LIV and Let Die: The Inside Story of the War Between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf

by Alan Shipnuck

Alan Shipnuck, the New York Times bestselling author of Phil , returns with a major new work of insider reporting on the battle for the soul of professional golf between the PGA Tour and the Saudi-funded LIV Golf League.

Over the past two years, professional golf has been at war, and Alan Shipnuck has been our most trusted correspondent on the front lines. Following closely on the heels of his bestselling sensation Phil , Shipnuck turns to the conflict that made Mickelson, and many other top golfers, villainous in the eyes of the LIV Golf’s controversial—and belligerent—storming of the professional golf world. (LIV’s unofficial motto, immortalized on hats gifted at a staff “Fuck ’Em All.”)

In LIV and Let Die , Shipnuck delivers the inside story in real time, with fly-on-the-wall reporting from the yachts where LIV was hatched and within the corridors of power as the PGA Tour flailed to fend off the threat. Shipnuck has traveled seamlessly between both tours—having countless conversations with players, caddies, CEOs, agents, financiers, lawyers, flaks, fans, and Instagramming wives—to deliver a no-holds-barred account of the most chaotic moment in golf history. Anyone who has a stake in professional golf lined up for an interview with Shipnuck—because they knew everyone else was talking to him, too. The disruption to an old, proud sport was largely conducted in the shadows, but LIV and Let Die delivers numerous revelations about what really happened, and why.

Shipnuck’s unparalleled access and award-winning reporting chops provide rich portraits of the brand names at the center of this sprawling Greg Norman, Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Jay Monahan, His Excellency Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Donald Trump, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Dustin (and Paulina!) Johnson, Pat (and Ashley!) Perez, Patrick (and Justine!) Reed, Bryson DeChambeau, Jimmy Dunne, and many more.

Bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, LIV Golf has upended the men’s professional game with vast riches—blatant “sportswashing,” from the mouth of Mickelson himself. Says Brandel Chamblee, “I think the LIV players are in a morally indefensible position, with a willful blindness to the consequences of their action, making them complicit to the ongoing atrocities.” Rory McIlroy said of playing a tournament alongside LIV golfers, “It’s going to be hard for me to stomach.” But the battle to thwart LIV revealed a deeper struggle within the game. “The Seminole guys, the Augusta National guys, they’re used to having all the power in the golf world,” says LIV’s Peter Uihlein. “They don’t like to be challenged. They’re not used to it.”

The bitter feuding (and trolling) between the PGA loyalists and the LIV camp made the battle between the tours deeply personal—but for the top leaders of the two tours it was strictly business, and in a series of secret meetings they reshaped the future of the sport. LIV and Let Die provides the previously unknown background and crucial context to understand the armistice between the tours that shocked the world in June 2023.

Long known as the most fearless writer on the golf beat, Shipnuck has delivered another hotly anticipated book packed with juicy nuggets and in-the-room-where-it-happened action...think Bob Woodward moonlighting on the sports desk. LIV and Let Die is the definitive account of the biggest (non-Tiger) golf story this century and a lively page-turner that in places reads like a spy thriller.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Politics, Book Club

352 pages, Hardcover

Published October 17, 2023

Reviews

[Brandice · Rating 4 out of 5]

LIV and Let Die is the story of the creation of LIV Golf and how it has challenged, and in some ways, threatened, the traditional game of golf via the PGA Tour. ⁣
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“LIV is about many things besides golf, chief among them money, power, and politics. But there is a darker, more elemental force at work: vengeance.”⁣
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Shipnuck reports on the feud between the two entities, the players at the center,⁣ on both sides, other involved characters including Greg Norman, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s PIF, which funds LIV Golf. Shipnuck also details the most recent status updates between the two groups as of summer 2023. His research in this book is thorough and impressive. ⁣
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While I’ve always been a casual golf fan, after watching Full Swing earlier this year on Netflix, I feel more interested in the game again. I’m very curious to see how things will play out between the PGA and LIV next year with their new (draft) agreement and while I can understand where people are coming from in their resistance to LIV, I personally think it’s been good for golf — It’s a way to keep the game fresh and attract more fans. I could never fault players for taking massive pay increases when people who aren’t professional athletes make similar career moves all the time. Sure, money should never be the only reason, but it is “a” reason. ⁣
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LIV and Let Die is an interesting read for existing golf fans.

