If Scott O’Neil was looking for a reaction with his audacious claim that LIV Golf is the only place to watch the world’s best golfers outside of the majors, then he has certainly got one.
LIV Golf Adelaide is establishing itself as the flagship event in the league’s calendar. And it delivered another impressive event this past week, with Joaquin Niemann securing his third LIV Golf win with his victory in Australia.
However, perhaps the biggest talking point coming out of the event was created by the league’s new CEO Scott O’Neil. O’Neil claimed during the broadcast that LIV was the one place to watch the best players outside of the four majors.
Unsurprisingly, many fans ridiculed O’Neil’s comments. He appears to have picked up the mantle from Greg Norman, who was certainly not afraid to make outlandish statements – seemingly with the intention of inspiring a reaction.
Smylie Kaufman reacts to Scott O’Neil’s comments about the strength of LIV Golf
It is hard to believe that O’Neil did not know exactly what he was doing. It takes absolutely no time at all to put together an argument which proves that he is wrong, with Brandel Chamblee pointing out PGA Tour players hold three of the four major titles.
And Smylie Kaufman has been left similarly baffled by the comments. Speaking on The Smylie Show, Kaufman hit out at the suggestion, insisting that LIV is some way off.
He said: “Holy s— man, what is this guy smoking? If you’re going to say something like that, you need to have some bullet points right after. You can’t just say that and be like, ‘yep, this is where the best golf is played’. What? What are you talking about, dude?
“Here’s a stat from Joseph LaMagna on Twitter: 33 golfers recorded a top 10 at a major in 2024, four were LIV Golfers. What?
“Joaquin’s really good. He’s really good. Do I think that Joaquin Niemann couldn’t win a FedEx Cup title? No. He’s good enough to get to East Lake and start four back of Scottie and win the golf tournament.
“We don’t disagree that there’s really good players on LIV. There’s plenty of good players on LIV. We’ve said that we don’t like the product. I disagree with a lot of it. I don’t like the shotgun start, I don’t like the argument that just because they play in four and a half hours doesn’t mean that it takes away from watching what would already be watching four hours of coverage by guys who aren’t playing good anyway, so why do I care if it’s a four hour window or not when it already always is a four hour window for golf?
“That, to me, is the dumbest thing in the world. And golf tournaments should end on the 18th hole. They’re not designed to be finishing on the fourth hole to win a golf tournament. The shotgun thing is so stupid.”
Where LIV Golf’s stars really rank amongst the world’s best players
There is no doubt at all that LIV has some outstanding players. Any tour would give a lot to have Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka playing regularly.
The big problem with O’Neil’s comments is the suggestion that LIV is almost unmatched – particularly in a week where the PGA Tour had Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Ludvig Aberg teeing it up.
Data Golf tries to offer a much more balanced ranking system with players not receiving world ranking points for LIV events. And heading into last week, just four players from the breakaway league found themselves in the top 20, with Tyrrell Hatton joining Rahm, DeChambeau and Niemann on the list.
That is a lot fairer to LIV, and even that finds that they have just 20 percent of the world’s 20 best players.
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