ATLANTA — Another Masters arrives just in time to remind us of what golf might be like if it weren’t as divided as Congress. If Saudi Arabia hadn’t gotten bored and taken up the game as a hobby. And if only all the world’s best players would have been content making merely an embarrassing amount of loot, not Bond super-villain money.
This tournament represents different things to different people.
For the romantic, it is the messenger of spring, the ideal of renewal and hope on full display for a week in the ultimate southern garden. Augusta, believe it or not, was a resort destination around the turn of the 20th century, before Florida horned in on the action. Now the luxury is pretty much confined to that golf course just down Washington Road from the Hooters. And the luxuriating is so terribly short-lived.
For the locals, from the hoteliers for whom this one week is their harvest season to the restaurateurs who find their tables suddenly filled with a hungry, thirsty, free-spending mob dressed in khakis and sundresses, it is time to give thanks to the plush demographics of golf. The Masters never has been a poor man’s diversion.
And for the weary follower of golf who has endured the cleaving of the game in two since the coming of the LIV virus in June 2021, this week is a bit of a reprieve.
The Masters represents the first field of the season that brings together most of the players anyone cares about, give or take a Talor Gooch. This is the first chance of 2024 to see the cream of both the PGA Tour and LIV together on the same manicured field of battle. You know, the kind of star-laden starting times we used to take for granted before Greg Norman and Phil Mickelson started mucking up a good thing.
The Masters defending champion, Jon Rahm, has been a non-person to the PGA Tour this season since taking up with the LIV rebels for a reported $450 million or so. But as long as there is a Masters, he’ll always be welcome back here. The lords of Augusta tend to place their champions above the petty, internecine tug-of-war for the talent (except the year they encouraged Mickelson to stay far away).
It’ll be nice to catch up with the Spaniard, see where he’s been hiding himself these past three months. He’s either been captaining the Legion XIII team in LIV or in witness protection. Hard to tell.
The PGA Tour-LIV fracture was supposed to be healed by now, so they grandly announced in June. A merger between the two was meant to be complete by the start of 2024. And yet the divide drags on and on and on.
In the meantime this year, the PGA Tour has lined up new investment from something called the Strategic Sports Group, rearming itself with $3 billion to hurl at its stars in an attempt to discourage further defections.
Instead of a settlement, there’s the feel of slow, grinding trench warfare between the PGA Tour and LIV, where money bags have replaced sandbags along the front lines.
When all this crass money talk was last addressed, at last month’s Players Championship, some principals of the PGA Tour did hit upon one great truth:
The outside world could give less than two divots about how the golf industrial complex chooses to make these players wealthy. It just wants to sit on its couch, drink a Mich ULTRA or two and waste a Sunday afternoon watching the world’s best try not to go all gooey like taffy in the sun on the back nine. So, make it happen.
As PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan told the media then: “(The fans) are tired of hearing about conflict, money and who is getting what. They want to watch the world’s best golfers compete in tournaments with history, meaning, and legacies on the line at venues they recognize and love.”
The Masters and Augusta National fit that bill rather nicely, don’t you think?
“I think we need to try to re-engage the fans and re-engage them in a way that the focus is on the play and not on talking about equity and all the rest of it. If I were a fan, I would want to watch the best players compete against each other week in, week out,” said Rory McIlroy, championing the obvious.
It’s only human that people ruin everything. Now they’re working on what used to be one of the ultimate comfort sports. One that was running along so smoothly before LIV, one that had even received a nice bump in popularity as a result of the desire to get outside and breathe and maybe hit the practice range in the wake of COVID-19.
The Masters does have some curative properties. It can thaw the cynic’s heart. It can charm the hardest of hardline sports fan, who otherwise might dismiss golf as polo on two feet. Now, might it remedy, if for only a week, this broken game? It arrives to provide the illusion of all the best players again playing meaningful golf, like they used to.
Last year’s tournament was a reminder that some of those chaps who went off to play their cute little 54-hole LIV exhibitions are still serious ball-strikers. Now including Rahm, LIV-ers finished 1-2-3 (Mickelson and Brooks Koepka the other two). Throw in Patrick Reed, and four of the top six were Saudi employees.
This year’s event contains a dozen LIV players, including seven past champions. Seeking a little more international diversity, the Masters even invited LIV’s Joaquin Nieman, even though they didn’t have to. It’s their tournament. They can draw names out of a hat if they choose.
For golf fans it’s a dysfunctional family reunion they can actually look forward to.
