First thing first- here at Just Win Minnesota we’re going to stray away from Minnesota sports every once in awhile. Even outside the sports world in general. I’ve given my writers the green light to write about whatever is on their mind. Could be parenting tips or general societal things that annoy them. Doesn’t matter to me, as long as it’s interesting and you think people will read it.
Now- on to today’s topic: LIV Golf.
I watch and follow the PGA Tour just as closely as I do our Minnesota sports teams. Golf is my second favorite sport to watch on TV behind college football. I love the tradition, the history, and the personalities of the PGA Tour. The four majors (especially the Masters) are appointment television for me each year. The drama that comes with a tight leaderboard on Sunday of a major or even a mid-tier PGA Tour event is second-to-none. Every shot and every putt can be the difference between winning and losing.
So I’m one of the guys who has been pretty annoyed by what LIV Golf has done to the golf world. I get what they were trying to do by disrupting the professional golf industry. Honestly it probably made the PGA Tour better by having some competition. But the PGA Tour in my opinion is still a far superior product and LIV Golf is never going to get close to touching it.
First of all, have you ever tried watching a LIV Golf event? It’s a terrible viewing experience which I believe is the crux of the issue- their league is geared toward the player experience rather than the fan experience, and the fans are the ones they need to pay their bills. The shotgun start is just too hard to follow.
Part of what’s fun about the traditional PGA Tour event is you learn the holes as the last groups work their way through the course. Yeah, there may be two guys tied at the top but you know one of the guys still has that par-5 coming up that’s reachable in two. And that’s part of the pressure that comes with being in the final group. The shotgun start on LIV has taken that away. It’s way too hard to follow who’s where and it’s too hard to learn the course.
Secondly, nobody cares about the team aspect of LIV Golf. I could care less about the Crushers, or whoever else (that’s the only team name I know thanks to Bryson). Have you ever gotten excited because a certain LIV Team won an event? I couldn’t tell you which team won any of those LIV events. Golf is all about the personalities, not the teams. And if team golf was so important then LIV wouldn’t have canceled their team event. And yes, I feel the same way about the team aspect of TGL, which I do watch when it’s on. But that’s more so because I can watch guys like Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods swing a golf club on a Tuesday night in January.
Thirdly, there is no tradition on LIV Golf. What’s their most prestigious tournament? What’s the tournament they all want to win more than any other? Maybe the one in Australia? They’re all the same tournament with the same purse. There’s nothing special about winning LIV Chicago or whatever other tournament. The PGA Tour on the other hand has tournaments like The Players Championship, The RBC Heritage, The Arnold Palmer Invitational, etc. Those tournaments have tradition and history behind them. Players can win the same tournaments as Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. And when it means more to the players then it means more to the fans.
So now LIV Golf is on life support after the Saudi’s ended their funding beyond this year. There have been mixed signals coming from LIV leadership since that announcement. One second they announce they have an investor (which doesn’t sound like a slam dunk). The next second they cancel the team championship. It sounds like Jon Rahm is for sure leaving LIV at the end of this season, and I would expect many guys to follow. Even worse, the DP World Tour just announced that they are going to re-instate their suspensions next season, meaning a lot of those LIV guys are going to have to decide if they want to roll the dice and stay on LIV or go play the DP World Tour. I know what I would do if I were them.
And if I’m the PGA Tour, the only players I really want back are Jon Rahm and Bryson Dechambeau. Rahm is still one of the best players in the world and I think playing on the PGA Tour would bring him back to the top of his game. Say what you want about Bryson but he would bring eyeballs and headlines. That’s hard to pass up if you’re the PGA Tour. The rest of the LIV players can go pound sand (yes that includes Cam Smith who has been terrible since leaving LIV).
So here’s to hoping this is the end of LIV Golf. LIV- you did what you wanted to do. You came into the golf world like a bull in a china shop and shook the PGA Tour to it’s core for a hot minute. The players are making more money than ever before. The schedules are more accommodating. You did it- congratulations. But it’s time for the golf world to return to how it should be. The best players in the world playing the best tournaments in the world on the PGA Tour.
