US Open will be fun
It’ll be billed as the battle between the LIV golfers and the PGA Tour
I’m hearing that Rickie Fowler, Matthew Wolff, Justin Rose, Bubba Watson, Jason Kokrak, and Harold Varner III are in the pipeline for the LIV series
I hope you realize that the ongoing soap opera drama is drawing in new eyeballs who otherwise would be treating pro golf as a punchline to a joke. That’s one way of growing the game LOL
All due respect my man, but you might just be making stuff up at this point and your blind support of the LIV tour so far makes most on here question your takes, TBH.
Well we’ll see how many of those names sign. Deals can always fall through last minute but I’m expecting a high batting average from the list I gave
Make no mistake, I am a fan of the PGA Tour golf too and I watch a ton. I watched some of the Canadian Open too. Rory was on fire all weekend (so was Finau)
I am a big fan of more golf, more entertaining storylines, and more opportunities to make money betting on golf (LOL).
I would like to see the Asian Tour get the full treatment from books too at some point
I’m actually going to agree with Daniel. The bitterness on both sides is fantastic drama.
I live in the UK, and every other week of PGA Tour golf for the last couple of decades has constantly talked about money. This week, we were instead told a couple of times every hour how prestige and quality of player matter far more than money.
I’d imagine this will be the rhetoric for every single week until the Tour Championship, where suddenly we’ll be told ad nauseum that this is the richest week in golf.
It will be funny to watch everyone squirm next week if a LIV player wins. I’m also going to be interested to see the reception the LIV players get. Wouldn’t be surprised to see the Boston crowd boo and heckle them throughout.
The bitterness on both sides is fantastic drama.
To each their own, but I might be more into it if Saudi blood money wasn’t involved. It’s not even “political”, it’s basic human rights, and if you keep looking for reasons to say “I guess this could be interesting” instead of saying “fuck those guys” — we are starting the conversation on a completely different page.
Can’t change how others think, but they won’t get a second more of my attention. Frankly, it would be nice to see @matt_courchene and @will_courchene ignore it all together.
Yeah, I don’t really want to get into the political and moral components of it because I feel the argument against is strong enough without that. I think there are several arguments to be made for us covering this (and also some to be made against). From a moral standpoint, I don’t really see the framework that gets the average person to say no to this Saudi venture but yes/no to so many other things related to sport, business, and charity in our lives. You can call that whataboutism, but it’s also about having a consistent worldview with logical principles.
But I obviously understand where you are coming from. I think at the very least we should have the historical LIV data on our website as there will now be top players playing most of their rounds there. I would view that similar to the journalists who covered the event this week despite being very against the source of the funds.
Honestly, if that’s your attitude then you probably would have to dismiss a lot of sport. When big bucks are involved, generally somewhere along the line something reprehensible will have happened.
I think the vast majority of people would take the massive pay rise to work for the Saudis, while disassociating themselves personally from any atrocities they commit.
I’ve been a Newcastle fan for 25 years, they were purchased by the Saudis last year and the fans are on the whole massively excited at being able to spend enough to eventually compete for trophies. None of the existing players demanded a transfer away from the club when the Saudis took over. The WWE go to Saudi Arabia twice a year, and right now the only two active wrestlers who don’t go is someone of Syrian descent and his best friend.
Basically, I’m into it for the entertainment and want to see the horrible people on both sides act ridiculously.
Fair point, I guess you guys couldn’t really put out your best product without the data from the events. In my mind though these guys shouldn’t even be playing in the majors making their “data” as useless as they are.
Agree to disagree. For me, this is a perfectly reasonable place to draw a line.
Btw, no offense, but you’d do well performing at a LIV golf media event!
This is another opportunity to make money. That’s what this site is about. It’s not about what Tour is best or there would only be the PGA Tour here. It’s about finding an edge. It’s silly to judge the quality of LIV after one event. I mean, if a LIV player wins the US Open are we going to declare LIV the better Tour? Of course not. Doesn’t really matter how Schwartzel played on the back nine. He had enough in the bank to hold on. The 54-hole event will certainly open up more possibilities than 72.
The fact LIV got the names they did and more on the way means this is going to be something to watch (on and off the course). But, again, this site is about EV.
Hennie Du Plessis as a Top 10 was a terrific hit. Hopefully more of these to come. Probably will be considering name recognition will influence odds here (at least in short term) than the PGA Tour.
Let’s enjoy the fact we have another option.
It will be a sad state of affairs the day our site is ‘all about EV’. Sports bettors / fantasy players pay our bills no doubt, but 90+% of the site can be enjoyed by people who don’t care about betting at all. Will and I are golf fans first, and we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t care deeply about the sport.
And we are lucky to have you guys.
Also wouldn’t be doing this if we weren’t making money, so there is some truth to your comment.
A little late to the discussion here but I thought I might add a few things, loosely in response to a few of the topics of conversation so far.
