As LIV Golf circles the drain, Brian Rolapp must choose between hardball and moneyball | Opinion
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Like most sports nerds, Brian Rolapp has probably seen the movie Moneyball, about Billy Beane’s effort to build a competitive baseball franchise from scant resources, and if his approach to LIV Golf’s interminable teetering on the toilet rim is any indication, he’s adopted one of Beane’s maxims: “When your enemy's making mistakes, don't interrupt them.”
LIV’s chief executive, Scott O’Neil, has moved from cocky assurances that his league was funded through 2032 to desperately trying to keep players from exiting amid a bankruptcy restructuring that’s offering pennies on the dollars owed and an equity slice of LIV 2.0 — which is basically a derelict storefront selling piss-flavored pizzas but promising Michelin stars.
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A stampede is underway. Jon Rahm is out, along with fellow Spaniards David Puig and Sergio Garcia. Reports suggest several others, including Cameron Smith, are on Rahm’s heels. Left behind are no-name players with no alternatives, a handful of well-cushioned executives, and the unpaid, online toadies and bootlickers whose delusions of relevance have vaporized as thoroughly as a corpse might in some faraway consulate.
Rolapp has watched LIV sink without so much as tossing a pair of PGA Tour logoed water wings into the tide. His public comments have remained consistent when asked about pathways back for LIV’s refugees. “There's no current plan for a returning member program like you saw earlier this year,” he said in August, referencing the terms under which Brooks Koepka came back. A few weeks later, the same question drew the same language: “We are not currently contemplating a returning member program.” His use of the present tense matters, suggesting the door isn’t open right now but nor is it permanently walled up. He won’t engage until players can prove themselves free of their contractual obligations, preferring not to hand LIV a tortious interference claim. But since some guys will soon be in a position to talk, Rolapp has to decide what he’s going to do and for whom, if anything.
Hardball would be the easy approach, and not unpopular among his membership, many of whom want no part of their former peers returning. The PGA Tour has said a one-year ban must be served from the date of the last LIV event played, which means none are eligible to rejoin until August 2027. That rule was applied to Patrick Reed, who accepted it and had to re-earn status via Europe (saving Counselor Klayman the effort of littering Ponte Vedra with frivolous lawsuits). But Koepka wasn’t held to that standard. The Tour has made clear that each case will be decided separately. That provides Rolapp an out, and Rahm a potential in.
Rolapp’s instinct will be to play moneyball — calculating how to grow the value of his product while not alienating stakeholders. That would mean facilitating the return of those he deems additive — Rahm, Smith, perhaps Tyrrell Hatton and Joaquin Niemann. But his version of moneyball could feel like hardball to the players in question.
Use the Koepka return terms as a baseline. He made a $5 million charitable donation. For Rahm, whose agents never downplayed reports of the Saudi riches he was reaping, maybe that’s times three or four. Koepka forfeited PGA Tour equity grants for five years; others might lose those in perpetuity. But Koepka also accepted exclusion from signature events for one year unless he qualified by right, a penalty rendered obsolete by the structural changes coming in 2028, when the Tour splits into the elite Championship Series and the lesser Challenger Series. That presents Rolapp with a quandary when it comes to the access he can give returning exiles.
In theory, Rahm’s five-year exemption for winning the 2023 Masters would grant him access to the Championship Series in ’28, but ushering the Spaniard directly into status that loyal members are fighting to earn would ignite a rebellion in the locker room, and good luck selling it to Comrade Cantlay in a board meeting. All returning players could simply be told that past status is meaningless, that access to the Championship tier has to be earned anew, that they must begin on the Challenger level and earn promotion. What better way to bolster the less glamorous schedule’s debut season for sponsors, broadcasters and fans than to consign recognizable names from LIV to compete there?
If they don’t care for the terms, the DP World Tour will take them. But someone like Rahm, whose fourth child is due any day, won’t relish working far from his Scottsdale home. And the 10 PGA Tour cards currently available from Europe will be significantly cut — perhaps by half, or more — meaning securing a golden ticket will probably require playing a full schedule and playing well.
Not a single LIV player has leverage now, no matter what their egos or 20-percenter coat holders or YouTube likes would have them believe. Whatever future exists for them on the PGA Tour will be determined solely by what Rolapp can win support for among his members, the same guys who haven’t forgotten that LIV tried to upend their business. The bill coming due will be painful. But it’s like Billy Beane said in Moneyball, “You think losing is fun?”
Eamon Lynch is a columnist for Golfweek and a contributor to the Golf Channel.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: As LIV Golf circles the drain, Brian Rolapp must choose between hardball and moneyball | Opinion