For LIV Golf, it was the perfect storm. Hurricane-force winds swept through the final round of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am on Sunday, clearing a clear view of the highlight of the Separatist Tour’s opening tournament of the year.
The scaling back of the PGA Tour’s original flagship event was so convenient for them that one wondered if Saudi Arabia had also bought the time.
Viewers looking for their usual Sunday golf fix had no choice but to tune into LIV’s season opener at Mayakoba, which was ultimately won on the fourth extra hole in the dark almost total by the Chilean Joaquin Niemann.
And, to be fair, for many fans it might have been a close call on what to watch, even if the $20 million Pebble Beach competition had been able to run its course complete 72 holes.
Which would you go for: LIV’s offer of Niemann fighting to defeat Spanish major winners Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia or US Open winner Wyndham Clark trying to hold off Ludvig Aberg and Matthieu Pavon on the California coast?
The latter was played in an emblematic venue on the Californian coast, but which had been brought to its knees by Clark’s extraordinary 60 on Saturday. The first was a $25 million shootout on a Greg Norman-designed resort course in Mexico, where Niemann carded a 59 in the first round.
In both events there was some sensational golf, but nothing better illustrates the madness of the modern game than the fact that a total of 134 golfers (80 in the US, 54 on LIV) competed in the week last for a total of 45 million dollars, without any result. cut to one or the other competition.
When tournaments of such limited scale bring in an average take-home pay of $336,000 per player, we can easily understand why so many people are now saying that men’s professional golf is completely out of touch with reality.
Clark was crowned the winner at Pebble Beach because the final round was made impossible, while the Mexico tournament provided an engaging climax for those who accessed the coverage.
Rahm sought to start paying back the hundreds of millions he pocketed for his change of season by jumping into the race. A potential showdown with his former Ryder Cup partner, Garcia, was enough to get me to stream the final. The website page suggested I was one of around 29,000 people watching the action.
It was a decent and welcoming cover. The commentary sought to sell the tournament to a wider audience rather than the usual narrow broadcast where traditional golf networks assume everyone watching is already a golfer.
The cadets wore microphones and the conversation with their players was informative. Refreshingly, it felt like the viewer came first.
At least, that was my impression. Is it too optimistic to suggest that competition between tours might ultimately lead to a better overall product for the fan?
That seems to be the only upside to the current mess, one that doesn’t seem any closer to being untangled as LIV enters its third season.
Neither of last weekend’s two champions can claim to have beaten the best peloton in the world because the two circuits are diluted by division. And the latest developments do not bring us any closer to a solution – quite the opposite, it seems.
The PGA Tour is emboldened by the $1.5 billion investment with Strategic Sport Group announced last week. In the future, they could also attract liquidity from the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) which supports LIV.
But PGA Tour Policy Board member Jordan Spieth says they don’t need the Saudi money, while the man he replaced on the board, Rory McIlroy, insists this influence from the Middle East is essential.
McIlroy reportedly left a WhatsApp group made up of A-list actors. It seems he has had enough of the endless arguments.
The Northern Irishman says a deal with the PIF is vital for the game’s reunification.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice continues to insist that any agreement with the PIF would have to be formally reviewed, which would result in big delays even if an agreement was reached.
And where is the Wentworth-based DP World Tour in all this? A number of players and officials feel they are experiencing the end of their formal “strategic alliance” with the PGA Tour.
The idea of a Europe that could pivot to join forces with the PIF and thus provide a route back into the establishment for LIV recruits such as Rahm and co is no longer considered as fanciful as it once was. used to be.
That said, the DP World Tour just announced FedEx as a new sponsor for this year’s French Open, a deal that is seen as a direct benefit resulting from their formalized agreement with the PGA Tour.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the gravy train with its thick, gooey fare of excess continues. LIV heads to Las Vegas for Super Bowl week while the PGA Tour sets up camp a little further south in Arizona for the rowdy WM Phoenix Open.
WM stands for waste management – which is exactly what’s needed when overly rich rival tours, with substandard products and seemingly no consistent future progression, compete for our attention.
Maybe it’s time to switch to the Weather Channel.