The Big Hitters Case for Professional Team Golf
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The Big Hitters Case for Professional Team Golf
What’s it like being on a golf team for a living? We asked Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and other LIV Golf captains
One nice theory about team golf is that it trains you to never give up. When your score is tethered to teammates, an individual is less susceptible to wallow in self-pity on a bumbling back nine.
“You never know what can happen on the last few holes. You may find something within you that you can carry to the next event. An 82 is always better than 83,” says Jon Rahm, who recalls a moment in the locker room during his days at Arizona State University almost a decade ago. He and the No. 2 player combined for 29 under in their home tournament, but the rest of the team dragged their score to 25 under and a second-place finish. “I wish I would’ve gone full Bill Belichick and ripped them, told each person everything I thought they did wrong, that there was no chance anyone of them would ever be a pro playing like this. But instead, I tried to make guys feel better by saying ‘aw, you’re so talented’ and stuff like that. It was a split-second decision I’ve always regretted.”
Rahm is now the captain of Legion XIII on LIV Golf whose interest it is to promote teams as key to the future of the pro game. It’s a rare point of unity, with the other side of golf’s civil war also investing in the concept. The recent launch of indoor simulator TGL—Tomorrow’s Golf League—by Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and extension the PGA Tour, organizes teams around major American cities in a format that airs on primetime and can’t be affected by weather.
“There’s definitely a vision, but I’m not going to say it … come find out for yourself what we are.”
—BROOKS KOEPKA
Commercially, there’s an idea that a team of golfers, even if geographically contrived, is worth more than their sum as individuals. Teams don’t skip events, miss cuts or suffer career-ending injuries that leave sponsors holding an empty bag. Fandom accrues and passes to generations, unlocking all manner of longer-term marketing deals. But as a golf lover, presumably you don’t care about any of this, the business. You’re more fascinated by how the greatest players in the world think, practice, compete, live. Money aside, what’s it like being on a team permanently, as opposed to the biennial gatherings of Ryder and Presidents Cups? It’s a question that takes a pausing of hostilities to answer.
(Though to truly put money aside, let’s first put it on the table. In 2024, Scottie Scheffler earned $63 million in prize money and bonuses. Jon Rahm earned $35 million plus whatever chunk we might allocate from his multi-year LIV Golf contract, estimated around $300 million. In each of the 14 LIV Golf tournaments in the 2025 season, individual winners will receive $4 million and winning teams will receive $5 million toward their franchise operating budget. As unchanged by money as Scheffler’s personality and competitive drive seem to be, let’s temporarily/graciously assume similar for the other top golfers of this world for whom dollars have reached mathematical abstraction.)
“Assertive but not mean, is how I think the guys would describe me.”
—CAMERON SMITH
I recently spoke to several team captains in a LIV Golf players dining lounge, which does look different. Rather than individuals, a roving eye always landed on four golfers in matching poppy polos, moving like slow tracers in and out of the buffet line and choosing tables collegially. But for the incessant ping-pong game and throes of excitement reverberating from Sergio Garcia and his Fireballs GC, the following quotes are accurate.
“I think we have the closest team out here. We’re genuinely four good mates who care about each other and want the best for each other. We have a lot of fun, but we also work really hard,” says Cameron Smith, captain of the all-Australian Rippers GC (Marc Leishman, Lucas Herbert, Matt Jones) that won the 2024 LIV Golf team championship. During lulls in the schedule, Smith organizes team camps that are three days of playing and two days of practice, usually in Australia or Florida. All four players, four caddies, four swing coaches, two physios, the club manager and his assistant submit to a schedule overseen by Smith, though in his ear more this year is Tony Meyer, High Performance Director at Golf Australia, who Smith just hired.
“Getting to train with other good players and compete against each other in training is a big advantage,” says Meyer, who has coached national teams of all age levels across 20 years. “The disadvantages can be that every player needs to work on something different to develop and training together can limit this. …. Professional team players have significantly more experience and require far less direction as they know what works for them.”
“Assertive but not mean, is how I think the guys would describe me,” says Smith, who is at his most vocal leading putting and short-game drills with “meaningful” stakes. “I think Herbie enjoys it, but the other two maybe not so much,” he laughs. The camps don’t come close to replacing the lost competitive hours of a PGA Tour schedule, but Smith believes the quality is higher. “There’s more information being shared. Nobody is holding things close to their chest. Instead of going to dinner and talking about our families and whatever, the conversation gets very focused on golf. At night I wonder all the time, what can we do to get better as a team?”
“There is no question that I play better when I am amped.”
