Losing the will to LIV
Golf's great divide may finally be inching toward a solution. Unless it isn't.
From the moment at which LIV Golf launched more than three years ago, I found it confusing.
Almost everything about LIV, the breakaway league bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, was positioned as an improvement on fusty old golf. They played loud music at the tournaments, there were fewer holes per event and shotgun-start tee-times — both elements intended to make for shorter, exciting television windows — and, most different of all, they had teams. As much as everyone involved talked about these innovations like they had turned the golf world on its ear, as though average fans were caught up in whether the Crushers or the Fireballs could give the 4 Aces a run for the LIV team title, I don’t think it’s being unfair to say that the golf world basically hasn’t given a shit.
Like, at all. LIV has absolutely made its stars obscenely rich, thanks to the seemingly bottomless pile of PIF money that both lured PGA Tour defectors over in the first place and has continued to be doled out in the form of giant purses. But as a product, it’s a non-entity in the traditional big golf markets of North America and Europe. Tournaments frequently bring stories of tickets being given away, and television ratings have been so small as to be almost negligible. Just the latest example of that: LIV’s fourth season opened last weekend in Saudi Arabia, played under floodlights there so it could be shown in the United States during the day, for the first time ever on a real U.S. cable channel (Fox Sports), and the event averaged around 40,000 viewers for Saturday’s final round.
That is almost impossibly low. It’s a number that is not much beyond People Who Forgot to Turn Off the Channel. The PGA Tour’s final round in Phoenix on Sunday averaged more than 2.8 million viewers on CBS, or a number about 50 times higher than the LIV audience. LIV’s numbers are even dwarfed by the audiences for the TGL, the new tech-heavy golf-like-substance in which PGA stars play on simulators in an arena in Florida, which have drawn audiences of close to one million viewers on ESPN in the States. (Canadian viewership numbers for any of this are not released publicly and are almost impossible to procure.)
It is probably not a coincidence that as LIV staggers out of the gate for another season, talk of “reunification” with the PGA Tour has intensified. Here’s Rory McIlroy saying that he thinks U.S. President Donald Trump is in the PGA Tour’s corner in negotiations between the PIF and PGA Tour that have going on for almost two years now:
McIlroy said Trump told him he’s not a fan of LIV golf’s 54-hole team stroke play format despite the fact LIV Golf has or will host seven events in its four-year history at Trump’s courses in New Jersey, Virginia and Miami, paying the Bedminster and Doral courses for the privilege. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has received a reported $2 billion investment into his private equity firm from the PIF.
“I was like, but you’ve hosted their events,” McIlroy said. “He was like, yeah, but it doesn’t mean that I like it. So I think he’s on the tour’s side.”]
That same story also included comments from PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, which caused one eyebrow to arch a little:
When asked if unification means an end to LIV Golf, Monahan said: “What it means is the unification of the game, which is what we have been and are focused on. And candidly, that’s what fans want.”
It seems notable that Monahan, when asked about the possible end of LIV, did not say: No.
McIlroy, who could have been wearing an “I Hate LIV” hat these past few years given how consistently he has disapproved of the breakaway tour, is now talking like more of a peacemaker. He said in San Diego this week that everyone needs to “get over it” and be friends again, partly because LIV’s arrival inflated PGA Tour purses.
“We're playing for a $20 million prize fund this week. That would have never happened if LIV hadn't have come around.
“I think everyone's just got to get over it and we all have to say, OK, this is the starting point and we move forward. We don't look behind us, we don't look to the past. Whatever's happened has happened and it's been unfortunate, but reunification, how we all come back together and move forward, that's the best thing for everyone.” — Rory McIlroy
OK, fine. But while it’s true that the Tour now makes a lot more money available to top-tier stars like McIlroy who qualify for its signature events, the guys who are grinding it out every week just to make cuts and try to retain their Tour cards probably won’t be nearly as keen to just declare “Bygones!” and let the LIV guys back into PGA Tour fields, taking up spots that would have been available to the grinders. The defectors gave up their Tour status to go make truckloads of money in events that no one cared about — should they really be given the same treatment as the guys who have been trying to compete in PGA events every week on merit?
It is also unclear if LIV Golf even wants to let itself be absorbed into the PGA Tour or whatever the next iteration of the Tour is called. This thing was said to be a labour of love for Yasir Al-Rumayaan, the PIF chairman and a close ally of the kingdom’s ruler. He is said to have advocated for the team format, and there was talk not that long ago that the four-player “franchises” would be putting themselves up for sale, hoping to make millions from golf-nut billionaires. (That hasn’t happened.) How would “reunification” even happen without binning off much of what made LIV different in the first place?
It probably wouldn’t, is the short answer. These next weeks, and months, most likely, will tell us if that’s, in fact, where we are.
Weekend Reading
Public infrastructure project or fever dream? For the Toronto Star, I wrote about Doug Ford’s plan to build a tunnel under Highway 401. Let’s just say I’m skeptical of the concept.
Thanks, Gary. For theScore, my column on how the 4 Nations Face-Off is, more than anything, a reminder of all that we have missed.
The tank that didn’t take. Also for theScore, my column on how Masai Ujiri didn’t stay committed to a rebuild for very long. No one should be surprised, really.