A LIV Golf, PGA Tour reunification? Pass
TFC contributor Gary Van Sickle is of the belief that the PGA Tour doesn't need LIV Golf and vice versa, so he suggests letting them go their own way
The great philosophers Peaches and Herb once noted, “Reunited and it feels so good.”
Their message still resonates. In fact, reunification is professional golf’s current buzzword.
It sounds like a safe, peaceful word to solve the split between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.
I don’t mean to be a torpedo in a room full of red roses, but I don’t care about reunification. I like the PGA Tour and I am interested in LIV, but …
Do I suddenly have a hankering for some Dustin Johnson, whose 36-hole Masters score beat only three other players? Not at all.
When Brendan Steele won in Adelaide last weekend (despite missing short putts galore), did I think, “Gee, that could’ve been a PGA Tour win”? Nope.
Do I miss Phil Mickelson, whose finishes in LIV’s 54-man fields this year are 51, 30, 6, 52, 47, 43, 36? He couldn’t win on PGA Tour Champions Tour with that kind of play.
Am I in withdrawal without Jon Rahm, Cam Smith, Bryson DeChambeau, Tyrrell Hatton and Kevin Na? Nah. (Pardon that redundancy.) And if I was, hypothetically, I could tune in to the occasional LIV Golf telecast and get my fix. (The first LIV team playoff last weekend in Adelaide was pretty good, in fact, because the enthusiasm of the Aussie fans made for an electric atmosphere.)
The PGA Tour would be a better place with LIV’s stars, but it doesn’t need them. And LIV Golf doesn’t need the PGA Tour. It seems to be going along just fine. The Adelaide event shows that there is great interest in LIV Golf outside the U.S. Maybe LIV ought to play four, five or eight events in Australia. That country has incredible golf fans.
Reunification is a swell talking point, but that’s all it is. Let the LIV Golf players return to the U.S.? At what cost? And it doesn’t seem as if very many of them want to return to the PGA Tour. Why would they? They are riding the greatest welfare gravy train in history. Richard Bland, Peter Uihlein, Matt Jones and others are laughing all the way to their online banking apps.
I haven’t seen any signs that commissioner Jay Monahan and the PGA Tour are interested in compromising. Ditto, Greg Norman and LIV Golf.
The one factor that could change this stalemate is the $3 billion being poured into the PGA Tour by Strategic Sports Group (SSG), an investment group that also owns the Boston Red Sox, among other things. One former major champion who has no love for LIV told me that yeah, the Saudi’s are scary fellows, as Mickelson famously said. “You know who’s just as scary?” the champ added. “Investment bankers. They want a return on their money.”
The new money, which already paid off Player Equity Program payments that included $100 million to Tiger Woods and $50 million to Rory McIlroy, was just a buy-in. Now that SSG has a stake in the PGA Tour, it is going to have a voice in the tour’s direction going forward.
How do you monetize a niche sport like golf enough to make up $3 billion? I don’t see it happening in golf’s current landscape. Maybe the PGA Tour’s long-running model would have to be blown up to make that kind of money. McIlroy already suggested smaller fields and bigger purses, a suggestion not at all self-serving. Funny, that notion sounds exactly like the World Tour proposed by Norman in the 1990s that the PGA Tour shot down.
Even a new version of that old idea doesn’t sound like a $3 billion idea, either. But SSG knows more about making money than any former ink-stained wretch writer.
We’re forgetting a key point in this whole controversial affair. Thanks to LIV Golf, viewers now have more golf to watch. That’s a win for us.
Getting golf reunited might reduce our viewing options which, Peaches and Herb would agree, wouldn’t feel so good.
IT TAKES TWO
Even though the Zurich Classic was a team event, the victory by Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry counts on McIlroy’s official PGA Tour victory list. That gives him 25, the same number as Johnny Miller, Tommy Armour and Macdonald Smith, and they’re tied for 23rd on the list. That’s pretty elite company. McIlroy is 57 behind the record shared by Sam Snead and Tiger Woods.
THE RANK AND FILE
Jon Rahm is back on top in the updated Vans Ultimate LIV Golf Rankings (or VULGR as insiders call them).
Tyrrell Hatton briefly claimed the No. 1 ranking after the Masters, but Rahm piled on another third-place finish last weekend in Adelaide. In six events, Rahm has finished somewhere between third and eighth. He is Mr. Consistent. And also, surprisingly, Mr. No Wins Yet.
The VULGR rankings are based on how many opponents a player beat and how many he lost to. Adelaide winner Brendan Steele, for instance, compiled a 53-0-0 mark in his victory. Rahm, in a five-way tie for third, went 47-2-4. The rankings include the last 12 LIV events plus the Masters. Each players’ won-loss record is converted into a winning percentage.
Notable changes: Steele moved up from 34th to 17th with the Adelaide win and got his winning percentage over the .500 mark to .572. … Louis Oosthuizen is quietly enjoying a revival of his game. In his last six LIV events, he has a pair of runner-up finishes, a sixth and a seventh, and has sneaked up to No. 5 at .682. … Dustin Johnson has fallen out of the top 20. He’s currently No. 21. … Big names who have been disappointing include Phil Mickelson and Lee Westwood. Mickelson, ranked 50th, is 33-176-3 in his last four tournaments. Westwood, No. 51, has cracked the top 30 only once in his last eight appearances and is 35-171-6 in the last four events. … Hudson Swafford, returning from hip surgery last year, continues to struggle. His 52nd-place finish in Adelaide was his fourth finish of 50 or worse in six events so far, leading to his .128 mark. The buzz is fading from Anthony Kim. He came in last in Adelaide. His four finishes have been 53, 53, 50, 54, for a 6-206-0 mark and a dismal .028 percentage.
VULGR (thru LIV Golf Adelaide)
1. Jon Rahm, .808
2. Tyrrell Hatton, .782
3. Bryson DeChambeau, .768
4. Talor Gooch, .685
5. Louis Oosthuizen, .681
6. Dean Burmeister, .678
7. Richard Bland, .677
8. Joaquin Niemann, .670
9. Cameron Smith, .657
10. Abraham Ancer, .650
11. Cameron Tringale, .621
12. Sebastian Munoz, .610
13. Patrick Reed, .604
14. Brooks Koepka, .585
15. Sergio Garcia, .583
16. Laurie Canter, .574
17. Brendan Steele, .572
18. Jason Kokrak, .561
19. Marc Leishman, .560
20. Charles Howell, .546
21. Dustin Johnson, .534
22. Paul Casey, .532
23. Eugenio Chacarra, .529
24. Carlos Ortiz, .528
25. Kevin Na, .527
26. Henrik Stenson, .526
27. Caleb Surrat, .525
28. Harold Varner, .522
29. Peter Uihlein, .515
30. David Puig, .502
31. Matt Jones, .498
32. Scott Vincent, .490
33. Adrian Meronk, .479
34. Lucas Herbert, .459
35. Mito Pereira, .455
36. Ian Poulter, .447
37. Sam Horsfield, .445
38. Anirban Lahiri, .443
39. Matthew Wolff, .442
40. Graeme McDowell, .407
41. Thomas Pieters, .396
42. Branden Grace, .395
43. Pat Perez, .371
44. Andy Ogletree, .354
45. Jinichiro Kozuma, .341
46. Charl Schwartzel, .334
47. Bubba Watson, .333
48. Danny Lee, .318
49. Kalle Samooja, .300
50. Phil Mickelson, .295
51. Lee Westwood, .284
52. Martin Kaymer, .273
53. Kieran Vincent, .236
54. Hudson Swafford, .112
55. Anthony Kim, .028