LIV Golf Considers Launching Women’s Golf League

Not content with providing the biggest shake-up to men’s golf in living memory, LIV Golf could be about to do the same to the women’s game, with the potential launch of a LIV Ladies’ League along the same lines as the men’s.

LIV confirmed it is exploring the possibility of a women’s League, and with the shotgun start system successfully implemented in the Invitational Series events, it could be that men’s and women’s events are held simultaneously, with the women teeing off in the morning and the men in the afternoon.

A new 14-tournament men’s LIV Golf League was announced recently, starting in February 2023. This year’s Invitational Series has only had events in the UK and US so far, though there are stops in Thailand and Saudi Arabia scheduled for October. Next year’s League will visit Thailand, England, South Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, Indonesia, China, Singapore, Hong Kong and as-yet-unnamed locations in Europe and the Americas.

A new raft of LIV signings is expected as soon as the FedEx Cup Playoffs finish with the Tour Championship next week, and after that, the rosters for the rest of 2022 are set. While there will be plenty of work to be done ahead of the full League launch, replicating the success of the men’s events with similar events for ladies could be the next natural step.

While the country of origin of the big money on offer with LIV Golf has proved troublesome to many, the ladies’ game already has close ties to Saudi Arabia, in the shape of the Aramco Team Series. Aramco is the world’s largest oil producer, based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Golf Saudi backs six events on the Ladies European Tour in all, with five of them the Aramco Team Series.

Alex Armas, the CEO of the Ladies European Tour, confirmed earlier this week she would be open to a dialogue with LIV as the prospect of a women’s league becomes more talked about. She said: “We would engage in a conversation with LIV as we would with any other partner. Everyone is assuming that what is happening in the men’s LIV Golf league will be a carbon copy of what might happen in the women’s game and, until we know what LIV’s ambitions are with the women’s game and we have a constructive dialogue and to find these synergies, then it’s hard to say what that might look like.”