LIV Golf's stars came up short at a major championship. Again.
Didn't those LIV golfers look just a little soft around the chin in the grueling U.S. Open at Oakmont, compared to that mudder of a new champion, J.J. Spaun? The sample size is significant enough now to say it with certainty: LIV is bad for golf, not just the game of golf in general, but specifically your golf, Brooks Koepka, and your golf, Bryson DeChambeau, and your golf, Dustin Johnson, and your golf too, Jon Rahm.
Spaun outfought all of them through the pelting rains, the graveyard ditches and the long grasses that curled around the ankles like hostage ropes. After two magnificent birdies on the closing holes in the downpour, he flung his putter in the air and whirled around with his caddie and an umbrella like Mary Poppins, a deserving winner. It was one thing that had separated the seemingly ordinary Spaun from pursuers, that deservingness. He had worked for it and earned it, hardened by 57 rounds of PGA Tour competition in 2025 against some of the toughest setups and fields.
Know how many rounds Koepka had played this year on the tourist trap corporate resort courses LIV visits in Riyadh and Singapore and Mexico City, in exchange for fat, easy purses and a reported $100 million in guarantees? Just 28.
The players who defected to the Saudi-backed LIV have mouthed various individual rationales, but it all comes down to this: They wanted to make the most amount of money for the least amount of work. LIV, with its 54-hole carnival-like events and suitcases full of guaranteed payouts, is not competition; it's exhibition. That simple fact is beginning to tell heavily on their ability to compete for four rounds in the major championships.
No less than former European Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley suggested as much in televised remarks recently. McGinley pointed out that LIV players, allegedly the greatest stars in the game, have won just two of 10 majors since LIV launched (Koepka's 2023 PGA Championship title and DeChambeau's 2024 U.S. Open victory) and they seem to be deteriorating in 2025.
'You need to play competitive golf,' McGinley bluntly told the Golf Channel last month. ' … Bar Brooks and Bryson, the rest have not turned up seriously since they've gone to LIV in these major championships.'
Fourteen of them entered the Open at Oakmont; just six made the cut. The supposed super-elites DeChambeau, Johnson, and Joaquín Niemann were at 10 over par after just two rounds, Phil Mickelson at 8 over. Of those who survived to play the weekend, Tyrrell Hatton gave the strongest chase Sunday, before he exhibited what is becoming a LIV signature in majors: a closing fade.
It was anyone's tournament with nine holes left to play and double bogeys more common than hot dogs. At one point seven players were within a stroke of each other. 'The back nine was just all about fighting,' said runner-up Robert MacIntyre, a left-handed Scot. MacIntyre, Viktor Hovland, Cameron Young and Scottie Scheffler all fought, and made late charges, each birdieing the 17th hole.
Hatton? He bogeyed it, and the 18th too. Hatton was LIV's best quality-of-play representative, along with Rahm, who could have been a factor with his final-round 67, but couldn't make up for a combined 8 over par in the middle rounds. It's worth noting that Hatton and Rahm only joined LIV in the winter of 2024, so perhaps their games aren't fully corroded yet.
Competing in a major is not ordinary golf. It's an utterly draining experience that takes all kinds of physical stamina and acquired resilience. Listen to Scheffler talk about what winning the PGA Championship last month at Quail Hollow did to him. 'It's really hard to describe to somebody that hasn't really lived through it just because of — I mean, when I woke up after the PGA Championship this year, I literally felt like I got hit by a bus. Like I felt terrible. And it's just part of the adrenaline, part of competing for four days on a really difficult golf course, keeping your head in it for 72 holes, which is a long time, and just mentally it's exhausting. Physically it's a grind too.'
LIV players are losing their fitness for the grind. One might have expected two-time U.S. Open champion Koepka to make a run. Instead, he bogeyed three of his first five holes and two of his last four, finishing 6 over and tied for 12th. Koepka is now 20 over par in three majors this season, with missed two cuts in two of them.
The fade factor has been noticeable in DeChambeau's performance too. He played just 15 rounds of LIV golf heading into the Masters. Dynamic ability and range work could only get him so far. Small wonder he shot a final-round 75 at Augusta, got smoked by Scheffler down the stretch in the PGA and could not keep it in the fairway at the merciless Oakmont, blowing up with a second-round 77.
'He was living in the rough there [these] last couple days,' Johnny Miller remarked at a Saturday news conference with Jack Nicklaus. 'Of course he gets to watch it on TV today.' Nicklaus snickered.
LIV talents can make themselves viable on more forgiving courses, but Oakmont was utterly exposing. PGA Tour players were simply better equipped to handle it.
On average, the rough at a regular PGA Tour event is two and half to four inches deep. At Oakmont it was over five inches, and the long grasses were 18 inches. The green speed stimpmeter reading — the distance a ball rolls, measured in feet — on a PGA course is usually between 11 and 12. At Oakmont it hovered around 14 or above. Those LIV tracks are not designed to hone great players, they're designed to entertain duffers.
No one was better than those former champions Miller and Nicklaus at summarizing the body and mind required to play competitively at Oakmont, much less win. Miller, looking at Nicklaus sitting next to him, said, 'Who do you think, once the bell rang on Thursday, who do you think believed he deserves to win?' On Sunday, that was J.J Spaun. You got the feeling that deep in their bones, the LIV players knew someone else was more deserving, too.
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