Joaco Niemann is just on a different planet right now. The Chilean has quietly turned LIV Golf into his personal stomping ground, and he added another notch in Korea by outlasting Talor Gooch in a playoff. One birdie on the first extra hole, handshake with the caddie, champagne everywhere. Business as usual.
The trophy moment — Niemann gets the champagne shower after closing out Gooch in the playoff.
8 LIV wins. Let that sink in. Whatever you think of the league, the dude has figured out how to close, and he's doing it in environments that look like full-on rock concerts. The galleries in Korea were stacked, the crowd noise was loud, and the celebrations on 18 had real juice — the kind of raw emotion that golf usually pretends it's too dignified to show.
A LIV player going full caveman on the 18th green — fist pumps, stomps, the whole bit — as Exhibit A in the eternal 'are golfers athletes' debate.
And then there's Bryson, because of course there's Bryson. While Niemann was busy actually winning the tournament, DeChambeau spent his Korea week telling reporters he's been running AI on the range to diagnose his swing. The mad scientist bit never stops. Frustrated, then learned — that's the Bryson cycle in a nutshell, except now ChatGPT or whatever he's plugged into gets a swing-coach credit.
Bryson at the LIV Korea presser explaining his latest experiment: using AI to troubleshoot his swing.
So that's the state of LIV right now. Niemann is the most lethal closer in the field, Gooch is still right there as the recurring bridesmaid, and Bryson is trying to invent golf from scratch every other week. Korea delivered all of it in one weekend. Whatever you make of the league, that's a pretty entertaining product.