The South African golf-fan community is all a-twitter about the impending arrival on these shores next year of LIV Golf, and, in fairness, it is an opportunity for fans to see some players who, ordinarily, have not been particularly good travellers – especially to these shores.

But we should be careful about swallowing whole the bullshit peddled by the likes of Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie, who was pivotal in securing the deal which will bring the travelling circus here.

LIV Golf is a long way from the being the ‘best golfers in the world’, which is a line that is part of the bait being dangled in front of fans by McKenzie and others. These are fans who have seen the likes of the Nedbank Golf Challenge change from an exhibition (over four rounds, mind you) with some truly awe-inspiring talent in its fields to a limited field European Tour event in recent years. Admittedly, it’s still a great tournament for true aficionados of the game.

So, while it will be wonderful to see some (formerly) great Americans here with the LIV caravan, let’s keep that in some perspective. Of the Americans currently on the roster, Phil Mickelson has played here before – and that was when he was on the President Cup team in 2003, and he stayed on for the expanded Nedbank Golf Challenge afterwards (as did most of the other players on both teams). Charles Howell III was also among those Americans on that list. And Kevin Na made the field (by invitation) of the Nedbank Golf Challenge in 2011.

The likes of Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka couldn’t be bothered about travel outside the US, by and large, and never were, and only the fact that LIV requires its players to play in all of its events will bring them to South Africa – should they still be on the roster.

I’m not sure that we would have ever got to see Bryson DeChambeau, Talor Gooch or Bubba Watson on South African soil. They are three of the Americans in the upper reaches of the current LIV Golf list and likely to still be playing next year. Again, they would have spurned any opportunity to play in South Africa had LIV not decided to travel here. I also think the average South African golf fan – whether inclined to feel positively about LIV Golf or not – couldn’t give a continental about Gooch, in any case.

And talking about continentals: Barring Jon Rahm, Tom McKibbin and Tyrrell Hatton, who is there of substance that is worth shelling out good money for? We’ve seen Sergio Garcia in his prime anyway, and I’m not sure crossing the street for Thomas Pieters, Richard Bland, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Graeme McDowell and Martin Kaymer is worth the effort anymore. They used to be good when we saw them here before.

These arguments are petty, however. The crux of the matter is that the visit here by LIV Golf is in no shape or form a good thing for golf.

While it seems churlish to point to the 54-hole format of the events as a drawback when there are tours – including our own Sunshine Tour – which have 54-hole tournaments and attract world ranking points despite that, the fact that there is a limited field (of basically the same players every time) in LIV Golf with no cut, and minimal jeopardy for season-long mediocrity surely puts the achievements of players in LIV Golf in some perspective.

By way of example, the man topping the list of LIV Golf players currently is Chile’s Joaquin Niemann. He’s been touted by LIV Golf fans as the best golfer in the world with his five victories on the circuit this year, but he missed the cut in the US Open and the Open Championship, finished in a share of 29th in the Masters, and had his best finish in a major since jumping to LIV Golf in August 2022 with his share of eighth in the PGA Championship.

That he has been rewarded richly for his LIV performances is a happy thing for him, and, of course, part of the model for LIV Golf. But his 2025 winnings of nearly R383 million outstrip the winnings of the indisputable world number one, Scottie Scheffler, who has won R346 million to date on the PGA Tour. Niemann has played 16 tournaments, 11 of which were LIV events. Scheffler has also played 16, and two of his four victories so far have been major championships.

Those kinds of winnings are part of the reason I’m happy for the South Africans on LIV Golf: I know them all personally, and that they have been able to feather their nests in the way they have is great on a personal level: Dean Burmester has won R102 million this year, Charl Schwartzel R85 million, Louis Oosthuizen R70 million and Branden Grace R40 million.

On the PGA Tour, Aldrich Potgieter is the highest-earning South African, with R52 million from his 20 tournaments. That is enough for 49th place on the PGA Tour earnings list. His amount is, of course bolstered by victory in the Rocket Classic for which he won R30,640,471. By comparison, Ian Poulter is the 49th-ranked player (in a much, much smaller pool of players) on LIV Golf, and he has won R28 million from 11 LIV Golf-only events.

Let’s look at the workload of those two: Potgieter played 119 rounds over the past 18 months facing 774 competitors in head-to-head matches. Of those he beat 484 for a 62.5 percent head-to-head win rate. Poulter played 71 rounds over the past 18 months facing 178 competitors in head-to-head matches. Of those he beat 93 for a 52.2 percent head-to-head win rate.

The last-placed player on LIV Golf this year (who shall remain nameless) has played just one event. He won R721,715.52 for coming last. The 200th-placed player on the PGA Tour Money list is Chesson Hadley. He has played 15 tournaments across the PGA Tour and the Korn Ferry Tour (with 10 missed cuts) and he has won R1,830,811.84. So good money goes to far more players in the conventional golf ecosystem.

