The No. 2 participant in the world has moved on from the golf league that made him the No. 2 participant in the world. Cameron Smith will depart the PGA Tour and play in the LIV Golf League beginning this week in Boston. It’s LIV’s finest scoop to date by way of buying extremely ranked gamers who’re thriving in the present panorama.
This represents a large loss for the PGA Tour. Smith is the reigning Tournament of Champions winner, Players champion and Open Championship winner. The first two of these occasions are amongst the 13 elevated tournaments for the PGA Tour in 2023, and the defending champion will not be at both.
There is additionally a development right here for LIV. The Saudi Arabian-backed league now has a assortment of golfers who’ve gained 12 of the final 26 major championships. That’s a large deal for the advertising and marketing of its product, though I stay doubtful that anybody outdoors of Tiger Woods can have an effect on viewership for any league outdoors of the context of the PGA Tour and the major championships.
It’s that context that the PGA Tour nonetheless holds over LIV Golf and can have to lean on as LIV undoubtedly pours increasingly more cash into its future league. The Tour can (and may) do a higher job of contextualizing its personal product by making a few of the decisions it has already made, like elevating its occasions, but in addition by doubtlessly reforming the FedEx Cup.
My colleague Rick Gehman made the nice level in our current podcast (see under) that Smith and LIV are the excellent marriage. With his Open win this summer season, Smith is exempt into all the major championships for no less than the subsequent 5 years, and LIV will get the most up-to-date major winner to add to its secure of gamers that already consists of Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka.
Regardless of what you assume is the proper path ahead, what LIV has achieved so far has been spectacular and significant, because it has remodeled itself into the second-best tour in the world in lower than a 12 months. We focus on all of this and far more in our current First Cut Podcast as we attempt to decide what the newest news means and the way every league will deal with it.
Cameron Smith is formally becoming a member of LIV Golf. Rick Gehman and Kyle Porter focus on what this implies for the PGA Tour. Follow & hear to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
