Why PGA Tour Players Keep Beating LIV in Golf’s Majors

Scottie Scheffler’s dominant win at the 2025 PGA Championship, in conjunction with the way in which Rory McIlroy scooped The Masters earlier in the year, suggests the PGA Tour is on course to have the winningest roster when it comes to golf’s biggest tournaments, over the likes of LIV Golf.

Players at LIV are some of the most decorated in the sport. With Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, and Jon Rahm accustomed to triumphing on the biggest of stages. However, when it matters most, they seemingly fall at the final hurdle.

This, combined with a surge in the PGA Tour’s confidence — based on popularity, viewership, superior athletes, brand-name value, and more — suggests the more traditional league is the place to be, despite LIV’s once-bold status as the upstart.

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The playing level should not be as big a contrast as it is. But in 2025 alone, the PGA Tour’s two biggest stars, Scheffler and McIlroy, have shown in successive major tournaments that they have superior staying power on the fourth day — something LIV lack recent experience in.

At Quail Hollow Golf and Country Club in North Carolina, Scheffler barely wobbled despite Rahm’s late charge up the leaderboard on Sunday, the 18th of May.

The Spanish power driver was accustomed to four-day tournaments when he was a force on the PGA Tour but since defecting to LIV he only competed in three-day competitions outside the sport’s majors. Rahm was level with Scheffler when he was playing the 12th hole, but squandered the opportunity less than an hour later, finishing five-over par in the final three holes alone. This, while Scheffler kept his cool and ended the tourney with an astonishing five-shot winning margin.

Earlier in the year, McIlroy did similar. Though he did not have the benefit of winning by a big margin, and had to defeat Justin Rose via playoff, he outlasted LIV’s biggest threats like Patrick Reed and Bryson DeChambeau.

It raies the age-old theory that players on the PGA Tour keep their skills sharper because they are far more active in golf’s calendar when compared to the more sporadic competitions LIV’s golfers compete in, exclusively in three-day tournament formats.

The latest loss for LIV comes at a time when they could do with a win.

Even Golf Digest pointed out Monday that LIV is an inability to catch-up to the PGA Tour. They continue “to struggle to capture American audiences,” the report said. Viewership, meanwhile, on the PGA Tour “is climbing” and “its premier players are dominating signature events.”

This has seemingly prompted the PGA Tour to stall on merging with LIV, as both tours face a fourth successive summer in confrontation with one another.