Golf's next big thing: Tigers vs. Sharks
The PGA Tour and LIV Golf are scheduled to confront each other in July of 2023.
What is this, boxing? There’s no reason to wait.
Instead of waiting for a courtroom to open up, let’s choose a speedier trial.
Proposing the Midas Cup: Twelve from the Establishment, 12 from the insurgents, with Tiger Woods and Greg Norman as the captains.
The Tigers vs. the Sharks, and instead of giving each team a gentlemanly half-point when a match is all square after the 18th, run Woods and Norman out there to play it off.
The Midas Cup would instantly rival the Ryder Cup as the most overcaffeinated event in golf, the one time when posing and trash-talking and messing with the head are commonplace and expected.
For those of you who never bought the general bonhomie among pros, the LIV revolution has proven you correct. Each side has accused the other of hypocrisy, and Rory McIlroy savored passing Norman on the PGA Tour wins list.
“This is the best place to play in the world,” said McIlroy on Sunday, and he has said the same thing on days when he didn’t win $18 million, as he did at the Tour Championship at Atlanta’s Eastlake.
He also noted that he took the lead from Scottie Scheffler of the 70th hole of the event, which he said was always a good feeling. “Or the 52nd hole, depending on wherre you’re playing,” he needled.
The Midas Cup would be a much tighter competition than this week’s Presidents Cup figures to be. LIV players aren’t permitted in the PGA Tour-run competition, which eliminates Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann, Marc Leishman and Anirban Lahiri if they’re really leaving as reported.
The PGA Tour would still be the paper favorite, with McIlroy, Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay, Xander Schauffele, Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Will Zalatoris, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Viktor Hovland, Sam Burns and Jordan Spieth as a 12-man roster based on the Official World Golf Rankings. That’s 12 of the top 13 in the game, and such a forceful list that Tony Finau and Billy Horschel would be left out.
(Zalatoris has a back problem, so if he missed the Midas Cup the replacement would be Tony Finau, who won back-to-back at the Twin Cities and Detroit this summer.)
The LIV squad would lead off with Smith (No. 2) and Niemann (No. 18), the Chilean who won the Genesis Open in Los Angeles from beginning to end and has a chance to become South America’s best player since Angel Cabrera. Smith, of course, won the Open Championship with a Sunday 64. That’s a forceful left-right to the chin of the PGA Tour, no doubt.
Then you go to Dustin Johnson, Abraham Ancer, Brooks Koepka, Louis Oosthuizen, Paul Casey, Kevin Na, Bryson DeChambeau, Harold Varner. Talor Gooch and Patrick Reed, a proven hit man in highly visible match play moments.
The Sharks would come together with an underdog’s zeal. The Tigers would come together with the exasperated fury of a parent with a paddle. If you remember how the Colts were supposed to drive the Jets into Biscayne Bay during the third Super Bowl, you might sign up for this.
As you recall, Norman took Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s millions and persuaded Phil Mickelson and the others to come on over, despite PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s unswerving admonition that none of the refugees would be welcomed back.
LIV Golf has no TV contract and no sponsors, and the three tournaments they’ve played have been more like family outings. Their events last only 54 holes with no cut, no fourth round and really no losers, with a last-place finisher making over $100K.
Despite the general solidarity among the PGA Tour players, the LIV keeps picking off significant talent. The coaches and caddies are treated like oil-company dignitaries, and unofficial money still spends as well as the official kind.
But now the official disgust of the PGA Tour has been replaced by realpolitik, as Monahan realized LIV’s dollar diplomacy was working.
After Woods visited the BMW tournament to meet with players, Monahan announced a plan that sounds a lot like LIV on supplements.
Beginning with the 2022-23 season that begins next month, the PGA Tour will include 20 “elevated” events that will offer purses of $20 million. “Top players” will be required to play in 20 events, instead of the current 15. In those elevated tournaments, there will be no cut, and otherwise there will be a $5,000 payout to those who do miss cuts, which is long overdue.
Beyond that, each exempt player will be guaranteed $500,000 regardless of how they play.
But what constitutes a “top player,” of which there will be 20?
Well, that will be determined by the Player Impact Program. That, said Monahan, is based “on measurement criteria and date to reward players who resonate most with our growing fan base” and will also involve “awareness criteria, including internet searches, general awareness, golf fan awareness, media mentions and broadcast exposure.”
What does that mean? Rickie Fowler, who hasn’t been on an important leaderboard in years, will always be charismatic enough to pick up PIP currency. Does everybody have to be funny on TikTok now?
Will the naturally quiet folks, like Cantlay and Schauffele, be forced to hire gag writers? What’s it got to do with golf?
No wonder the LIV folks are grimly amused by this. Norman posted a picture of himself and Monahan and simulated a conversation, with Monahan saying, “Hey, can I copy your homework?’ and Norman replying, “Sure, just make it look different so it doesn’t look too obvious.”
“I laugh at what they came up with,” said Lee Westwood, an early defector. “It’s just a copy of what LIV is doing. There are a lot of hypocrites out there. Now, funnily enough, they are proposing 20 events that they look a lot like LIV. Hopefully at some point they will all choke on their words.”
James Hahn, a player director on the Tour’s Policy Board, voted against the new proram. He told Adam Schupak of Golfweek that he feared “a lot of animosity between the haves and have-nots. I feel like a portion of the $100 million could have gone to making our Tour great rather than going to the top 20.”
Hahn also was concerned, as everyone should be, about the fate of long-time PGA Tour events that aren’t in the Elevated category. Will their fields disintegrate? How relevant can they remain?
The reason they’ll probably survive is the impressive flow of young talent coming from college and through the Korn Ferry Tour. Cameron Young had five second-place finishes, contended two majors and made over $6.5 million, just a year after he was on the Triple-A circuit. He, too, was tempted by LIV but turned it down.
As always, the true deciders will be the organizations that run the four majors. If LIV players can’t play in both Opens, the Masters and the PGA, the gusher of money on LIV will come up hollow, particularly since the PGA Tour is close to matching it.
So what we have is real sandpaper, a Family Feud in which years of resentment are finally free to bubble up.
Instead of conducting it with memes, let’s put it on a golf course.
If the Tigers win, all the LIV players must buy electric cars.
If the Sharks win, all the PGA Tour players must contribute $1 million each to the Phil Mickelson Athletic Speculation and Amusement Fund.
Gentlemen, start your infighting.