I used to play golf a few times a week. In the small village of Muthil in Perthshire there’s a nine-hole course that was my preferred location. The full course at Crieff was a nice challenge, but a little long for me, and prone to be full of the officious handicapper who looked down on a person playing on a shoestring, and without tailored clubs that are updated yearly.
Nearby Comrie also has a nine-hole course, but for the casual and inexpert player some of the holes have the feel of playing up the face of a grass clad Eiger. A few miles further out is St Fillan’s and here is a lovely flat parkland course whose record is held by Sandy Lyle, whose name adorns the Bi-annual cup played for charity.
But, for me, Muthil was closer.
Over the time I played on a regular basis my wife noticed that my muscle definition and stamina increased, and this from merely playing a few hours of golf twice a week.
Sadly, since moving south, where golf memberships are more expensive and it is less of an every person’s game, that muscle definition and stamina has faded away.
I have been pondering on such because of major rumblings in the golf world in recent weeks due to the arrival of the LIV Golf Tour.
According to the LIV golf website their ‘… mission is to modernize and supercharge the game of professional golf through expanded opportunities for both players and fans alike.’
To achieve this tournaments are played over three rounds, fifty-four holes - you may have noticed LIV is the number in Roman numerals; all players - of which there will be forty-eight - start at the same time, shotgun starts, with groups at each hole around the course; there is no cut, so each player plays every round. Over a short season of eight tournaments all players involved will receive a participants purse, with a season ending team event to boost earnings.
A player who participates in all eight tournaments, but has the misfortune to finish last in each one, would take home just over one million dollars. This may sound a good return, but pales somewhat when compared to the potential two-hundred-and-twelve million available to someone able to complete a clean sweep of events - though this seems an unlikely occurrence. A final note on prize money is that some players are able to secure appearance and even joining fees, and of course all can seek to negotiate sponsorship.
To give some context, using PGA data, about half of tour players earned above one-million dollars in twenty-twenty-one, but most of those players took part in over twenty tournaments, a few over thirty. Only eight played under twenty tournaments and of those only one played fewer than ten.
It’s easy to see why securing one of the forty-eight spots available on the LIV tour has been an option some golfers consider.
The PGA has taken a strong stance against the new tour. Players who join it will be ineligible to compete in future PGA events. There is a small exception for the three annual Major competitions under PGA purview, which offer some exemptions for previous winners.
Those who have resigned their PGA Tour card have also lost any Fedex Cup points accrued so far. This puts any US players out of contention for playing in the Ryder Cup team.
The European tour has yet to make final decision on players who have joined the LIV tour. There will be pressure from traditional partners in the PGA, but also a worry about potential diminution of European players available for the Ryder Cup.
And for the next year or so the effect on Ryder Cup teams is likely to be of secondary focus, behind any legal challenges by PGA players who wish to have both cakes to eat.
Going forward there will be further considerations. The next Olympics is a few years away and golf has been a popular addition to the last two Olympiads. The LIV Tour has applied for players to receive World Ranking Points, and it is these standings which the US team has used to select it’s participants previously. Their applications success, or lack thereof, will be something to keep an eye on.
Before the Ryder Cup or the Olympics, there is any appearance by LIV Tour players at the four annual Majors.
Let’s consider exceptions offered by the Majors, as they stand. Winning any of them provides you a five year exemption for the other three. Winning the Masters or PGA adds lifetime exemption for these; The Open allows you to play every year until your sixty; The US open gives you a ten year exemption.
So, for example, Phil Mickelson - a prime mover and promoter of the LIV Tour - can be at the Masters and PGA as long as he wishes and the Open until his sixtieth in twenty-thirty, but to play the US Open again he’ll need to win one of those three.
On the other hand Andy Ogletree - who had the misfortune to require hip surgery the year after turning professional - finished last at the inaugural LIV event and has no exemptions from winning previous Majors and thus has no automatic entry to any of the Majors. As per the current PGA position hewill not be eligible to play in the three US majors.
There has been much made of the power the Majors have to influence how successful the LIV Tour is. The argument goes along the lines that if LIV players are allowed into the Majors, the PGA will be weakened and have to come to an accommodation. If LIV players are not permitted, the LIV tour will be a dead duck because players will want to be in contention for Majors.
The argument is valid only as long as players feel beholden to make such binary decisions.
There’s good reason to think they won’t.
When cricket began having twenty-twenty tournaments, where international players could parachute in to play games and then head back out, some said it would be the death of International cricket at Test and fifty-fifty level.
