LIV Golf: Exile on Easy Street

Do we really want to see athletes on cruise control?

J.P. Poston had spent 96 hours at the top of the John Deere Classic leaderboard. He had also turned around a dismal season in two weeks.

After he nailed down the John Deere Classic victory Sunday, he choked up when CBS interviewed him.

“It’s hard out here,” Poston said, after consolidating his 2nd-place finish in the Travelers Championship with this, his second PGA Tour win, worth $1.28 million.

Meanwhile, Branden Grace was taking a champagne shower at Pumpkin Ridge, near Portland, as he abosrbed a $4.3 million afternoon.

He won LIV Golf’s first U.S.-based event and also picked up a bonus for finishing second in the new tour’s tricked-up “team” competition. Pat Perez shot 80 in the final round but was on the winning “team” and took home a total of $903,000.

By all accounts it was a heck of a party. Talor Gooch said it was like a Ryder Cup event, then admitted he wouldn’t know, never having been in one. His decision to join LIV Golf has deprived him of that option for the foreseeable future.

“I”ve had a lot of LOL moments with LIV,” said PGA Tour player Mackenzie Hughes, “but that was the undisputed number one.”

LIV Golf is counting on man’s inherent desire to make the most money possible while exerting the least effort possible.

Its events are 54 holes with no cuts. Check the acronym, and remember that tour boss Greg Norman would have won the 1986 Grand Slam under such a format. Instead he only won the Open Championship.

The biggest names in the 48-man club already come with big contracts, but you can shoot 150 and still make a $120,000 check. The caddies have their expenses paid and eat and lodge handsomely. They, the agents and the wives/girlfriends are expected to pressure more and more PGA Tour players to join LIV Golf, or at least that’s the game plan. Come on in. The money’s fine.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever been a part of,” said Patrick Reed, who has been on winning Ryder Cup teams and took home the 2018 Masters. “The guys who do come are going to absolutely love it and the guys who don’t, they’re missing out.”

Paul Casey became the 22nd member of the Official World Golf Rankings Top 100 to cross the line last week.

The only obligation you have in LIV Golf is to play one of the carefully-spaced eight tournaments this year, 14 next year.. On the PGA Tour you have to play 15 events, but you also have to play well. Unless you finish among the top 125 money-winners, you lose your exempt status for the next season.

That doesn’t mean you can’ t play in PGA Tour events, because not everybody plays every week, but you cannot set your own schedule for the year, and you can become dependent on sponsor’s exemptions, the long odds of surviving a Monday qualifier, or winning three Korn Ferry Tour events in one year or finishing among the Top 25 money-winners.

You also go home with nothing if you miss the cut, which half the field does. Most of all, you’re on your own, with your family and your caddie. There are times when their loyalty fluctuates with your strokes-gained percentage.

It is pressure. Just like most of the rest of life. Unless there is pain and deprivation involved in losing, what does winning mean? Can you really have ecstasy without agony?

Virginia’s basketball team was top-seeded in the 2018 NCAA tournament. It became the first No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16 when it was blown out by Maryland-Baltimore County in the first round. It was shattering. The next year, Virginia gathered itself up and won the NCAAs. Head coach Tony Bennett carried his credential from the 2018 loss all year. He didn’t just “park” the loss. He made sure the Cavaliers swallowed, understood and wrestled with their failures. That pain defined the dimensions of their victory. Had Virginia been given a mulligan somehow, it wouldn’t have been the same.

Current PGA champ Justin Thomas wondered when the LIV golfers would develop the “balls” to admit they’re just doing this for the money. Aside from the unfiltered Perez, none has. Neither has anyone confronted the issue of taking money from the Saudis and their murderous regime.

Casey begged off the Saudi Invitational three years ago. He pointed out that 11.5 million children in Yemen were facing starvation, thanks to a civil war prodded by the Saudi-based government. That hasn’t changed, but something has.

Reed justified the decision on family grounds. He said the extra time off will allow himself to bond with wife and kids, and thus prolong his career, instead of trying to stay abreast of everyone in the FedEx standings and thus making the 30-man, season-ending annuity known as the Tour Championship.

“No wonder guys get injured in their 30s and are mentally tired, because they have to grind every single week,” Reed said.

Just what the 9-to-5 auto mechanic wants to hear. Besides, Reed has never played fewer than 20 PGA Tour events in a season and played 29 in 2016-17.

"There are a lot of guys who are hypocrites,” said Billy Horschel, who, like most players, remains on the PGA Tour. “(Commissionr) Jay Monahan and his staff work tirelessly on our behalf. People say they don’t listen to the players on the tour, but there are 200 of them. If they listened to what all of them had to say, it would be a complete mess. We wouldn’t have a tour.

“Some of the comments are ridiculous. The PGA Tour requires you to play 15 events. Nobody is making you play the first round of the playoffs and miss family obligations. I’m tired of it. Go play your LIV Tour and forget about the PGA Tour.”

Ah, but that’s the other human instinct: Wanting it all. Monahan banned the LIV players, indefinitely, from PGA Tour events. One anticipates legal challenges to that. A court in the U.K. rescinded a Scottish Open ban, allowing Ian Poulter to play this week. If LIV players are successful it would mean a mandatory 29-tournament workload, not that anyone is risking CTE, or life in a wheelchair, by playing golf.

Steve Stricker said the first LIV event, in England, resembled a member-guest. It also looked like the American Celebrity Classic, the Home Run Derby, and other entries in the category of what we originally called “trash sports.”

Meanwhile, J.T. Poston said it was hard out there, and that was comforting. Everywhere in sports, the money is relentless. The last thing it should be is easy.