NOTHING seems to be going right for LIV Golf where our very own Miguel Tabuena plays.
The league is right now staving off extinction, and the upstart league never saw it coming.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), its chief backer, had poured in $5 billion over the past five years but has announced a few months ago that it would cease pouring in money at the end of the current season.
Now comes news that the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, and the Asian Tour have agreed on a multi-year partnership that will expand playing opportunities to members, more particularly to Asian Tour players.
If LIV Golf was already hanging by a thread to stay alive, this recent agreement may see that thread thinning out to nothing.
The Asian Tour leaving and joining the new conglomerate means LIV Golf has lost the one league it had banked on to preserve its legitimacy and whatever relevance it still possessed in the golfing world.
The Asian Tour has been a lifeline for LIV Golf, having many national opens under its wing through the International Series, including the Philippine Open, whose cash prizes dwarf many of the region’s events. But those days are likely gone, and LIV Golf, despite the optimistic outlook of its leader, is breathing its last.
Under the new setup which starts in 2027, top players from the Asian Tour, through its Order of Merit, will earn access to the DP World Tour and its second tier league, the Hotel Planner Tour. Once promoted to the DP World Tour, Asian Tour players can compete for one of 10 cards on the PGA Tour via the Strategic Alliance among the partners.
The Asian Tour and the DP World Tour will also have a few co-sanctioned events in the coming three years to cement the relationship.
Asian Tour CEO Cho Minn Thant told Golf Digest that his group had to abandon LIV to consider the longevity of pathways for its members given the uncertain future of the formerly Saudi-backed league.
This was after Thant lovingly embraced LIV as partner in building the Asian Tour from its position as a poor man’s league with no substantial impact on the global order to one with a degree of significance.
“I think the timing is just right now, it's all about timing,” Thant said. “We'd kept in touch [with the DP World Tour] over all these years. Six years ago, it was right for us to do a partnership with LIV Golf, but given the circumstances now, we've had to look at other options.”
But no matter what happens to LIV Golf, our man embedded in the league, Miguel Tabuena, there playing as a wildcard, is probably just happy where he is.
If LIV Golf dies tomorrow, Tabuena will probably care very little. After all, there is little chance he would be at LIV Golf had it continued for another season or even if PIF had continued to support it.
The man has not made an impact while representing Asia and the Philippines, consistently playing poorly among the 57-player contingent. Most tournaments find him near the bottom of the leaderboard.
This does not mean he was not trying. It’s just that LIV Golf is above his league. He managed to get into the LIV mix after winning International Series Philippines last November, which was a career-best for the 31-year-old.
Thanks to that glorious week, Dustin Johnson, the two-time major golf winner, invited him to join his LIV Golf team. Unfortunately, Tabuena failed to make a quick impression. That stint lasted just one tournament. But luckily for Tabuena, a LIV wildcard spot opened and he was invited to fill it.
That changed his life forever.
It was not so much that he was in contention often. He was not. Not ever. But what was going for him, and the entire field, were the humongous cash prizes that PIF doled out to players who had the fortune of getting invited to LIV Golf.
Tabuena was one of them. The top Filipino player vied for the $4 million winner’s prize in each of the past nine tournaments. Though he never got near it, this did not mean his finances suffered.
They multiplied. Tabuena, like the rest of the LIV players, became rich. After all, if you place among the last five or 10 players at each tournament, the least you get is $50,000.
LIV Golf has had nine tournaments since February. Tabuena played in all of them. Assuming he settled for $50,000 every time he played, that would amount to $450,000, or P27 million, over a period of six months.
Sometimes he could manage a good week, such as when LIV played in Virginia, where he finished solo 25th. There he took home $195,000, the equivalent of P11.8 million.
Currently, Tabuena is competing in LIV Golf United Kingdom, the league’s 10th leg. He is tied for 47th place, 3-over-par after two rounds, 20 strokes behind leader Herbert Lucas.
LIV’s future may be bleak, but don’t tell that to players who’ve been there six years. Nearly all have earned what many call generational wealth, thanks to the PIF bankrolling the league with stupendous contracts for top players like Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau, and cash prizes of $30 million per leg.
Maybe this is just the reason LIV Golf is nearly over. Too much money put out with too little return on investment. Even with PIF endowed with unlimited money in its portfolio—$1 trillion at last estimate—only a fool would continue to throw good money into something with no sign of future profits.
For Miguel Tabuena, surely it was fun, and profitable, while it lasted. Thanks to his lifelong devotion to a game that pays the patient and the determined, not to mention the luck of being at the right place at the right time, he’s set up for life.
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