Some National associations forbade players from signing up, on pain of not being available for the National team. What was the result?
There were players towards the end of their international careers who accepted they’d no longer play that form of cricket, and accepted the relative wealth the new tournaments offered. Others, nearer the start of their career, took the view that a guarantee of money for work now was worth taking against a possibility of national glory rewarded by entries in record books.
Today accommodations have been made and, apart from a few issues more political in nature, players are able to make benefit of the money spinning twenty-twenty circuit, and play for their national teams. There’s even a cogent argument that Test and fifty-fifty versions of the game have been enhanced by playing styles developed in twenty-twenty games.
For those readers who got lost at the mention of cricket, here’s the thing. There are likely to be accommodations made so that LIV Tour players can participate in things like the Ryder Cup, Olympics, and Majors, even if the PGA remains hard-line about other tournaments.
Some of the ideas from LIV may percolate over to the PGA. When the weathers poor there are already examples of tournaments with shotgun starts, or being reduced to three-rounds.
Working on the assumption that LIV Tour players are allowed to play in the Majors, but no other tournaments, what are the likely effects for both?
For the LIV Tour having their players in the Majors will help keep a high profile, which will assist with sponsorship and television deals. This in turn will provide more earning opportunities for the players on the Tour. As we’ve seen, they are already pretty good.
For the players there is the opportunity to get your name on one of those coveted trophies. Only two-hundred-and-twenty-nine men have achieved this as of June twenty-twenty-two, fewer of those have managed it more than once. Money and a shot at glory could well be irresistible for players as yet undecided.
Of course, LIV Golf could create their own Major event. The four we have currently only coalesced in the sixties, before that there was a more movable view on what Major tournaments were.
And here’s the thing, in my view, a LIV Golf Major may be the only chance their tour players will have of winning such, especially as time goes by.
Why?
I mentioned how quickly my muscle tone and stamina dropped after I stopped playing golf as the reason for considering this article. Another thought that led me to it is the much loved and multi-attributed, quote in golf, ‘The harder I practice, the luckier I get.’
Tying these two ideas together I suggest that players who are not in a regular habit of playing four rounds of golf in competition will lose the tone and stamina required to come through as the victor.
If the PGA retains it’s hard stance then LIV Tour players will have no chance, in competition, to stretch the muscles - both physical and mental - required in win a Major.
Initially that is unlikely to be an issue, years of experience will still be there. But over a longer term, where you have players who have played the LIV Tour as a majority of their career, will these players have developed the skills needed to grapple with a fourth day of play, heading down the back straight with huge crowds around the fairway, a slim lead in the final few holes, and coming under pressure from someone who won their warm up tournament?
Will they withstand the pressure-cooker stresses of a play-off?
There will always be wonderful players who can do extra-ordinary things - Tiger Woods winning at Torrey Pines in two-thousand-and eight, in a play-off, despite knee and anterior cruciate ligament issues comes to mind - but such players are special because there are so few of them.
There are far more players who despite being excellent golfers, never claim a Major (Rickie Fowler, and Ian Poulter may change that, but Colin Montgomerie and Jeff Maggert won’t).
On an average year two of the four Major’s fall to a first-time winner. Surely, it cold be argued, that leaves plenty opportunity for a LIV Tour player to snag one.
It does, but no amount of practice will build up the resilience required to play that fourth day. LIV Tour players will develop a playing rhythm which goes into the three day match. Adrenaline levels will prime to peak at the right times, muscles will develop memory of when to keep going and when it’s time to relax.
How much of a difference can such a thing make to a player in prime condition? Maybe only marginal, maybe not enough for a genius to overcome. But only a genius.
The cycling coach Dave Brailsford sought to aggregate marginal gains in pursuit of excellence, understanding that attention to small details can add up to big victories.
The corollary of marginal gains is incremental decline, where skills developed drop off as they remain unused.
Players on the LIV Tour will lose out on the facility to make those incremental gains a Major winner will need. And the ones who have joined will see an incremental decline in their ability to cope with the pressures of a four day tournament.
The LIV Tour has the potential to be fast paced, exciting, and well followed. It may provide some wonderful Ryder Cup and Olympic players.
I just don’t see it providing any Major winners, unless they happen in the next year or so.
There is of course one further issue with the LIV Tour which is not addressed in the above, but it would be remiss to not comment on.
Surely, in the twenty-first century, creating opportunities where only one gender can benefit should be a thing of the past.
Header by Stuart Turnbull, created with CANVA Pro.