Inside Look at LIV Golf

Brooks Koepka officially announced as latest LIV Golf signee

Four-time major champion Brooks Koepka said that he didn’t agree to join the LIV Golf Invitational Series until after playing in the U.S. Open.

BY RYAN LAVNER

A week after a testy exchange with reporters over his future plans, Brooks Koepka was unveiled Wednesday as the latest high-profile signee with the LIV Golf International Series.

Koepka will play in the first LIV event in the United States, scheduled for next week, June 30-July 2, at Pumpkin Ridge in Oregon.

LIV announced Koepka’s signing a few minutes into PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s news conference at the Travelers Championship. Unaware that Koepka had officially bolted for the rival league, Monahan said that he spoke to Koepka on Monday and added that he’s “been a wonderful and tremendous PGA Tour player, and I hope that continues.” Informed later that Koepka had indeed left for LIV, Monahan said that he was “disappointed” but looked forward to having a conversation with Koepka. The four-time major champion clashed with the media last week at the U.S. Open, where he claimed in a pre-tournament press conference that he hadn’t put much thought into joining the Saudi-backed tour despite persistent rumors over his impending departure. Growing frustrated with the repeated line of questioning, Koepka blamed reporters for casting a “black cloud” over the year’s third major.

“I don’t know why you guys keep doing that,” he huffed. “The more legs you give [LIV Golf], the more you keep talking about it.”

After putting himself in contention through two rounds at Brookline, Koepka faded badly over the weekend and finished 55th. He has now missed the cut and posted finishes outside the top 50 in three major appearances this year. The Open Championship at St. Andrews begins in 22 days.

The top-ranked player in the world for 47 weeks, Koepka has been slowed by knee, wrist and hip injuries, the latter potentially requiring surgery. Last year he racked up three top-6 major finishes but has failed to add to his major haul since the 2019 PGA. This year he has played 11 events but only the majors over the past two months. When asked last week about his limited slate, he said, “I’ve had a lot of other stuff going on, man.” He cited both his recent wedding and trying to make sure his body was as close to 100% healthy as possible. A part of the Tour’s 16-man Player Advisory Council, Koepka re-committed to the Tour in February, saying that he was “happy to be here” and that the Tour folks are “people I want to do business with.” He was, along with Rory McIlroy, one of the first players to denounce the Saudi league, saying that he didn’t think a tour should be about just 48 players and that “money isn’t going to change my life.” His tone changed last week, however, when asked whether his past support of the Tour was a permanent decision.

“There’s been no other option to this point,” Koepka said, “so where else are you going to go?”

Speculation had continued to swirl about his future plans, particularly after his younger brother, Chase, appeared in the inaugural LIV event earlier this month outside London. Internet sleuths also noticed Monday night that Koepka wiped any mention of his PGA Tour status on his social-media accounts. Currently ranked 84th in the FedExCup standings, Koepka has repeatedly stated how much trouble he has ramping up for the non-majors, even famously saying a few years ago that he doesn’t practice before regularseason events. This year’s LIV schedule features seven more events through the end of October, six of those offering 54-hole, no-cut events with $25 million purses.

The additions of Koepka and Abraham Ancer, who was announced on Tuesday, give the rival tour eight of the top 50 players in the world, joining Dustin Johnson, Louis Oosthuizen, Bryson DeChambeau, Kevin Na, Patrick Reed and Talor Gooch.

“There’s no understating the impact that Brooks Koepka has had on the game of golf in the last five years,” LIV CEO Greg Norman said. “He carries a championship pedigree and record of success as one of the most elite players in the world.”

Koepka was still listed in the field for the Travelers but withdrew from the event late Tuesday night. Monahan has already suspended 17 Tour players for competing in the first LIV event without a release, and he has said that any player who tees it up in future LIV events will receive the same punishment.

An inside look at how the money works on LIV Golf

By Alan Shipnuck

NORTH PLAINS, Ore. — LIV Golf is about many things: disruption, sportswashing, vengeance (in the case of frontman Greg Norman) and, uh, golf. But more than anything, it’s about cold, hard cash. As with many other issues surrounding this upstart tour, the details around all the money are shadowy. In an effort to get more granular, the Fire Pit Collective spoke with four agents who represent LIV golfers; they were granted anonymity to facilitate candor.

“What you have to understand about professional golfers is that they are all whores,” Agent A says. “That is the starting point.”

