And now we wait.
LIV Golf's U.S. opener for 2025 is in the books, and by all accounts, everything went pretty well for the Saudi-backed league at Trump Doral in Miami, where Aussie Marc Leishman earned his first victory in four years by topping a loaded leaderboard. Doral played stout, with only six players finishing under par. Leishman's 4-under 68 to close helped him beat Charl Schwartzel by a shot.
But not many people will care about the results in Miami, though Leishman's name may not be the flashiest when you consider who was in the final grouping (Bryson DeChambeau, Sergio Garcia and Phil Mickelson). But the wait is on for the TV ratings.
For the first time this year, LIV Golf competed head-to-head with the final round of a PGA Tour event. The leagues, which a month ago seemed on the verge of unification but now seem world's apart once, saw two different leaderboards fighting it out down the stretch, but more people will talk about Brian Harman's emotional win in Texas than they will Leishman's in Miami.
What will the head-to-head TV ratings look like?
The focus for Miami will be when the TV ratings come out for Sunday's final round, and that one number will say a lot about the league's future.
TV ratings have been abysmal to start the season, but there are some caveats. LIV has played its first four events overnight in the U.S., helping lead to lower numbers. It has also been on Fox's secondary networks, with the Doral event being the first that was on Fox during afternoon viewing hours, the same time the PGA Tour is on every week.
No excuses this week.
Starting off, if the numbers follow the trend and are poor, or even middle of the road, it puts the league in an even more difficult position when it comes to unification. For the first time since LIV Golf has existed, it seems the PGA Tour holds all the power when it comes to unification. The league has struggled mightily to gain traction in the U.S., and if that continues even on a bigger platform, it's going to beg the question of why is this still ongoing.
Players like Brooks Koepka have openly said they're not happy with where the league is at and haven't shut the door on possibly leaving. This week, all of LIV's stars who were in contention down the stretch faded, including DeChambeau, who fired a 4-over 76 on Sunday when he came into the day with a two-shot lead. That's not great when the leaderboard was, for the most part, much better than the PGA Tour's for a majority of the afternoon.
If the numbers are good, it gives LIV Golf more ammunition for negotiations. It also shows the league can possibly survive on its own and has cultivated an audience. New CEO Scott O'Neil has done a multitude of things to try to right the ship in terms of how LIV Golf is operated from a business standpoint, and these things take years to build, but he has tried to the ball rolling in the right direction.
But nothing matters unless fans are paying attention. Through the first four events of the LIV Golf season, fans have not cared that Jon Rahm's streak of top 10s since joining the league has continued. Or that Mickelson has consecutive top 6s heading into Augusta National. Or that Garcia is making a serious case for a spot on the European Ryder Cup team this fall.
LIV stars are known mostly for what they do in the majors or on their own, not for what they do competing ...
