Has it been a good week for LIV Golf at 89th Masters? The jury is out

It was a close call at the halfway stage in the 89th Masters whether or not LIV Golf players are match ready for majors in the traditional opening one at Augusta National after playing in just five events on the breakaway circuit this year in preparation for the annual drive up Magnolia Lane.

The likes of Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson had teed up in Saudi Arabia, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore over the past couple of months on the breakaway circuit before getting their final warm up in the shape of a tough test on the Blue Monster at Trump National Doral in Florida last week.

A total of twelve LIV Golf players teed up in Thursday’s opening round, with past Masters champions Rahm, Johnson, Mickelson, Patrick Reed, Bubba Watson, Charl Schwartzel and Sergio Garcia being joined in flying a different flag to the PGA Tour and DP World Tour players in the field by DeChambeau, Koepka, Tyrrell Hatton, Joaquin Niemann and Cameron Smith.

Jon Rahm walks with his caddie Adam Hayes during the third round of the 2025 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club | Harry How/Getty Images

Due to the game’s current fractured state, of course, this is just one of four weeks in the year when players who were once PGA Tour stars but are currently banned from playing on the US circuit get a chance to prove they can still compete against the likes of Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele and Collin Morikawa - the four top-ranked players in the official global standings.

It was actually quite funny when Rahm, at his pre-event press conference, was asked where he felt he ranked in the world of golf at the moment. “Am I out of the top 100 yet,” he replied, smiling, which, of course, stemmed from the fact that LIV Golf events do not offer Official World Golf Ranking points due to ongoing concerns by that organisation about the league’s format, including 54-hole events with no cut.

Told that he was - he’s actually 80th after dropping five spots in the latest weekly update - the Spaniard added: “A couple weeks to go and I'll be gone. I mean, I'm not going to say exactly a number, but I would still undoubtedly consider myself a top-ten player in the world. But it's hard to tell nowadays.”

It is, indeed, and that’s why golf fans are rubbing their hands when weeks like this one come around, as, of course, was evidenced when McIlroy and DeChambeau went head-to-head over the final few holes in last year’s US Open at Pinehurst, where DeChambeau joined Koepka, who achieved the feat in the 2013 PGA Championship, in winning one of the game’s marquee events as a LIV Golf player.

2022 Open champion Cameron Smith was among five LIV Golf players who missed the cut in 89th Masters | Andrew Redington/Getty Images

On the evidence of how he played that week, it was no surprise at all to see DeChambeau up near the top of the leaderboard after 36 holes here, with the popular American being joined in progressing to the weekend by Hatton, Reed, Watson, Niemann, Rahm and Schwartzel.

For the five others, though, it was a case of ‘Good Night, Vienna’. As the cut fell at two over, Johnson just missed out, as did Garcia. It was a sore one for Koepka, meanwhile, as he found himself heading for the exit door as well after running up a quadruple-bogey 8.

As for Smith, how the mighty have fallen. The Australian was closing in on the world No 1 spot when he was crowned as Open champion at St Andrews in 2022, but the man who signed for the Saudi-backed circuit soon afterwards has now missed the cut in the last two majors.

Mickelson, meanwhile, is now a shadow of a player who owns three Green Jackets and created history as the oldest men’s major winner when landing the PGA Championship at the age of 50 at Kiawah Island in 2021.

In someone like DeChambeau, in particular, LIV Golf could have something big to celebrate here on Sunday night and that would certainly delight both new LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil and, of course, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the head of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which bankrolls the rebel circuit, after his visit to the Georgia venue on Friday at the invitation of Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley.

Even that, though, will not open the floodgates for LIV Golf players to be heading up Magnolia Lane in years to come. Both The R&A and USGA may have decided to provide more opportunities for them to get into The Open and US Open, starting with this year’s events at Royal Portrush and Oakmont respectively, but the Green Jackets are not golfing sheep.

“We respect their decisions,” said Ridley of the game’s governing bodies in his annual pre-event address. “We are an invitational tournament. We have historically considered special cases for invitations for international players, which is how Joaquin Niemann was invited the last couple years (and being joined for this edition by Dane Nicolai Hojgaard). We feel we can deal with that issue, whether it's a LIV player or a player on some other tour that might not otherwise be eligible for an invitation, that we can handle that with a special invitation.”

Former winner Zach Johnson pictured on his way to a 66 in the third round at Augusta National Golf Club | Harry How/Getty Images

It remains to be seen, of course, what the outcome is going to be from ongoing talks between the PGA Tour and PIF, with US president Donald Trump even getting involved recently to try and get that pushed along.

However, it probably wasn’t what the likes of DeChambeau and Koepka wanted to hear when Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson all spoke following the Honorary Starters' ceremony here on Thursday that they don’t believe a compromise can be found.

Maybe the majors will be the only big battlegrounds in golf for a bit longer than we were all expecting.

Playing with Rahm, 2007 winner Zach Johnson shot up the leaderboard after carding a 66 in the third round. The eye-catching effort came 12 months after he’d told patrons to “f*** off”.