LIV Golf

[Ethan]

It isn't a fact. Their ranking may decrease, but that doesn't mean they are weakening as golfers. They are exactly the same golfer, in the short term, as they were before they defected. Their sliding, simply shows the owgr is no longer representative of the world's golfers.
Their golf determines how good a golfer they are, not the rankings. Tweaking the rules could put me number one. Nobody would believe I am the world's best golfer though.

I think we are conflating two issue here.

One is the effect of not scoring OWGR points, which will clearly cause a drop.

The second is the background form.

Most of the drop from players who joined LIV occurred before they joined LIV and were playing a PGA Tour schedule, but their form has not been as good as it was.

DJ, for example, played 10 events on the PGA Tour/major schedule up to The Open (as well as the Saudi event on Asian Tour) and during that time fell from 5th (2nd after last 2021 event) to 16th. He was 15th after the Byron Nelson in May.

Westwood, Casey, Stenson, Garcia, GMac, Bubba, Reed, Schwartzel etc have all been on the slide well before LIV too.

 

[Deleted member 15344]

They aren't playing for much money at the Hero Open event, three players will be taking home six figures whilst twenty one players will be taking home six figures in the Rockety thing whatever event.

Sponsors won't hang around long without a decent field.

Tour is becoming half a dozen big events with fillers the rest of the year.

that’s no different than the last 20 years ?‍ - prize money has always been bigger in the US

Each tour has events which buffer the bigger ones - it gives other the opportunity to play events

Do people expect the same level of tournament each week ? When would those ranked 125 to 200 play in the tour events

Would also add that right now we are having more pro golf comps to watch than at any other time in the past 10 plus years

 

[Barking_Mad]

They aren't playing for much money at the Hero Open event, three players will be taking home six figures whilst twenty one players will be taking home six figures in the Rockety thing whatever event.

Sponsors won't hang around long without a decent field.

Tour is becoming half a dozen big events with fillers the rest of the year.

Professional golf competitions are way overvalued. People can cite poor purses on DP Tour but Ramsey won £250k last week which is nearly 8 times the average UK yearly wage.

There's people working three jobs to support their family, so I find it hard to sympathise with folk whining about the cost and time involved of being a professional golfer.

 

[Deleted member 21445]

The actual truth is there are really great Golfers that are great to watch play shooting great scores on great courses on both tours..

And there will always be known players underperforming on both tours because that's the game of golf..

 

[Foxholer]

Nobody better mention how Will Zalatoris - PGA Golden child, is getting on at the RMC ;-)

Still better than the best of the LIV players who missed the cut in 2 of his last 5 counting events.

 

[AussieKB]

I have had enough of this thread, it does not matter what one side says the other side says the opposite, the sky is blue....no the sky is red
I just wish both sides could step back and look at it from the other persons perspective, but that is just not going to happen.

 

[Ethan]

I have had enough of this thread, it does not matter what one side says the other side says the opposite, the sky is blue....no the sky is red
I just wish both sides could step back and look at it from the other persons perspective, but that is just not going to happen.

I don't like LIV Golf, but it is not its existence as such, but the faux brand it is portraying.

Take Richard Bland. He basically said that he didn't have that much top golf left so he may as well make the most of it. I respect that, he is just right to do so. Other players in that late PGA Tour career who don't fancy the Champions Tour, something similar. Jason Kodak said he was planning to scoop up as much money as he could and retire in his mod-40s. That is fine too.

The bits I object to are

1. the idea that Saudi money is no more tainted than someone who takes sponsorship from a company that does business in Saudi. That is nonsense. This is simply a massive PR campaign with an enormous budget and the players involved are renting their reputations to it.

2. that LIV Golf is trying to grow the game or capture a new young audience. They don't give a toss about either.

3. players were warned that if they defected "put a tee in the ground" I think it was, they may lose their PGA Tour membership but are now whining when that exact thing happened. They were warned. If they sucked it up and made the move and accepted the consequences, fine. But they want it both ways. They claim to be independent contractors yet seem happy to be employees of LIV Golf and turn up when told to do so.

