The gates to golf’s utopian fields are open once more with Augusta welcoming the biggest stars of the PGA Tour, and LIV Golf, for the Masters.
This year’s first major will be welcome relief from the partisan ramblings and posturing that still emanate from the game’s never-ending merger negotiations.
Even so, some harsh truths about golf’s great, multi-billion dollar mess will linger in the shadows of the Georgian pines.
These are the burning questions ahead of this week’s Masters Tournament.
Watch every round of The Masters LIVE & Exclusive on Fox Sports, available on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start Your Free Trial Today >
TEE TIMES: Day in blockbuster Woods group; ‘troll job of the century’ revealed
MASTERS ULTIMATE GUIDE: Everything you need to know
Bhatia dislocates shoulder fist pumping | 02:57
‘YOU SH**ING ME?’: GOLF NIGHTMARE THAT JUST WON’T END
Players from both sides of golf’s great divide almost unanimously agree on one thing this week: The game needs to finally unite.
Exhausted fans could be forgiven for almost choking on their Pimento sandwiches at Augusta as each player speaks of fixing the divide they’ve created.
At least the best players in the world will all be in one spot this week.
But that we still only see such an event four times a year – nearly two years since LIV Golf’s inaugural tournament – boggles the mind.
A framework agreement between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf’s Saudi paymasters feels a thing of the distant past. The self-imposed December 31 deadline to ratify the deal? Utterly meaningless. Finalising a multi-billion dollar agreement with US investors? Not enough, only because there’s more to be had.
And so now we stand here; another majors cycle is upon us and a deal to unite golf still not forthcoming. It’s sure to infuriate the masses.
“I’m like a lot of people in that I’m like, “are you guys shitting me?”Fire Pit Podcast host Mat Ginella said ahead of the Masters.
“Have you guys not figured this out yet? Do something. Do anything other than point fingers, look confused, turn on each other. Figure it out.”
Ginella’s words capture the general mood of golf fans in 2024.
Painted grass, banned words and $2 sandwiches: Inside weird world of The Masters
ULTIMATE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the 2024 Masters
Day leads Aussie Masters contingent | 01:26
Cries for unity on either side of the ledger feel at best ironic and at worst utterly disingenuous.
LIV Golf’s Bryson DeChambeau recently said: “We can’t keep going in this direction. It needs to happen fast … too many people are losing interest.”
DeChambeau pocketed a reported A$190m to join LIV Golf — so it’s little wonder that his comments were met with some scoffs.
“Adlai Stevenson described Richard Nixon as the kind of man who would cut down a tree then mount the stump to deliver a speech on conservation,” Eamonn Lynch wrote in his Golfweek column. “So one wonders what he’d say of Bryson DeChambeau, one of the arsonists who set golf’s house on fire and who is now complaining that others aren’t moving quickly enough to extinguish the blaze.
“(DeChambeau) made a decision to cleave the sport for the sole purpose of personal enrichment, and his new-found enthusiasm for a peace agreement is a shameless effort to have others insulate him from the consequences of that decision.”
LIV Golf stars are indeed responsible for this “disruption phase” — Phil Mickelson’s words, not ours — in the first place.
But PGA Tour players are not without a case of their own to answer. Select members have retaliated to LIV Golf in such a way that made the task of unification harder than ever, even if it ultimately earnt them just financial rewards.
Sure, we can’t ignore the bottomless pit of Saudi money, and the model that exploited the PGA Tour’s shortcomings, that split golf in two in the first place. But no divide would exist without the mutual player greed that sparked, and now sustains, it.
A glass-half-full approach, however, would be to say, ‘at least we still have the majors’.
Golf author Alan Shipnuck describes this year’s Masters as “welcome respite” from the will-they-or-won’t-they discussion that has swallowed the game whole.
Even if for only four days, golf itself will become a focal point.
Amen (Corner) to that.
But the combustible nature of what’s bubbling in the background means we’re never far away from another escalation in the golf war.
Shipnuck added that this week also serves as a stark reminder that, for all the beauty of the majors, there’s mess elsewhere that must be solved for the sake of both parties.
“The majors pulsate with that tension,” Shipnuck said on the Fire Pit podcast. “They become more major, they have more meaning.
“It also throws into sharp (focus) that the events that matter are not on the PGA Tour or on LIV Golf. There are these other things (majors). And that’s another structural problem for the game.
“Thank god the Masters is here, all these background issues will subside for four days … but who wins and who loses takes on different shades of meaning. It’s a fascinating moment.”
