LIV Golf has plenty of money, but what about relevance?
PIF-backed league is embodying the 'If a tree falls in an empty forest and no one is around ... ' question. An example is Brooks Koepka's playoff win over Jon Rahm — did anyone see it or care?
Money supposedly can’t buy happiness.
I’d like to give it a shot, though. I have the skill set to be a happy billionaire. All I’m missing is that part involving the billions.
You know what else money can’t buy? Relevance.
Brooks Koepka became the first five-time winner on LIV Golf last week when he beat Jon Rahm in a playoff at The Greenbrier. LIV Golf events offer a $4 million first prize. Five times $4 million is $20. That’s impressive.
Now, name any of the other four LIV events Koepka won. For that matter, name any other LIV event.
You’d think a Koepka-Rahm playoff would be a huge deal but LIV has taken all of these players off the radar and off mainstream television. The U.S. Amateur probably got as much attention as the LIV event.
I’m not picking on LIV Golf. I follow those events as closely as anyone. (My proprietary LIV rankings are below.)
This is about big money ruining professional golf. The Saudis funding LIV Golf can keep pouring billions in as long as they want but there is no sign of the league grabbing the American public’s attention — if that’s even the audience they’re after.
The PGA Tour panicked and made a mistake by trying to keep up with LIV’s big-buck giveaways. It was an effort to keep LIV Golf from stealing more PGA Tour talent to go along with Rahm, Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith and a few other notables.
More money doesn’t equal more interest. Exhibit A pre-dates LIV Golf and that’s the FedEx Cup or the so-called playoffs.
No matter how much money the PGA Tour and FedEx keep pouring into this system, fans don’t follow along with the points system. They never have, even in the old days when Steve Sands put his masterly math skills on display for Golf Channel with frequent white-board updates of the players’ ever-changing point totals.
Last weekend’s FedEx St. Jude Championship, the FedEx Cup opener, was a good event because it had a dramatic finish. Former Masters champ Hideki Matsuyama was running away with the title until, oops, he wasn’t. He kicked away his lead, then regrouped and poured in a clutch birdie putt at the 71st hole, hit two perfect shots on the 72nd hole and holed a clinching birdie putt there.
It wasn’t good theater because Matsuyama won $4 million or because a couple of players, notably Tom Kim, wasn’t among the 50 players advancing to the next round. It was good theater because of the actual golf.
Long-term, it isn’t clear whether these current PGA Tour purse increases are sustainable. Long-time sponsors such as Honda, Farmers Insurance and Wells Fargo have bailed and a few others have one foot on a banana peel. That’s business as usual in the PGA Tour’s history. Sponsors come and go and the Tour always finds new ones.
But this time feels different. The Tour’s new eight signature events — with limited fields of 60, no cut (and no urgency) and big purses — seems flawed. With more than half of the Tour’s 125 exempt players shut out of these events, these events don’t feel fair. Pro golf has been the last bastion of meritocracy in sports. Players get what they earn. But this gives the appearance of being a closed shop.
That’s just how the game’s top players apparently want it. Since players have taken over a majority position on the tour’s governing board, all the changes have been made to benefit the top players. It’s like putting the rabbits in charge of the carrots. Or the politicians in charge of your tax dollars.
Signature events overshadow the tournaments that don’t have that status. And they overshadow them in prize money and FedEx Cup points awarded. Worse, since every PGA Tour event is in a recruiting war with every other event to attract the game’s big names, the lesser events lose out. The big names go for the guaranteed money and points.
The PGA Tour did something similar in the 1990s when it started the World Golf Championships. Same thing. Mostly no-cut events. Limited fields. All the big names. Ultimately, they were four must-play events that meant players competed in four fewer other Tour events. The Tour was stealing players from itself.
Now, imagine you’re a sponsor of a PGA Tour event that isn’t a signature event. You can’t match the signature events’ $4 million first prize or its supersized FedEx Cup points. You can’t match the number of top players competing in the signature events. You’re at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to attracting a top field. You might start to wonder why your company is dropping $15 to $20 million to sponsor your tournament.
Where the higher purses in golf seem out of whack is in the television ratings. Historically, golf telecasts don’t draw squat for ratings. They deliver a target audience advertisers want to reach (or used to) — wealthy males over 40.
The argument that golfers aren’t paid as well as athletes in other major sports such as baseball and football doesn’t fly. Those sports draw far more viewers in person and on television.
Scottie Scheffler has won nearly $28 million this year and he’s still got this week’s FedEx Cup event in Colorado, plus the FedEx Cup finale in Atlanta where first prize is an additional $18 million.
Aaron Judge, a superstar for the New York Yankees, is making $40 million this year. Scheffler could easily blow by that. Should Scottie Scheffler make more than Aaron Judge? That’s an awkward debate.
I don’t know the answer but I know this: Golf remains a niche sport and baseball isn’t.
All congratulations to Scheffler for taking advantage of the system. But if golf is really this popular with fans, why does it effectively end its season on Labor Day Weekend so it doesn’t have to go up against weekend football telecasts?
Pro golfers are loving this money machine. But is it sustainable? Or does this feel a lot more like a real-estate bubble or the dot.com bubble? Are advertisers and TV networks going to decide this sport isn’t worth this kind of money and this kind of coverage?
