LIV Golf is about to complete its second season, and plenty has occurred in Year 2. Phil Mickelson mentioned some key subjects on Wednesday.
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When LIV Golf introduced its first group of dedicated players again in May 2022, two-time main champ Dustin Johnson headlined the record. Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood had been talked about, too.
Per week later, Phil Mickelson signed on. A few weeks after that got here Brooks Koepka. Later that summer season, Cameron Smith, recent off an Open Championship victory, and Joaquin Niemann signed on the dotted line.
LIV Golf was stealing stars from the PGA Tour, however that slowed after the primary yr. Now Year 2 is sort of full, and the way forward for LIV Golf is barely more murky given the framework deal between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi PIF. And that was earlier than the latest information of the OWGR’s choice to disclaim LIV Golf occasions World Ranking factors, that are essential for almost all of its players to qualify for main championships.
So, will LIV proceed to evolve? Mickelson thinks so. The six-time main champ is in Florida for this week’s season-ending LIV Team Championship at Trump National Doral, and through Wednesday’s multi-player press convention Mickelson was requested about among the newest developments within the golf world. Notably, the OWGR choice, and what LIV ought to do subsequent.
“As a league that’s trying to grow the game and bring it globally and promote the game throughout the world, as well as bring something different than the old, stodgy format that we’ve had for decades, we just need to focus on what we are doing and make our product as good as possible, as interesting as possible,” Mickelson mentioned. “We need to make tweaks into our program. The OWGR needs to obviously make tweaks but we need to tweak our format to continue to evolve and be more interesting and easier to understand. We have enough on our plate to make our product more and more exciting and appealing that we shouldn’t worry ourselves with what they are doing.”
At for the evolution of LIV, Mickelson mentioned they’ve numerous concepts internally — “we have to see if they are good ideas,” he mentioned — however the hot button is expertise.
“When you’re a start-up, and we have only been around a year and a half, you look at the quality of players that we have already, and that’s going to continue to improve next year and it’s going to continue to improve the following year,” Mickelson mentioned. “It’s important that we continue to evolve our product, our presentation. This was kind of the idea at the beginning. Like we thought, OK, we’ll have the Team Championship, we’ll have the individual part. But all of that is flexible and should be evolved so that based on fans’ needs and wants, as well as television and other entities, so it’s easier to understand and becomes more appealing.”
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Given the OWGR information, and with LIV Golf now looking forward to its third season after this week’s occasion, Mickelson was requested if he believes more players will come over from the PGA Tour. Does he assume the exodus has stopped, or are more players coming?
“Do I think that?” he mentioned. “No — I know that’s going to happen.”
“When players look at LIV, they are wanting to be a part of it. Everybody here is happy and enjoying what we are doing and enjoying the team aspect of it and enjoying each other and the camaraderie and enjoying playing golf globally and all the benefits that come with playing this tour,” Mickelson continued. “So there’s a lot of players that see that and want to be a part of it. The question is, you know, how many spots are available. There’s a lot more players that want to come than there are spots.”
There’s actually no particular reply concerning what occurs to LIV Golf going ahead. Maybe one thing, maybe nothing. Right now, the golf world has means too many query marks.
Asked if he thought the pending merger would have an effect on players coming to LIV — a query which may have been supposed to imply it might discourage players — Mickelson twisted his reply the opposite course.
“I think the merger talks allow for it,” he mentioned. “I think it allows and kind of opens the door for that.”
With LIV Golf’s season winding down, 4 players will now face relegation (the dearth of assured promotion and relegation of players is one factor that harm LIV in its try for World Ranking factors). One of them is James Piot, who was on Mickelson’s HyFlyers GC staff. On Wednesday staff captains had been requested about filling these spots.
“The reality is, I’ve been fielding calls, as we all have, from players that are free agents,” Mickelson mentioned. “To PGA Tour players to DP World Tour players that want to come over. You know, the spot’s probably going to be filled by the time the qualifying tournament is here. … But I think there’s a good chance based on the number of calls that we’ve had that the spot will be filled fairly soon.”
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