MORE COVERAGE
‘Tough to beat’: Smith resurgence looms; why ex-champ can‘t be ignored — Every Aussie at Masters
Jailed ex-champ faces fresh Masters exile after remarkable fall from grace, prison release
How ‘thousands of rounds’ on PlayStation has Aussie world No.335 ready for Masters ‘dream’
Rahm confident LIV & PGA can coexist | 00:53
WAS RAHM SOLD A $900M LIE?
No one symbolises golf’s player-led problem in 2024 more than the Masters’ defending champion, Jon Rahm.
LIV Golf had many naysayers in its infancy, but few struck it down harder publicly than Rahm who dismissed the rebel tour for its lack of prestige, and 54-hole format.
Awkward that he then became its biggest-ever signing less than two years later. But, then again, he’ll make a reported A$900m to get over that.
But it hasn’t taken long for Rahm, now just five tournaments into his LIV Golf switch, to show a glimmer of remorse.
While LIV Golf recruits have spent nearly two years toeing the party line and waxing lyrical about its format, Rahm this week called for the Saudi-backed circuit to move to traditional 72-hole tournaments.
“If there ever was a way where LIV could go to 72 holes, I think it would help all of this argument a lot,” Rahm told the BBC. “The closer I think we can get LIV Golf to some other things the better. I think it would be for some kind of unification to feed into a world tour or something like that.
“I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but I definitely wouldn’t mind going back to 72 holes.”
In a separate conference call after releasing his Champions Dinner menu, Rahm made no secret of how much he misses playing a number of events on the PGA Tour.
“I’m not going to lie; for everybody who said this would be easy, some things have been, but not being able to defend some titles that mean a lot to me hasn’t,” he said.
“I love Palm Springs. I’ve been able to win twice there. Riviera is about as charismatic of a golf course as we have. It’s definitely a week that it’s fantastic for a lot of us, and it’s a fan and player favourite. Not being there was difficult.
“I still watched the broadcast. I still watch golf because I love watching it, but it’s hard.
“It was hard not to be at the Phoenix Open at the end of February, and it was hard not to be at Hawaii because it’s another tournament that my family enjoys and I’ve done fantastic on.”
That’s four PGA Tour events since early January Rahm misses. Certainly no small number.
That said, it will be hard for many to find sympathy for Rahm given the fuel his switch to LIV Golf handed PIF in merger negotiations.
Rahm’s move came at a time that a deal was meant to be on the verge of being finalised. All that has happened since, however, is a sustained standoff. The PGA Tour even went elsewhere and struck a separate, lucrative partnership with the Strategic Sports Group to muddy the waters further.
Former pro and golf analyst Brandel Chamblee says that Rahm’s comments speak to a player who thought he was going to be the agent of change, but only ended up as a pawn within the wider battle.
“He sounds like he was misled. Like his departure was going to be the tipping point. It turns out it wasn’t at all,” Chamblee said on the Golf Channel.
“He went from being viewed as his own man to being somebody that can be bought.”
He added: “Sounds to me, reading between the lines, he thought his movement there was the domino and it would lead to this coming together of the different factions.
“I think if anything, it’s brought them further apart. I don’t see them coming together any time soon.”
This was effectively confirmed by Rahm on Tuesday when he fronted the press at Augusta.
“I understood that it could be, what I hoped, a step towards some kind of agreement, yes. Or more of an agreement or expedited agreement,” he said.
“I would hope it would be something that would help expedite that process. But at the end of the day, I still did what I thought was best for myself.
“I still love the PGA Tour, and I still hope everything the best, and I still hope that at some point I can compete there again.”
Cam Smith is ‘going to be tough to beat’ | 01:18
IS THIS THE MOST OPEN MASTERS EVER …
The poor form of many of the world’s top-ranked golfers, and the noise surrounding golf’s protracted merger talks, can no longer be considered a coincidence.
Seven of the world’s top 10 golfers are winless this year, while there has been an avalanche of shock results from underdogs.
For example, amateur Nick Dunlap became the first amateur since 1991 to win a PGA Tour title this year when he clinched the American Express.
Peter Malnati had only won once on the PGA Tour since turning pro in 2009 before he took out this year’s Valspar Championship in a teary triumph.
Outside of world No.1 Scottie Scheffler, who has won twice, the game’s big guns have been largely out of form.
