A happy Leishman calls 2024 ‘best year of my life’

Outside of a weekend in England in which he suffered appendicitis and needed emergency surgery, Marc Leishman had an enjoyable year in 2024.

While it didn’t include an individual trophy, it did involve three team trophies with his all-Australian Ripper GC, including an emotional playoff win in their home tournament in Adelaide, and then capping it off with the season-ending Team Championship in Dallas.

He still has a chance to claim individual hardware, starting with this week’s Australian PGA Championship followed by next week’s Australian Open, with his fellow Rippers Cameron Smith and Lucas Herbert also in the field. A win would be Leishman’s first individual trophy in his native country since 2008 when he competed on the developmental Von Nida Tour. 

Meanwhile, life beyond the ropes, he said, has never been so fun. He gets to enjoy the camaraderie with his Ripper teammates at tournaments, and his family on the numerous off-weeks afforded to him by LIV Golf’s 14-tournament schedule.

"I've put it down as a pretty good year on the golf course and off the golf course, it's probably the happiest I've ever been,” Leishman told the Australian media this week in the buildup to the PGA at Royal Queensland. "It's been the best year of my life.

"Getting to spend so much time with my kids, they came to a few tournaments and those that they came to, I played really well. Travelling around with seven or eight of us, eating out for dinner and having fun every night, I've really enjoyed that about it.

"Playing some good golf and winning as a team — it's very rare in golf that you get to actually celebrate with other people when you win who are equally as happy as you are, and that's the cool thing about what we get to do now.

"We've had some memorable nights out and made some great memories all around."

The 41-year-old finished a LIV Golf career-best 15th in the season-long Individual points race in 2024, with his best result a tie for second in Singapore. He was trending nicely going into LIV Golf UK by JCB but was forced to withdraw prior to the second round with appendicitis.

After two weeks off, he bounced back with a tie for fourth at Greenbrier. It was his seventh top-10 finish in 30 regular-season starts since joining LIV Golf in the middle of the inaugural 2022 season.

The most recent of his 16 professional wins came in 2021 at a two-man team event in New Orleans on the PGA Tour when he partnered with his Ripper captain Smith to win a playoff against the South African tandem of Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel.

His last solo title was a year earlier when he held off Jon Rahm at Torrey Pines.

Now, all those players – Smith, Rahm, Oosthuizen and Schwartzel – are among his individual competitors at each LIV Golf event.

“The fields are just so good every week,” Leishman said. “You're playing against some really good players and it's hard to win out there. Obviously, that's a box I'd like to tick, to win on LIV individually.”