liv golf
Brooks Koepka’s blunt LIV Golf take: ‘We all hoped it would have been a little bit further along’
Thananuwat Srirasant
Brooks Koepka didn’t mince words. Again.
In a Wednesday press conference with Bryson DeChambeau and Joaquin Niemann, the brutally honest five-time major champion was asked to assess LIV Golf, now that the league is well into its fourth year.
“I think we all hoped it would have been a little bit further along, and that’s no secret,” Koepka said at Doral, site of this week’s LIV Golf event. “No matter where you’re at, you always hope everything is further along. But they’re making progress and it seems to be going in the right direction.”
DeChambeau was asked the same question and answered it before Koepka. He referred to new CEO Scott O’Neil, who has been on the job for 90 days.
“We don’t know everything that’s going on, but from what we’ve heard, there’s a lot of positive growth and positive momentum from a sponsorship side,” DeChambeau said.
There have been plenty of changes for the Saudi-backed league. O’Neil, former CEO at Merlin Entertainment, took over for Greg Norman earlier this year and quickly changed his league’s slogan from “Golf, But Louder” to “Long LIV Golf.” The league also has a new broadcast television deal with Fox Sports in the United States.
Ratings, however, have been low for each of the first four events, which O’Neil is quick to point out mostly happened in the middle of the night in the States. The season opener in Saudi Arabia drew 85,000 viewers. The Australia event in Adelaide is the biggest to date with 249,000 viewers. Hong Kong and Singapore had 29,000 and 34,000 respectively.
Which makes this a big week for LIV Golf, one that will deliver crucial data. They’re playing in the eastern time zone for the first time all year, at a golf course known for hosting a PGA Tour event for five decades. It’s going up against a PGA Tour event that has a relatively weaker field and the Masters is up next week, where 12 LIV golfers will compete.
“Would I want more people watching us? Of course,” O’Neil told reporters Wednesday in Miami. “Is that part of my job? Yes, it is. And I have no problem being judged. Judge me this week for sure in the U.S. But I'll tell you, two and a half million people watched that Riyadh event … not in the U.S. but we're a global sports league. We're the F1 of golf, and F1, I’d imagine, has more people watching in [Asia-Pacific] when they're in Singapore than they do when they're in Miami.”