Culture
Joaquin Niemann had to fight to get to this Masters. Now he wants to stay
MIAMI — It was exactly what he wanted. To be nervous. To back himself into a corner and force himself out. It was why Joaquin Niemann was there in the first place, flying across the world for two weeks in Australia. The Chilean golfer has always been one of the most talented players on any course he walks onto. But he was young. He was relaxed. And then he went to LIV.
He kept backing himself into that corner at the Australian Open. He gave up a two-shot lead in the final holes to allow a playoff. Then he missed a makeable birdie on the first playoff hole that would have won it. Nerves. Pressure. Good. From the fairway on the next playoff hole, Niemann stuck it, the ball five feet from the pin. Made the putt. Won the Australian Open.
That shot probably played Niemann into the 2024 Masters.
Joaquin Niemann is the hottest player in men’s golf not named Scottie Scheffler. He is 25. He just won three tournaments in six starts. He was top-five in three more. He’s got a win at Riviera and five professional wins in total. He shot a 59 at a former PGA Tour course. So you might assume he’s a star, right? But despite being No. 9 in the world on DataGolf (which ranks all players from all tours), he’s No. 91 in the Official World Golf Ranking (which does not rank LIV pros).
Niemann chose two years ago to leave the PGA Tour and captain an all-Latin American team with LIV Golf called Torque GC. He reportedly got paid $100 million to do it. And he struggled. “I didn’t play the best,” he said. He finished just 21st in the 2023 LIV standings and was out of exemptions for future majors.
So Niemann made plans during his “offseason” to go to Australia. And Dubai. And then Oman. It was a long shot, but the plan was to jump from 87th in the world to the top 50 and earn a spot in Augusta. And somewhere in these five months, Niemann might have become the golfer he was supposed to be.
“I feel like you could see a change in him,” Torque teammate Mito Pereira said.
Niemann has dug deep and found a version of himself who thrives under pressure. The question is if he can do it on the biggest stage.
Amid the celebration on the 18th green, the mics picked it up. Niemann had just won LIV’s season-opening event in February in Mexico via a playoff, two days after shooting a 59, and before the interview could even start, Niemann muttered: “But I’m not in the majors.”
Some saw it as crass. Some thought it was awesome. But it started the conversation. Niemann’s offseason trips were noticed, but it was still an under-the-radar storyline. He finished fourth at the Australian PGA Championship. He won the Australian Open. Then in January, he finished T4 at the Dubai Desert Classic on the DP World Tour. It was an incredible three weeks in competitive fields, but he was still only 59th to end the year. Niemann understood that. He figured he had to win both Australian tournaments to move into the top 50.
The greater point was that he was more focused. Pereira, a childhood friend from Chile, said Niemann has always been great but has also always been a relaxed person. The type to never think two hours ahead. But last fall Niemann started to realize he wouldn’t be in the majors in 2024, and suddenly a player who had goals of being world No. 1 had to change something. It wouldn’t matter how good Niemann was if he couldn’t play on the biggest stages. Pereira noticed him working harder, going to the gym more, pushing himself and putting himself in situations where he had to succeed.
“I think I liked that kind of pressure,” Niemann told The Athletic last week before LIV’s pre-Masters tournament. “I feel like it pushed me to be better, in a certain way to be more focused, to prepare better, to have my game in better shape.”
Two weeks after Mayakoba, Augusta National gave Niemann one of three special invitations to the Masters without mentioning his play on the breakaway tour. That same week, he played at an Asian Tour event in Oman and placed third. Niemann won again one week after that at LIV’s event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This time, an LIV course reporter interviewed Niemann and suggested he would be one of the favorites to win a major championship.
A sarcastic Niemann dryly said: “How is that possible if I’m like 100 in the world?”
Joaquin Niemann leads the season-long LIV standings after winning two of the first three events. (Lintao Zhang / Getty Images)
If Jon Rahm is the best player at LIV, and maybe Brooks Koepka is the most important, and Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson really got the project rolling, and even Cameron Smith won an Open Championship just before coming, then Niemann is the most interesting LIV player entering this Masters. Because Niemann represents something new. He is the first young player to become a top player while playing in the little-watched LIV Golf league. And golf hasn’t figured out what to do with that.
No matter how you feel about LIV or Official World Golf Ranking or Niemann’s candid comments on it all, it’s clear that Niemann cares about the majors. He cares about his place in golf. He said multiple times that he doesn’t mean to be antagonistic, and he’s not somebody who gains motivation from beating other players or making enemies. His motivation is internal, and his frustration is with his ambition and concern he won’t have opportunities to reach it. The reality is the majors carry more weight than ever in a divided tour.