[Dallas Shattuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure - I read this book because my husband is an avid golfer and finally agreed to read a book with me 🤣 but let me say that this will be a top non-fiction read of 2023!

I was blown away by the effective way Shipnuck explained the complex PGA vs. LIV Golf dynamics. I was especially in awe about the political and societal impacts of LIV Golf. I had no idea before reading this book.

LIV Golf is paid for by Saudi Arabia, who played a role in September 11th and commits ongoing human rights atrocities. They are using golf to “fix” their reputation and get the U.S. to forget/overlook what they’ve done and continue to do.

It’s disgusting to hear what professional golfers are doing for money (and I have little sympathy for millionaires that complain they aren’t being paid enough). And to the surprise of no one, Donald Trump is a LIV Golf advocate and friend of Saudi Arabia.

In short, there are huge concerns about the future of professional golf, including significant national security vulnerabilities.

Sports are political, and this book emphasizes that point.

Even if you aren’t a golf fan, I highly recommend this book. It’s about so much more than golf.

Thank you @librofm and @simon.audio for the #gifted copy!

[Steve Eubanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Events sometimes overtake a story. Book publishing is a long process and when the world moves fast, you sometimes look back and think you might have said things differently. I’ve known Alan Shipnuck since he was a rookie reporter at SI, so I feel confident that he’s wishing he could rephrase some of the glib descriptions and explanations he made of MBS and the House of Saud. Everything he wrote was accurate. But word choices matter. When discussing world leaders in a complicated region that could explode at any moment, caution is always advised.

This look at LIV Golf is factually accurate, narratively quick, and occasionally insightful. There were a couple of unnamed sources that made me wince, but that’s only because I’ve done the same thing and regretted it.

My takeaways are: No one surprised me here. These men are who you think they are. Tiger Woods has become a leader: thoughtful, selfless, and without bitterness, admirable traits for a man whose every foible was worldwide news. Rory McIlroy is a good guy with an Irish mean streak just beneath the surface. Phil is Phil. Greg is Greg. People are complicated.

I learned a little more about Jay Monahan than I knew before. You will, too.

It’s a quick read. Give it a whirl.

[Jacob Snyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

[WM D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liv and let die was a very good book. I really enjoyed reading it. It explored the relationship between the pga tour and the Liv tour. It goes into detail the way that they used money and politics to persuade people to come join them

[Ryan Stoffield · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book talking about the saga that has been going on in professional golf between the PGA Tour and LIV golf. Shipnuck did a great job explaining the inside stories of how everything evolved. Unfortunately he couldn’t keep politics aside and included plenty of clumsy cheap shots towards republicans in the book.

The book is still a great synopsis of what is going on in professional golf and leaves plenty of questions open to what will happen in professional golf in 2024 and 2025!

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Golf is somewhat of a new sport for me. I didn’t grow up playing or know anyone that played. It is a bug that has entrenched me for the past 5 years though. I am immersed in it and can’t get enough. This book was everything that I enjoyed reading about. Character backgrounds, drama, behind the scenes conversations, and a history lesson on a place I never thought I would know so much about now, Saudi Arabia. If you are a golf sicko like myself, this is a must read!! The way Alan organized this book was perfection and caught my interest the whole time.

[Megan Pollenz · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a golfer who watched the entire saga of LIV and the PGA Tour unfold in real time, reading this book was pretty fun. Being able to read what players, reporters, insiders and executives of both tours thought was like peaking behind the Wizards curtain.
Also, it’s just a fun book to read for people who enjoy reading about sports drama that has a lot of real world consequences.

