Per my quick count, if the cut line stays where it is, there
Jun 24, 2022, 1:52 PM
will be 90 PGA Tour pros going home without a paycheck this week. Why is this important? Because, from now on, each time it happens, I suspect you will see a few defections to the LIV "Tour".
Now, guaranteed money sounds great for players, but if you are a golf fan, is it something you would watch, or pay to go see in person?
So, what if this were pro football? A rival league pops up, infinitely well funded, ready to cherry pick some of your best players. What do you do? I suspect you do just what the PGA Tour did, which is, to say "If you go, you STAY gone, because you are banned from our league going forward."
Even with Saudi backing, I think me and a lot of others wouldn't have AS MUCH of a problem if the LIV league was actually set up where you had to play well to get a paycheck. The idea of multimillion dollar signing bonuses kind of takes away that incentive, along with the fact that even last place gets $120,000 each time out. Would you like an absolutely crappy surgeon operating on you, just because somebody liked him enough to hire him at a fancy hospital, regardless of the fact that he barely knows which end of a scalpel to hold on to? In some ways, that is what you are going to get when / if you watch LIV golf.
If the Saudis thought this thing was going to polish their image via "sportswashing", as it has been dubbed, no matter what else happens, it failed in that endeavor. All it has done is bring up the myriad of reasons why it is NOT good to be in bed with the Saudis. (Never mind that us and just about every other industrialized country in the world is in bed with them to some degree via oil and gas agreements.)
as long as the LIV players can still participate in the "majors", which is probably going to be the case, you'll see more and more players thumbing their nose at the PGA. Not sure about the US Open or the British Open, but Augusta National is absolutely going to make sure they have the best players in the world competing in the Masters each year regardless of what the PGA says or thinks.