Casey, Niemann lead list of LIV Golf’s 2024 most improved players

Paul Casey was frustrated in not winning an individual tournament trophy during the 2024 LIV Golf season, but the Crushers GC veteran can take comfort in knowing he was the league’s most improved player.

The 47-year-old Casey finished 11th in the season-long Individual points standings, an improvement of 24 places from the previous season in which he finished 35th while battling health issues. No other returning player in 2024 jumped as many spots year over year.

Casey posted five top-10 finishes in 2024, with his best result a tie for second at LIV Golf Hong Kong when he lost in a three-man playoff to Abraham Ancer. That’s the closest Casey has come to winning in his 29 regular-season LIV Golf starts.

“There's no easy events,” Casey said. “Every time I turn up, it's Brooks [Koepka] and it's Joaco [Niemann] and Jon Rahm and Bryson [DeChambeau] and all these guys. I'm not excluding anybody, but it's where do you hide? You don't. A win is really an unbelievable achievement out here. …

“There's always somebody there playing great golf. The level of competition is so high that that is what it is. There's only 13 opportunities; it's not a lot.”

The next most-improved player in 2024 was Niemann, the Torque GC captain who won two of the season’s first three tournaments and eventually finished runner-up to Rahm for the Individual Championship. Niemann moved up 19 spots from 2023, when he finished 21st in points.

Rounding out the top five most improved: Stinger GC Captain Louis Oosthuizen, jumping 18 spots (24 to 6); his Stinger teammate Charl Schwartzel, moving up 17 spots (38 to 21); and Ancer (26 to 12) and his Fireballs GC Captain Sergio Garcia (17 to 3), who each moved up 14 spots.

Surprisingly, the top 13 returning players from 2023 each dropped in the final points standings in 2024, an indication of the improved fields due to the addition of first-year LIV players such as Individual Champion Rahm and his Legion XIII teammate Tyrrell Hatton, who finished fourth in points.

The highest returning player who actually improved his position in 2024 was the Stingers’ Dean Burmester, who jumped from 14 to 9 thanks in large part to his first LIV Golf individual title in Miami.

A total of 17 full-time returning players improved their positions in 2024, including four players who changed teams last offseason – Graeme McDowell, Matthew Wolff, David Puig and Carlos Ortiz.

2024 Most Improved Players