Growing the game: Revisiting the many reasons golfers gave for joining LIV (besides money)

The dishwasher is full. The bins aren’t out. There’s no loo roll. I want to grow the game of golf.

Some phrases in life stick 100 metaphorical daggers through your chest at once.

Two-time US Open champ and LIV Golf rebel Bryson DeChambeau released a vague statement about his professional future over the weekend, and he used the latter phrase three times.

I don’t know how I survived reading it and still wrote this column.

When LIV Golf arrived in 2022, players with DeChambeau’s profile were reportedly awarded nine-figure sums to leave the established PGA Tour and DP World Tour to join the start-up funded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is worth nearly a trillion dollars.

Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Cam Smith and Brooks Koepka were also linked with fees around this mark. The perception was that players joined for money, while a nation with a questionable human rights record was washing its reputation.

Therefore, any other justification, like the ones I go into below, sounded laughable. And they were.

Players such as former World No.1 Lee Westwood have always been clear on their money-oriented motivations – he said as much on a recent episode of the Chipping Forecast.

Fans might remember Harold Varner III’s admirably frank statement about setting his family up for generations through the cash on the table with the breakaway league. Johnson was clear about this, too, when becoming one of the first players to sign up.

This is all fine. But on many occasions, we were treated to a remarkable collection of reasons why the new venture was so attractive, which make for amusing reading now that many are jumping the ship that is sinking to the ocean bed.

As LIV Golf nears complete extinction after plunging into bankruptcy, I thought I’d have some fun revisiting some of the reasons players used to join LIV Golf.

Growing the game

Let’s deal with this one and get it out of the way. If I had a pound for every time a LIV player mentioned growing the game, I’d have more than nine figures in the bank myself.

DeChambeau has been one of the most enthusiastic advocates of LIV’s mission to grow golf. It was a line LIV probably wanted the players to toe when being peppered with questions in the early days.

Graeme McDowell began the spiral at LIV’s first-ever event four years ago, in the tour’s first-ever player press conference:

“I really feel like golf is a force of good in the world. I just try to be a great role model to kids. I know what the game of golf has taught me. I love using the game of golf as something to help grow around the world.”

This was the first of many, many repetitions of this phrase, so we can’t go through all of them now. Read DeChambeau’s statement again if you want a fix.

No one really knows what it means either. Increased participation? More juniors playing? The sport being played in more countries?

If it’s any of those things, it’s hard to say LIV caused a spike. And golf’s encouraging participation numbers are certainly nothing to do with McDowell wearing a Niblicks shirt and playing in a shotgun start.

Taking golf around the world

It felt like we were constantly told golf must become global and be taken around the world, and that LIV came to the planet’s rescue in that regard. ‘Why is no one playing golf outside of America?’, we asked ourselves week in, week out.

At LIV Singapore in 2024, Mickelson spoke of his excitement for the new league visiting countries outside of the US, ‘starving for world-class professional golf’.

In Adelaide earlier that year, former LIV CEO Greg Norman said: “Our investor wanted to invest in LIV because he loved the opportunity of the franchise model, what he could do with it and how we can build it out on a global platform.”

Golf has been built on a global platform for decades. Norman won 91 events worldwide, for crying out loud, in places like Japan, Hong Kong and Fiji. To his credit, he supported events worldwide long before his LIV dream was realised.

The DP World Tour goes on a worldwide cruise every season as well. The variety in that schedule has always been astonishing. Just a cursory glance at this circuit gives you a taste of where professionals can ply their trade.

Take the year that LIV was founded – 2022. If they wished, these passionate globetrotters could’ve avoided needless reputational damage and played on the DP World Tour in Kenya, South Africa, Qatar, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, France, and Portugal.

Playing team golf

This was another favourite. LIV introduced franchises, team captains, matching shirts and a competition in which individual performances contributed towards a collective result.

I think we can admire the effort here, at least. We know team golf can be fun to watch with the Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup. Maybe they were on to something.

Nevertheless, the lure of being part of a squad was too much for these guys to turn down. DeChambeau clearly has an undying love for the Crushers, and Talor Gooch was very enamoured by the whole thing too.

One standout moment represented this yearning for belonging and will go down in LIV’s folklore. After an event in Portland in 2022, Gooch, who has never represented the US in the sport’s biggest team events, suggested the atmosphere was comparable to the Ryder Cup.

“I haven’t played a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup, but I can’t imagine there’s a whole hell of a lot of difference,” he said.

I’m disappointed this hasn’t been carved into a plaque.

ALSO: Rory was wrong. I’d rather watch Lee Westwood than almost any PGA Tour star

Spending more time with family

This is where things get particularly amusing.

One of LIV’s great attractions was supposedly the opportunity to play less and spend more time at home with loved ones.

Less travelling, fewer tournaments, more time watching the children grow up. All very admirable. But a couple of players provided a wonderful twist when leaving LIV this year, citing the very same reasons, would you believe?

At the 2022 BMW PGA Championship, Reed said that his new life with LIV could grant him ’11 to 14 extra weeks’ that he could spend with his family.

Fast forward to the 2026 Masters, shortly after leaving LIV, Reed said, “To be honest with you, it was one of those decisions that I felt like was the best, not just for the golf game, but also for my family to spend more time with them. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, obviously being at home and spending time with the kiddos and my wife.”

In 2024, Ian Poulter chose not to play in Final Open Qualifying, and missed out on playing at Royal Troon. He chose to go on holiday with his family in Switzerland instead.

“That is what LIV Golf has given me, a bit more family time,” he told Talksport.

In October, the Englishman announced in a statement that he was leaving the Saudi-funded tour. He wrote: “Ultimately, the opportunity to spend more time with my family, reduce international travel, focus on senior golf and have the opportunity to pursue other interests was something I felt was right for me at this stage of my life and career.”

They couldn’t lose, could they?

Disagreements with the rules

This is a fun one, and easy to forget. On the odd occasion, the rules of golf became tangled in justification for joining LIV and taking lucrative sign-up offers.

At the 2022 Phoenix Open, Charley Hoffman was furious after a controversial ruling and took to Instagram to complain about the PGA Tour and its officials.

Hoffman hit his ball into the water off the 13th tee, which led to a penalty shot. In the post, Hoffman said he then dropped twice on the side of the hill that had no grass. He eventually found a tuft of grass for his ball to rest, but it rolled into the water, and he had to take another penalty shot.

“You wonder why guys are wanting to jump ship and go play on another tour,” he wrote. Among those supporting his outburst were two future LIV defectors. Mickelson commented: “I feel ya.” DeChambeau added: “Agree wholeheartedly.”

Hoffman never joined LIV and the rule eventually changed, but the implication was rather amusing, and then we have two high-profile players in the comments who did make the switch from the PGA Tour.

Sergio Garcia took things further at the Wells Fargo Championship that May. After disputing the timing of a ball search with an official, Garcia was caught on camera declaring: “I can’t wait to leave this tour.”

He added that he wouldn’t have to deal with the officials much longer.

To be fair to Garcia, the PGA Tour subsequently acknowledged that the official had made an error. But the suggestion that moving to LIV would somehow remove the possibility of contentious rulings was wonderful.

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