[Leon Mwotia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never thought the inner workings of creating a breakaway golf league would be so enthralling. This book is about money and its power to corrupt, about men and their principles and about a geopolitical morass where respectability is for sale. Excellent read.

[Piper · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh! i love mess ... and alan shipnuck, you are so, so brilliant — " 'what you have to understand about professional golfers is they're all whores. that's the starting point.' " and if you see me binge rewatching full swing, no you don't

[Michael Passalacqua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not entirely unbiased reporting, but a great deep dive into the LIV / PGA saga. Loved the unfiltered quotes and anecdotes about some of the biggest names in the sport

[Noah Greene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Golf.

[Captain Absurd · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think the potential of a journalistic story about Saudi involvement in the world of golf is fully realized here. Rather, we get a little who's who of the discipline, an extremely insufficient depth of investigation, and a pretty stagnant drama. Perhaps if I knew any of the characters apart from Woods, I would have had more fun. Either way, it was very informative, so I guess the author did a great job.

[Jim Beatty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave him an unlimited budget and he exceeded it. - E Williams

[Caroline Samuelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting subject -- could have been presented in a more digestible way
was also aggressively political when it didn't need to be at times

[Daniel Badger · Rating 4 out of 5]

LIV: the league for MAGA and Aussies

Shipnuck gives a wonderful history of the puzzle pieces fitting into place and forming the picture that would be LIV. While his bent is obvious throughout the book, his conclusion chapter is masterful. I wish the entire book was written with the same tone as the last chapter. The last chapter almost feels like it was written by someone else (AI summary maybe? Jk). Needless to say, Shipnuck got into it with the Shark, so the animosity is understandable. Same with his book Phil, you get slapped in the face with the sense that there was something personal about this piece and you can feel the offense in his words. There also might be a slight case of Trump Derangement Syndrome going on.
I must commend Shipnuck on an incredible job of research and compiling such interesting details. It was important for him to include the ties the PIF has to the American economy. If anyone is going to die on that hill of not supporting LIV because it is Saudi money, then they ought to be prepared to boycott Uber, DoorDash, EA gaming, Bank of America, Pinterest, Amazon, Microsoft, PayPal, Meta, FedEx, VISA, Starbucks, Shopify and Adobe as well. There is not much left in life’s experiences that ISN’T touched by the PIF. Scary.
His speculations aside, it was a masterful collection of stories and interviews.
Overall, it was an enjoyable read.
My boys at No Laying Up got some shoutouts, however embarrassing their statements were. I wouldn’t want my friends painted in such a negative light. I was first introduced to Alan on the California Tourist Sauce episode on the Monterey Peninsula.
Well done, Shipnuck. Smooth sailing and may the wind ever fill your sails.

[Randy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve been reading Alan Shipnuck for probably his whole career and he has long been considered one of the preeminent golf writers on the PGA beat. He became really famous because of his book about Phil Mickelson where in a teaser to the book he quoted Phil calling his new patrons—the Saudis—“scary motherfuckers.” I suppose when you write a book like this about the new golf league funded by the Saudis that you are allowed to have bias and let that bias show through. Shipnuck has a lot of them. He doesn’t like Phil. He doesn’t like Greg Norman. He doesn’t like J.T. (Justin Thomas). He doesn’t like Trump (In fact he suffers from TDS). He doesn’t like Patrick Reed. He somehow manages to compare a penalty Reed received which he claimed he handled “perfectly” to Trump’s famous “perfect” phone call to President Zelenkski. Kind of a gratuitous stretch. (Trump lives in the head of sufferers of TDS). Shipnuck apparently gets his news from limited sources. Subsequent revelations about the Bidens reveal that Trump was probably right. The Biden’s need to be investigated. Shipnuck’s personal politics casts a shade on his LIV vs PGA take. Shipnuck contends that revenge was the motivation for positions taken by certain main characters in the story. Greg Norman long had a bone to pick with the PGA for stealing his idea for a world golf tour. Rory McElroy, the main PGA defender among the players holds a grudge against Norman for comments he made about Rory. It’s all pretty nasty and a giant story that needs telling. But perhaps Shipnuck was in a bit of a hurry. It might be quite awhile before we really understand what took place. All the participants aren’t talking yet. On the Foreplay golf podcast he admitted that he had to add a lot of material after the surprise announcement that the PGA and Saudi golf had reached a compromise agreement. Because of this a lot of people had to walk back their moral arguments against the Saudis the emotionality of which argued sanctimoniously that participating in LIV would offend 911 families and put the players in the company of the murderers of the journalist Kashogi. I’m always amazed that Americans can act as if our country can always take the high road; as if we’ve never bombed or killed innocent people. Or, if one is real “conspiracy theorist” wondering if our own government might have played some kind of role in 911. Shipnuck rightly points out that the European golf Tour (DP World Tour) and the LPGA have regularly and currently taken big bucks from the Saudis. As Shipnuck points out, most of the title sponsors of PGA events do business with the Saudis. The US government does business with the Saudis. We all depend on Saudi oil.

