Lynch: LIV Golf, 2022-2026 | Opinion - Golfweek

All things considered, it was a lousy week for charlatans and grifters who’ve made careers of pissing on your leg while insisting that it’s raining. Now follow the predictable theatrics: shameless calls for harmony from those suddenly out of influence, out of ammo and out of options, urging everyone to focus on the future, knowing that any look back would demand accountability for their decisions and actions. All while a feverish fringe alleges a grand conspiracy, because the alternative means admitting they are, at best, suckers and, at worst, among the more simple-minded specimens seen since man stumbled from the cave to the keyboard. 

LIV Golf launched in the summer of 2022 with grandiose promises and crash-landed Nov. 5 in a mundane New Jersey bankruptcy court. “The debtors are toggling to a value-maximizing wind-down in their business,” the league’s lawyer said, the “value-maximizing” gloss hinting at one final, undeliverable pledge. LIV’s cause of death is identical to its original source of life: the disloyalty and greed of the very golfers it lured from — and, in some cases, induced to litigate against — tours where they used to compete.

For four years, they feigned enthusiasm about the team format and taking golf to less-trafficked corners of the world, neither of which would have materially changed in a LIV 2.0. What would certainly have changed is the compensation. The money ran out, so the players did too. 

Per a popular meme quoting Niccolo Machiavelli for something he never actually wrote, “Never trust a person who betrays others. Even if he betrayed them for you.” 

It was never about anything else, of course. All the posturing, self-serving guff and brazen bullshitting had to cease when LIV’s advocates entered a courtroom, at which point it became obvious that the only mission was money. Just not for everyone. Players were paid extravagantly, regardless of any current whining about being offered cents on the dollar for outstanding commitments. Executives were too, even as LIV circled the sewer. In the weeks before its Chapter 11 filing, the league handed out $15.6 million in retention bonuses, including $6.375 million to its CEO, Scott O’Neil, who also received gratuities totaling more than $4.5 million earlier this year. The hundreds of employees dismissed and the vendors being stiffed on payments were not so fortunate. 

The only surprise is that the farce lasted this long. A business that didn’t even warrant a first day somehow had a final one. Its enduring impact — other than on the portfolios of its beneficiaries — will be in proving how even successful people will do anything for more cash, how struggling media companies will prostrate themselves for a share, even from a government that butchered a journalist (one golf magazine published a guide for planning a buddies trip to Saudi Arabia), and how many unemployable and unwell losers will beclown themselves on social media in hopes that a stray crumb of reward or relevance falls far enough to reach their basement dwelling. 

And yet all that professed solidarity lasted exactly as long as the solvency. 

Don’t expect many expressions of regret, however. Players who still have competitive chops will find homes elsewhere, while those who don’t will know they cashed out at just the right time. But then, ruefulness requires reflection, which might not be taking place. Jon Rahm knows he didn’t lose money by going to LIV, regardless of his high rank among the creditors, but does he think about losing three years of his prime and the core of his reputation? Bryson DeChambeau may believe himself loyal for remaining publicly committed to LIV longer than most, which beats wondering if he’s really a mark living in his own manufactured reality. Phil Mickelson has retreated from public life to address private issues, sparing him any rumination on having recruited and evangelized for a failed project that incinerated his standing and exposed him as having all the authenticity of a bot farm. 

Most of LIV’s golfers are still represented by the same agents who counseled them when they joined the league, which suggests they don’t feel misled (yet). But as the golf world moves on, those who created and sustained this sham shouldn’t be forgotten or breezily absolved. Like 54, the London-based agency that reaped a fortune for running the league. Or GSE Worldwide, the player management group that earned a percentage as its clients paraded one by one to LIV’s roster. Or the Asian Tour, now back in favor with its U.S. and European counterparts, but which traded its affections as freely as a Bangkok streetwalker. Or the networks that broadcast a worthless product because it was a substitute for reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or a convenient means for cozying up to the Saudis for a bigger prize. 

There were plenty of seats around the trough during the good times, but not many pews filled at the funeral. To borrow from Hamlet, no flights of agents to sing thee to thy rest. LIV will have to strike the match for its own pyre. It ends as it began, a rallying point for the worst people in golf. They will miss it, but no one else will.

Eamon Lynch is a columnist for Golfweek and a frequent contributor to Golf Channel.