The PGA Tour season has ended but things are heating up over at LIV Golf with the announcement of six new players, headlined by Open Champion Cameron Smith.
The Australian was announced earlier this week alongside Marc Leishman, Harold Varner III, Cameron Tringale, Anirban Lahiri and Joaquin Niemann who will all make their debut at The International Club in Boston this week.
Smith starts the event as favourite and he may be very hard to beat. He has been rumoured to have been joining the tour for a long time and as the current world number two, becomes the best player to make the switch so far.
Even as he won the Open Championship there was talk about this move and he has looked like a player that has not quite been himself since that win. Maybe it was a bit of a hangover from that first major win, but it certainly could have been all the question marks over his future. Now that is sorted we could see him get back to his very best. Even at 11/2 he is still very backable.
Dustin Johnson has maybe been the most consistent player across the first three tournaments and he has every chance of getting his first win. It is a course that should play right into his hands. It is a long course with five par fives and Johnson is up there with the biggest hitters in the game. What is perhaps not appreciated with him though is just how good he is from 100 yards and in. His wedge game is so often the thing that separates him from the rest and this week that could really pay off. 6/1 is not too bad in such a small field and after finishes of eighth, fourth and second so far, the only way to improve from there is with a victory.
Birdies galore for these 10 players 🐤 #LIVGolf pic.twitter.com/L0UlZ09LcF
— LIV Golf (@livgolf_league) August 28, 2022
No player has made more birdies in LIV Golf than Branden Grace and that has already resulted in one win for him and if you are looking for more of an outsider then he could be the man at 28/1. He seems to have thrived in the team format alongside his fellow South Africans. Grace has always been a classy player and he has the quality to win any of these events, even as the fields are getting stronger and stronger.
In the first event in London there were a big chunk of players that were certainly there to make up the numbers, but with every signing that is made the strength in depth improves. This batch of signings may not all move the needle too much, but they certainly make the tournament a lot stronger. The balance is slowly shifting towards LIV Golf in terms of field quality.
Strike a pose Joaco 📸 #LIVGolf #LIVGolfBoston @joaconiemann pic.twitter.com/wonHiEYQAa
— LIV Golf (@livgolf_league) August 31, 2022
Niemann is a player that looked set to be a star one day and is perhaps a bigger signing that it may appear at first. He is the world number 19 at just 23 years old and already has two PGA Tour wins. A criticism of some of the signings, and it is certainly valid, is that many of the players are on the back end of their careers, but the young Chilean is a player that is the opposite of that. He could well start off with a bang here after two top 10s in the past two weeks. A lot of the players in the field have not played much golf of late, but he has played, and has played well. 9/1 is short, but he is more than capable of winning in a field like this.
LIV Golf will continue to be controversial, but this is the first event they have that will not be going up against a PGA Tour event so it will be interesting to see how the ratings do here. With every event that goes by the quality of the players goes up and that is only going to help. Some will never accept the breakaway tour, but we have already seen the big improvements that the PGA Tour have made to their own events to fend off LIV, and it can only be a good thing for golf if they can find a way to coexist.
