This could make things even more interesting.
It will be interesting.
They are going to need a decent TV deal if they are going to continue.
And, many PGA players that stayed are saying there should be a financial penalty for the LIV guys to come back
Actually, if the PGA wants to play this right they should let anybody who leaves LIV to come back. Of course they would have to qualify. I don’t think Dustin Johnson will have much trouble with that.
The great Jack Nicklaus said when asked about LIV: “It’s a shame the best golfers in the world can’t play each other every weekend.”
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On the basis of what? Personal pettiness?
If someone left the PGA to go travel or care for a sick family member, would that person be subjected to this kind of middle finger upon returning?
LIV was a threat to PGA’s hegemony, not a moral outrage. This kind of sourpuss attitude only proves the PGA does indeed need more competition.
From what I can tell, yes.
First, for the disclaimer, I am not a big golf fan, so I may have missed something. With that said, I recall that when the merger between the PGA and LIV was being discussed some PGA players wanted the issue of the money the LIV golfers had been paid to be addressed. Apparently they weren’t too keen on the LIV players keeping the boatloads of money they had gotten while at the same time getting the benefits of a unified tour while the PGA players who didn’t leave for LIV weren’t similarly compensated.
I had not read anything about any demanding any LIV players who return to the PGA pay a financial penalty, but I could have missed that. Is that the case?
I agree with your basic point. However, I think LIV screwed up big-time with their approach. If you start by paying players beaucoup bucks to join your tour before they have even played one round of golf and then use a four-player team format with fifty-four holes, how compelling is that to watch? Moreover, how well does a format like that prepare a player for a high-pressure tournament like the Masters? And, when LIV players can’t get world rating points due to that format, how well does that serve your league?
If LIV had been smart, they would have given some financial incentive for players to move up-front followed by king-sized tournament paydays. And, they would have kept the standard seventy-two hole format. That would have made from some compelling golf, plus LIV players could still have had world ranking points.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that LIV players have, for the most part, been non-factors in the major tournaments. As one example, Jon Rahm was a force on the PGA. After he left to join LIV for $300 million, he has not been the same. He totally collapsed in the final round of the Masters this year. I can’t help but wonder if things might have been different had he not taken $300 million up-front and been playing fifty-four hole team golf the past few years.
And, if reports are to be believed, Rahm now has some regrets over going to LIV, as he misses playing in several PGA venues. I also read that Rahm assumed that a PGA - LIV merger would take place very shortly after he joined LIV, so he probably figured he could pocket his $300 million and end up back in the PGA venues at the same time. Little did he know how things would turn out to date.
Edit: Rahm collapsed in the final round of the PGA Tournament. Bryson DeChambeau faded in the final round of the Masters.
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It was very interesting how the PGA purses grew quite a bit after LIV appeared.
I saw an interview recently, but can’t remember who or where.
As a follow-up to resurrect this thread, I just saw this article on Jon Rahm. I think it shows more proof tgat LIV would be best served to revamp its format.
Rahm left the PGA Tour when it seemed that he was destined to be Scottie Scheffler’s biggest rival.
It arguably says plenty that Scheffler’s worst finish in the majors this year matched Rahm’s best.
Excellent reporting here by Michael Girdley on the details of this whole controversy.
Sounds like there were plenty of legitimate complaints about the PGA Tour from the golfers who left, as well as some unwise looseness of the lips from the same people, which cost them a lot of money from lost sponsorships. Particularly Phil Mickelson.
Ultimately, as Girdley put it, regardless of the amount of money going into LIV, the PGA still held the cards.
I will say what I said before. LIV Golf as an alternative to the PGA in itself was not a bad thing at all. The way LIV Golf was set up, though, with players being paid beaucoup bucks just for signing up and before playing one round of golf and then playing fifty-four hole shot-gun tag team tournaments, pretty much blew away any possibility of people taking it seriously.
I’ll bite and quibble a bit here.
I’m not clear on how these elements you mentioned here doomed the franchise from the start. It’s understandable to sign big stars, and in order to do that, you need to make it worth the disruption to their careers and the associated risks thereof.
I also don’t think the tournament structure, including the reduction from four days to three, turned people off of LIV or kept them from developing an interest in it. I think inertia and tradition did.
As Girdley said in the video essay above, the PGA majors are hallmarks and cornerstones of professional golf, going back decades or more. No matter how well funded LIV was, it did not have the Masters, the US Open, etc.
To succeed, LIV would have had to burn unimaginable amounts of of cash and play a very long game lasting decades, and the Saudis were clearly unable and/or unwilling to do so. (One detail in that video was the economic impact to the Persian Gulf states after the hostilities in Iran began, and I’m sure that played no small role in the Saudis’ withdrawal.)
Thank you. I will reply. 
I have given my reasoning already. As I said earlier, LIV could have given some financial incentive to join followed by king-sized purses which would have really incentivized their players to want to win. That could have made for some compelling golf. As it was, they got paid well in advance just for showing up. Going on memory, Tiger Woods made this point about LIV and why he did not support the circuit. Hell, if reports are correct, he turned down $800 million from LIV. I will forever respect Woods for that.
I disagree. Golf is a very traditional game and its fans are big traditionalists. LIV Golf did themselves no favor in this regard. They did far more than make some tweaks to make things interesting. Girdley gave the contrast to the ABA, which made some tweaks to its basketball rules but still maintained the integrity of the game.
He is off-base here. The PGA does not “have” the four major tournaments. If it did, it would have banned every LIV golfer from participating, like it did with its own tournaments. I do not know the exact details, but those four majors are independent of the PGA. You had LIV golfers participating based both on exemptions from previous major victories along with their world ranking. In fact, both Brooks Kopeka and Bryson DeChambeau won a major as an LIV golfer.
Speaking of world rankings and LIV’s structure, they shot themselves in the foot big-time and did their players no favors at all with their fifty-four hole format. That ensured that their players would not get world ranking points and thus fall in the standings. This past year they went to seventy-two holes, and lo and behold, the organization that awards world ranking points found a way to award them to LIV players.
Do you think it might have given LIV a tad bit more credibility if they had set themselves up such that their players could receive world ranking points from the start and keep pace with the PGA players, so to speak? This would have allowed for a legitimate comparison of players in both leagues. As it was, the reports were about how LIV golfers like Jon Rahm had fallen in the rankings by virtue of losing world ranking points.
On this point I agree with you. LIV probably would not have lasted long-term anyways. We differ in our opinions on how much LIV’ s structure, rules, etc contributed to its demise.
Hard to say. There were a lot of details that were clearly not thought through, and that change may not have saved it.
I think their much bigger problem was lack of popularity among the consumer public. Not convinced that lack of world rankings was a huge factor in that.
Yes, three of them are run by the USGA. And the “Open” (British Open) is, well, just about the oldest running golf tournament run by someone over in England!