Here’s why I found while asking people at the Rocket Mortgage Classic what they thought of the LIV Golf series and how it might affect the PGA Tour.
While Tony Finau and Taylor Pendrith were busy running away from the field at the 2022 Rocket Mortgage Classic on Saturday, I decided to do some running myself.
Actually, at my age, my running days are pretty much over. So I briskly waddled over to the nearest fairway to do some legwork in order to find answers to a question I’ve been asking in different forms to different people all week at the tournament.
What do you think of LIV Golf?
Actually, the question is a lot more complicated than that, and so are the answers.
People have lots of opinions, and strong ones at that. But no one, even golf fans who have invested their time and money to attend a PGA Tour event, really knows what to make of the upstart Saudi-backed golf league that’s playing a tournament in New Jersey this week on a Donald Trump golf course.
I think LIV is a joke and its players are greedy opportunists without conscience who don’t care about accepting blood money in order to play in what are essentially exhibitions.
LIV players don’t even care about getting better because, as Tiger Woods recently said, with huge, guaranteed contracts and no-cut paychecks, “what is the incentive to practice? What is the incentive to go out there and earn it in the dirt?”
But that’s just my opinion. I never broadcast it to anyone I spoke with while soliciting theirs. I spoke off the record with PGA Tour employees, golf marketing professionals and journalists.
In general, those people had a concern about how LIV might change the pro golf landscape as a competitor to the PGA Tour. Some thought the players were greedy, some understood their desire to take the guaranteed contracts and pursue much bigger purses. Branden Grace, ranked 134th in the world, claimed $4 million in early July for winning the LIV tournament near Portland, Oregon. The same week, J.T. Poston earned $1,278,000 for winning the PGA Tour’s John Deere Classic.
