The rise of the golf rebels

Golf wasn’t supposed to be this much fun.

Now in its second season, LIV Golf keeps upping the stakes in its revolt against the game’s establishment. The two sides kept things polite at April’s Masters, where LIV’s Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka made a run at the green jacket only to finish second behind PGA Tour pro Jon Rahm. Still, there is plenty of bad blood between golf’s warring camps.

‘There’s lot of animosity,’ said Tiger Woods, who has ghosted ex-friends who defected to the breakaway tour. There is also a whole lot of money. Woods, still the game’s top star at 47 despite injuries that have hobbled him, turned down an offer of more than $700 million to join LIV. Mickelson got a reported $200 million, while Koepka, Dustin Johnson and British Open champion Cameron Smith accepted around $100 million each. Such sums are a drop in the waterfall of wealth behind the new tour: Saudi Arabia’s $620 billion Public Investment Fund, which runs LIV Golf largely for publicity purposes.