Amid mounting legal losses, floundering TV ratings and a team structure no fan really seems to care about, LIV Golf should have had a celebratory moment at Augusta National on Friday
Brooks Koepka, who looked positively broken in 2022 before defecting from the PGA Tour to LIV is now healthy and dominating to the tune of 12-under-par through two rounds. He holds first place at the Masters by himself and has a three-stroke lead on the rest of the field.
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This was the moment that should’ve made the Saudi-backed league look a bit more legitimate. Instead, Koepka spoke honestly about where his game is and inadvertently made clear that LIV Golf is a step down from the PGA Tour.
Brooks Koepka says if he had been this healthy at the time of his choice to join LIV, that it would have been a tougher decision. But added he's happy with it.
— Brendan Porath (@BrendanPorath) April 7, 2023
“Honestly, yeah, probably,” Koepka said when asked if joining LIV would’ve been more challenging if he were this healthy last year. “If I’m being completely honest. I think it would have been.”
Anyone who watched the Netflix docu-series Full Swing knows Koepka was in a dark place last season. His struggle to find consistency in his game, and keep his body from aching, led to one of the more brutally honest looks into the mind of a pro golfer at a crossroads.
“I’ve had these question marks for like the last year and a half,” Koepka, a four-time major winner, told Netflix. “Am I going to be the same golfer? Am I ever going to be the same? And I still don’t know where I’m at. I’ll be honest with you, I can’t compete with these guys week-in and week-out.”
The search for an answer led Koepka to accept a reported $150 million signing bonus to join LIV Golf and abandon the PGA Tour. After an offseason of surgery and rehab, rumors of Koepka regretting his decision to join LIV began to pop up — most notably in February from golf writer and author Alan Shipnuck, who’s as wired into the drama between LIV and the PGA as any journalist:
“I’m hearing a lot of rumblings that Brooks Koepka has buyer’s remorse. He took the money when his brittle body was still being put back together, and in private he has confided to folks he wasn’t sure if he would ever get fully healthy again. But now Koepka is feeling frisky and supposedly rethinking his career choice. The guy has one of the biggest egos in golf, and as the PGA Tour creates ever-increasing buzz with its elevated events and even the state-sanctioned TGL, Koepka has to feel like he’s on the outside looking in.”
Koepka’s comments on the record won’t do much to dispel those notions, either.
On Friday he spoke about getting the chance to play against some of the world’s best golfers again and it’s clear he misses these outings.
“It’s just competitively where you miss playing against them,” Koepka said. “Because you want Rory [McIlroy] to play his best and Scottie [Scheffler] to play his best and Jon [Rahm] to play his best and go toe-to-toe with them. I do miss that, and that’s one thing that I do miss, and that’s what I think makes these majors so cool.”
Koepka has a four-year deal with LIV Golf and it doesn’t appear there’s any easy way out. LIV reportedly requires players to repay up to four times their initial signing bonus to break their contracts. Which means Koepka would be on the hook for up to $600 million. And he’s still suspended indefinitely on the PGA Tour along with the other pros who defected.
All of this should make LIV officials a bit queasy. Koepka is excelling on the sport’s biggest stage and instead of using it to prove that they do play “real golf” on the LIV circuit, he’s admitting he misses the guys he used to play with.
Koepka may very well end up winning the Masters this year, but the way he’s talking about his new home seemingly won’t entice many others to follow him there.
