PGA-LIV rift good for Augusta, not the game
AUGUSTA, GA. Magnolia Lane is beckoning. The famous azaleas are blooming.
But with the Masters set to begin Thursday, make no mistake: men’s pro golf is in grave danger of withering. It’s certainly in the midst of a sad devolution unlike any other. Most of a year since the PGA Tour disrupted the RBC Canadian Open to announce a supposed “merger” with rival LIV Golf, that grand promise of a lucrative coming together between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has yet to be consummated. While Tiger Woods and other playing members of the tour’s policy board met last month in the Bahamas with PIF head Yasir Al-Rumayyan, an agreement on Saudi investment — and an implied truce in the economic war that has divided the sport — does not appear imminent.
Until one materializes, there’s trouble. While the emergence of LIV Golf has made the world’s top players far richer, it has come with costs far beyond ballooning purses. The rift has alienated fans turned off by the rampant greed and blatant hypocrisy. And recent evidence suggests it’s been murder on PGA TV ratings, which by one calculation are down 20 per cent across the board.
“That’s a fifth, that’s big,” Rory McIlroy told reporters in the leadup to last week’s Valero Texas Open. “Twenty per cent’s a pretty jarring number.”
If there’s a positive, let’s face it: The current state of affairs is good for the majors, at least in the short term. Just as Augusta National Golf Club styles itself as a picture-perfect snapshot of another era, the majors remind us of what pro golf used to be. This year, the Masters, PGA Championship, Open Championship and U.S. Open will be the only four testing grounds on which the world’s best will reliably compete against one another. If four, too, is a jarring number (far too small, by any measure) it’s the number of the moment.
There’ll be 13 LIV defectors here, including reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm, who jumped ship for a reported $350 million (U.S.) after capturing his first green jacket. Looking back at last year’s leaderboard, LIV rebels figured far more prominently than perhaps anyone expected. Three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson tied for second with fellow LIV tourist Brooks Koepka. Former Masters winner Patrick Reed, another LIV sellout, tied for fourth.
That few have paid much attention to LIV’s product, making this week the first time an audience of any size has watched Rahm and Koepka and Mickelson since last year, has the potential to make the Masters far more watchable than any of the tournaments before it this year.
What’s good for Augusta isn’t good for the game.
“The only answer is for us to somehow come together in some sort of terms where it makes sense, and for us to be playing all again in somewhat of the same boat,” LIV defector Bryson DeChambeau told reporters at the breakaway tour’s Miami event last week. “It’s great to have the majors where we come together, but we want to be competing … with all of the best players in the world.”
There are those who’d shake their head at the disingenuousness of DeChambeau offering to supply the glue to put golf back together, since he’s among those who’ve become absurdly wealthy (to the tune of a reported $125 million) while wilfully breaking it apart. And therein lies the sticking point in the allegedly ongoing negotiations. Considering how LIV rebels have luxuriated in Saudi millions, it’s understandable why the PGA loyalists don’t all take kindly to the concept of welcoming back the turncoats as though nothing happened.
While LIV member and two-time Masters winner Bubba Watson recently insisted this Masters will be without the “tension” of last year’s — which was Mickelson’s first since he skipped the 2022 event in the wake of controversial comments explaining his rationale for joining LIV — a reduction in outward hostility hasn’t yet produced palpable progress on repairing the sport. Pressed to explain why things are the way they are, golfers sometimes can’t help but point fingers.
As world No. 1 and 2022 Masters winner Scottie Scheffler said recently: “If the fans are upset, then they should look at the guys that left. We had a tour, we were all together, and the people that left are no longer here. At the end of the day, that’s where the splintering comes from.”
This week, at least, a divided sport’s best players can agree on one thing: There’s nowhere they’d rather be than Augusta National with spring in bloom and a divisive rivalry playing out on the fairway for the first of four times this year.
“I don’t think there’s any difference whether you play the PGA Tour, LIV, European Tour or Sunshine Tour. It really doesn’t make a difference,” Rahm said last week. “The Masters is the Masters.”