—JOAQUIN NIEMANN
Another of the more obviously cohesive teams is Torque GC (Joaquin Niemann, Mito Pereira, Sebastián Muñoz, Carlos Ortiz) as all are youthful and Spanish-speaking. Apart from Muñoz, three share a swing coach in Eduardo Miquel. “We have a group text chat, just the four players, and a larger team chat that has 10 people, and we are always going back and forth to make sure everyone is on the same page,” says Niemann, the captain who finished second to Jon Rahm in the 2024 individual standings. Last season, there was tension when it was perceived Muñoz was bringing a bad attitude to practice rounds. Even world-class golfers are prone to psychological slumps. When the three confronted Muñoz, the conversation went very well, according to Niemann. “When you have a bad day and get frustrated and don’t want to do certain things, it’s one thing when you’re by yourself. It’s different when you’ve already expressed your goals to a group and need to put your word into value.”
Personally noticeable for Niemann has been a shift away from loneliness. “When I first came out, it was 28 weeks a year, and sometimes my agent or coach was there, sometimes not. It gets kind of weird.” On LIV, the shotgun start is conducive to team meals and practice sessions, as everyone arrives and leaves the course around the same times. Niemann really likes the warmups. “We have four spots on the range, and if not, we’ll take turns watching each other, talking about the course, certain shots, getting each other pumped. The music is playing, it’s incredible. Now when I go to a DP World Tour event, it seems blah, sort of chilling. There’s no question that I play better when I am amped.”
That life as a tour pro can be alienating is not a new observation. Hours of lonesome travel interspersed with cutthroat competition has always favored the psychologically strong. But has it gotten worse? In a recent article in The Atlantic, writer Derek Thompson dubs ours “The Anti-Social Century,” and argues that as we’ve become increasingly phone-bound, homebound, steadily building a penchant for AI interaction and takeout meals, we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking the convenience of being alone makes us happier than being with other people. Projecting a greater societal ill onto professional golf certainly isn’t a perfect fit—pro golfers are not homebound as they literally live in front of crowds—but they, too, share the habits and behaviors of our time. Almost any PGA Tour Champions golfer you ask laments the more friendly decades of pro golf before everyone started walking around with their heads buried in their iPhone, or practicing and working out with earbuds in.
Rahm—whose teammates are Tyrell Hatton, Tom McKibbin and Caleb Surratt—never holds team meetings or practices. “We have dinners, but everybody knows what he has to do to get into his own headspace to prepare. … I’m there to pick up somebody after a round if needed, but my job is to perform well and be the face to attract partners.” Though Rahm likes to think he is a mentor to Surratt, age 21. “Like a lot of new pros, Caleb was trying to change too many things at once. I tell him to slow down and laugh and see the world as a kid, which is a good lesson for us all.”
Rahm says he agonized for weeks over the naming of his team. “The first name we considered was ‘Atlas,’ a Titan who was punished to hold up the sky, but it didn’t feel quite right.” When it dawned theirs would be the 13th team in the league, Rahm’s mother reminded him of the comic book series he used to read as a kid, Asterix and Obelix. In one story, Legion XIII is a troop that wages endless war with a small French village endowed with superhuman strength by a wizard. The legionnaires had “crossed the Rubicon” river to reach the battlefields, which echoed Julius Caesar’s loyal legion during Rome’s civil war, and in turn, Rahm saw his difficult decision to defect from the PGA Tour. “I want our team to be the one that stands its ground against all odds.”
Cameron Smith believes there are two types of golfers: those who play better for a team and those who play better on their own. “You can kind of tell when someone is out here just for himself,” he says. Though trying hard is no guarantee for success, either. “The stress of being on a team breaks some people down a bit. That vulnerability toward the close of a tournament, when the team leaderboard is having wild changes, is the coolest thing.”
While the bottom third of golfers on LIV Golf likely wouldn’t earn Korn Ferry Tour cards if they tried, they are nevertheless accomplished players with egos. When or how does a captain intervene if his player is struggling? “I would first have other conversations to confirm what I see and then approach the player’s caddie,” Rahm says. “Then maybe the player chooses to come to me. It could be he’s working on something I don’t fully understand, and so just barging in straight away and telling someone what they need to do is not usually a good method.”
Brooks Koepka is the captain of Smash GC (Graeme McDowell, Talor Gooch, Jason Kokrak) which is the only team without a general manager. That means Koepka exercises control over details great and small. “I like having my hand in everything. It’s fun learning about other people’s businesses when you play golf with them, and discussing how you might connect.” Koepka thinks TGL did a good job with its logos and the technology, but is dismissive of any meaningful differences ushered in by teams in the modern pro world. “It’s still a job. If you don’t have enough self-motivation, you won’t be out here long.”
Does the fact of every Smash GC golfer using the same physical trainer, Mark Wall, provide some unity to a seemingly disparate collection of personalities at different stages of their career? “Not really. We all come from the same world, we all played the tour, a lot of paths have crossed.”
How might your team describe you as a leader? “Quiet, hardworking,” Keopka responds. “I lean on Graeme to be our communicator. At a tournament, I’m solely focused on what I got to do …. If everyone on our team kills their category, including those with non-playing roles, we’re going to do fine.”