Players like Phil Mickelson have argued for years that the tour wasn’t treating the players fairly. After all it is the players tour. They lack rights to their own images and couldn’t monetize them on Instagram or wherever. And suddenly, as LIV recruited some very big names (Dustin Johnson, Cam Smith, Patrick Reed, Brooks Kopek and Mickelson) the tour discovered they could find a lot of dollars to sweeten tourney purses.

The LIV story has been a great boon to golf writers. For the last twenty years they pretty much had one story line—Tiger Woods. Tiger has been so dominant that he sucked all the air out of the room. If you are a golf fan you might as well be a Tiger fan as he was and still is the story even though he can no longer play much. The golf writers have rehabilitated him more than once. Not to say that Tiger isn’t interesting. He is. But not always in a good way. He’s the greatest of all time as a golfer but not as admirable as a person and whenever they can the golf writers give him a pass (or in his current iteration idolize him as the father of up and coming Charlie Woods). Shipnuck makes Tiger one of the heroes of the LIV/PGA tussle. It’s pretty logical that Tiger would support the PGA over LIV. For two decades he has been the face of the PGA chasing Jack Nicholas’s majors record and Sam Snead’s total tournament victories. Tiger has inspired a generation of golfers to the point where if these same guys had been around in Tiger’s heyday he might not have won as many as he did.

Shipnuck writes well. He has a rep. Not all the players like what he writes. Not surprising. Justin Thomas tweeted negatively about the book encouraging more positivity. But Shipnuck and the rest of us know that the dish sells more books. Shipnuck disingenuously says (on a podcast) that JT is not a very compelling personality.

The whole LIV/PGA drama has been very interesting. This book is a start in telling the story. It’s value is diminished by Shipnuck’s partisan POV. He is in the Chamblee camp where the Saudis are unredeemable villains. He doesn’t frame the story objectively. The PGA are the good guys. LIV and it’s players are the bad guys. The subtext of this tale is that Mickelson was right about the PGA Tour and its management. He deserves a great deal of credit for the increase in money on the PGA tour but since Shipnuck doesn’t like him he comes across as a money whore.

Sadly, money always talks and even though there is a truce now between the PGA and the Saudis the story isn’t over. As a golf fan I don’t find LIV golf very interesting. It’s more of an exhibition than a competition. At some point it will make sense for the top LIV golfers to be able to play the big PGA events.

I listened to this book and although I normally refuse to listen to any audio book read by the author I should mention that Shipnuck does a creditable job.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

My emotions were torn as I read this insightful, detailed account of the battle between "sorta" good vs "mostly" evil. I winced every time the PGA shot itself in the foot (which was pretty much every other page) and cringed hearing the rise of a disrupter in the sport with unlimited financial resources and an awful history of human rights violations. Shipnick had a front row seat to the international cat fight and brought all the receipts needed to shape this story about millionaires holding onto pride and tradition while fighting over market share.

