“There’s a lot of chatter about, ‘These guys don’t play real golf; these guys don’t play real golf courses,’ ” stated Australian Cameron Smith, the winner of ultimate summer time’s British Open, the most up-to-date primary.
That’s the test, then. Does LIV’s lucrative-but-lax structure correctly get ready its gamers for primary championship golfing? LIV performs with out cuts. LIV performs 3 rounds as a substitute of 4. LIV promises its gamers cash irrespective of efficiency. LIV has staged 3 tournaments this calendar yr. The PGA Tour has staged 15.
“The fields aren’t as strong,” Smith allowed. “I’m the first one to say that. But we’ve still got a lot of guys up there that can play some really serious golf, and we compete against each other hard, week in and week out.”
Uh, test that, Cam. How’s month in and month out? The first LIV season concluded in November. The 2nd started with a event in February. Then got here two weeks off, every other match in mid-March, a week off and the just-completed match out of doors Orlando. But anyway …
“He’s probably right,” LIV headliner and three-time Masters champ Phil Mickelson stated of Smith. “It would be nice to validate the amount of talent that is over there on LIV, and I think a lot of guys are playing really well heading in.”
LIV isn’t going to depart as a result of deficient TV rankings or small galleries. It isn’t going to depart as a result of it might probably’t draw identify sponsors for its tournaments. It isn’t going to depart as it assured masses of tens of millions to gamers in assured contracts and will pay the winner of its Orlando match $4 million and $3 million extra to the winners of a four-player crew part.
The Saudis have what quantities to limitless cash, bloodstained as it’s by means of the murderous regime that gives it, flippantly laundered. They have satisfied those gamers to take it, ramifications be damned, and tricked them into publicly claiming it’ll “grow the game.”
So LIV will, ahem, are living so long as the Saudis need it to. But what’s at stake here’s the aggressive legitimacy of the renegade circuit. LIV has, inarguably, pressured certain trade on the PGA Tour. But if iron sharpens iron — and the chief forums at the PGA Tour’s new “elevated” occasions were gangbusters for golfing lovers — do pillows melt pillows?
In different phrases: Does taking part in shotgun begins over 3 days with fields of 48 supply the identical preparation for the tournaments that decide a participant’s legacy as taking part in 72-hole occasions wherein there can also be 144 gamers and you should make the reduce to obtain a test?
If the chief board on the again 9 Sunday right here reads, in some order, Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth and Collin Morikawa, and it’s a must to scan down prior to you to find Smith, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed and Bryson DeChambeau … smartly, the resolution will likely be obvious. LIV wishes its gamers in the Masters to be related over the weekend. The outcome of no longer contending might be vanishing from awareness.
And it’s as though the LIV gamers know they’re no longer as ready as they’d be. Back after they departed the PGA Tour — which had warned that it could ban gamers who defected and has adopted thru — some justified the determination by means of announcing they sought after extra keep an eye on over their time table. That’s bunk. The reverse is correct. LIV has 14 occasions round the international for the complete 2023 season. The gamers have to turn up on the ones dates.
“Look, I’ve played five events this year,” stated Koepka, who arrived right here having gained the LIV match Sunday and has performed the 3 LIV tournaments and two extra on the Asian excursion. “Usually, I’d play six coming into this.”
Six? Last yr, Brooks, you performed 8 instances prior to Augusta.
“I mean, I usually don’t play that many,” Johnson stated. “I probably only played one or two less than normal.”
Well, no longer actually. Last yr, Johnson performed six instances prior to the Masters. This yr, he performed 3. He has no longer performed a 72-hole match since the British Open — 9 months in the past. In phrases of aggressive rounds getting into the Masters, he had 24 a yr in the past, 9 this yr.
“If I’m ready,” he stated, “I’m going to be ready no matter how many events I played.”
And by means of the weekend, we will have to have a clearer thought of the back-and-forth between the ones gamers who left and those that stayed. Smith, for one, stated he wasn’t positive what to anticipate from the competition he used to peer week to week, yet he was once greeted Monday on the vary with “lots of laughs and lots of handshakes.”
“It’s a very nuanced situation, and there’s different dynamics,” McIlroy stated. “It’s okay to get on with Brooks and D.J. and maybe not get on with some other guys that went to LIV, right? It’s interpersonal relationships. That’s just how it goes.”
Translation: Rory isn’t purchasing Reed a pimento cheese sandwich anytime quickly.
“But this week and this tournament is way bigger than any of that, I feel,” he persisted. “And it’s just great that all of the best players in the world are together again for the first time in what seems to be quite a while.”
That a lot is correct. In the most up-to-date primary, Smith beat McIlroy in an epic duel at St. Andrews. At the conclusion of the PGA Tour season, Smith left for LIV. McIlroy stays an “us.” Smith is now a “them.” They may each finally end up in rivalry on the again 9 Sunday.
If McIlroy does, it’s going to be as the number one PGA Tour flag-bearer. If Smith does, it’s going to be validation — badly wanted validation — of his new circuit. The Masters, nearly by means of definition, rises above this intra-sport squabble. LIV wishes its gamers, whether or not they’re ready or no longer, to raise it up, too, or it’s going to be misplaced.