Sepp Straka won for the third time in his PGA Tour career by taking home the winner’s trophy for the 3rd event on the 2025 PGA Tour Schedule Sunday evening in La Quinta, CA.

Straka wins “The American Express”, at one time in history known as “The Bob Hope Desert Classic” (a long time ago).

Straka beat out Justin Thomas by two strokes ending at 25-under for the win.

Straka earns $1.58 million and 500 FedEx points. I’d probably take the money over the points, personally.

Either way-probably not the most exciting golf tournament on the weekend of the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, but it will make many golf fans happy to see JT atop the leaderboard. It seems like he’s due to for a W.

Straker is a 31-year old Austrian who played his college golf at Georgia and earned his PGA Tour card in 2019.

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It was still a pretty phenomenal week for Thomas, who went bogey-free Sunday to card a 66.

Said Thomas after the runner-up finish, “I played well. I mean, I had a chance, it wasn’t obviously a great one on the back nine, but I was proud of myself, I did what I needed to do on the front nine today and at least be making some noise and kind of moving up the leaderboard.”

Straka had an amazing Saturday, scoring 8-under, playing the third round at 64, setting up for his win Sunday.

“Yeah, 64 around there, that was one of my best rounds I’ve ever played probably,” Straka said in his post-round press conference.

“No, I played great. I kept hitting my spots and I kept giving myself birdie looks and made a lot of those birdie looks. I putted really well that day, struck it really well that day, and any time you can have your low round of the tournament be at Stadium it’s a good thing, it means you’ve done something right that day. That was definitely the biggest round of the week for me.”

“It was a fun day, trying to manage the lead and manage my nerves,” Straka said. (I) just had a good time playing out there, and, yeah, very happy to come out with a win.”

So, it was a bit of a ho-hum week on the PGA Tour. This week the Tour heads to Torrey Pines in San Diego for the Farmers Insurance Open.

For those who thought the PGA Tour negotiating and bringing LIV Golf into the fold might slow the progress of the upstart competitor, that strategy doesn’t appear to be working.

LIV golf seems to be gaining traction.

Thursday it was announced that FOX Sports will carry the entire LIV calendar for the 2025 season across FOX brands and apps.  A move that many industry experts believed was the missing piece of the puzzle that could make the upstart golf tour funded by billions of dollars from the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of the Saudi Arabian government.

Fans will get to see LIV up close on major national TV for the first time, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm and others, at one time labeled deserters of the PGA Tour. There appears to be a softer public sentiment about the defectors compared to 2022, when Mickelson and others joined the competition.  In June 2023, the PGA Tour and LIV golf announced an agreement of sort that seems to have stalled over the last one and half years.

Here’s the announcement from FOX Sports in part, along with LIV’s big stars promoting the big agreement:

FOX Sports and LIV Golf today announced a multiyear media rights agreement that will deliver live coverage of LIV Golf League competition to viewers throughout the U.S. beginning this February with the start of LIV Golf’s third official League season.

Throughout the season, all three days of LIV Golf tournament competition will air live across the FOX family of networks, with more than half of the League’s schedule airing on FOX or FS1. Select rounds will air on FS2, FOX Business Network and the FOX Sports App, with nearly all of the LIV Golf season’s 210 hours of competition carried live across FOX Sports platforms. All LIV Golf coverage will also be streamed on the FOX Sports App and to LIV Golf+ app subscribers.

FOX also says that the LIV tournaments will continue to be produced by LIV’s “in-house team”, “maintaining its distinctive live leaderboard, enhanced drone coverage, statistics-driven graphics, and fast-paced coverage featuring nearly twice as many golf shots per hour than traditional golf coverage”

For those who call the PIF-backed LIV sportswashing, this may be “broadcast washing” to some. FOX is betting that fans are ready for something different when it comes to golf on TV.