Monday Leaderboard: LIV Golf's big win, Rory McIlroy's legend grows

Welcome to the Monday Leaderboard, where we round up the weekend's top stories in the wonderful world of golf. Grab an Arnold Palmer, pull up a chair and assemble your crew…

1. LIV Golf's finest hour

For most of its existence, LIV Golf has been an extremely expensive punchline: many of the world's best players compete for millions while almost no one watches, either in person or on screens.

So leave it to Australia to turn the whole enterprise on its head. LIV Golf is so popular down under that an estimated 94,000 golf fans flocked to Adelaide to watch hometown hero Cam Smith and his Rippers GC win the team event. (Brendan Steele took the individual award, overtaking Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel.) The entire event could rival, energetically, anything the PGA Tour can currently produce.

That's the thing about golf: Americans tend to think of it as an American game, mostly because we're Americans and think the world revolves around us. But beyond that, three of the four majors take place in America, and most of golf's immortals (Nicklaus, Palmer, Woods) are as American as the Fourth of July.

But golf is an international game that is becoming increasingly popular in Australia, the Middle East and especially Asia. LIV Golf is poised to capitalize on this in a way that the American-bound PGA Tour largely cannot, and that is the path LIV has taken to success.

Will LIV Golf establish itself as a viable part of the golf world in the long term? Still to be determined. But events like Adelaide have shown that there is an appetite for golf that has nothing to do with the PGA Tour… and that is something the Tour should pay attention to.

2. The legend of Rory McIlroy grows

Every now and then, Rory McIlroy reminds us that not only is he the once and future face of the PGA Tour, but he's also a pretty good player. At the Zurich Classic in New Orleans, he and partner Shane Lowry won in a playoff, giving McIlroy his 25th career victory on the tour. (Whether team competitions should count as individual victories is a whole other discussion.) McIlroy now has as many tour victories in his career as Johnny Miller and more than Gary Player and Raymond Floyd. And as he later demonstrated, he can also tear up the stage with “Don't Stop Believin'”:

Everyone acts surprised that McIlroy has pipes like that, but the guy grew up in pubs. This is an imperative skill to develop.

3. Team golf is having its moment

Every few years, the Ryder Cup excites the golf world about the concept of team golf. Imagine the greatest players in the world… together! How awesome is that? Outside of the Ryder Cup context, it's usually not that great. Golf is an individual sport, and forcing a group of lone wolves into a team format is often as awkward as the dance floor at a wedding when “The Cupid Shuffle” is playing.

Still, there are options out there. LIV players often note how the team format brings them back to the camaraderie of their college days. The first ever team golf playoff in LIV took place in Adelaide on Sunday and the all-Australian Ripper GC defeated the all-South African Stinger GC on the second playoff hole.

At its best – like Sunday in Zurich – team golf can be fascinating and captivating. (Too bad for the poor Martin coach, who would have gotten a two-year exemption with a win and instead failed in the playoffs due to two sudden-death misses to McIlroy and Lowry.) There's a lot of golf money riding on the team – not just in LIV, but also in the not-yet-debuted TGL indoor golf league – but it will require a lot more buy-in from players and fans to stick.

4. Hannah Green performs back-to-back in Los Angeles

With Nelly Korda out this week, the rest of the field was at the LPGA's JM Eagle LA Championship at Wilshire Country Club… so Hannah Green stepped up and won her second straight title at the tournament. Unlike last year when she had to win in a playoff, this time Green took a comfortable three-stroke victory. Wilshire is Green's territory; She finished T3 in 2021, was solo second in 2022 and has been a winner the last two years. Green joins Korda as the LPGA Tour's second multiple winner this season.

5. Tim Widing shows how to start a career

What's going on with multiple winners in golf these days? While Korda and Scottie Scheffler are doing demolition work at the highest level, Tim Widing is now doing the same on the Korn Ferry Tour. Widing won the Veritex Banking Championship in Arlington, Texas last week, his second straight win on the Developmental Tour. At the Veritex he reached an astonishing 31 under par, a new Korn Ferry Tour record in relation to par. Widing is on track to qualify for the PGA Tour at the end of the season, but if he wins again he will Advance immediately thanks to Korn Ferry's “three win promotion rule”. Soon it will just be Scheffler, Widing, Korda and Green winning every tournament out there.

The Mulligan: Settle down, Australia

We're all for a vibrant golf scene, but it seems the Aussies can't control themselves any better than the galleries at the World Cup Phoenix Open. At last weekend's LIV event, someone threw a full water bottle into the air, hitting Lucas Herbert's caddy right in the head as he put the needle back in:

Ouch. LIV: Golf, but wilder.

Swing and roll 'em true this week, friends, and we'll see you back here next Monday!