The golfing world has been dominated by talk of the LIV Golf Invitational Series, the Saudi-backed venture fronted by Greg Norman and LIV Golf Investments.
Details of the Series were announced and quickly followed by the $225m curtain-raiser at London’s Centurion Club in June, where South African Charl Schwartzel secured the $4 million first prize. It became a South African double in Portland when Branden Grace took the spoils in the second edition.
With two iterations under our belt and the story of the third soon to be written at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey, we take a detailed look at everything we know about the LIV Golf Series and how it has impacted the golf world as we knew it.
What Is The LIV Golf Series?
Briefly put, the LIV Golf Series comprises of eight tournaments – seven regular events and a season-closing Team Championship, which will be held at Trump National Doral.
Each of the regular events feature three rounds with no cut, and with play commencing by shotgun start. There is also a team format with no more than 48 players making up of 12 teams of four, with the teams drafted each week.
The Series has enticed players with huge $25m purses at each of the first seven tournaments, and a $50m purse in the finale. There is also a bonus pool for the best performers throughout.
The concept of a breakaway league is not new to golf or in fact, Greg Norman. The former World No.1 put forward his own plans for a World Golf Tour in 1994, a lucrative, eight-field event that would showcase the game’s best players as independent contractors, unfettered from the PGA Tour.
Norman’s path to ‘growing the game’ never did come to fruition but you sense there has always been a determination to challenge golf’s status quo. And so here we are, 28 years later with the game on the precipice of civil war and now an official league to rival the established ecosystem.
The Australian is confident in the future success of his product, describing the Series as “a carrot too hard to resist.” It has taken a monumental financial investment…
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