4. The idea that LIV Golf is on a par with the PGA Tour. It really isn't even close.

5. Trump. He is an embarrassment to golf and tarnishes the reputation of all he touches.

 

[Swango1980]

I have had enough of this thread, it does not matter what one side says the other side says the opposite, the sky is blue....no the sky is red
I just wish both sides could step back and look at it from the other persons perspective, but that is just not going to happen.

I guess everyone has a breaking point, yours came after 244 pages of comments on this thread

 

[Foxholer]

Young player, rated 13th in the world, one of the future stars of the tour - and he's absolutely nowhere on the leaderboard - not exactly selling the argument that the PGA Tour has all the better, younger players is he?

Infact apart from Tony Finau, and Stuart Cink, the leaderboard is full of names that I couldn't put a face to - and Stuart Cink is old, and therefore irrelevant;-)

In fact, the entirely contra argument could be applied - that it actually shows the strength of the PGA Tour!
A slightly off-peak performance by even a top player and there's a load of players on the PGA Tour ready to take advantage of the opportunity! And your inability to recognise much of the leaderboard simply shows the amount of talent that exists on TPGAT.
That's diametrically opposite to the LIV setup, where even uncompetitive players like Mickelson will still get paid a huge amount, simply for attending.
It appears Lefty didn't have the best of starts either...https://www.golfwrx.com/689558/phil...m_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=GolfWRX.com

 

[Barking_Mad]

Currently 2.3k watching live on YouTube.

 

[BubbaP]

Currently 2.3k watching live on YouTube.

What do you actually mean by "watching live"?
(Tee off is in approx 40 minutes)

 

[RRidges]

Not very many spectators in evidence.
Has the association with Trump put them off?

 

[Backsticks]

Yes. And they were giving them away for free. Still, everyone is really stoked about the team component, so thats good fake news. So into it, they wont even go along for free.

 

[Deleted member 15344]

Not very many spectators in evidence.
Has the association with Trump put them off?

Aligning with Trump imo is a huge error

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment...9.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw&tsrc=twtr


Lynch: The marriage of LIV Golf and Donald Trump is the stuff schemes are made of
Eamon Lynch
Sat, July 30, 2022, 3:51 PM·5 min read
In this article:

• 
  
  Donald Trump
  President of the United States from 2017 to 2021

So much of the commentary about LIV Golf has focused on what it is not—as in, not a conventional tour, not a familiar schedule, not 72 holes, not a regular tee time format, not requiring good play for good pay, not on broadcast television, not well-attended by fans and not deterred by mass executions. Only with its third tournament, held this week, was it thrown into sharp relief what LIV actually is. Not for the first time, true character was revealed courtesy of an embrace by the baby-carrot fingers of Donald J. Trump.

LIV’s event at Trump National G.C. in Bedminster, N.J. was greeted with dignified outrage by families of those killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks. They pointed to a U.S. intelligence report declassified in 2021 that suggested Saudi links to the atrocity went far beyond what was previously known — financing Al-Qaeda, spawning 15 of the 19 hijackers — to include government figures from the Kingdom meeting and aiding the terrorists on U.S. soil. Yet when asked about the families’ protest, the former president offered this: “Nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately.”

The comment exposed how Trump is utterly devoid of honor, but it also illuminated why he is perfectly suited to LIV Golf. Their shared parallels are as plentiful as they are unflattering.

Start with the art of obfuscation, practiced at every LIV press conference as both executives and players prevaricate about ongoing abuses by their benefactors. Their evasions on human rights issues and the bonesaw dismemberment of a regime critic are akin with Trump’s absolving the Saudis of responsibility for the murder of almost 3,000 Americans. The requirement of those in the pay of the Crown Prince is always to downplay, deflect, dissemble, deceive, but never denounce.

Then there’s protecting the grift, doing whatever is necessary to ensure the pocketing of other people’s money continues unimpeded. Both LIV and Trump Inc. are taking MBS for a dupe. While Trump collects fees to host tournaments, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, received $2 billion for his new private equity firm from the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund, despite objections by the Fund’s advisors over the merits of the investment. At least Trump and Kushner earned the regime’s favor by providing air cover after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Accounting for the Fund’s enormous payments to effete golfers is a tougher ask.

