David Feherty hits out at LIV Golf critics, reveals the one thing they always get wrong

David Feherty has made a career of his irreverent takes on the golf world.

So much so that the TV analyst, whose playing days ended in the late nineties as he began to carve a new career behind the microphone, was one of the more high-profile personalities to join the Saudi-funded revolution in 2022.

Feherty, like several of the players, admitted he was made an offer by LIV CEO Greg Norman that he simply couldn’t refuse.

“Greg called me out of the blue,” he told Sports Illustrated. “It was the Open Championship at St Andrews, the one that Cam [Smith] won. That was my last event as it turned out at NBC.

“I wasn’t supposed to start until the beginning of the following season. It was supposed to be a secret. Someone at NBC leaked it. And I ended up at Bedminster [for LIV Golf’s third event] a few weeks later with a new gig.”

Feherty, who won five European Tour titles and played on the European team at the 1991 Ryder Cup, serves as LIV’s lead analyst alongside former Golf Channel reporter Jerry Foltz and play-by-play commentator Arlo White and admitted the decision “wasn’t difficult at all”.

He added: Greg has been a friend of mine for nearly 40 years. I knew he had a vision because he’s had it so long. Hell, it was the late eighties where he was thinking about a world tour or spreading the game globally.

“He asked me and I said yes.”

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But with the move came heavy criticism – notably that it was just a money grab by players, with reports that the likes of Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm banking nine-figure signing-on fees.

And while Feherty admits the financial incentive fuelled his own move, he doesn’t believe the players did the same and dismisses the common notion that LIV is not to be taken seriously as a competitive sports league.

“We hear from time to time that it’s exhibition golf,” he said. “Trying telling that to those guys out there.

“You hear Bryson talk about the team aspect. They really care about this sh*t. It’s far more than an exhibition.

“It’s the same quality of field every week. We’re getting great players out there in contention. We have the occasional outlier, too, who will come in and win.”

As for his own future, Feherty said he had two more years left on his deal, and he hopes to extend that.

“I don’t know what the hell else I would do,” he said. “I would definitely like to do this. I could see me doing this into my seventies.

“I just turned 66. I’ve been 51 years in the game, since starting as a caddie and turning pro at age 17.”

Thankfully for LIV Golf, Feherty is a better analyst than he is mathematician.

The 2025 season will get underway in Saudi Arabia in February.

Alex Perry is the Associate Editor of bunkered. A journalist for more than 20 years, he has been a golf industry stalwart for the majority of his career and, in a five-year spell at ESPN, covered every sporting event you can think of. He completed his own Grand Slam at the 2023 Masters, having fallen in love with the sport at his hometown club of Okehampton and on the links of nearby Bude & North Cornwall.

Associate Editor