Most golf fans know that the PGA’s Masters tournament is held at Augusta National in April – except when postponed by a global pandemic as it was in 2020. It remains to be seen, however, if the newly formed LIV tour will manage to create its own signature event like the Masters, the U.S. Open or the British Open.
Taylor Zarzour covers golf for ESPN and has a morning show on the PGA Tour radio channel on Sirius XM. His knowledge base and experience reporting on the sport gives him a unique perspective, which he shared recently during a SportsTalk interview with John Rose.
The LIV is financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. The first tournament was played earlier this month in England and the second is set to tee up this weekend in Portland, Oregon.
In Roman numerals, LIV is 54, which refers to the score a player would get if he birdied every hole on a par-72 course. It also is the number of holes played at all LIV events, according to online research.
Fifty-four holes represents three rounds of golf, one round short that the PGA sponsored events have.
This is just one difference between the well-established PGA and its new rival, which has lured several top golfers with multi-million dollar joining incentives. The only problem is that players must choose – they can’t play in both, Zarzour said.
“It’s disrupting the PGA tour by taking away the top players,” he said. Top-ranked golfers like Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia and Bryson DeChambeau already have signed on, as well as Phil Mickelson, a familiar name in golf circles. And Australian golf star Greg Norman, “The Great White Shark,” has been hired to run the LIV, he noted.
Zarzour said the LIV has caused PGA officials to look at its own model and to make changes so more players won’t abandon their tour.
As Zarzour sees it, the big problem for golf fans is that they aren’t going to be able to see the top players compete against one another at tournaments sponsored by either group.
“In every other sport, you get to see the best players playing,” he said. As it stands now, “not every great player will play in the same tournament,” but only in the major championships. In the official world golf rankings, players get points based on their performance at sanctioned events. The LIV doesn’t offer points at this time, although it has applied.
“There’s a tremendous pressure to not give points,” he said. And if that’s the case, those players are going to have to find somewhere else to play so they can earn those ranking points. But it won’t be in PGA events, because players who’ve joined LIV have been banned. It is uncertain whether LIV players will be able to play on the European tour, but they have been cleared to play – this year, at least – at the British Open in Scotland later this summer.
The top 50 or 100 players – based on world ranking points – are the ones who are invited to participate in the major golf championships, he said. Players could earn millions of dollars just for joining LIV – Mickelson reportedly got $200 million and Johnson $150 million – but would possibly forfeit their access to world ranking points, thus dropping them from the ranks of the top players.
The upheaval and confusion that the LIV has created could be too much for golf enthusiasts, Zarzour said.
If fans can’t watch the top players compete against each other in one tournament, they may become disinterested and quit watching altogether.
As the PGA continues to evaluate how to move forward, Zarzour said he predicts that players who defected to the LIV but soon after regret their decision would probably be re-admitted to the PGA with a little fanfare. It may be a “one-time only forgiveness,” Zarzour said, “and you’re able to come back and play.
Those players who stay longer and then re-apply to the PGA may find themselves facing a lengthy suspension, he said. “It could be years before players play again.”
Zarzour said the issue keeps coming back to whether this is good for the sport and for golf fans.
Given the dizzying amounts of money that the LIV has offered to players to join their circuit, Zarzour said, “a lot of us might do the same thing these players have done.”
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