With two LIV Golf starts under his belt, Tom McKibbin has already proven his worth to the league and to his Legion XIII side, posting a T7 finish in Adelaide after an impressive debut in Riyadh where a late slip cost him a top 10. He’s also been an integral part of Legion XIII’s runaway victory under the lights in Saudi Arabia, and runner-up finish Down Under, and the 22-year-old has clearly enjoyed his first weeks as a LIV player.
“Yeah, obviously the last couple of weeks have been a lot of fun, something that’s been a little bit different to me. But I’ve had a great time,” he said in a joint pre-tournament press conference with teammate Caleb Surratt and Fireballs GC player David Puig in Hong Kong, ahead of the third event of the 2025 LIV schedule.
“Australia was a whole new experience and something that was incredibly fun to be a part of, and I feel like I’ve played some very nice golf the first two weeks, so just trying to keep that going hopefully for the rest of the year.
“Yeah, I turned pro very young, and thankfully had a lot of success quite young, and hopefully I’m able to sort of take that over to here. It’s something that excites me a lot, and I’m looking forward to just playing this whole year and sort of seeing where that leaves me at the end of it.”
McKibbin began his year in Abu Dhabi where he represented Great Britain and Ireland in the Team Cup, and though rumours of a LIV move had already begun circulating, being paired with Tyrrell Hatton in the opening match and spending the week in Hatton’s company helped persuade him that the LIV move was the right one.
“We played a couple of practice rounds and played in the four-balls together, and we chatted a lot about it,” he recalled.
“He told me how he found it, what he liked about it, and we had a lot of good conversations that week, which was nice and sort of definitely eased my mind a little.”
McKibbin has never been somebody who seeks out the limelight and attention, preferring to let his golf do his talking, so as the focus of global attention in the run in to LIV Riyadh, quite how he’d fare on his debut was anybody’s guess.
As it turned out, he opened with a seven-under 65 that was the third-best round of the day and helped put Legion XIII in a commanding position and one that they’d never surrender.
“I was probably just more excited just to get started,” he explained. “Obviously the whole sort of waiting around for a few weeks, I sort of knew what had been going on and sort of waiting to get going, that probably brought out the best in me once the golf started. I was able to go out there and do my own thing and be in a place that I felt very comfortable.
“That probably helped get me off to a good start, and once that first round was over, I felt very comfortable going forward.”
If playing – and playing well – under the lights in Riyadh was an indicator that he’d made the right decision, that was rubber stamped when he got to Adelaide and witnessed what is by far the biggest and most boisterous of the events on the LIV circuit.
“I had obviously heard so much about it going into it, and then getting there and getting started and getting to the party hole or the Watering Hole for the first time and not being able to hear myself think, after that I just couldn’t believe how different and how cool that experience was,” he said. “Walking up that hole and playing that every day, and that was probably for me the first real, wow, this is really cool and something that I had never experienced and just was excited to go back to that hole every day and try and hit a better shot.
“Yeah, that was awesome.”
Hailing from the same club on the County Down outskirts of Belfast, McKibbin and Rory McIlroy will always be inexorably linked. McIlroy told the press in Dubai that McKibbin had reached out to him for advice once the LIV offer came through, and McIlroy further admitted that he’d advised against making the move.
McKibbin refused to be further drawn on what they’d discussed, but reiterated his respect for his friend and mentor, and added that, in spite of McIlroy’s advice, he felt that taking LIV up on the offer was the right decision.
“Yeah, no, I’m not going to say what he said to me or what we talked about,” he shrugged. “Obviously I respect Rory a lot and I’ve been able to be very close to him the last four, five, six years and spend a lot of time with him. Obviously I spoke to him when the opportunity came around and we had a couple of conversations.
“But ultimately, as I just said before, I just had a really good gut feeling about this, and it was something that excited me a lot. It was something different for me. I sort of felt it was a good decision for me and something that I had to go with my feeling, and only I can sort of make my own decisions. It’s something that I’m very happy I made. I’ve really enjoyed the last couple of weeks, and I think it’s going to be a great thing for me and the whole thing going forward for the future.”
One of the main draws of coming to LIV, McKibbin says, was the opportunity to play alongside and against some of the genuine top players in the world on a regular basis. Even with a PGA Tour card for 2025 secured, without being in the Signature Events, this wouldn’t have been a regular occurrence in the United States, whereas each time he tees it up on LIV, he’s got Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Tyrrell Hatton, Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith and Joaquin Niemann among others to contend with.
“It’s something that’s very cool, and being able to learn from Jon and Tyrrell and play practice rounds and play some competitive rounds, as well, with them has just been really cool to be able to do that so quickly and learn from them,” he said. “It’s going to be exciting going forward as I get to play more weeks and get to play with more guys.”
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