV golfers such as Joaquin Niemann and Sergio Garcia in order to have the very best rejoin the field.
While this is a good start, it’s certainly not enough to convince everyone that they’ll be watching the best of the best play four times a year.
For instance, the Stinger duo of Louis Oosthuizen and Dean Burmester are currently not slated to join the field for the 2025 Masters in April.
Oosthuizen is one of the most recognisable faces of South African golf and remains an elite player despite his current standing after Riyadh and Adelaide.
Burmester, who is in great form already, performed admirably at several major championships last year, even flirting with a win at several points.
There will be opportunities for Louis and Dean to move up in the OWGR through the Asian Tour and International Series, but time is tight and they may only be able to commit to a single tournament outside LIV before April.
Their omission will add fuel to the argument that the majors no longer feature the best in the world, just who the proprietors of each major championship believe are the best by means of using an obsolete ranking system.
Bubba Watson is the Feel-Good Story of the Year
It’s too early to say that he has it in the bag, but Bubba Watson’s T12 and T21 finishes to start the season have him as the clear frontrunner for Comeback Player of the Year.
After finishing last season in the dreaded Drop Zone with his future in LIV unclear, Watson has rejuvenated himself for 2025 and looks like his old self.
Often a detriment to his team in years past, Watson led the way in Riyadh to give his RangeGoats a second-place podium finish, a feat they had not accomplished since Miami in 2024.
Adelaide turned out to be much more challenging than the 2024 iteration of the tournament, with several individual golfers and teams finishing above par.
For every mistake Watson made he seemed to immediately negate the damage, bouncing back time and time again.
Had a few more bounces gone his way, Watson would easily be claiming back-to-back top-15 finishes.
The New TV Deal Makes Watching More Restrictive Than Ever
There’s no way around this one, trying to watch a LIV tournament in 2025 is a baffling ordeal.
It was generally understood last season that the Friday broadcast was on the LIV Golf + app and the LIV Golf YouTube channel, both free of charge.
Saturday and Sunday aired on the CW, which is widely available to most US households with a basic cable package.
Tournaments in the United States were live while those outside the US were on tape delay, but still readily available Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
Now the LIV app is a pay-per-view service and YouTube isn’t an option anymore.
It was reported that only 19,000 US viewers were able to watch the season opener in Riyadh because of how few households subscribe to FS2.
While FOX is a basic cable channel and FS1 is available on most cable packages, FS2 requires additional subscriptions and fees, making it a restrictive speciality channel that few can access.
There’s immediate cause for concern. The issue must be fixed before LIV Miami where President Trump’s beautiful Trump National Doral, home of the Blue Monster, will be featured.
Trump National Doral is one of the most gorgeous golf courses in the world and, along with Andalucia, is one of the jewels of the LIV tour.
The Blue Monster is legendary for its difficulty. Where only the best of the best have a chance at winning, the Miami tournament tends to bring out the best in the field, making it one of the more competitive tournaments of the year.
LIV Miami does have a time slot on the prime FOX channel, however due to the fanfare and expectations of this particular event at President Trump’s golf course, the entire tournament needs to be made available to everyone, not just those who subscribe to an upgraded cable package.
This issue has already been solved in Australia and the UK where LIV has signed deals with national television stations to broadcast all tournaments to reach the maximum amount of households.
Is a Second Australian Tournament a Good Idea?
The numbers don’t lie, Adelaide was once again LIV’s most successful endeavour in terms of fan turnout.
For their efforts, LIV was awarded a guaranteed spot in Adelaide until 2031, making it the only course we know for sure will be on the schedule for the foreseeable future.
Cam Smith’s Ripper squad best exemplifies why the team aspect of LIV works. Not only is Ripper a collection of close-knit friends but the team could also be considered LIV’s equivalent of an Australian National team.
The sense of national pride that Ripper has carried about is reflected in the numbers of fans that show up to Adelaide year after year and make it without a doubt the most raucous tournament of the year.