[Alejandro Faes · Rating 4 out of 5]

“That little idea (how to reinvent professional golf) sparked a war – and a fragile peace – that changed golf forever.”

Con una narración ágil y bien documentada, Alan logra conectar los puntos que llevaron a la creación de LIV y su impacto en el golf profesional. Como en todo gran cambio histórico, no hay un solo villano ni un solo héroe.

Gracias a su conocimiento profundo y amplio —dentro y fuera del campo—, el autor entrega una mirada clara y muy bien construida de una transformación que ya dejó huella.

(4 de 5 estrellas)

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

-2 stars for trying to humanize br*son d*chambeau, +1 star for the focus on sweet baby rory mcilroy, -.5 star for often bizarre talk ab women, +1 star for explaining how all of this fit into the geopolitical landscape, -.5 star for making me think ab liv golf. thank you, alan, i patiently await your rory biography

[Molly Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars // loved this from start to finish. It’s not just a golf book but had some super interesting history on geopolitics and the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. Learned a lot and will look for more reads like this in the future!

[Bethany McClellan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible investigative effort. I am not a golf fan, and only a casual sports fan, and this was titillating.

[Jay Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shipnuck at his finest. LIV, truly some bad guys

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listened to this while hiking a few of the New Hampshire 4000 footers. Was a perfect companion for being in the woods. The audiobook for this was phenomenal and I can’t wait to listen to more by this author.

[Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

For all the complexity of the politics, events, and characters involved in the professional golf scene, Shipnuck is able to seamless narrate the events that have lead the PGA Tour and LIV golf to the present day.

[Richard FitzGerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. Researched, fast paced, full of stories but you'd need to have an interest of know a bit about golf

Only issue with it is it is US centric, as perhaps golf is, western biased and not really reflective of sport of business in the Middle East, using the usual stereo types

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's an episode of the Freakonomics podcast titled "Greg Norman Takes On the P.G.A. Tour." This episode runs for 53 minutes. The audiobook of LIV and Let Die: The Inside Story of the War Between the PGA Tour and LIVE Golf takes a whopping 10 hours and 32 minutes. You can get the basic gist of the story by foregoing the audiobook and listening to the Freakonomics episode instead. Not only will you have saved 9 hours and 21 minutes of your life, you also won't have to listen to Shipnuck's whiny, self entitled voice. You're welcome!

Maybe I should've prefaced this review by stating I don't care about golf. It would be an overstatement to say I dislike it, because to state that I dislike golf would mean I'd have to actively spend time thinking about golf. I really don't. So i'm really not to target demographic for this book. But do you know what? I don't care about rowing, yet I found The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics to be riveting. I don't care about World War II, but I found All the Light We Cannot See to be fascinating. But Shipnuck took a boring topic and somehow managed to make it even more boring.

[Jack Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough but No End. THIS NOT IMPORTANT READING!!!

If you can tolerate Mr. Shipnuck's Trump Derangement Disorder, this is what seems to be a thorough history of the steps in the attempted Saudi takeover of professional touring golf. The thing is, the Saudis and the PGA Tour have not settled anything yet other than to drop all the lawsuits.
Despite all the references to "saving golf" by some of the delusional characters in this story, there is no reference in the book that golf is played and enjoyed by millions of people around the world who represent all ages and income levels, most of whom could not care less about how this story about the touring professionals ends.

[John Schorg · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amazingly bitchy account of the wars over control of professional golf. While there are some laugh out loud moments, two things hinder complete enjoyment. One is that the book is populated with a group of men who attained their emotional maturity in high school and never grew from there. (As an interested party puts it, "What you have to understand about professional golfers is that they are all whores.") The second is that the author just cannot resist telling you how wonderful he is...which means he is the perfect author of this book.

[David Kateeb · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good. I’m a golf nut so I knew alot going in, but the behind the scenes access and some of the quotes that didnt make it into the media at the time are here. If you have no knowledge at all with the current professional golf landscape pick this up.