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Long LIV Golf? How about Let LIV Golf seemed to be the vibe on Friday at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster.
While the talk of the golf world has been the announcement that LIV Golf has found an investor to keep the rebel golf league going — although there remain plenty of details to iron out — inside Trump National there wasn’t much concern or interest in the topic among the spectators that showed up to the New Jersey course for this week’s LIV Golf New York.
Fans milled around the Donald Trump-owned property, followed the fan favorites Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm and took in the action on a sweltering second day of the event.
But was the drama around keeping the league alive past this season or the ongoing battle between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf something that golf fans cared about?
“I mean, people bring drama too much into it just to make it a bit more interesting and make it more exciting than it has to be,” 21-year-old New Jersey resident Lorenzo Stanziola told The Post before Friday’s round began. “But if you like the game, then you’ll like the fact that it could be expanded globally and everybody is going to get involved rather than just the PGA [Tour] keeping it strictly [to] Europe and America.”
Standing near the tee box on the 10th hole, Steve Kozel, who is in his 60s, said that he had heard about the drama surrounding LIV’s future, but that “it doesn’t really concern me,” and when asked about the new funding replied, “That doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Many of the fans that The Post spoke with on Friday explained that they were there because they enjoy the sport.
John Coutinho, 48, from nearby Roxbury, N.J., was at his first-ever live golf event with his son, which he described as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
LIV’s survival has been an ongoing narrative during the 2026 season and hit a fever pitch when the Saudi Public Investment Fund pulled its financial backing earlier this year.
CEO Scott O’Neil confirmed earlier this week what The Post’s Mark Cannizzaro had first reported that investors had been found to keep LIV Golf afloat beyond this year.
Even with the news, many questions remain about the process moving forward and whether its stars will remain on the circuit.
And many at Bedminster on Friday expressed hope for things to work out for LIV going forward, viewing it as a way for new golf fans to enter the space.
“I’m not up on all the details, but I do think that it’s interesting to have something other than the PGA,” Catie Gilhuley said, while attending Friday’s round with her mother Andrea. “Just like in any sport, to have kind of just a different vibe, especially to get non-golf fans to be more into it and it’s just fun. And then also just to see new courses and [make it] a little bit more accessible.”
LIV Golf doesn’t release ticket numbers until after its events, but Friday’s round drew a modest crowd to Trump National.
The league did move up tee times by two hours with blistering heat hitting the area.
Still, LIV has struggled to make inroads in the United States, with media reports suggesting a sparse crowd for the league’s event in Virginia in May.
Golf content creator Alex Stone, 39, believed part of that had to do with the way the conversation has been framed, using men’s and women’s basketball as a comparison.
“It’s almost like the same dynamic of men’s basketball versus women’s basketball. You look overseas and you wonder, well, to them it’s just basketball,” Stone said. “I think in other places it’s just golf, but to us, because somebody told us to pick a side, we picked a side. … We don’t care. Who wants to pick a side when you’re just trying to view golf?”
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