The Masters can’t escape the LIV civil war tearing golf apart
The bitter civil war between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour has ripped the sport apart, writes Matt Cooper, and it’s up to Augusta National to provide a technicolour distraction
There has always been a sense that the Masters is a fairytale or fantasy for golfers and perhaps next week’s first major championship of 2024 most resembles The Wizard of Oz. There are the extremes of colour (Augusta National loves green), a fabled route (onto the property along Magnolia Lane and around it via Amen Corner), peculiar tradition (the Butler Cabin), a strange but beguiling prize (the green jacket) and a cast of characters desperately trying to overcome their flaws.
There is no scarecrow who wants a brain, tin man in search of a heart or lion seeking courage. Instead, Scottie Scheffler wants a hot putter, Rory McIlroy needs to stay patient and, OK, Xander Schauffele would like to turn his many major championship top-10 finishes into a win so maybe courage of a kind is what he’s missing.
But this year, there is an added feature for the Augusta fairytale and it is the sense that something malevolent and threatening is hanging over this other-worldly location.
That sinister shadow is the ongoing civil war between the old (the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, the Official World Golf Rankings) and the new (LIV Golf – the rebel circuit funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund). Two years of bitter conflict have ripped apart the sport’s cosy status quo and revealed an inner core of entitlement among elite players and administrators.
On the course, the PGA Tour responded to the threat of LIV’s money tree by upgrading events to “Signature” status with elite fields and enormous prize funds. The stars welcomed the inflation-confounding pay increases while arguing for further ring-fencing. Rewards are also up for journeymen (in addition to a guaranteed $500,000 against earnings) but they feel wounded and deserving of more. Throw in LIV’s abiding sense of persecution and it’s not a great look for the sport: haves painting themselves as have-nots.
Off the course, the PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan co-opted the concerns of 9/11 protestors against LIV Golf, then it was revealed he’d okayed secret talks with PIF shortly after last year’s Masters. Another ugly look.
The players and administrators are not alone. LIV’s television broadcast is comically reminiscent of the one-eyed commentator in the film Escape to Victory, the attempts at balance from many traditional broadcasters are half-baked and when LIV golfers thrive on the DP World Tour, the official reluctance to acknowledge them feels grubby. Online, golf’s social media has enthusiastically succumbed to paranoia and pomposity. Offline, friendships have been poisoned. It’s horribly like the nastiness of Brexit with added golf balls.
It’s one reason why the victory of Peter Malnati in last month’s Valspar Championship felt like a breath of fresh air. The 36-year-old potters around the course in a floppy hat and plays with a yellow ball because his toddler likes the colour. He said after the win: “I think people are just sick of the narrative in golf being about contracts on LIV, purses on tour, guaranteed comp. I think people are so sick of that.”
Malnati is also a player-director on the PGA Tour’s Policy Board who, in the days before his win, attended a board meeting at the Bahamas home of fellow director Tiger Woods, to discuss relations with PIF and a recently signed investment deal worth up to $3bn with the Strategic Sports Group. PIF’s governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan was in attendance for at least some of the time.
What was resolved there, if anything, remains a mystery (a memo from Monahan said talks were “constructive”) but 2014 European Ryder Cup captain and TV commentator Paul McGinley told RTÉ Sport radio last month: “Don’t hold your breath. It could be a few more years before we see any kind of daylight, unfortunately, and I don’t think golf is going to thrive in that period of time.”
Bryson DeChambeau said at this week’s LIV Miami event of potential harmony: “It needs to happen fast for the good of the sport. Too many people are losing interest.”
The breakaway, which signed the defending Masters champion Jon Rahm at the end of 2024, has become so infuriated by its inability to secure Official World Golf Rankings ratification, and with it gain a player pathway into the majors, that it withdrew the application last month.
In all, 13 LIV stars will compete at Augusta, including last year’s PGA Championship winner Brooks Koepka and the rising star Joaquin Niemann from Chile but Louis Oosthuizen, the 2010 Open champion and two-time winner on the 2024 DP World Tour, will not. Nor will the in-form Talor Gooch, Abraham Ancer or Dean Burmester, all of whose rankings have withered while in exile.
Discussing their absence and LIV arch-critic McIlroy’s pursuit of the career grand slam at Augusta, Gooch told Australian Golf Digest: “If he completes [it] without some of the best players in the world, there’s just going to be an asterisk. It’s just the reality.”
Spicy stuff, and it is obvious from the Ryder Cup, and also the Solheim Cup, that golf is always more electric and captivating when it is partisan and edgy. Throw in the inherent drama of the back nine at Augusta on a Sunday and we might be set for a conclusion for the ages. Some will crave a PGA vs LIV final-round duel, the civil war in microcosm. Others fear such a prospect would be the equivalent of throwing oil on flames that really need putting out.
Better, perhaps, to simply enjoy the fact that what LIV wanted, and what the PGA Tour tried to recreate, will now be delivered by the Masters and the other three majors alone. The original best-of-the-best showcases, the majors, truly matter.
The favourite with the bookies is Scheffler, the world No 1 who departed Augusta in a green jacket two years ago and claimed the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship last month. The irony is that while common wisdom has it that the in-fighting is too toxic, it also insists that Scheffler is too wholesome, too bland, too boring. The bewildered game doesn’t know what it wants.
Best, maybe, to escape the dismal grey reality by losing ourselves in a technicolour dream world. It’s what fairytales are for.
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