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As golf events go, “The Match” — which pits celebrities and/or golf stars against each other in a made-for-TV competition — doesn’t exactly have the status of a major tournament. Previous matches that have featured everyone from Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers have been long on star power, short on actual star power. golf drama.
Say this for The Match, though: at least someone attempts to reunite golf’s divided stars.
The final installment of the event, which begins in December in Las Vegas, pits PGA Tour stars Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy against LIV Golf’s Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka. In other words, The Match did what the PGA Tour and LIV Golf couldn’t: bring the game’s stars together again.
Men’s professional golf has split into two distinct camps since LIV Golf began play in 2022. While the PGA Tour has the heritage and the biggest names – Woods and McIlroy – LIV Golf has managed to attract most of the most interesting characters in the world of golf. . Players like DeChambeau, Koepka, Mickelson and Jon Rahm now play on the LIV Tour, and the only time they cross paths with their former PGA Tour comrades is at majors and the occasional non-PGA event Ride like the Olympics.
What makes all of this so infuriating is that LIV’s top players clearly still have the guts to compete with their Tour counterparts. This year’s US Open at Pinehurst was one of the best tournaments – not just majors, but tournaments of any stripe – in recent golf history, and DeChambeau’s victory over McIlroy summed it up at the last shots of the last hole. Olympic golf at the Golf National in Paris looked like The Rahm Show until Rahm implodes and Scheffler snatches the gold from around his neck.
There certainly does not appear to be any visible urgency behind the scenes for any reunification. The Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, LIV Golf’s backer, announced their surprising end to hostilities in June 2023, and since then there has been almost no concrete progress.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan doesn’t often speak to the media (and, by association, Tour fans), but he did so last week before the Tour Championship in Atlanta. Although he was asked five times about the status of PIF and LIV Golf negotiations, he refused to elaborate.
“These conversations are complex. It’s going to take time. They took time, and they will continue to take time,” Monahan said, before repeating a variation of the same line that so many involved in the deal have said repeatedly: “I’m not going to negotiate the details in public. or disclose details or specifics. All I can say is that the conversations are continuing and they are productive.
The greatest enemy of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf isn’t each other, it’s indifference. The longer these “productive” negotiations drag on, the more fans find other things to do with their time.
“I just think it’s gone on long enough,” McIlroy said last week of the drawn-out negotiations to unify, adding: “I think if it doesn’t happen soon, then honestly, I think the PIF and the Saudis are going to have to look at alternative options, right?
Now that the PGA Tour season is over, the LIV Tour is coming to a close, and football has begun, golf will recede even further in the public mind than it already has. This is not the path to a sustainable future for men’s golf, no matter how many corporate sponsors there are on either side.
So now comes The Match, stepping into the void left by the Tour and LIV. The intrigues are numerous. There’s the Pinehurst Rematch, Koepka trying to get his game back, McIlroy eating his words about not wanting anything to do with LIV, Koepka and DeChambeau getting along, Scheffler dominating everyone in sight… every hole should have enough drama to inspire a million Golf reactions on Twitter. Sure, it’s manufactured drama, but at this point we have to be happy with what we’re getting.
“It’s not just a competition between some of golf’s greatest champions; it’s an event designed to energize the fans,” McIlroy said in a text to Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch. “We’re all here to put on a great show and contribute to a goodwill event that brings the best together again. “
McIlroy has been one of LIV’s most vocal critics, but he’s also one of the few on the PGA Tour side who has publicly taken a game-first approach. He understands that golf is, at its core, a spectacle – and when golf stops being a “good show,” fans go elsewhere.
The Match will not solve golf’s problems. But it’s at least proof that reunification is possible… even if you have to put up with awkward jokes and forced jokes to get there.