And where do the eyeballs actually go? To LIV Golf, or to the PGA Tour and other tours in the conventional sector of the game?

If LIV apologists are to be believed, it’s in new media where the battle for the eyeballs is being won. Well, not so much: On the two oldest and most widely-used of the new media, the PGA Tour is doing way better. On Facebook, the PGA Tour has 5.6 million followers, and LIV Golf has 492,000 followers. On X (Twitter), the PGA Tour has 3 million followers and LIV Golf has 297,700 followers.

Elsewhere, LIV is finding more traction online. During its main February-September season last year, LIV averaged 3.44-million views per month on YouTube, a 68 percent increase compared to 2.05-million per month in 2023. The 5.3-million views it drew in April this year represents its best month to date, and seems to indicate that growth for this year will again be in the 60-70 percent range.

LIV has also seen significant growth on TikTok, having reached 1.1 million followers and gained more than 22 million likes to date.

Don’t get it twisted: LIV certainly isn’t dominating tour golf when it comes to social platforms. The PGA Tour regularly brings in 30 million YouTube views per month, while the DP World Tour tends to average 10-15 million monthly views on YouTube.

And the difference in the more conventional channel of television is stark: Through the first seven head-to-head Sundays of the LIV Golf year in 2025, the audience difference between golf’s two main tours was clear. On those first seven Sundays in which the two tours held events in 2025, the PGA Tour was averaging 3.1 million viewers on CBS/NBC, while LIV was averaging 175,000 on FOX/FS1/FS2.

It’s not just the PGA Tour that LIV is trailing. Let’s look at a few other eyebrow-raisers:

• TGL, the tech-infused, indoor league created by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy met a mixed response from fans, but still did far better numbers than LIV. TGL events averaged 500,000 viewers, with 650,000 for the prime-time events screened on ESPN1. That’s more than any LIV broadcast to date.
• Major League Pickleball, a sport often dismissed as ‘grandma tennis’, regularly outdraws LIV on TV. One FOX Sports broadcast drew nearly twice as many viewers as the equivalent LIV slot.
• The Puppy Bowl – yes, the annual Super Bowl parody where puppies play fake football – had 1.3 million viewers. That’s almost three times LIV’s best effort.

Of course, when LIV Golf comes to South Africa, there will be (in the words of one convert to me when I expressed cynicism about the actual numbers of fans) ‘thousands and thousands of fans attending’. And SuperSport will broadcast the whole shebang, as they do with all the other LIV Golf events. So the TV numbers locally won’t tell us anything about LIV internationally.

The number of actual fans at the tournament will speak to the thrill of seeing some of the big names from LIV Golf in the flesh. It will speak to the joy of seeing local heroes South African fans don’t get to see often enough in action against those big names. And it will speak to nothing more than that, because the hard international reality of the disparity in popularity will remain.

And here’s the thing: That disparity is not going to be erased anytime soon.

I’ll admit I thought political reasons would be the major turn-off to true golf fans when LIV Golf first burst into life. But now, I think the fact that the product is simply inferior is the major turn-off.

The unapologetic pandering to the demographic that LIV Golf thinks will ‘grow the game’ – the loud music (and the choice of that music), the party holes – is nothing more than social media clickbait. It detracts from the golf, rather than contributes to it, and those attracted to it will grow up and move on.

The 54-hole no-cut format clearly does no favours to the participants. Also, it robs the tour of one of the major pleasures of professional golf, which is the development of a rhythm which comes from the 72 holes over four days. It takes away the drama of players trying to make the weekend, trying to prolong the effort of grinding out a more favourable result.

The shotgun start further detracts from the rhythm of a ‘normal’ golf tournament. Imagine having to trek out to the 13th hole to see one of the South African players teeing off at Steyn City when LIV Golf comes here. And then finding you have to watch Frederik Kjettrup as well. And you have to get to the sixth if you want to catch another South African player. Who is paired with Yubin Jang.

LIV Golf has admitted that a regular draw and start make sense by putting the leaders after 36 holes into groups that go off on the first hole in the final rounds in their events. But what provision has been made for the charge from five strokes back from someone who has teed off on the fifth hole in the final round? Fans in the stands around the 18th are going to have to leave in their droves to get to the fourth where the charger will finish – if they want to see it. Television coverage can obviate that to a degree, but what about those who have paid good money to watch the tournament at the venue?

As the advertisements for tickets for the South African event in March next year say, ‘Golf like you’ve never seen.’ Truth is you might not see it!

The sheen of LIV Golf is proving to be only skin-deep. And the first South African visit in an allegedly multi-year deal might look attractive on the face of things. But the sheen is just that: a glossy surface with no substance.