LIV Golf faces 5 fascinating offseason questions | Monday Finish

Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where we’re declining all high-stakes super-secret private poker invitations until further notice. To the golf news!

GOLF STUFF I LIKE

Holing out.

By now you may have seen several replays of what is a strong contender for golf shot of the year — American Jordan Gumberg holing out for eagle on his 72nd hole at the Genesis Championship to keep his DP World Tour card by a single shot. But what strikes me about that shot is just how much of professional golf is just about refusing to give up.

Gumberg, who turned pro in 2017, didn’t give up when he missed his first 17 cuts across the Korn Ferry and PGA Tours in the first five years of his career. Instead he headed to Europe and tried to find an opening there.

He didn’t give up when his first year in Europe went sideways, missing eight of 10 cuts and failing to finish better than T51. Instead he put his head down, came back the next season, turned a Monday qualifier into a runner-up finish, turned that into a full card, turned that into a DP World Tour win and claim full status for 2024 and 2025.

He didn’t give up when things went sideways again midway through this season, not even when he missed 13 of 16 cuts and headed to his final event of the year knowing it was likely his final event with any real status. He was showing no form and he needed to contend just to keep his card. But then he rose to the occasion.

And it’s because Gumberg didn’t give up that he was in position to hit that wedge shot on No. 18 at Woo Jeong Hills Country Club in Cheonan, South Korea. It actually falling in the hole was a nice reward from the golf gods.

And because Gumberg hasn’t given up yet, I’m excited for what he does next.

WINNERS

Who won the week?

Michael Brennan skipped a step. After winning three times on the PGA Tour Americas this summer he earned Korn Ferry Tour status for the 2026 season — but he won’t use it. Instead he took full advantage of a sponsor exemption into the Bank of Utah Championship, going on to win by four shots over a solid fall Tour field. His entire week was eye-popping, but this eye-popped the most:

Brennan averaged 351.1 yards off the tee and hit 89 percent of his fairways. That yielded the best driving performance of the entire PGA Tour season by strokes gained (+7.6 SG). Black Desert has wide fairways but it aggressively punishes big misses. Sean Martin called that a “driving clinic,” which seems right. It’s appropriate that Martin’s analysis came attached to a clip of Brennan actually missing one of his six fairways all week — because this missed fairway was right down the middle and went 418 yards, trickling into the rough by the green and leaving him with an up-and-down for birdie.

Team Australia won the Hanwha Lifeplus International Crown, the LPGA team event that occurs every two years and features country-based teams in a week’s-worth of match-play competition. The event may have skipped your radar because a lot of it happened overnight (New Korea Country Club is very much not on ET) but the Aussies took it to the U.S. team in the final, with Minjee Lee and Hannah Green each winning their singles matches. (More here.)

Junghwan Lee won for the first time on the DP World Tour — and did so on home soil, by three shots. Lee immediately takes up DPWT status with the win, which is also the first on the tour by a Korean player since Ben An at this same tournament last year. (More here.)

Pongsapak “Fifa” Laopakdee punched his ticket to the Masters by winning the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship at Emirates Golf Club, rallying from six shots back with birdies at 10, 13, 15, 17 and 18. Then he birdied all three playoff holes to win by a shot. One fun fact about the Arizona State junior from Evin Priest, who was on site this week: the Thai 20-year-old sings to himself when he’s nervous, an idea he borrowed from Jeeno Thitikul.

Steven Alker won on the PGA Tour Champions by a full touchdown (and extra point!) firing 20 under par at the Simmons Bank Championship to blow away two runners-up at 13 under. It’s his 10th win on the senior circuit and he moves to No. 1 as they head to their playoff finale. (More here.)

And Yani Tseng re-entered the winner’s circle on the Ladiest European Tour, the latest step in an improbable comeback that featured some remarkably low lows but now serves as some small triumph of the human spirit; Tseng has overcome the putting yips by switching to lefty on the greens. Golf is endlessly hard but endlessly fascinating, even if you reach No. 1 in the world.

SHORT HITTERS

5 unanswered questions LIV faces this offseason.

