With Prominent Signings, LIV Golf Plants a Flag for Its Third Season

Alex Miceli sees a parallel with military history in how the Saudi-backed league may be ready to go forward alone without a PGA Tour partnership.

Every Monday, Alex Miceli will share what he learned from the previous week in golf.

I could be a little snarky and say I learned that the French play golf, but that is just being obtuse.

Instead, I’m thinking a history lesson is in order.

During the Korean War in the 1950s—yes it was a war not a conflict—the United Nations' forces met with the North Koreans and Chinese in the little border town of Panmunjom to hammer out an armistice.

The talks ranged from 1951 to 1953 and progress was continually stalled by North Korea and the People's Republic of China with the hopes that Americans at home would lose interest in the conflict and give into unreasonable demands.

This type of tactic would work in Vietnam and is working today with Ukraine as Congress is losing interest in the plight of the former Soviet republic.

During the summer of 1953 the talks, now two years old, had made slow, almost laborious progress.

Then North Korea and China decided to test the will of U.N. forces and attacked a hill of no military value, known as Pork Chop Hill.

From April to July, Pork Chop was under constant fire from both sides, but both knew that the hill stood for something more than a strategic advantage.

The North and the China wanted to test the will of the U.N. forces, while the U.S. and the U.N. wanted to show its unwavering support for South Korea.

Once the battle ended on July 11, after thousands were killed or wounded, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed less than three weeks later.

Now what does this have to do with golf?

I look at LIV Golf’s recent signings of Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton and see the making of golf’s own Pork Chop Hill.

Jon Rahm makes his LIV Golf debut this week / Imago

It's LIV maintaining its independence and sending a message to the PGA Tour that they are not going to wait forever to get a deal done.

By all accounts, the PGA Tour had been dragging its feet until the Rahm signing and once the Spaniard was comfortably in the fold, the PGA Tour took notice. The Tour was likely waiting to see how far LIV and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia would go, and learned with the Rahm signing and subsequent signings that LIV is truly committed to the new league.

It’s also likely that the idea of PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan being the overseer of LIV as suggested in the "framework agreement" is no longer viable.

It looks like the PIF and its owners believe in LIV and want to give it a chance to flourish on its own, and the commitment showed in signing Rahm and others is a sincere one.

It’s the similar commitment that the U.N. and U.S. forces showed on Pork Chop Hill.

It’s not a given that LIV will last forever, but like South Korea it must be given a chance, and it seems over the next year or two that is exactly what the league will get and thankfully no blood will be shed, but instead some egos may be ruffled.

What I learned—or maybe more what was reinforced in my mind—is that history repeats itself, over and over again, you just have to pay attention to learn the lessons.