Patrick Cantlay, now the lead player director on the PGA Tour policy board, has only one top-10 finish this year. He’s also seen his ‘strokes gained’ stat – the PGA Tour’s main metric for comparing players – blow out by 1.77 strokes.
Viktor Hovland, Matt Fitzpatrick, Max Homa, Tommy Fleetwood and Collin Morikawa have all had their figures decline by more than 1.40 strokes.
Keegan Bradley and Rory McIlroy are also worse off this year with 0.84 and 0.58 declines respectively.
There are some other factors at play. For example, McIlroy is undergoing some swing finetuning with new coach Butch Harmon, and others are chasing distance.
But the one factor that unites the top players and their struggles is the disturbance outside of the ropes.
“I think there’s just an epidemic of distraction on the PGA Tour,” Chamblee said.
“When you think what about they’re dealing with, I think they’re obsessed with what they’re entitled to, they’re negotiating, instead of being obsessed with what it takes to win titles.”
Chamblee offered no sympathy, however.
“When you treat the game as transactional, which I think so many of the best players in the world are doing … I think that just hinders your ability to play at highest level.
“They’re being robbed of their best games and fans are being robbed of the stars. I think they need to rediscover the reason to pursue the highest level, and it’s not money.”
He added: “I think if Scottie (Scheffler) is a bit off his game it sets up for the most wide open Masters you can imagine.”
Meanwhile, fellow Golf Channel analyst Johnson Wagner said it’s not just distractions infecting the big stars, but also complacency.
“Look back to Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, that generation – they had to go out and win to pay the bills,” he said.
“Now, playing no-cut signature events, and maybe there’s a bit of complacency now that they can go out and play decent, make a ton of money, and go to the next week.”
Min Woo Lee set for third Masters | 01:15
… OR WILL ONE FREAK ANNIHILATE FIELD – IF NOT HAUNTED BY TWO-FOOT ABYSS?
This year’s Masters is only wide open if one man lets it be.
That man is Scheffler who is in the Tiger realm with his ball-striking matching it with the all-time greats.
Already a Masters champion and world No.1, Scheffler is taking his greatness to a scary new level, as evidenced by wins this year at the Arnold Palmer and Players Championship.
It’s widely believed a second green jacket has his name on it, should he keep it together between the ears.
Scheffler is hitting an absurd 76.1 per cent of greens in regulation this year, which is the highest season total since the PGA Tour started recording the stat.
Just as incredible is his tenacity – Scheffler is bouncing back from a bogey with a birdie 50 per cent of the time this season.
The big question mark that lingers, however, surrounds his putting.
For years, Scheffler’s ascendancy has come with the asterisk around his putting, which has often ranked below average on the PGA Tour.
It’s true that his putting numbers have been made to look worse by the fact that he hits the green in regulation more than anyone. More GIRs simply means more putts are required.
That said, there was no denying his greater tendency for more three putts, and yippy strokes from close range.
Everything at least appeared to be changing early this season when, at the Arnold Palmer, his putter turned red-hot. Ridiculously, he sunk every putt inside 15 feet over the weekend.
If Scheffler learnt how to putt like he ball-struck, it was game over for everyone.
“We talked last year about how great and historic (Scheffler’s rise) was, compared it to mid-2000s Tiger Woods. He’s getting better and it should be scary for everyone in this field,” Wagner said.
“Thinking about it every single day!” | 04:08
In Houston last month, however, Scheffler missed a putt from inside two feet, ending his 28-round streak of playing under-par.
Sometimes, those final two feet can look like the great abyss, even to the game’s best.
While the miss hardly means he’s back to where he started, it’s clear that the chapter on Scheffler’s putting woes is far from over.
Meanwhile, the super slick nature of Augusta’s greens will only exacerbate any doubt with the flat stick.
The good news for Scheffler is that the rest of his game leads the field by so far that he merely needs to putt respectably, not well, to win the green jacket again, according to Chamblee.
Chamblee said that Scheffler can afford 116 putts – or 1.6 a hole – and still win the Masters.
“Last year he led in GIR and had 127 putts, the worst in the field. They’re correlated, but … if he putts good, I can see him winning by eight or ten shots.”
For context, Denny McCarthy still lost in a playoff last weekend at the Texas Open having only had 91 putts for the tournament.
“It’s mind-boggling to think you’re talking 15 more putts than a guy who was in contention last week,” Wagner said of Chamblee’s prediction.
#Masters #PGA #Tour #Scottie #Scheffler #Rory #McIlroy #win #news #preview #golf #LIV #Tour
