After many false starts, the Saudi Arabia-backed, Greg Norman-helmed venture known as the LIV Golf Invitational Series finally made real news last week with an announcement of eight tournaments in 2022, including four in the United States. LIV debuts near London in June, and its first season concludes with a team championship at an undecided site.
LIV Golf is committing $255 million on this new series in 2022 alone, on top of a 10-year, $300 million investment in the Asian Tour. That’s a lot of new capital coming into the global game.
LIV did not announce any players or corporate sponsors, but it seems poised to begin the search for one or more streaming or broadcast partners. There was speculation in media circles that the LIV Series would seek up to $500 million for its global media rights.
Also last week, the almost-forgotten Premier Golf League attempted to resurface. On the eve of the LIV announcement, the PGL, having failed to gain a meeting with the PGA Tour over many years, took to the modern-day court of appeals – social media – to explain its new theory of the case. In a minnow-swallows-the-whale scenario, it proposes a merger of sorts with the PGA Tour, one that spreads ownership shares among players on the PGA, DP World and even Korn Ferry tours, despite the fact that the latter have no legal standing with management of the PGA Tour.
Memo to the PGL: Jay Monahan isn’t big on social media.
I find several aspects of both plans worthy of skepticism. Remember, LIV Golf effectively copied the PGL playbook when it separated from the upstart new league.
Let’s begin with the 54-hole format. That sounds like an exhibition to me. Or a PGA Tour Champions event. Championship golf is 72 holes of individual stroke play. It’s been that way since the late 1800s. Heck, back when men were men, the final two rounds of the U.S. Open were played in one day. Arnold Palmer started to become “The King” in 1960 when he drove the first hole at Cherry Hills in the second 18-hole round on the final day. Ken Venturi nearly died of heat exhaustion in winning the 1964 Open at Congressional, playing 36 holes on the final day in torrid heat and humidity.
The 54-hole model also dents the corporate hospitality financial underpinning of pro golf. Corporate hospitality is an all-day affair at PGA Tour and DP World Tour events, the exception being the Waste Management party on the PGA Tour, which is an all-day/all night bacchanal. Fifty-four holes means less time entertaining customers. Less face time equals less revenue for the tournament operator. LIV won’t have to worry about this in 2022, as it does not appear to have any corporate sponsors lined up, but this will be an impediment if corporate support is expected in later years.
Now, about the shotgun-start plan. That sounds like the one-day men’s member-guest at Duck Hook Town and Country Club. Full bar service at the turn; closest to the pin on the par-3s; long drive contests on the par-5s; and beat the pro on No. 15 for pro shop credit.
Finally, 54-hole events don’t automatically qualify for Official World Golf Ranking points. That might not matter to Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter, but it does to the young guns whom Norman so desperately wants to attract. These players want to play major championships, and major fields are determined, to a great extent, by OWGR rankings.
Now, about the shotgun-start plan. That sounds like the one-day men’s member-guest at Duck Hook Town and Country Club. Full bar service at the turn; closest to the pin on the par-3s; long drive contests on the par-5s; and beat the pro on No. 15 for pro shop credit. Can you just imagine the cart brigade of players and caddies launching at noon on the first day, searching for the proper tee and ditching the cart behind a tree? You won’t see that on the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour. The late Dan Jenkins would have had a field day in the media center with this madness.
And then there are the golf courses, with at least one claiming to have agreed to host the LIV Series for a cool $5 million. Rich Harvest Farms is closer to Iowa than it is downtown Chicago, and you must scroll down a few pages of top-ranked golf courses in Chicagoland before its name appears. Trump Bedminster? Despite the former president’s claim, Pine Valley members do not chopper over to play at Bedminster. Let’s just call that what it is: fake news.
Finally, there is the team-golf aspect. I’d like to see the research that says golfers crave more team golf. Using the Ryder Cup as evidence of this hunger is a false equivalency. The Ryder Cup is a singular event, one of the great sporting spectacles in the world that takes place every two years. Nothing in golf comes close to being comparable. The 2022 Presidents Cup will be a great financial and social success this year in Charlotte, North Carolina, but it cannot be used in the same sentence as the Ryder Cup. It is a manufactured event that grew out of the PGA Tour’s frustration of being excluded from the largess of the Ryder Cup.
The Ryder Cup is as much about playing for tour and country – or continent, in the case of Team Europe – as it is about anything else. That is real drama; flags matter. You can’t manufacture that kind of drama with four guys who were arbitrarily grouped together as a team.
That said, LIV Golf is trying to think outside the box, not simply to adopt the status quo, and that is to be appreciated. Perhaps golf could benefit from some form of a modern makeover, but there is no need to gut the entire tournament structure. And you must keep this in mind when Norman says they are not going away: money buys patience, and the Saudi Public Investment Fund has a lot of money.
For more on the LIV Golf Invitational Series announcement, read Ron Green Jr.'s story on Global Golf Post+.
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