When saying "It’s a business " breaks down-- an economic argument for hating LIV
There is a certain kind of sports fan who chastises those critical of the Saudi league for their naivety. The reality of the situation is that the Saudi’s have more money, and ultimately the team with the bigger pockets will win – this is the idea.
My question is-- what precedent is there for a situation like this? I think the best comparison is something like Uber, Lyft, or WeWork. Running the clock forward a few years, after the Saudi League has poached every golfer on planet earth worth watching, what are we left with?
Do you think they will continue to shower players like Hudson Swafford in millions of dollars? How much they are willing to spend will depend on and is constrained by two things:
How much they have budgeted for this specific campaign of sportswashing via golf.
The existence of competitors they need to outcompete.
If LIV find legitimate success (i.e. getting players like Hovland, Scheffler, Morikawa, Rory, Hidkei, etc), the reasons it has to pay insane prices for terrible players will disappear. The economic pressure (the high start-up cost associated with getting players to switch) to pay huge salaries will be gone. Ultimately players earnings will be comparable to (possibly less than) their earnings on the PGA tour today.
If we are framing this as a competition between two businesses, it will be a competition where the stupidest business wins, and everyone loses except the few players with the fewest scruples.
We will be left with a shitter version of the PGA tour, owned by MBS, paying huge hosting fees to every trump golf course. Oh yeah, and 54 holes with no cut-- kiss those missed cut bets goodbye!
Which brings me to my next point.
Romantic Reasons to Hate LIV
There is another kind of sports fan that insists that the business of professional sports is all about “entertainment”, and efforts to make sports more “entertaining” are inevitable and indeed necessary for a sports continued existence.
So here we are, with LIV embracing its place in the entertainment industry, with brilliant and fun innovations like a shotgun start(!), London taxis driving everywhere on the golf course, and Scott Vincent of the golf ball slim slammers putting on a beautiful display by shooting 78! Wow! So fun! Oageltree close behind with an 81!
What has always bothered me about the “sports = entertainment” people lecturing me is that they never pause for a moment to ask-- what kind of entertainment are we talking about here? I argue that this question has a clear answer: competition. People are entertained by good competition.
You can imagine my disappointment then, when LIV’s primary innovation is to make the sport LESS COMPETITIVE.
There are many ways that I could see the PGA tour produce more competitive and exciting competitions for players and fans-- these include: more variety in the format of events (having a survival stylle event with a cut each day, having a US am style event with stroke play qualifying and a knockout round, making the last part of the Fedex cup a matchplay event instead of an idiotic handicapped stroke play event, etc), playing at courses that produce exciting, challenging golf due to good architecture and conditioning, having a links season leading up to the British Open. Every innovation associated with LIV are steps in the opposite direction of what I would like to see
Is it ever ok to work for the Saudi’s?
While I agree that the comment sections of this forum (focused primarily on modelling golf thoughtfully) is not the right place to carry out a debate on the moral issues surrounding the LIV golf league, there appears to be abundant confusion about what the moral issues are in the first place.
With that in mind, I just want to point out that there is a huge difference between working for the LIV and taking 200k from the Kingdom to go teach english in Jeddah, or something. The issue is not the provenance of the money, but rather, what you are being paid to do. In the teacher example, they are paid to teach people english (or physics, or whatever you prefer).
A pro golfer, however, is being paid to actively promote the idea that the Saudi government is basically good and forward thinking, and should be accepted by people in the west as such.
So when people refer to the moral issues surrounding this tour, ^^^ this is what they are talking about.
As I’ve said before, I realize that Data Golf does a lot and if you feel you’re being stretched too thin, it’s AOK just to post the LIV Tour projections on the Sub Tours. I can take it from there
I mean, it’s a lot of work and it goes against your personal and political beliefs. I get that and I’m thankful for whatever I can get
If it disappears from the Sub Tours though I’ll probably complain LOL
Thank you, Data Golf for all your great work!
Yeah as I’ve said 6-7 times previously in this thread, we are covering it.
DP World Tour punts on the LIV Tour issue
It looks like the laws are different in the EU. There are legal ramifications to booting the LIV players from the DP World Tour
More notably the commissioner did not pull the gangsta move and welcomed all LIV players to the DP World Tour. It would have been a huge scalp if he said something like, “Dustin Johnson, welcome to the DP World Tour”
It looks like LIV Golf will have to create or repurpose a few big money events on the Asian Tour to accommodate the LIV golfers
Why would giving the LIV tour players membership be a gangsta move?
If more fragmentation = more betting opportunities, and that is what you want, isn’t isolating the LIV players to ensure more opposite field events the gangsta move you want?
I don’t think DJ wants to play any DP World Tour events, why would he? He could have done that at any point over the last decade if he wanted to, and he’s made it clear he wants to play less golf now.