Why LIV Golf, even with Jon Rahm as new star act, is still a turn off for the majority of Scots

Golf correspondent Martin Dempster delivers his verdict on breakaway circuit’s 2024 offering

Jon Rahm gestures to the crowd during the DP World Tour Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai in November. The Spaniard has subsequently signed for LIV Golf for a whopping $476 million. Picture: Andrew Redington/Getty Images.

You’ve got to admit that Jon Rahm’s sensational signing has added a fascinating new dimension, but let’s not beat about the bush here. Even if you’d added in Jon Bon Jovi and John the Baptist, LIV Golf would still carry little or no interest for the vast majority of Scots heading into the Saudi-backed circuit’s third season, which starts in Mexico on Friday.

Following Rahm’s capture for a whopping $476 million and the Spaniard having been joined in his Legion XIII team this week by Tyrrell Hatton for a reported $50 million, LIV Golf now has a player pool that also includes Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia and Bubba Watson.

“LIV has taken so, so many personalities away from the PGA Tour,” observed Dan Rapaport, one of the leading US-based golf writers for Barstool Sports and has a following on X alone of close to 300,000, in a post on social media this week. “Headline guys. Memorable characters.”

He’s right, of course, but I reckon Colin Callander, a Forfar man who was a former editor of Golf Monthly and been involved in golf for a long time, really hit the nail on the head in his reply to that. “Ninety per cent of amateur golfers probably haven’t noticed,” he stated. “And another five per cent don’t care.”

In the main, club golfers are only interested in their own game and live in a bubble when it comes to matters that someone like myself, for example, might think is either of interest or importance. I know lots of golfers who didn’t really watch DP World Tour or PGA Tour events before LIV Golf arrived on the scene and, with all due respect to those now plying their trade on the circuit, what has it really brought to the table in terms of revolutionizing the game?

Don’t give me any codswallop about its team format because, apart from those actually involved in the respective four-player line ups, I am still waiting to come across someone who has been excited about that. And, even though Rahm is the current Masters champion and world No 3, I don’t think it’s likely you’re going to see anyone walking through St Andrews wearing a Legion XIII shirt any time soon.

Sorry, but the Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup are the only team events that proper golf fans are interested in and last year’s contests in those events in Italy and Spain respectively merely underlined that LIV Golf is always going to struggle in terms of being a product that actually has a real capacity to draw eyeballs around the world and especially here in the game’s cradle.

Money, of course, has talked in Rahm’s case and, let’s face it, few people would have turned down his offer. And it’s the same for Hatton. I was one of three journalists who spoke to the Englishman in Dubai less than a fortnight ago about him being linked with LIV Golf. “As of right now, yeah,” he replied to being asked if he was staying on the DP World Tour and PGA Tour. But you just had a feeling that he was expecting LIV Golf to keep nibbling away at him and it was eventually a “yes” from the two-time Alfred Dunhill Links champion as well.

Good luck to him. Good luck to Rahm, one of the most exciting players to emerge in the game over the past decade. But, unless someone says otherwise, I won’t be watching LIV Golf events once again this year and I suspect I won’t be alone in that respect.