Which leads to the inevitable hornswoggle, the suckering of the credulous with talk of a groundbreaking new commodity that feels more like a revenue play for guys whose liquidity can no longer finance their narcissism. The brands of Trump and LIV Golf’s CEO Greg Norman are their names, which they have appended to everything from airlines to steaks. If you’re to persuade a fresh investor to subsidize your swashbuckling self-image, you’d best have new product to pitch. Golf is their means to that end.

Both men are adept at using personal grievances as professional fuel.
Trump’s list of perceived injustices is longer than the Beijing phone book and includes the PGA Tour (for leaving his Doral Resort in 2016), the PGA of America (for taking the 2022 PGA Championship from his New Jersey course to Oklahoma after the January 6 sacking of the Capitol), and the R&A (for not taking the Open back to Turnberry while his name is above the door).

Norman’s well-documented resentment at the Tour dates back decades and is rapidly expanding to include those he deems insufficiently welcoming of his new Saudi-funded venture, like the major championships and the Official World Golf Ranking. No gripe is too petty to go unvoiced at LIV and that has emboldened its players to speak out about the harsh exploitation they endured, like Phil Mickelson with his media rights and Sergio Garcia with his penalty drops.

A common side effect of proximity to Trump and LIV is reputational ruin. Many a man has had his name tarnished by association with 45 and now golfers watch as their hard-earned prestige is diminished, not by the naked money grab but rather by the disingenuous equivocations that are a job requirement when you work for the Saudis. Take Paul Casey, once an admired UNICEF ambassador who refused to compete in Saudi Arabia but who was mute this week when asked about abuses by those whose check he cashed. Next up: Bubba Watson. He adopted two children and is a passionate advocate for the cause, but will one day have to reconcile that with working for a state that has cruelly made adoption illegal.

What LIV Golf ultimately showcased this week is something Trump long ago mastered: the art of theater, of presenting a masquerade to the dissatisfied masses, of promising disruption and reform that it is poorly positioned to deliver upon.
“Our success is a direct result of knowing how to market a brand and having the right people representing the brand,” Norman once gushed in his default corporate-speak. He couldn’t have found more appropriate people to represent the LIV brand than those he assembled this week. It was almost enough to make one pity the Crown Prince whose purse is being chiseled by all of them. Almost.

 

[Backsticks]

Yes. Why the association with Trump? They didnt need him. Another sign that it really is a badly led organisation, with no judgement, let alone cold calculation of what they should be doing to succeed. The Trump association is just shooting themselves in the foot yet again. Surely they want to court support, not give people yet another reason to loath what they are about. As I mentioned before, it would not surprise me that GN has a day of reckoning with the sheiks behind it, and it will be hard to justify that he is doing a good job.

 

[Orikoru]

Just incredible that Stenson is actually winning after all the controversy of him signing. You couldn't script it any better. ?

 

[Mel Smooth]

Just incredible that Stenson is actually winning after all the controversy of him signing. You couldn't script it any better. ?

I know he’s had the captaincy stripped for the RC, but is he allowed to get the bats out and tee it up? God knows they could need him. ??

 

[RRidges]

Not playing badly for a guy with an OWGR of 173!
Played a pretty solid round today - a couple of glitches notwithstanding.
I'd like to see him win it, but think DJ has other ideas.
Still way too much emphasis on the team aspect by some commentators though.

 

[Backsticks]

It highligts the poor quality 9f tge field against him. Take out the best of the 172 golfers ranked higher than him, well of course his chances of winning improve. Second division golfers, who cannot stay with the level in the first division, are much more at home if actually playing in the second division.

 

[RRidges]

It highligts the poor quality 9f tge field against him. Take out the best of the 172 golfers ranked higher than him, well of course his chances of winning improve. Second division golfers, who cannot stay with the level in the first division, are much more at home if actually playing in the second division.

There's still a couple of dozen in the field ranked above him. And I don't believe they are all 2nd division players! Where would you actually draw that '2nd rate' line? Top 100?