DORAL, Fla. — After the paragliders landed, unfurling flags for Aces GC and Crushers GC, the first-tee emcee set the stage. LIV Golf’s team championship was upon us. The entire season had come down to this, he said. Time to get hyped. Three women ran along the rope line, waving T-shirts in the air, the universal sign to make noise. In unison, amid the thumping beat of Khwezi’s “Cyberpunk 2020,” the emcee got things started.
“Miami, get ready to party,” he said. “This is golf, but louder.”
Then, Talor Gooch, Charles Howell III, Mito Pereira and Patrick Reed teed off one by one to some clapping, some whooping. LIV’s finale — 12 teams playing for a $50 million season-ending purse — was underway, with a cool $14 million to the four-man winning team.
Not long ago, it was thought that this — the 2023 team championship at Trump Doral outside Miami — might serve as LIV’s final resting place. In early June, following the PGA Tour’s formal agreement to partner with the near-$700 billion Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, voices were quick to promote the presumptive demise of the tour’s chief rival.
The deal created a for-profit company combining the commercial interests of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour behind a large cash investment from the PIF. Just…
