Finally, Joaquin Niemann was able to enjoy a tournament victory in Australia without the weight of trying to bag major championship starts from a trip Down Under.
Which is ironic, given the Chile native, who won the 2023 Australian Open to secure a spot in the 2024 Open Championship, landed in Australia last Monday ahead of LIV Golf Adelaide – the same day news broke that the R&A had created an exemption for one LIV player into the links major this July. That came only days after the USGA created a similar place in the field at this year’s US Open at Oakmont Country Club.
In the past two years, Niemann has almost traveled to Australia as many times as his LIV Golf colleague and the nation’s homegrown star, Cameron Smith, in an effort to gain entry to the major championships, given that his league’s event don’t offer Official World Golf Ranking points. At the end of 2023, and early 2024, Niemann included Australia as one stop on a global journey spanning 45,000 miles in 12 weeks. He won the Australian Open, a DP World Tour event that offers three spots in the following year’s Open Championship, and he finished high in a series of Asian Tour events. The PGA of America and Augusta National rewarded Niemann, 26, for his international efforts with special exemptions into their major championships. He returned to Australia in late 2024 to defend his Australian Open crown.
This week, though, Niemann arrived Down Under with three major starts already locked in: the 153rd Open, due to his 25th place on the DP World Tour’s final 2024 Race to Dubai ranking, as well as special exemptions to the 2025 Masters and PGA at Quail Hollow.
Perhaps feeling a sense of freedom, and buoyed by an undeniable familiarity with firm, fast Australian golf courses, Niemann produced the only bogey-free round at The Grange Golf Club on the final day of LIV Golf Adelaide to win his third individual title in the league since joining from the PGA Tour in 2022. His seven-under-par 65 in Adelaide allowed him to gallop past Abraham Ancer, also an Australian Open past champion, who led the majority of the round before three bogeys in his final five holes. Niemann’s 13-under total gave him a three-shot victory over Ancer and Carlos Ortiz (both 71).
“The fans always treat me really good. I enjoy playing in front of these Aussie crowds,” Niemann said. “They give some extra energy. I enjoy hitting golf shots in front of them. The courses are a little firmer down in Australia, and I like the shots you have to hit.”
In the team component, LIV Golf’s scoring format in 2025 counts all four scores in each of the three rounds. Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs won by six shots over Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII side. It was the Fireballs’ fifth win, four of them coming on different continents.
For Niemann, it cemented his status as one of golf’s most in-form players, and as the face of a small group that golf fans know are sublimely talented but who are losing access to the majors. One could even argue Niemann has been a catalyst for the major championship organizers to re-evaluate their entry criteria. He sits 74th on the OWGR but 18th on Data Golf’s ranking, just two spots below PGA Tour and Ryder Cup star Ludvig Aberg. Only two months ago, Niemann won the PIF Saudi International, a star-studded Asian Tour International Series event headlined by a host of LIV players. This week, particularly in the second and final rounds in Australia, the gifted ball-striker flighted his shots through heavy winds and putted sensationally on slick greens.
“Days like today makes me grow as a player,” Niemann said. “There is a lot I have to take from today and learn from it. If I could have these Sundays more often, chasing leaders, it would be really good for my game.”
If Niemann can produce more Sundays like Adelaide over the next three months, he’ll likely earn a spot in the only 2025 major he’s not currently in: the US Open. On May 19, the USGA will invite the top LIV player (not already exempt) for Oakmont from the league’s points standings. Niemann’s victory Sunday catapulted him to third, 4.6 points behind leader Adrian Meronk, who is not exempt for the U.S. Open and won LIV’s season opener in Saudi Arabia last week.
Only hours before Niemann’s winning putt dropped, the state government that underwrites LIV Golf Adelaide announced a six-year extension to keep the tournament in Adelaide until 2031. Tournament officials were expecting more than 100,000 fans through the gates this week, eclipsing the 94,000 who attended LIV Adelaide last year.
While the six-year extension wasn’t quite the USGA announcing a host course so far into the future that it’s downright confusing, it had a similar sentiment: tournament organizers, and LIV as a whole, want to signal their path forward even as debate rages about where LIV Golf would fit into a reunified professional game.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, at Torrey Pines this week, told a group of reporters his goal was to get both PGA Tour and LIV Golf players competing on one unified circuit should a deal go ahead between his tour and the financiers of LIV Golf, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The golf world eagerly awaits what that reunification will look like.
But for now, it’s clear the Joaquin Niemann, and LIV Golf, are here to stay.