Is there a vision of what Smash GC is, or aspires to be? “There’s definitely a vision, but I’m not going to say it. Each fan needs to identify with what they like on their own. Come find out for yourself what we are.”
Five-time major champion Koepka famously took a path less traveled as a young American, going first to the European Challenge Tour and learning to travel and fend for himself, and win. Might going straight from a college team to a pro team prevent a golfer from getting road-hardened? “It’s all up to them. Everybody grows differently. People used to believe the prime age for a golfer was 35 to 40. It’s a generational thing. More and more guys are ready sooner and younger now.” Eugenio Chacarra went straight from Oklahoma State to LIV Golf and won in his fifth start, but after a sophomore slump was removed from Fireballs GC. In another high-profile dismissal, Koepka traded Matthew Wolff after publicly questioning his work ethic.
When everyone gets along, the bosom of the team model is increasingly preferred. Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) arrangments that let amateurs accept endorsement deals, as well as the PGA Tour U. Ranking that awards status to bypass mini-tours, are both new incentives for college golfers to incubate longer in amply funded D-1programs. Following the lead of most other top golf countries, the USGA established in 2023 a national development program that’s funding the training of the most talented kids under the watch of group coaches. A lot of these golfers might be first recognized in PGA Jr. League, the successful grow-the-game initiative whose team-scramble format and vibe resembles Little League baseball. There are a thousand more girls’ high school golf teams in this country than 10 years ago.
“How are the younger generations looking at the game and what’s going to be their way in?”
—HENRIK STENSON
Henrik Stenson, co-captain of Majesticks GC (Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood, Sam Horsfield), sees pro teams as a progression of the team environments he thinks most golfers enjoy more. For total personnel, the Majesticks are the largest LIV Golf team, its front office having already produced a docuseries and started a charitable community program, Little Sticks, that supports golf’s inclusion in school P.E. programs. At 48, Stenson is quick to talk beyond his career and a future where golf events more resemble ice hockey games—with T-shirt cannons, mascots, music and a variety of diversions to entice people of all ages and backgrounds. “I’ve been playing golf for 35 years and am very much a traditional golfer in many ways, but how are the younger generations looking at the game and what’s going to be their way in?” As a rule, Stenson thinks people more easily connect with teams. “If LIV Golf had launched in a different way, with all of the golf world behind it, I think every golf fan in the world would’ve had a cap for one of these 13 teams.”
But it didn’t. To describe the current golf world in as few words as possible, hard to do better than “nobody’s happy.” The fans feel cheated getting to see the best compete against the best only four times a year at the majors. The companies that sponsor tournaments are being asked to foot more prize money for weaker fields. The TV networks that broadcast golf are suffering lower ratings. The charities are being squeezed as flows of money are redirected. The rank-and-file are frustrated by narrower paths to the signature events and other special rewards designed to placate the stars. The stars are ever vigilant that justice for loyalty and disloyalty be correctly meted. The players who signed with LIV Golf feel unfairly vilified in the public forum, and at least a handful aren’t playing in the majors who should be, which completes a kind of circle of dissatisfaction.
To a man, LIV Golf captains bemoan the lack of imagination and resistance to change they’ve faced. The Ryder Cup is one of the most-watched events, so why shouldn’t there be regular teams like the other major sports? Any answer must include that they’ve yet to convince fans they care. The same criticism could be lobbed at the golfers of TGL, who, understandably, can come across as more preoccupied with delivering snappy repartee into their mics than the outcomes of the matches. Creating a new league or sport from scratch is hard. What can team golfers do to truly capture the fans?
“One of my favorite sayings is that a team always beats a roster,” says Dr. Bhrett McCabe, a leading sports psychologist, alluding to how cohesion will trump a sampling of all-star talent. An idea that could apply to attracting fans as much as scoring points. “A group of people becomes a team when each individual is truly less important than the team,” McCabe says.
In 2025, you will see the full marketing power of an ambitious organization unleashed. Their new slogan, “Long LIV Golf,” frames their efforts as saving our great game by pushing it forward into global modernity. Scott O’Neil, the new CEO, and several of his lieutenants have backgrounds working at the highest levels of professional team sports and stadiums. With business acumen, not to mention sophisticated data-tracking technologies enabled by your ticket, might they achieve in years what took most sports franchises decades upon decades? A genuine following.
The captains all remind it’s early—2025 will be just LIV Golf’s third full season. Smith says he’s already hearing “Go Rippers” more than his name, especially among Australian galleries. He foresees a day when Rippers recruits are the cream that rise in a feeder system co-sanctioned with Golf Australia. Rahm’s Legion XIII may set up something similar with his alma mater, ASU. Rahm also says he’s not entirely opposed to flipping the purses to make the team prize the more lucrative, if that’s what it takes.
Money can be pushed aside only for so long.
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