Touched off by a recent Brandel Chamblee tweet in which he said prize money is being applied to signing bonuses, there has been discussion this week about how the money is distributed on the LIV tour. The lower-wattage players in the field at Pumpkin Ridge have to kill what they eat, guaranteed nothing beyond the last-place money of $120,000 in the 48-man field. The more established players who jumped to LIV from the PGA and European tours have received guaranteed money that, contrary to Chamblee’s tweet, is in addition to whatever the player claims from the tournament purses, which this week is $20 million plus an additional $5 million for the concurrent team competition. “The prize fund is the prize fund,” says Pat Perez, who is making his LIV debut this week. “Whatever you win you get to keep. That’s why guys are taking this seriously.”

As with team sports, the guaranteed money on LIV varies from player to player, based on age, starpower, current form and projected performance. “Every deal is different,” Ian Poulter says. “There hasn’t been a lot of talk about the money [among players] because that’s personal.” Some of the numbers that have been floated in media reports have been fantastical: $200 million for Phil Mickelson, $150 million for Dustin Johnson, $100 million for Bryson DeChambeau. “You have to take that with a grain of salt,” Agent B says. “Who does it benefit to inflate those numbers? LIV, obviously, because they’re trying to generate buzz and recruit more players. But it also benefits the agents who are trying to sign new players or nudge other clients to make the jump.”

Though it is subject to negotiation, the standard arrangement in professional golf is that players keep all of the money they win on the course but agents take 20 percent of appearance fees and endorsement deals. LIV’s upfront money is treated like the latter, and as a result, the player representatives are getting a fat cut. (Because there is no cut in the events and players are guaranteed a check, some agencies are taking a commission on the first $120,000 of a player’s winnings, treating it as a de facto appearance fee.) One veteran caddie to a top player who has remained loyal to the PGA Tour says in a text message, “I honestly think that one of the backstories to this LIV thing are agents who desperately want the biggest payday of their lives.”

A key player in the building of LIV Golf is GSE Worldwide, a New York-based outfit that represents seven players who have made the jump: DeChambeau, Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen, Brendan Grace, Abraham Ancer, Carlos Ortiz and Eugenio Chacarra (who just turned pro). On Thursday, Norman told me, “We still have some big announcements coming.” Speculation has centered around another GSE client, Sam Burns. (Andrew Witlieb, the head of the company’s golf division, did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

GSE’s aggressive business model dovetails nicely with LIV’s desperate need to sign players. “We call it pushing paper,” Agent A says. “Those guys buy clients. They go in and say, ‘We’ll guarantee you X millions of dollars in income to sign with us.’ That means if [GSE doesn’t] land some big deals, they get their ass handed to them.”

But Agent C pushes back on the notion that he or any of his colleagues have steered their players to LIV despite the risks of being banned from what was their home tour, to say nothing of the blowback attached to LIV’s funding coming from Saudi Arabia. “Our job is to present all the options to the player, but they always make the final decision,” Agent C says. “If you push a player to do something that is not in his best interests long-term, you’re not going to be in this business very long.”

How are players taking care of the rest of their “team” in this era of inflated purses? Most caddies and swing coaches to LIV players are getting the same percentages as always, which means 10 percent of a victory this week is worth a cool $400,000 to the looper. “I’ve heard a little grumbling from the players,” Agent D says, “but there has been so much talk about quote unquote player greed that I think they are sensitive to not squeezing anyone right now. I do expect that at the end of this season some percentages will get adjusted.”

Each LIV player is given four plane tickets per tournament: one first class, one premium economy and two economy. He also gets four rooms in a luxury hotel. So caddies who used to have to pay their own way are now traveling for free. With no cut, they are also guaranteed a check every time out, and the 54-hole events reduce the wear and tear on their aching joints. “I have gotten calls from more than a dozen caddies dying for a bag,” Agent D says. Perez signed with LIV for four years, which will take him to age 50, when he will be eligible for the PGA Tour Champions … if golf’s warring bureaucracies ever make peace. Like other players with relatively modest upfront money, he received his haul in one chunk. Every player with a long-term LIV deal is compelled to play every event on the schedule, even as it potentially expands from eight tournaments this year to 14 in coming years. There are clawback provisions should a player miss a significant amount of time for injury. Interestingly, there is also a “morals clause” by which LIV can cancel a contract and recoup the upfront money.

The way LIV has quickly reshaped the landscape of professional golf has led to a lot of reflection on human nature. On Thursday, a couple of miles from Pumpkin Ridge, a dozen 9/11 families participated in a protest of LIV’s links to Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. While fans, reporters, political commentators and a few professional golfers wrestle with these larger geopolitical issues, business is booming on the LIV tour. Says Agent A, “I was just talking with the guy doing all the deals for LIV, and he told me he is drinking from a fire hose right now. He is getting bombarded by agents. I think there was some initial apprehension about how this whole thing was going to play out, so a lot of people were on the sidelines, observing. Now the gold rush is on.”

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