With LIV Golf less than five years old, it is not exactly surprising that the league is continuing to make changes as it attempts to find the perfect formula to appeal to both some of the world’s best players and plenty of fans.
LIV Golf looks to be here to stay. They have a number of outstanding players in their league. And given that they are owned by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, they will have few concerns about the finances.
But LIV is far from the perfect product.
And one of the issues LIV must address became difficult to ignore this past week at the final major of the year.
LIV Golf has no excuse not to make significant change after Bryson DeChambeau’s comments before The Open Championship
The Open Championship brought the curtain down on what was a very underwhelming major championship season for LIV players.
They threatened to achieve something special. Bryson DeChambeau was in the final group on Sunday at The Masters, while Jon Rahm pulled level with Scottie Scheffler during the final round of the PGA Championship.
Elsewhere, Tyrrell Hatton was in contention late on at the US Open and had a very good week at Royal Portrush.
DeChambeau meanwhile, did brilliantly to move up the field after looking destined to miss the cut following his first round of 78.
DeChambeau’s slow start, coupled with the lack of presence from LIV players in the top 20 on the leaderboard, arguably puts the spotlight on comments he made earlier in the week.
The Crushers captain was asked about LIV not visiting a links course before The Open. And he admitted that it is something that the league needs to address.
“I think that playing a links style golf course is what we need to do. There are some hindrances to that currently that I think is pretty public. I don’t know if it is necessarily, but it’s difficult to play links golf courses currently under what’s going on,” he said.
“I think at some point we’ll be able to do that in the next few years. Until then, we’re just going to have to ride it out, but we definitely want to. We’ve thought about that from the inception of it. Getting it onto a links golf course has been nearly impossible.”
What PGA Tour players said about playing the Scottish Open the week before Royal Portrush
Of course, LIV playing at Valderrama the week before The Open is not the reason that none of their players have won a major this year. It is an extremely tough test, so is arguably a fantastic way to prepare for a major.
However, links golf is such a unique challenge.
You have to wonder if Scottie Scheffler would have been quite as good at Royal Portrush had he not had a tricky week at the Genesis Scottish Open the week before.
In fact, numerous players felt that the Scottish Open was the ideal preparation for The Open, as they played a links course under tournament conditions.
It was interesting that the likes of Phil Mickelson, Sergio García and Lee Westwood had impressive weeks. They have now played 85 Open Championships between them and know what links golf demands.
Had LIV’s players had a chance to dust off the cobwebs sooner, perhaps they would have had a little more success at The Open.
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