Augusta, Georgia, sits a few hundred miles southeast of the path of totality for today’s much-anticipated solar eclipse across North America, but the home of the Masters will offer a prime viewing spot to catch another form of shade.
PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf.
It’s a golf rivalry with a tradition unlike any other.
The PGA Tour’s Rory McIlroy and LIV’s Bryson DeChambeau, who have orbited in opposite golf galaxies during the professional game’s contentious two-year spat, united at least in spirit last week on one theme: the infighting must stop, and soon.
“ ... with the fighting and everything that’s went on over the past couple years, people are just getting really fatigued of it, and it’s turning people off men’s professional golf. And that’s not a good thing for anyone.”
RORY McILROY
“If you look at the TV ratings of the PGA Tour this year, they’re down 20 percent across the board. That’s a fifth. That’s big,” Rory McIlroy said last week at the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio. “I would say the numbers on LIV aren’t great either in terms of the people tuning in. I just think with the fighting and everything that’s went on over the past couple years, people are just getting really fatigued of it, and it’s turning people off men’s professional golf. And that’s not a good thing for anyone.”
DeChambeau, speaking at LIV’s event last week at Trump National Doral near Miami, sounded a similar theme.
“We can’t keep going in this direction,” said DeChambeau, one of the early defectors to the Saudi-funded tour, which is continuing to negotiate with the PGA Tour. “It’s great to have the majors where we all come together, but we want to be competing – at least I want to be competing – every week with all of the best players in the world.”
This week at Augusta National Golf Club, he and others will get their wish, albeit temporarily. But don’t expect a united front for the first major championship of the season.
LIV Golf will send 13 members to the Masters, including seven past champions, and each might be wearing a chip on his shoulder. Jon Rahm, the 2023 winner, was a PGA Tour member and an outspoken critic of LIV Golf at this time last year when he slipped into the green jacket.
“There [are] quite a few major champions in LIV, and there are a few that are major-champion-quality golfers,” Rahm told Global Golf Post’s Ron Green Jr. and assembled media before last week’s LIV event at Doral. “So just pure numbers, if you go with math, wouldn’t be the highest, but I’m confident that one of us can get it done this year.”
Another of LIV’s former Augusta champions, Sergio García, fanned the us-vs.-them flames with a tweet accompanying a group photo of the LIV’s Masters entrants that read, “We’re coming for the green jacket.”
LIV hyped its event at Doral, a longtime PGA Tour stop on the road to Augusta, as a de facto Masters prep. LIV’s Phil Mickelson, a three-time Masters champ, told GGP’s Green from the Blue Monster: “This is a great place to get ready for Augusta.”
It’s a storyline that could eclipse all others this week. READ MORE and MORE
Tiger Woods will put a streak of 23 consecutive made cuts on the line this week at the Masters when he makes his 26th career start at Augusta National. Woods, 48, a five-time winner of the green jacket, has finished only two of his six PGA Tour starts in the past two years, marred by three WDs and a missed cut. In his lone start of the year, he withdrew after 24 holes of the Genesis Invitational in February, citing an illness that later was diagnosed as the flu. He quit last year’s Masters before play resumed in the weather-delayed third round, citing plantar fasciitis in his surgically repaired right foot. Woods arrived at Augusta National late Sunday afternoon and went immediately to the first green to practice chipping and putting around the course. He is scheduled to speak with the media at 11 a.m. EDT Tuesday in Augusta. READ MORE
Cameron Smith is expected to be able to play in the Masters this week despite withdrawing from last weekend’s LIV Golf Miami event at Trump National Doral in Florida with a reported case of food poisoning. Although Smith, 30, of Australia, has plummeted to No. 62 in the world ranking since joining LIV in late 2022, he is eligible for the Masters by virtue of his 2022 Open Championship victory. READ MORE
Raj Mehta, Getty Images
The PGA Tour plans to send a memo to tournament directors today that will outline how the events must create fees to supplement rising prize funds, according to a report by Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard, who cited multiple unnamed sources.
As the tour increases prize money to counter the rise of LIV Golf, tournaments will have to help sweeten the pot. Signature events, which feature $20 million purses, are being told in the memo to pay an extra $1 million. Full-field events will be hit with an extra $500,000 mandate, and opposite-field events must ante up another $250,000, according to the report.
Regarding any potential effect on tournaments’ contributions to charity, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan says in the memo that “nothing is changing on that front.” READ MORE
Anthony Kim peeled back a few layers of the mystery surrounding his recent return to professional golf.
Speaking with Global Golf Post’s Ron Green Jr. and other assembled media before last week’s LIV Golf Miami event at Trump National Doral, Kim presented himself as “a totally different person” from the renegade three-time PGA Tour winner who abruptly vanished from the game in 2012.
“I’m hoping to help other people understand that life, you know, can throw a lot of s*** at you, but you go through tough things and they make you tougher, and you can make it through,” said Kim, now 38 and a married father who conceded that injury and addiction led to his downfall.
“When doctors are telling you that you may not have much time left, that’s a pretty rude awakening,” he said without delving into the details.
In an interview with LIV Golf’s David Feherty titled “The Journey Back,” Kim acknowledged, “I played my whole career without a full deck.” More details are expected to be released soon in a documentary. Meanwhile, Kim has finished near the bottom of LIV’s 54-player fields in his three starts. READ MORE
TAP-INS
Heavy rain washed out the final two rounds of the Australian Women’s Classic, prompting officials with the Ladies European Tour to make an unusual decision: co-winners were declared, the prize money was unofficial and no Order of Merit points were awarded. Denmark’s Nicole Broch Estrup, Taiwan’s Pei-Ying Tsai and Australia’s Jess Whitting were declared joint winners after their opening rounds of 6-under 66 at Bonville Golf Resort in New South Wales. READ MORE
Guy Kinnings began his role last week as the fifth CEO in the 52-year-history of the European Tour Group with a promise to “help shape the next exciting phase in its evolution.” Kinnings, 60, an Englishman who was promoted from deputy CEO and head of the Ryder Cup, replaced Keith Pelley, who resigned after nine years to return to his native Canada as CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. READ MORE
The DP World Tour and the Korean PGA have signed an agreement with automaker Genesis to merge two events into the co-sponsored Korea Championship. The tournament, to be played October 24-27 at Jack Nicklaus Golf Club in Incheon, South Korea, is part of the tours’ strategic alliance. READ MORE
Allisen Corpuz is among eight past champions who are exempt for this year’s U.S. Women’s Open, the USGA announced in disclosing that it has received 1,897 entrants for the national championship on May 30-June 2 at Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Country Club. The number of entrants ranks second all-time to the 2,107 received for last year’s USWO at Pebble Beach (California) Golf Links. READ MORE
Compiled by Steve Harmon