Did LIV Golf punch above its weight at the 2024 Masters, PGA Championship, and US Open?

41 appearances have been made by LIV players at the 2024 US majors.

Bryson DeChambeau landed the knockout blow in Pinehurst for LIV Golf’s latest coup, but how have Greg Norman’s elite fared in the biggest prize fights of the season so far?

LIV Golf’s pound-for-pound king had threatened to cause a major upset all year with a tied sixth-place finish at the Masters, followed up with a swashbuckling second place at the PGA Championship in Valhalla.

And in June’s ‘Showdown in the Sandhills,’ golf’s new undisputed ‘people’s champion’ got the job done by staying true to his authentic brand of crushing power with a competitive scientific edge.

Pinehurst stayed true to its ‘raison d’etre’ too, mind, punishing the slightest inaccuracies forcing anxiety-inducing approaches from its wiregrass wastelands and precarious pitches onto its turtleback greens.

Bryson best survived the “war of attrition” that was Pinehurst No.2 at the 124^th US Open with only ten others finishing level par or better for the week, all of the PGA persuasion.

Ironically, it was Sergio Garcia, only in as a last-minute alternate, who cropped up next for the LIV fraternity in a tie for 12^th, with 2023 PGA Champion Brooks Koepka taking the bronze for LIV down at six-over for T26.

Valhalla was much the same story with DeChambeau battling for glory, pipped this time by Xander Schauffele, with his closest LIV bandmate, Dean Burmester lagging a further eight strokes off the pace.

At least back in Augusta, Bryson wasn’t the sole flag bearer at the right end of the leaderboard with Cameron Smith, Tyrrell Hatton and Patrick Reed all having solid Masters campaigns.

LIV Golf has made 41 appearances across the season’s first three majors, representing 15, 10, and 8% of the fields respectively. And given these players earned their exemptions largely through past successes in majors, or recent performances of note, a strong LIV presence across all four days would seem a minimum expectation.

The PGA Championship saw LIV’s strongest ‘team’ performance with 11 of 16 going on to make the cut, increasing the LIV proportion of the field from 10 to 14%. The US Open also saw a net increase from 8 to 11%, with only the Masters seeing the lowest percentage of LIV players making the weekend (62%).

Making the cut, however, is not a benchmark that this caliber of players or the wider golf community are going to shout home about. The Great White has a stable of major winners old and new, and competing for silverware on a Sunday should be the ‘Norm’.

In 2024, the LIV versus PGA narrative failed to really spark into life until DeChambeau and McIlroy’s gripping to-and-fro at Pinehurst. Koepka, Mickelson, and Smith at least helped make up the numbers in 2023.

Until the powers that be settle on a solution to the merger deadlock, we will inevitably keep salivating over these head-to-head battles that appear strangely elusive given Norman has wrestled away players at their peak including Jon Rahm and Dustin Johnson.

Is there anything to be said of Wyndham Clark’s comments that came back to haunt him at the Masters this year? Does LIV have a 72-hole stamina issue? Was it just clumsy and mistimed, or could there be an element of truth?

Well, LIV players shot 72.88 (MAS), 68.13 (PGA), and 73.13 (USO) on average in round four compared to the field average of 72.48, 69.26, and 71.48.

In comparison, the top eight world-ranked PGA Tour counterparts on the leaderboards shot a round four average of 72.63, 66.50, and 71.63 respectively.

Aside, from performing notably better than the round four field average at the PGA Championship (-1.14 shots), the stats don’t make great reading, particularly when compared to the PGA big guns who out-shot them by 0.25, 1.63, and 1.50 strokes on average on Sundays.

Wyndham’s wishful thinking was more related to the drop-off in performance, however, and if LIV’s drop-off is disproportional to the field.

On the evidence from Valhalla at least, the evidence disagrees. LIV players improved by 0.96 shots in the final round of the PGA Championship from their 54-hole average for the tournament.

It was only Pinehurst with its pitfalls that appeared to trip them up disproportionately to the wider field, dropping 1.96 shots on average in the final round. In contrast, the field managed to limit the damage to just 0.05 shots to respective 54-hole averages.

The PGA Tour’s finest appear to follow suit in the final round, gaining ground at the PGA Championship, losing it at the US Open and Masters. Jay Monahan’s gang had the edge in Pinehurst and Valhalla with smaller drop-offs (1.42 v 1.96) and bigger gains respectively (-2.04 v -0.96).

LIV players at the Masters only saw a negligible drop-off in final round performance (0.04), however, compared to a full shot decline from their rival tour colleagues.

Ultimately, LIV’s 72-hole pedigree at majors is still up for debate. There’s certainly no compelling evidence to support Clark’s insinuations, but questions are justified into whether LIV’s stars are shining as brightly as they should in majors.

There is no denying that one has been glowing considerably brighter than the rest though with his second US Open win not just a coup for LIV but perhaps a catalyst for golf’s new and united frontier.

It’s one of the first things the man himself alluded to, “I hope this win can bridge the gap between a divided game.”

“Let bygones be bygones and go figure it out. Let’s figure out this amazing game that creates so much positivity back to where it belongs. From at least what I can tell, that’s what the fans want, and they deserve that,” said DeChambeau.

He’s not wrong and has more than played his part in trying to break the PGA-PIF merger deadlock that we’re told is “still making progress” despite players still in the dark as to what that really means.

Ahead of the Players Championship in March, PGA Tour Commissioner, Jay Monahan confidently announced a “shared vision to quiet the noise and unlock golf’s worldwide potential.”

In the months since though, the only thing ‘quiet’ seems to be the mysterious shared vision itself. The latest teaser came just days before the US Open when Tiger Woods described a “light at the end of the tunnel” that has restricted the best head-to-head battles in the sport to a handful of times a year.

But for now, the PGA and LIV Tour cogs grind back into gear in Connecticut and Nashville, just days after the dust has settled in the North Carolina sandhills.

The Open in Troon will be the next chapter in LIV’s history at the majors, beyond that the Paris Olympic Games, of which Bryson will play no part due to qualification criteria being locked in two years ago.

It’s another loss for the sport who miss out on a golden opportunity to engage an entirely new fanbase yet to feel cheated out of weekly box office bouts.

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About the author

Ross Tugwood

Senior Digital Writer

Ross Tugwood is a Senior Digital Writer for todays-golfer.com, specializing in data, analytics, science, and innovation.

Ross is passionate about optimizing sports performance and has a decade of experience working with professional athletes and coaches for British Athletics, the UK Sports Institute, and Team GB.

He is an NCTJ-accredited journalist with post-graduate degrees in Performance Analysis and Sports Journalism, enabling him to critically analyze and review the latest golf equipment and technology to help you make better-informed buying decisions.