For years I’ve knocked watching golf on TV. The many-hour commitment
to watch people whisper into the mic about an upcoming putt doesn’t
have the same… say gusto… as someone losing their mind after a March
Madness buzzer beater.
But Sunday’s Tour Championship was must-see TV and if couldn’t have
come at a better time as it shows the fatal flaw with the PGA Tour's
adversary - the Saudi-backed LIV Tour.
The winner of the Tour Championship pockets $18 million dollars,
adding a whole degree of pressure and encouragement to go out there
and shoot the lights out. Can you imagine the hustle if every player
in the Super Bowl was playing for $18 million? No result-based reward
is bigger in the world of sports.
Since it's a culmination of the PGA Tour season, it takes the FedEx
Cup Standings and gives the leaders a corresponding stroke lead before
the tournament start. This particular format caused a lot of
consternation as Fed Ex Cup leader Scott Scheffler earned a six stroke
lead before the tournament started. Somehow people thought six strokes
would be an insurmountable lead and nobody in golf has ever choked
away a big lead in the history of the game.
Naturally, Scheffler struggled on the last day and Northern Ireland’s
Rory McIlroy won his third Fed Ex Cup championship because his putter
was red hot in the final round. McIlroy began the tournament as the
No. 7 seeded golfer and notched a triple bogey on his first hole,
putting him miles behind the No. 1-ranked golfer in the world,
Scheffler.
On the final day, the pressure got to Scheffler, who didn’t fall
apart, per say, but was tight, defensive and very obviously not his
usual self. But can you blame him with $18 million on the line? It
goes above and beyond the normal jitters you get when teeing off on
the first hole of the clubhouse with people around.
The kind of golf that was played on Sunday was scrappy, tense and
dramatic. When everyone predicted a boring finale to the 2022 PGA Tour
season, this is exactly what the doctor ordered.
And it’s something the LIV Tour couldn’t dream of pulling off. The
Saudis have poached some of golf’s bigger names with gigantic
contracts, but all this is paid up front and the LIV Tour is lacking
in two big things: any sense of competition or importance.
The PGA Tour has the prestige of the … well PGA Tour, where Jack
Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Bobby Jones, Sam Snead and Tiger Woods made
their names.
The LIV Tour on the other hand, has Phil Mickelson and other slightly
over-the-hill golfers mixed in with some real solid talent. Since no
TV network took the plunge with the Saudi-backed golf tour, they
streamed the events on YouTube. Yep YouTube.
And oh boy, it was a real treat to pull that up and watch Phil
Mickelson spend more time in the woods than the greens. Phil is
essentially the LIV’s mascot who shows up for a few in between inning
promotions of pies getting thrown as his face.