Kim the man of the moment but Chacarra's LIV win has long-term significance

Sport lovers are always on the hunt for the next big thing and golf's latest rising star issued a statement on the PGA Tour by winning the Shriners Children's Open in Las Vegas on Sunday.

After rubber-stamping his PGA Tour playing rights with a win at the Wyndham Championship in August, Tom Kim produced a perfect performance at TPC Summerlin last week, sending the PGA Tour hype machine into overdrive with his three-shot win.

"Chugga chugga, chugga chugga, choo choo! Get out of the way; the Tom Kim train just became an express headed straight to superstardom."

That's a direct quote from the PGA Tour website in the immediate aftermath of the Shriners. For those in need of some context, Kim's nickname is derived from a childhood love of Thomas the Tank Engine.

The article goes on to describe how Kim is the first player since Tiger Woods to win two PGA Tour titles before turning 21 and, to be fair to writer Ben Everill, he is quick to acknowledge that comparisons between a two-time winner and an 82-time winner are ridiculously premature.

But, while Kim's Vegas performance felt important in the context of his own rapidly ascending career, the victory of Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra at LIV Golf Bangkok could prove to be a game-changer in the future of the sport at professional level.

The first five events in the mega-money Saudi-backed LIV Invitational Series went the way of established stars.

Charl Schwartzel, Branden Grace and Henrik Stenson claimed the first three tournaments before Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith, the two best players on the breakaway circuit, won in Boston and Chicago. Some of these triumphs, each worth $4m apiece to the winner, were surprising on current form but not in the wider context of these players' careers.

Then came Chacarra, the 22-year-old Spaniard who had played in just eight professional events before signing with LIV, the last of which saw him miss the cut at the Wells Fargo Championship in May.

The former world number-two amateur was a college star at Oklahoma State, the golf program which also produced Viktor Hovland, Rickie Fowler and Chacarra's fellow LIV members Talor Gooch and Matt Wolff.

Tom Kim picked up a second PGA Tour title at the Shriners Children's OpenCredit: Icon Sportswire

College stardom doesn't always guarantee future fame and fortune but winning golf tournaments does and Chacarra will feel that his decision to join LIV, rather than toil away searching for PGA Tour starts, has been vindicated after he banked a bumper $4m payday on Sunday.

That's almost as much as Kim has made in total PGA Tour career earnings, and it's more than fellow rising star Sahith Theegala has picked up in his entire career, having won several major accolades in college including the Haskins Award, golf's equivalent of college football's coveted Heisman Trophy.

LIV's long-running quest for legitimacy took another turn in the earlier part of the week when they announced a strategic partnership with the lesser-known MENA Tour in an attempt to secure world ranking points.

The OWGR (Official World Golf Ranking) were quick to rebuff this slightly cynical attempt at exploiting a loophole but, with LIV CEO Greg Norman seemingly not married to the idea of 54-hole no-cut events, they could still achieve that goal sooner rather than later.

As a product, LIV is fine but it's far from groundbreaking. The team concept is contrived and the shotgun start, while useful for punters wishing to avoid the dreaded draw bias, makes it difficult to work out who is truly in the driving seat when tournaments reach the sharp end.

Rory McIlroy's final-round tussle with Smith at the Open was one of the most memorable moments of the golfing year because it came at St Andrews with the Claret Jug on the line, not because there was $4m up for grabs. I could take a guess at how much Smith won that afternoon, but I'd almost certainly be wrong and, frankly, I don't really care.

With each star who decides to make the leap – and there will surely be more, regardless of any intervention from McIlroy, Woods or the other PGA Tour loyalists – golf in general gets weaker because the product gets diluted further. Two average tournaments do not make for better viewing than one great one.

However, Chacarra's win represents a watershed moment for the breakaway circuit and it was fascinating to see Jon Rahm namecheck his fellow Spaniard moments after winning the Spanish Open on the DP World Tour.

Rahm, it appears, is much more open to the idea of cooperation than the steadfast McIlroy and it may soon be inevitable that golf's traditional powers will have to come to some form of compromise because both the PGA Tour and DP World Tour are under serious threat.

Like it or not, the LIV Series, with seemingly limitless spending power and no pressing need to be commercially viable, looks here to stay and it could take over if the next Chacarra or Kim makes the tough but understandable decision to put finances first.

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