“I want to win the majors,” Niemann said. “That’s the message that I want to give to myself, and that’s the approach I want to have going into these tournaments.”
And Niemann at least gains street cred for going out and earning it, while fellow LIV golfers like Talor Gooch — who won the LIV individual title last year — have criticized the Masters for not giving spots to top LIV players. That has not gone unnoticed among Niemann’s old PGA Tour peers.
“(Joaquin) has been chasing his tail around the world to get this, play his way into Augusta or show enough form to warrant an invite. I don’t know if the same can be said for Talor,” Rory McIlroy said in February.
This is the challenge for Niemann and LIV going forward. Niemann, Gooch and the 50 others on LIV made choices, and they knew there would be consequences. It’s why Niemann changed his mind nearly every day in August 2022 before leaving the PGA Tour. On the other hand, Torque teammate Carlos Ortiz told Golf Magazine’s “Subpar” podcast that players were given assurances they would receive OWGR points.
It leaves the career of players like Niemann in a fascinating spot. Most of the other stars and team captains already won their majors, earned their fame and became household names before joining LIV. Their success and acclaim were why LIV wanted them. Rahm could feel more comfortable making his move after winning a Masters and a U.S. Open, giving him exemptions for several years. Niemann’s potential and international reach are why LIV wanted him. Yes, he was once the No. 1 amateur in the world, convincingly won the Genesis Invitational and finished 11th in the Tour Championship after four years on tour, but he was just on the way to becoming a force in golf. Still very far from being one.
While Niemann was able to earn his way into most majors this season (he’s not in the U.S. Open yet but can play his way in, either via his Masters and PGA Championship performance or through open qualifying), there’s no guarantee he’ll be back next year unless he thrives in this year’s majors or takes the same route he did this winter. For reference, Koepka finished second at the 2023 Masters and won the PGA Championship but only ranks No. 31 in OWGR. Cameron Smith is No. 62. Major success doesn’t keep one ranked high forever.
Joaquin Niemann’s first LIV win came earlier this year beating Sergio Garcia in a playoff. (Manuel Velasquez / Getty Images)
LIV CEO Greg Norman withdrew the application for world ranking points in March, ending the hope to change that discussion anytime soon. The expected path for LIV to pursue now is in conversations with the four bodies that govern the majors to provide a certain amount of spots to the top-ranked players in the LIV standings, but there are no indications yet that’s realistic. And while the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (which funds LIV) remain in negotiations to mend the sport, there’s still no actual timeline to do so. And there’s little knowledge of what a deal would mean for unification.
“It’s weird because we’re playing to get better and not for people to say, ‘Hey, you’re really good, you’re gonna get this,’” Pereira said, “but obviously if you’re that good of a player and you’re not getting anything, it’s a little bit unfair.”
The more interesting element with Niemann is simply attention. Eyeballs. Understanding. If a golfer becomes one of the 10 best players in the world and nobody sees it, is he a top-10 player in the world? When LIV had the golf world’s attention to itself in February thanks to a rainout of the PGA Tour’s Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the rerun of the PGA Tour’s third round on CBS still garnered 11 times more viewers than LIV on the CW Network. Niemann is legitimately good, but he’s not earning OWGR points, he doesn’t have a clear path to majors, and his play is hardly being seen.
Golf fans already knew who Rahm, Mickelson, Koepka and Johnson were. How will the casual fans learn about Niemann?
Which brings us to this week’s Masters.
Most of these discussions are broader issues that will be determined over years and years. Right now, Niemann will play the Masters for the fifth time. He ranks No. 9 on DataGolf and has the eighth-highest odds to win at BetMGM. The respect for Niemann is there. And the best way for him to announce himself is with a great week at Augusta.
But even before the qualification dilemma, Niemann hasn’t always thrived at the majors. He has just three top-25 finishes in 19 majors, and his T16 at last year’s Masters remains his best-ever major finish. Then again, he’s made three straight Masters cuts. This is a place where guys improve over time.
The hope is that this is a different Niemann. This is the guy who went to his friends last fall and said, “I need to get into the majors.” The one who spent more time in the gym, who practiced with more focus, who understood he needed pressure on himself, and once he had it he rose to a new level.
This version of Niemann understands that OWGR No. 1 is no longer the goal it used to be.
“There’s no world rankings,” Niemann said, thinking about how to put it. “If you want to be the best, you have to win more majors than anybody else.”
This week, he’ll approach the first tee at Augusta, and his heart rate will get a little higher. His hands will get a little shakier. He’ll be nervous. And we’ll find out if Niemann is ready.
(Top photo illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; photo: Mark Metcalfe / Getty Images)
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself — or have a lasting influence on an author. With that in mind, this week’s literary geography quiz highlights the final stops for five authors after a life of writing. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
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