Dustin Johnson’s LIV Golf team is hiring Chris Rosaasen as its new GM. He will serve in this role on a lengthy contract, and he fills the role left by sports attorney David Cornwell. Cornwell is expected to continue working in a legal aspect for Johnson.
The 4Aces, according to Rosaasen, will soon be profitable. It can be difficult for new ventures to turn a profit quickly, and LIV Golf and its teams are all relatively new. However, Rosaasen says they’ll be profitable by 2025.
The 4Aces pay Rosaasen’s salary. Each team makes money from sponsorship revenue, as well as merchandise sales and winnings from tournaments. Based on this (the 4Aces are currently only middle of the road in team standings, but Johnson is third in individual points), the new GM believes they can turn a profit sooner rather than later.
Part of this assessment comes from the fact that Rosaasen has already gotten very close to completing deals with sponsors on multi-year deals, all of them reportedly worth the mid-seven figures every year. That will go a long way towards them turning a profit.
Extracurricular, the apparel brand run by the new GM, signed on with 4Aces last year, so there was already a strong relationship. Rosaasen said via Sports Business Journal:
“At first I laughed at him and said I don’t have time to do that. But the opportunity was too good to turn down if this is going to turn out what we think it’s going to be.”
Pretty soon, this could be looked back on as a major hire and a stellar move for the LIV team that includes Johnson, Pat Perez, Patrick Reed and Harold Varner III. Talor Gooch is no longer on the roster.
Can Dustin Johnson win the Masters in 2024?
Dustin Johnson will be in the field for the Masters in 2024, barring an unforeseen withdrawal. He won the 2020 Masters, and that qualified him for this year’s tournament in two ways. First, winners get lifetime invites back to the tournament. Second, anyone who’s won a Major in the last five years has an invite to the Masters. Even if he’d won something else in 2020, he’d be in.
Johnson is in good form although he did struggle and finish eight over par at the 2023 visit to Augusta National. He was T12 in 2022, though, and he has decent odds to win this thing. Bet365 puts his odds at +4000, which means he has a better shot than Hideki Matsuyama, Joaquin Niemann, Brian Harman and Tiger Woods.
Johnson is still one of the world’s best golfers, even if his move to LIV Golf has tanked his OWGR rank to 316th in the world. He hasn’t been able to get points, but he’s extremely talented and will have a chance to reaffirm that in front of the best golfers of this era in early April.