“I have a tip that can take five strokes off anyone's game: It's called an eraser.” – Arnold Palmer
The most obnoxious thing that ever happened to the game of golf filed bankruptcy on Tuesday.
What a whiff.
LIV Golf was essentially a hostile takeover attempt of professional golf.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund dumped more than $5 billion into the startup league, showering the world’s top golfers with enormous contracts and fabulous prizes to lure them away from the PGA Tour.
Three-time masters winner Phil Mickelson reportedly got a $200 million deal. Jon Rahm bagged a reported $300 million deal.
The money was breathtaking. So was the arrogance behind it.
Four years later, LIV landed in bankruptcy court with just $100 million to $500 million in assets and $500 million to $1 billion in liabilities.
And now some of the world’s top golfers can call themselves LIV’s top creditors.
Golfers account for the seven largest unsecured claims, with 14 players among LIV’s 30 biggest unsecured creditors.
Rahm leads the pack at about $7.5 million, followed by Bryson DeChambeau at $5.8 million and Dustin Johnson at $5.5 million. Cameron Smith, Tyrrell Hatton and others are also waiting to get paid.
And that hardly tallies everything LIV might owe under the players’ long-term contracts. The bankruptcy filing reflects amounts already owed or accrued.
Welcome to the bankruptcy game, gentlemen. Take a number. (Here’s a link to the filings you’ll be reading.)
It’s a fitting turnabout for a league that blew up the golf world when it launched in 2022.
LIV split players into warring camps, triggered lawsuits and turned a polite sport into a four-year grudge match.
And all of this rancor was bankrolled by a regime accused of using sports to burnish its reputation despite its atrocious human-rights record and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. “They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.” ” – Phil Mickelson in 2022.
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Now the disruptors have disrupted themselves.
And LIV’s biggest unsecured creditors, the money-chasing pros it paid fortunes to pry away from the PGA Tour, could wind up owning most of the reorganized league.
Or does the PGA want them back? Some fans sure don’t. “They left for the money, don’t let ‘em back,” one fan told Golf Digest in a 2024 report.
So maybe they can go play with themselves.
LIV’s proposed resurrection would turn the players into majority owners of a slimmed-down LIV Golf 2.0, with private-equity firm BC Partners and other investors expected to provide fresh capital.
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But seriously, sports fans? Who wants to pour more money into a golf league that has already burned through more than $5 billion without building much of a business?
“I don’t think there’s anything to restructure here,” said J. Scott Victor, a managing director at SSG Capital Advisors, told Golf Digest in June. “This is an investment that’s not panned out.”
