The number 2 player in the world moved from the golf tournament making him the number 2 player in the world. Cameron Smith will leave the PGA Tour and play in the LIV Golf League starting this week in Boston. That’s LIV’s best scoop to date on getting high-ranked players thriving in the current landscape.
This represents a huge loss for the PGA Tour. Smith is the defending League of Champions, Champion and Open Championship Winner. The first two events are among the 13 advanced tournaments for the 2023 PGA Tour, and the defending champion will also be absent.
Here too there is a trend for LIV. The Saudi-backed tournament currently features a collection of golfers who have won 12 of the last 26 major championships. That’s a big deal for my product marketing, though I still doubt that anyone outside of Tiger Woods can influence viewership for any tournament outside of the PGA scene. Tour and major championships.
That is the backdrop on which the PGA Tour still holds LIV Golf and will have to rely on as LIV inevitably pours more and more money into its future tournament. Tour can (and should) do a better job of contextualizing its own product by offering some of the choices it has made, such as enhancing its events, but can also FedEx Cup reform.
My colleague Rick Gehman made the great point in our recent podcast (see below) that Smith and LIV are the perfect marriage. With his Open win this summer, Smith is exempt from all major championships for at least the next 5 years and LIV gets the most recent major winner to add to the already-inclusive roster of players. Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka.
Regardless of what you think is the right way forward, what LIV has achieved so far is impressive and meaningful, as it has transformed itself into the second best tour in the world in less than a year. five. We discuss all of this and more in our recent First Cut Podcast as we try to determine what the latest news means and how each league will handle it.
Cameron Smith officially joined LIV Golf. Rick Gehman and Kyle Porter discuss what this means for the PGA Tour. Follow and listen to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
