Lynch: An ex-LIV Golf star’s fate shows the perils of being suckered for short-term cash.

Posted by Admin January 12, 2025 Golf

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“What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don’t need to make smart decisions — if they can get rich making dumb decisions?” So wrote Michael Lewis in The Big Short, his 2010 book about the crash of the U.S. housing market.

He was explaining how Wall Street encouraged poor decision-making, a point that’s equally relevant when applied to LIV’s role in professional golf as agents, peers and family members nudge players into career cul-de-sacs while pocketing a handsome percentage.

Eugenio Chacarra was among the world’s top amateurs when he left Oklahoma State to join LIV in 2022. He won in his fifth start but has had only two top-10 finishes since. Now he’s been dumped by Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs team and is sounding like a man with regrets, except about the cash.

“I see what it’s like to win on the PGA Tour and how your life changes. How you get major access and ranking points. On LIV, nothing changes, there is only money,” Chacarra said in an interview. “It doesn’t matter if you finish 30th or first, only money. I’m not a guy who wants more money. What will change my life is playing in Hawaii and qualifying for the majors, qualifying for the Masters, the Ryder Cup.”

Of course, that’s what Greg Norman’s outfit pledged to him. Only later did Chacarra realize he’d been suckered.

“When I joined LIV, they promised OWGR and majors. But it didn’t happen,” he said. “I trusted them … but OWGR and majors still hasn’t happened.” Carlos Ortiz has said he too was assured ranking points—which was never within LIV’s gift, as any credible player advisor would have known.

Players had numerous reasons for signing with LIV. Some were washed up, others were injured. Some had financial crunches, others were scrapping for starts. Some wanted to hang with their buddies, others wanted to grow the game in underserved regions like, um, America, Britain and Australia. Chacarra didn’t fit within any of those categories. He was a promising kid with what seemed a long, lucrative runway ahead—destined for PGA Tour success, majors, Ryder Cups.

Yet he was influenced to follow a path that leaves him competitively homeless at age 24, with a stout bank balance, sure, but also decidedly uncertain prospects of ever finding a way toward earning those dreamed-of moments in majors and Ryder Cups.

Chacarra ought to be a cautionary example for other young talents tempted to prioritize short-term money while blithely assuming that secure status awaits when the LIV gravy train derails. Not least Tom McKibbin, the 22-year-old who recently earned a PGA Tour card in Europe but who pointedly isn’t denying reports that he’ll decamp to the Saudi-funded league without ever using that card to regularly test himself against the world’s best.

“On LIV, I’m the only young guy who’s won, and they never talk about me,” Chacarra moaned this week. “They don’t really care about the young guys much.”

It’s easy to attribute Chacarra’s comments to bitterness at being dropped by LIV or an attempt to ingratiate himself with Ponte Vedra in hopes of fast-tracking a pathway to the PGA Tour. He will find sympathy in short supply. He has gotten rich off a dumb decision, but he’s hardly alone. LIV is a slush fund for players, agents, caddies, coaches, executives, vendors and assorted grifters, all of whom surely dread the day when their benefactor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, runs afoul of his mercurial boss and is stripped of the power to authorize wire transfers But Chacarra is alone in meeting the consequences of his decision, certainly moreso than the people who encouraged him to make it.

As the economist Thomas Sowell wrote, “It’s hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

Less than three years ago, Chacarra’s jump to LIV forced the PGA Tour to create meaningful pipelines for elite college players. PGA Tour University begat Ludvig Aberg, who Chacarra now admits to eyeing with undisguised envy as a world No. 6, Tour winner, Masters runner-up and Ryder Cup star. Chacarra meanwhile plans to compete at an Asian Tour event in Gurugram, India, the only place where he has status.