LIV Golf as we know it is gone.

Even if the tour can scramble to form LIV 2.0 next season, it will never be quite the same. The business model of throwing hundreds of millions at the best players in the world has failed, as even the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s unlimited supply of money turned out to be limited. 

LIV Golf is now bankrupt; many of its biggest stars jumped ship the minute the money ran out, and only four players have officially signed up for the league next season. 

Many were sceptical about LIV’s strategy of throwing away millions to fund their rebel golf league, and rightly so. The clearest indicator that this business model was always doomed to fail is the list of the top 25 players in the world when the league formed.

The top 25 players in the world when LIV was created

The problem with throwing money at the best players in the world is that in golf especially, this list fluctuates drastically from year to year. Looking back at the top 25 players in the Official World Golf Rankings in 2022, when LIV played its first event, it’s clear why the model failed.

Scottie Scheffler was still world number one, having won his first Masters that year, and Jon Rahm was a close second. Rahm was expected to contend for the world number one spot for years to come, but four years later, he’s ranked 15th. 

And the reading gets even worse for the players further down this list. Back in 2022, Billy Horschel was world number 16, but now he’s outside the top 150. Brooks Koepka and Tony Finau have also fallen outside of the top 100 in the last four years. 

Imagine if LIV Golf offered Horschel and Finau tens of millions to join their tour. How laughable would that look now? And that very scenario actually played out over and over for the Saudi-backed league.

They paid Kevin Na, Louis Oosthuizen, Paul Casey, and Abraham Ancer, all of whom were in the top 25 in the world in 2022 and have since fallen off the map after signing with LIV. 

In golf, it’s far from a guarantee that a top player will remain a top player for very long, and that’s exactly why it was incredibly foolish to put the future of LIV Golf in the player’s hands.