If you’re saying to yourself, hey Dylan, isn’t your job to answer these questions? I would say, y’know, that’s fair enough. Consider this an interesting list for you and a to-do list for me. Here are five questions surrounding LIV that affect the rest of the professional golf ecosystem, too:

1. Who will LIV sign?

Since LIV’s inception this has continually been the most intriguing question surrounding the league — who will they recruit from elsewhere in golf’s ecosystem? The first wave-and-a-half in 2022 was eye-popping, everybody from Phil Mickelson to Bryson DeChambeau to Brooks Koepka to Joaquin Niemann to Cam Smith and more. The 2023 signing of Jon Rahm was a shocker, too, particularly when accompanied by Tyrrell Hatton. So who will LIV claim this offseason? Which PGA Tour players will defect? Who will be the biggest name?

2. Who will LIV re-sign?

News came over the weekend via Flushing It that LIV had re-upped Dustin Johnson’s contract, which had been set to expire after the 2025 season. The 4 Aces captain will be back, which means LIV presumably made it worth his while to do so.

Some of LIV’s big names are now in an interesting position; on the one hand LIV needs them to stay on to keep any momentum going. On the other hand, their leverage in negotiating with LIV is hampered by the fact that they may have nowhere else to go.

The biggest negotiation by far won’t come this offseason and will involve Bryson DeChambeau, whose contract extends through 2026. He’s a full-time content creator and something of a media mogul in his own right, now — it’ll be interesting to see how his relationship with LIV and with his Crushers evolves as he thinks about re-upping while also balancing his side quests.

3. Will LIV get OWGR points?

Included in a terrific and all-encompassing Global Golf Post profile by John Hopkins (which you should read here) of now-retired OWGR chairman Peter Dawson were two interesting nuggets:

-He’s unclear on why LIV is pressing on.

“I really don’t understand why the PIF [Public Investment Fund] and Saudi Arabia are persisting with it,” Dawson continued. “They are doing wonderful things for the women’s game with the PIF Global Series and they have terrific plans inside Saudi for expanding golf for their own people and for tourism. These initiatives deserve our applause but LIV seems to be the odd man out.”

-and he’s disappointed they didn’t reach an OWGR resolution.

“I was very disappointed that we could not do so with LIV,” he said. “It is self-evident that players on the LIV tour are good enough to be ranked because they were before. But OWGR has a duty to ensure that all of the thousands of players in the system are ranked equitably. Some aspects of the LIV format made that impossible. In my opinion OWGR made the only decision it could at the time.“

That OWGR failure was in part due to LIV taking its toys and going home, withdrawing its application rather than working with the powers-that-be on acceptable standards for points-getting. Now, though, with new leadership in place on each side of the relationship and a new application on the way, it’ll be interesting to see how the OWGR board and LIV find common ground — and potential points.

4. What will happen to Henrik Stenson?

Henrik Stenson is the most high-profile LIV golfer to finish in its “Drop Zone,” outside the top 48, which per LIV’s regulations meant he is automatically relegated. (This is true with Anthony Kim, too, plus Mito Pereira, among others.) But we haven’t really seen LIV abandon any of its stars to this point, never mind a co-captain of a team (the Majesticks) like Stenson.

5. How will promotion and relegation look, exactly?

LIV has staged a Promotions event each of the last two offseasons. They’d be due for another this December, and presumably Stenson, Kim and Pereira could enter — but if it’s happening LIV has made no announcements on the subject as of yet. The answer to this question is intertwined with Nos. 3 and 4 (and, perhaps, 1 and 2, too) because questions of promotion and relegation are crucial to what makes this an open versus closed shop with new players earning their places. Perhaps they’re consulting with the OWGR on this very matter. Perhaps there’s another route they could build through the Asian Tour or its International Series. Again, we have mostly questions.

Time to work on the answers…

NEWS FROM SEATTLE

Monday Finish HQ.

It’s an unseasonably sunny Monday after a turbulent weekend; Saturday night the lights flickered throughout the night thanks to pouring rain and 50 mph winds, and Sunday I got pictures of a hailstorm at Chambers Bay. But this is inspiring weather, the kind that’ll make you hit a medium bucket on the way home from work, that’ll have you taking the dog for an extra-long walk, that’ll have the evening hours feeling precious rather than dark and abridged. I hope it’s the same where you are.

We’ll see you next week!

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.

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