Hitting a hole-in-one is cause for celebration anywhere, but hitting a hole-in-one at Adelaide’s ‘Party Hole’ is met with the same excitement as winning the entire tournament, as Patrick Reed found out on Day One.
Quite frankly, I am surprised that Sydney or Melbourne have not been lobbying LIV for a second tournament in their respective cities.
With LIV going from Asia to North America, then back to Asia (South Korea) for a single tournament before returning to North America later this year, the argument based on travel length is moot.
Would creating a second tournament subtract from the grandiose nature of Adelaide, or would it become another unique behemoth, anticipated by hundreds of thousands of fans each year? There is only one way to find out.
Sergio Knows How to Build a Winner
With their impressive victory in Adelaide, the Fireballs have officially cemented their place in LIV Golf history!
With the only team to have won in every season since the league’s inception, Sergio Garcia has become the league’s most underrated team builder.
It turns out that the man who was so instrumental in bringing us clutch performances in the Ryder Cup year after year knows exactly how to manage a team.
There’s little doubt that Sergio’s post-playing career is headed towards general management and/or presidency over professional team play.
David Puig has quietly earned consecutive top-ten finishes and Abraham Ancer is set to make his triumphant return to Hong Kong where he came out on top from the three-way playoff in 2024.
Newcomer Luis Masaveu is going through some growing pains but isn’t hurting his team too much.
Masaveu’s comparable is the 2024 version of Caleb Surratt, a youngster who looked overwhelmed at many times in his rookie season, but has turned into a consummate pro his sophomore season.
It looks like Sergio’s decision to move on from Eugenio Chacarra was the right move, but we might have to wait a season to two before that roster tweak makes an impact.
Parity Keeps LIV Die Hard Fans Engaged, but Does it Hurt Casual Viewership?
After two tournaments we have two different individual and team champions with the rest of the field finishing up and down not unlike a rollercoaster.
Polish-born Adrian Meronk channelled his inner Batman, making the darkness his ally, and held off weekly favourite Jon Rahm.
In Adelaide, Joaquin Niemann reminded us why he is a Top 10 golfer in the world, swooping in for the win on Sunday after shooting a weekend-best 65.
On the team front, Rahm’s Legion XIII absolutely crushed the competition in Riyadh.
So dominant was their form, that the tournament was a no-contest after Day One.
A week later in Australia, Sergio’s Fireballs, a team that looked mid-tier during days one and two combined for a weekend-best 12-under par and shocked favourites Legion XIII, winning by six strokes.
This makes for good drama and keeps things interesting until Championship Sunday, but golf is very much a superstar-driven sport.
If you ask most people who their favorite golfer is they’ll say Tiger Woods despite the fact that he only plays four to five times a year now.
Scottie Scheffler is without a doubt the best golfer in the world right now, and PGA Tour events often feel empty without him.
What LIV needs is an absolute world-beater, someone who wins again and again and again every single year.
We’re so close to having Jon Rahm be that golfer, but the bar is ultra-high with Scheffler winning nine tournaments last season, including The Masters, and an Olympic Gold Medal.
There are people who tune into golf to watch the tournament and see how the field is doing, but there is likely an equal amount of people who tune in just to see Scottie and Tiger.
Reunification on the Horizon
News reports indicate that President Trump is helping broker a deal between the PGA and PIF.
The revelation of White House involvement in this matter likely means that reunification is very close, and perhaps being taken more seriously than ever before.
Nobody knows exactly what reunification will look like between LIV, PGA, and DP World Tour.
Due to conflicting schedules, planning is likely to continue in 2025 with implementation being sparse until 2026.
Last year I wrote about possible ways of achieving rapprochement, I still believe that the best way for both sides to extend gestures of goodwill is for the PGA to lobby for the inclusion of additional LIV Golfers to major championships and invite some LIV golfers to PGA Tour events where there is no conflict of schedule.
Likewise, LIV should extend an offer to PGA golfers to create non-permanent teams or play as wildcards in LIV events where there is no conflict of schedule with the more prestigious PGA Tour events.
