Golf Wars: LIV and Golf’s Bitter Battle for Power and Identity

BBC golf correspondent Carter (The 150th Open) delivers a propulsive account of how the establishment of LIV, a professional men’s golf tour created as an alternative to the PGA, upended the sport. He chronicles how English businessman Andrew Gardiner, convinced professional golf wasn’t living up to its potential, proposed a new tour in which each participant would compete in every tournament and play on teams that “could become lucrative franchises.” Gardiner’s dream was realized when LIV’s first series kicked off in 2022, but not without controversy. Saudi Arabia served as an essential financier, raising concerns that the country was using the tour to rehabilitate its public image and distract from its human rights abuses. Lucrative prize money drew high-profile golfers to LIV despite the bad press, causing the PGA and European tours to issue warnings that bans or fines would be imposed on players who participated in the new venture. Carter artfully chronicles professional golf’s shifting landscape, and his transportive dispatches from LIV matches detail how the tour’s brash style is challenging the historically restrained sport (“Torrents of beer, plastic glasses and cans rained down. Thunderous cheers from the packed crowd echoed across the course,” Carter writes of the pandemonium that followed an impressive shot by Chase Koepka at a 2023 event in Adelaide, Australia). A tale of “arch disruptors,” big money, and murky ethics, this is Accidental Billionaires for the golf world. (May)