LIV & Let Die
My local cartoon for The Hamilton County Reporter
“It’s good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.” - Mark Twain
The golf balls of LIV are still rolling, but for how long? The Saudi backed venture into professional golf is in trouble because its funding is apparently drying up. It’s also uncertain if they will be able to complete their 2026 schedule which includes an August tournament just up the road from me in Westfield, Indiana.
Recently there was another LIV event in New Orleans that was postponed and CEO Scott O’Neil was questioned on if he could guarantee that the final four tournaments of the season would take place. His response… “What I can guarantee is a heck of a return if you come invest in this business.” The only guarantee there is that he didn’t want to answer the question.
The local tournament is scheduled to take place August 20-23 at The Club at Chatham Hills in Westfield, IN. As it so happens my son Doug is an Assistant Pro at Chatham Hills and anyone that knows this has been asking me for “the skinny” on the status of the event. My truthful answer is that I do not know, but at the moment it appears that everything is still a go. That said, August 20th is still a ways off and I guess we’ll all find out on the first tee that morning.
The bigger picture (and concern) about LIV Golf stems from their announcement last April when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund informed the public that they would only back LIV through the end of the current season. Since then there have been rumblings that the funding could dry up even earlier. According to reports there are efforts underway to raise between $250-$350 million (without the Saudi’s) to simply get through the final events of the season.
Looking at the final scorecard as this experiment appears to walk up the 18th fairway, over $6 Billion has been spent on LIV since 2022. That breaks down to about $100 Million each month and it’s never turned a profit. Now my buddies and I will tell you that I’m not much of a golfer, but I do know enough to realize that some holes are just too difficult to keep playing.
Sketches & sketchy stuff…
I started thinking about this issue weeks ago because people keep asking me what’s going on with the local LIV tournament in August. I honestly have no clue and so I wanted that message to be the cartoon. I though about other phrases like “it’s up in the air” or “it’s anyones guess”, but I kept circling back to “not a clue”.
I remembered that I had drawn a Fortune Teller for a different cartoon years ago and it seemed only natural that I bring that occupation to this panel. The crystal ball could easily be turned into a giant LIV golf ball so it was a no-brainer.
I did a few variations on the Fortune Teller, but I didn’t make many adjustments from one sketch to the other. This cartoon happened fairly quickly with very few challenges from start to finish. Perhaps the most difficult part was simply the arrangement of the elliptical shadows on the golf ball to help identify it as such. I only needed enough to communicate that it was a golf ball and still leave ample room for the type.
Final drawing…
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