Analysis-Golf-LIV Golf vows next year will be bigger and better

MIAMI : LIV Golf crowned a first team champion to bring the controversial Saudi-backed series to a close at Trump National Doral on Sunday, declaring the inaugural season a huge success and vowing to come back bigger and better next year.

The 4 Aces captained by Dustin Johnson collected the winner's prize splitting $16 million, which was just part of a whopping $50 million pay out that saw even the last of the 12 teams pocketing a $1 million for a single round of golf.

Johnson had said that it was the competition not the money that excited him but the former-world number one and Masters champion cashed in anyway finishing top of the LIV money list with more than $35 million from just eight events (including an $18 million bonus as the season's individual champion).

Bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, LIV grabbed the golf world's attention with staggering prize purses totalling $255 million while luring top players like six-time major winner Phil Mickelson away from the PGA Tour with huge signing bonuses that reports said totalled close to $1 billion.

But the Saudi money has come with plenty of scrutiny with critics accusing LIV golfers of being little more than well paid mercenaries in a "sportwashing" scheme by a nation trying to improve its reputation over its human rights record.

If sportwashing was the objective of LIV Golf, it failed miserably instead drawing attention to a number of Saudi involvements from the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi to the Kingdom's treatment of women.

While LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman was in Miami the Australian, who defended the Saudi Arabia's human rights record and Khashoggi murder saying "we've all made mistakes", kept a low profile holding no formal media availability