What did we learn about LIV Golf and its players from the Masters?
With his second place finish at the Augusta National, Phil Mickelson either legitimized or undermined the “creepy wankers” he wanted to represent.
The truth lies right in the middle: it told us almost nothing.
Mickelson’s form on the LIV golf circuit was virtually non-existent. When he stepped back to play at the Masters, he was forgiving. He was riotous again during the LIV event in Oklahoma last week. His performances reflect his behavior: tweet something pathetic, play pathetic. Officials in Augusta may have taken his phone.
There’s no argument for someone like Brooks Koepka: he’s taken LIV Golf seriously enough to be its star and, thanks to better health, has brought his once-dominant Masters self back to life. There remains a question mark over how he will play given the chance to win a major, but this is a world-class golfer who has no interest in the ongoing war between organizations. One suspects that he felt like he landed on the wrong page, but ended up having no other choice.
Patrick Reed’s second place finish in Dubai has reminded us how much his career has benefited from the allegations that shaped it. As much as he protests, however many people he doesn’t sue, Reed is better off believing the world is against him. He has to do without that in front of a predominantly sympathetic LIV audience, which now belongs more to a gang of mercenaries than to the black sheep. It’s no wonder his game suffered until he got back behind enemy lines.
The LIV Golf players who helped make the top 5 are all outstanding and all comfortable in Augusta. The breakaway circuit has a handful of these. And while it’s easy — and often even fun — to joke about where they now make their living, pro golfers are largely attuned to hitting balls and striving for golf perfection, even if it may never be attained.
You are individuals too and there are exceptions to every rule you want to write about. For example, it was not surprising to learn that Thomas Pieters was a latecomer to Oklahoma; You can pay him the world and get little more than a tweet from a member of his team about how much he enjoys being a member of the team he ended up on.
Dustin Johnson’s performance at this event will not change the fact that he will now view the off-season precisely as an excuse to go fishing or jet-skiing or whatever he’s doing at night these days. We’ll find out over the next two months if he really managed to surpass some mediocre performances in time as he jeopardized his chances of one day being remembered in the memory he deserves.
As for European legends, as one might once reasonably have described them, things are uglier overall. No doubt they feel they have been let down by a tour that they did when it suited them. This tour will also feel betrayed, their future Ryder Cup succession planning being shattered alongside half a dozen reputations. Augusta didn’t tell us about these players as each of them retired from major championships last year. Paul Casey is fortunate to be invited back for a farewell, an act of generosity by the PGA of America that Mickelson appears to have conveniently ignored.
Another big issue the Masters haven’t addressed concerns the future more than those players of the past: How much will the careers of those we know less about be shaped by playing on the LIV circuit of golf? How will Joaquin Niemann develop now that the rowdy Chilean boy no longer has to fight? Was Mito Pereira’s first chance to win a Major also his last? Will Matt Wolff ever reach the same heights as Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland? How will perceived mistreatment of Talor Gooch affect his future? Are LIV Golf’s younger stars poised to become elite players? Would they have done it if they had chosen a different path?
Big championships used to answer one question above all. For now, you’ll see that they’ll respond more frequently, but the likelihood of anything conclusive coming up is less than that of the Tweetomime villain, who is making his first return to the PGA since winning the PGA Championship. His glittering run at the Masters didn’t even tell us that LIV Golf would be happy to claim his success, as Greg Norman had promised prior to the tournament, adamantly that all of the organization’s players would conquer the golf tournament’s 18th green would in the event of a LIV victory.
Johnson or Koepka or Cam Smith or anyone else could go and win the PGA championship. Should any of them do so, it would be a huge PR boost for an organization formed for this purpose, but it would no more belong to LIV Golf than Jon Rahm’s Masters win belongs to the PGA Tour. As much as they try to convince you otherwise, these players know as well as anyone that golf is largely an individual sport. It was the exceptional talents of three players that ensured they played so well at the Masters and it will be a mix of talent and timing that will decide who wins the Wanamaker Trophy.