LIV Golf’s Instagram account has been highly visible this offseason. Its 2024 schedule, on the other hand, has not.
While the league’s handles have taken to sharing early and often into the upstart tour’s second-ever offseason, the league’s executives have apparently been coy with the details of the season schedule for 2024.
That seems to have frustrated one of the league’s biggest stars, Brooks Koepka, who has taken to the social media battleground against his employer. Over the weekend, the five-time major champ and former World No. 1 went to Instagram twice to express his frustration with his home tour for the way it has handled the league’s 2024 schedule, which evidently remains a mystery to just about everyone involved in the league, players included.
The situation started on Saturday, minutes after the league posted a mock Instagram DM inbox with the caption, “Who’s DM are you replying to?”
“The DM with the schedule for next year would be nice,” Koepka said first — a comment he later deleted.
The next day, after the league’s official handle posted a second picture of Koepka, he fired another shot.
“We don’t know what course cause we haven’t seen the schedule,” he said.
While player frustrations are far from an unusual piece of the golf world, they do represent a unique development in the world of LIV. Koepka’s comments weren’t much, but they represented some of the most public internal criticism that LIV has received since its creation. In fact, almost all of the internal communication from LIV since its inception has painted a rosy picture of the league, where a lighter playing schedule has long been considered one of the chief attractions.
The last 12 months have created cracks in that foundation, though, specifically the expansion of the league from a 12-event first season to a 14-event season 2. The added playing schedule brings the total number of events played by LIV’s stars to 18 (the 14 LIV events plus the four majors), roughly similar to the number of events played by the average PGA Tour star. Add in the fact that LIV’s disruptor status leaves far less certainty on its annual schedule, where cities and courses are regularly swapped, and suddenly the LIV schedule “strength” begins to look more like a weakness.
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The schedule, of course, is a highly charged piece of information for golfers, most of whom spend more than half the year on the road. While there’s plenty of room to criticize the current PGA Tour schedule, its continuity of events from year to year has engendered a certain sense of tradition among the playing class.
LIV has yet to find that, as the apparent scramble around its ’24 schedule only underscores. Even as the PGA Tour and LPGA have released schedules, the only event currently cemented on LIV’s ’24 schedule is a trip halfway around the world to LIV Adelaide, site of the league’s most popular tournament in ’23.
It’s early yet to say the league is in crisis about its schedule. After all, LIV didn’t begin its 2023 season until late-February, nearly six weeks after the start of the Tour season. But it’s worth noting that Koepka’s criticisms are not nothing. By this point in 2022, LIV’s 2023 schedule had already been out for more than a month.
The man behind the criticisms only adds to the story. Even if he’s earned a reputation as a sometimes surly competitor, Koepka is unquestionably one of golf’s biggest voices. And, as his home tour’s only reigning major champ heading in ’24, you can bet his words hold an extra weight around LIV HQ.
Do his Instagram comments, too? We’ll soon find out.