In a weird way, the PGA Tour’s success has almost become a problem. I bet I know what the Tour will do to solve the problem.
Throw more money at it. A lot more money.
Are you happy yet?
LIV GOLF RANKINGS (aka VULGR)
It is time for another look at Vans’ Ultimate LIV Golf Rankings (or VULGR as insiders call them at the Stepford Institute for Young Women).
You won’t be shocked to learn that Jon Rahm still holds the No. 1 ranking. You may be surprised by the name in sixth — Richard Bland, the 51-year-old whose consistency moved him ahead of stars Brooks Koepka, Sergio Garcia, Cameron Smith and Dustin Johnson.
Bland, who won two PGA Tour Champions majors this year, has turned into the Bernhard Langer/Energizer Bunny of LIV Golf. He just keeps playing well. He has three top-10s and eight top-20 finishes in 12 events and only one finish — 31st — in which he finished behind more players than he beat. Bland ranks sixth in VULGR with a .691 batting average.
Each player’s so-called batting average comes from the number of opponents he has finished ahead of, behind or tied. For instance, when Koepka beat Rahm in a playoff to win the recent Greenbrier 54-man event, he earned a 53-0-0 mark. Rahm was 52-1-0. John Caitlin, in a five-way tie at 37th, was 13-36-4.
Each player’s marks for the 2024 season are added to determine their current VULGR average, essentially a win-loss percentage. Rahm is 636-174-37 overall this season. The idea is to determine which players are playing the best against their LIV Golf peers. The four major championships are also included for those LIV players who competed, but results are capped to make them equal to the reduced-field Masters size (89 players) so the majors are equal in numerical value.
Highlights, low lights and Bud Lights of the latest VULGR stats:
Why isn’t Bryson DeChambeau No. 1 after his runner-up PGA Championship finish and U.S. Open victory? Because he missed the cut at the Open Championship and that 0-88-0 mark dinged his average. Imagine a star baseball player going through an oh-for-88 slump. … The aforementioned Caitlin, a former University of New Mexico star, is a relative newcomer to LIV Golf and would rank 12th with a .643 mark but he hasn’t met the VULGR minimum of eight events played. … Garcia made a significant jump to 7th, thanks to a LIV win, a 13th-place U.S. Open finish and an eighth at Greenbrier.
Phil Mickelson recently mentioned his career may be nearing its end and his LIV stats back that up. He has fallen to 50th, has only one top-20 this season and a VULGR average of .259. … Anthony Kim had his first finish better than 46th at Greenbrier, a 36th that lifted his disappointing season mark to .094 — that’s a stunning 47-477-6. The Mendoza Line (an old baseball benchmark for weak hitters) is still not within sight for Kim. … Mito Pereira, the Chilean whose tough finish cost him the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills, has taken the down elevator in the rankings. Pereira managed one eighth this year but no other finish better than 28th. He has dropped to 45th at .325.
Johnson, the original dominant force of LIV, has slipped to 25th and for the first time has a sub-500 average of .489. Johnson’s last five LIV finishes are 51, 17, 31, 20 and 33. … Other familiar names who have slipped out of the top 40 include Ian Poulter (41), Lee Westwood (42) and Bubba Watson (49).
THE VULGR RANKINGS (Through August 20)
1. Jon Rahm, .773
2. Bryson DeChambeau, .741
3. Tyrrell Hatton, .741
4. Joaquin Niemann, .736
5. Paul Casey, .697
6. Richard Bland, .691
7. Sergio Garcia, .669
8. Louis Oosthuizen, .663
9. Marc Leishman, .657
10. Abraham Ancer, .653
11. Dean Burmester, .653
12. Sebastian Munoz, .647
13. Brooks Koepka, .642
14. Talor Gooch, .638
15. Cameron Smith, .625
16. Matthew Wolff, .610
17. Patrick Reed, .604
18. Cameron Tringale, .592
19. Carlos Ortiz, .560
20. Charles Howell, .558
21. Anirban Lahiri, .539
22. Lucas Herbert, .505
23. Jason Kokrak, .503
24. Kevin Na, .490
25. Dustin Johnson, .489
26. Sam Horsfield, .478
27. Brendan Steele, .472
28. Matt Jones, .460
29. Eugenio Chacarrio, .453
30. Thomas Pieters, .450
31. Graeme McDowell, .447
32. David Puig, .441
33. Caleb Surrat, .437
34. Henrik Stenson, .436
35. Peter Uihilein, .436
36. Adrian Meronk, .411
37. Scott Vincent, .400
38. Harold Varner, .373
39. Martin Kaymer, .360
40. Charl Schwartzel, .339
41. Ian Poulter, .336
42. Lee Westwood, .334
43. Danny Lee, .333
44. Branden Grace, .325
45. Mito Periera, .325
46. Jinichiro Kozuma, .322
47. Kalle Samooja, .314
48. Pat Perez, .311
49. Bubba Watson, .306
50. Kieran Vincent, .303
51. Andy Ogletree, .259
52. Phil Mickelson, .249
53. Hudson Swafford, .102
54. Anthony Kim, .094
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I am very surprised the “opposite field “ events are still getting sponsors. They know there will be no big names playing.
Gary, you should have quoted one of the great Americans, Eunice “Lovey” Wentworth Howell III: “Anyone who says money can’t buy happiness doesn’t know where to shop”.