This week's 88th Masters serves as golf's group hug. Sports need that. It turns out that dogs and cats can play together peacefully. I wish there was a clear path to getting more of the same.
“The best players in the world are back together,” Augusta National president Fred Ridley said Wednesday. “Competition will be fierce. Families will be reunited and friendships renewed. The best that golf has to offer will be on center stage.”
These words were prepared, written down, and read aloud. Like everything at Augusta, they were intentional. It's important for the people who run golf's most prestigious tournaments to acknowledge that the sport they are trying to grow is broken at the highest level.
“You know, we've never had the best players in the world come together week in and week out,” protested Brooks Koepka, the five-time major champion and the most accomplished LIV player, who finished runner-up here last year. . “It's something that's been forgotten.”
fair enough.But before LIV, the best players did it Participate in the same tournament every week. I can't do that now. The PGA Tour labeled those who supported LIV as traitors. There is currently no way back.
This is tiring. But it's also inevitable. At this tournament last year, the first Masters after the sport's great split, there was an uneasy curiosity about how everything would play out. There was obvious tension between the two sides, and anger was in the air between Azalea. There was also a lot of skepticism about how well prepared LIV golfers were. They don't play very often. Their tournament is only 54 holes. There are no ultimatums to get paid. The number of iron sharpening irons has decreased.
Given Koepka's 54-hole lead, Phil Mickelson's Sunday upset, and Patrick Reed's fourth-place tie — not to mention Koepka's subsequent win at the PGA Championship — those questions are… Almost disappeared. LIV doesn't have the depth of his PGA Tour, but he used the offseason to poach Jon Rahm, his champion at the previous Masters. This makes LIV his second of the top five betting favorites here, joining Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele, who are ranked in the top five in the world.
Oh, about that ranking…
“We believe that that legitimately determines who is the best player in the game,” Ridley said Wednesday, citing the Official World Golf Ranking, one of the tools Major League Baseball uses for qualification. I believe that.” Masters officials are part of the group that devises and coordinates those rankings. Masters officials are therefore part of a group that LIV has decided has no place among them. Ridley clarified Wednesday that that hasn't changed.
“It would be difficult to establish any type of point system that has any connection to the rest of the world of golf, because the world is fundamentally – for the most part, but not entirely – closed. It's a great shop,” Ridley said. He's right. Players cannot earn their way to LIV through mini-tours or qualification schools. They are purchased by the Saudi overlords to play in a format that no other pro circuit can imitate. Therefore, the LIV field is not determined by merit.
However, Masters can make their own rules. Yes, the top 50 players in the rankings will receive an invitation at the end of the year and the week before the Masters. Niemann, a 25-year-old Chilean, was unable to qualify for either. Still he's here.
“We're invited players. We can make adjustments as needed,” Ridley said.
Joaquin, you've played on the DP World Tour twice and won the Australian Open, so you're going to be playing. congratulations. Not so for Taylor Gooch, who won three times during LIV's 2023 schedule and finished at the top of the circuit's standings for the year. This notoriously angers Gooch.
“If Rory McIlroy leaves and completes his mission, [career] “In a Grand Slam where you don't have some of the best players in the world, you just get an asterisk,” Gooch said in a February interview with Australian Golf Digest, adding that McIlroy was just short of achieving that feat at the Masters. He pointed out that it was just far away. “That’s just the reality.”
That is Gooch's reality and no one else's.
And indeed, a year after the watershed moment of the first Masters of Golf, that's all that remains. Schauffele, a mainstay on the PGA Tour, played a practice round Tuesday with LIV mainstay Dustin Johnson. My temper was boiling. There are olive branches everywhere. It's full of smiles.
All that remains is chaos and a sport that is far from what it should be. Last June, a “framework agreement” was reached in complete secrecy between representatives of the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed Public Investment Fund. That's because, publicly at least, the framework has no flooring or drywall installed. So the sport's most important characters wait in wonder.
“They're going to have to find a way to assess how the LIV players are doing and figure out how they can make money,” Rahm said. Rahm won so he can play here for the rest of his life, but his exemptions to other majors will eventually expire. . “…There's got to be a way for some players to advance. That's the best I can say. I don't really know what that looks like.”
This means that, after a long period of time, there is a consensus that no one knows what golf will look like next year, in 2030, and beyond.
“I still love the PGA Tour and want it all.” [works out for] It was great and I still hope to compete there again someday,” Rahm said. “I mean, you miss competing with certain people, right?”
He will play against them this week. Afterwards, LIV will head to Singapore. The PGA Tour is back in Hilton Head, and SC Golf's stars will go their separate ways before reuniting in Louisville next month for the PGA Championship. And with each week, month, and year that passes without a solution, a sport that was supposed to grow is instead falling apart and becoming less than the sum of its parts.
