LIV Golf’s 72-Hole Gambit: A Desperate Legitimacy Play That Might Actually Work

After 35 years covering professional golf, I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a tour’s confidence by looking at its calendar. So when I saw that LIV Golf is expanding to 72 holes in 2026—abandoning the 54-hole format that literally defined its identity—I had to sit down with a cup of coffee and really think about what this means.

Here’s my honest take: This is LIV waving the white flag on one front while doubling down on another. And depending on how you squint at it, that’s either brilliant strategy or a slow-motion surrender.

The 54-Hole Elephant Leaves the Room

Let’s be clear about what just happened. LIV Golf built its entire brand identity around speed and innovation—54 holes instead of 72, shotgun starts, team events, the works. It was supposed to be the future of professional golf, a radical reimagining of a sport the founders believed was too slow, too traditional, too American-centric.

Now they’re saying, basically, “Never mind.”

“The most striking change is tournaments will now be 72 holes instead of the 54 that served as the tour’s Roman-numeral namesake, putting LIV back on level ground with traditional tours.”

That’s not a minor tweak. That’s an existential admission. Having caddied for Tom Lehman back in the ’90s, I remember plenty of debates about tour format—some good ideas, some hair-brained. But I’ve never seen a tour abandon its foundational concept so completely while still claiming to be revolutionary.

What strikes me most is the pragmatism of it. LIV’s backers clearly realized that if they want legitimacy—if they want their victories to mean something in the broader golf ecosystem and if they want serious players to take them seriously—they need to match the traditional tours on the most basic metric: a full 72 holes of stroke play. It’s the lingua franca of professional golf. Without it, no matter what else you do, you’re always playing an asterisk.

Brooks and Patrick’s Exit: The Canary in the Coal Mine

But here’s the thing that keeps me up at night, and I say this as someone who’s tracked the PGA Tour religiously since the 1980s: Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed jumping ship back to the PGA Tour before the 2026 season started is not a small story. These weren’t fringe players. These were guys who committed, who took the Saudi money, who were supposed to be cornerstones of LIV’s credibility.

Their departure tells you something the league doesn’t want to admit out loud: The PGA Tour still owns the narrative. The Masters still means more. The Open Championship still means more. Even the FedEx Cup, which frankly I’ve never thought was a compelling trophy, still carries more cultural weight than anything LIV has created.

Reed and Koepka are hedge-betting. They’re saying, “We’ll take the LIV money, but we’re not betting our entire legacy on this thing.” That’s the kind of voter confidence issue that doesn’t show up in press releases.

The Talent That Remains Shouldn’t Be Dismissed

Now, before I sound like a total LIV skeptic—and I’m really not—let’s acknowledge what the league still has in its stable:

“Plenty of top attractions remain, though, led by the likes of Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia.”

That’s legitimately world-class talent. Rahm is an absolute star. DeChambeau is fascinating—sometimes maddening, but fascinating. Johnson is a major champion. And Garcia? He’s won a Masters. You can’t dismiss that kind of pedigree, even if the roster is thinner than it was two years ago.

In my experience, talent matters. It always has. The question is whether LIV’s format innovations and the sheer amount of money they’re throwing at competition can overcome the legitimacy deficit. The 72-hole change actually helps with that calculation, even if it kills some of the tour’s original marketing magic.

The 2026 Schedule: Geography Over Gravitas

Look at the LIV Golf 2026 schedule and what jumps out immediately is ambition in venue selection:

Riyadh. Adelaide. Hong Kong. Singapore. This is a globally ambitious schedule that the PGA Tour, for all its strength, doesn’t match. There’s something genuinely appealing about golf reaching into Asia and the Middle East and South Africa in ways it traditionally hasn’t. That’s not nothing.

The Broadcast Reality Check

“LIV Golf will air across multiple Fox networks in 2026, including the flagship channel and FS1, FS2 and Fox Business Network.”

Fox is all-in on LIV, and that matters. Television drives legitimacy in modern sports. The fact that they’re on the flagship Fox channel for marquee events, plus FS1 and FS2, means real distribution. You can’t hide on cable anymore—you need reach. LIV has it, at least for now.

What This Really Means

I think what we’re watching is LIV Golf pivoting from revolutionary to evolutionary. They’re saying, “Okay, we can’t beat the traditional tours at their own game, so we’ll join them on the basics (72 holes) and win them on everything else—distribution, geography, money, player experience.”

Is that a winning strategy? Ask me again in 12 months. But it’s not the desperate flailing some critics suggested it would be. It’s a recalibration. And after covering this game for 35 years, I’ve learned that tours that can recalibrate tend to survive.