00:00Do you believe that Liv will ever be on the same page with the PGA, Jimmy, where they'll get world
00:07rankings for players?
00:09Do you think that will ever happen, or do you think that's a long way away?
00:14Well, a couple things.
00:15First of all, a recent development a couple of weeks ago, the official World Golf Ranking Committee announced that they
00:23were going to start giving world ranking points in Liv tournaments.
00:27But only to those who finished in the top 10.
00:30Of course, Liv this year has gone to 72 holes instead of 54 holes.
00:35That was one of the hangups.
00:37Actually, on this show that I do now, it's called The Big Swing with Jimmy Roberts.
00:41It's on Golf Channel on Tuesdays and then on YouTube and everywhere else you get your podcasts on Wednesday, first
00:50release.
00:50But the first episode we had was with Greg Norman.
00:53And we talked to him a lot about Liv and its struggles.
00:59I don't know that they'll ever be an equivalent of the PGA Tour.
01:04You know, the best players in the world are on the PGA Tour.
01:07And I think if you would have asked me two years ago who had the upper hand in the negotiations,
01:12which apparently are ongoing,
01:14I definitely would have said it looked like Liv did with the departure of, you know, people like Jon Rahm
01:20and Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka.
01:23But now with the PGA Tour bringing in a new CEO, a man who's kind of rearranging the deck chairs
01:33and changing things around,
01:34you're going to see big changes on the PGA Tour, perhaps next year, certainly the year after that in terms
01:39of the schedule.
01:40And they brought in private equity or they like to say it's not private equity.
01:44It's just an infusion of money, almost potentially three billion dollars to basically challenge Liv and all of the money
01:54that they're giving to players.
01:55And things have definitely shifted the other way.
01:58And we've seen it.
01:59And I think Liv's going to have its hands full.
02:02The loss of Brooks Koepka means what to Liv.
02:05How important was that for the PGA to get him back?
02:09He ended up playing, I believe, Jimmy, give me the number if I'm wrong here, north of 10 million dollars,
02:14right?
02:15For a fine that he played non-PGA events.
02:18What was the ramifications against Liv by losing a player like that?
02:23It wasn't good for them.
02:24And Patrick Reed also followed.
02:26He's coming back.
02:27I think Liv is kind of putting their bank on younger players now, trying to build.
02:34But the question remains, how long can they stick around?
02:37How much money are they willing to lose?
02:40I mean, you've got to understand that the people who are banking this, you know, the Saudis, this isn't significant
02:47money to them, or at least not in the context of things that they spend on and the amount that
02:52they spend.
02:53And the other thing to kind of consider is that Liv may not be successful in the United States, and
02:58I don't think there's any doubt that it's really been a struggle.
03:02But internationally, it's a different story.
03:05I mean, it's not wildly successful, but the profile's a lot different.
03:10They had that event down in Adelaide, which was wildly successful.
03:14And there are a lot of places around the world where you don't get to see the best golfers in
03:19person, and that's, to a certain degree, been their appeal.
03:22But I think the linchpin for all of this, Dan, is that if they lose Bryson DeChambeau, that's when the
03:28house collapses.
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