There is open qualification into LIV…and plenty of non 4 round events get into OWGR. OWGR and majors could easily involve LIV and they purposefully chose not to, it will likely kill the league or at least has seriously crippled it. And I suspect that was the aim
-team golf
-guaranteed fields weekly
-clear title race and standings
-presentation in general (lots more shots, color coded upcoming holes for difficulty, win probability, better scatter plots imo)
-team playoff event with singles/doubles combination
“There is open qualification into LIV”
2 years after they tried to call OWGR’s bluff and failed. Look, all I am trying to convince you of is that whatever Matt’s level of contempt for LIV is, it is more pro-LIV than the median golf fan.
I think this is mostly because LIV has objectively been a failure, that has done nothing other than fracture the sport and enrich a few very low-quality people.
I have been and remain highly critical of the PGA tour, and dislike a lot of the players (Spieth, JT, etc), but come on!
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We totally disagree here. Fractured the PGA Tour sure, but has led to massive improvement through competition. Gives us true golf fans options to watch
That sentiment makes no sense. Why would you want options to watch two worse products versus one cohesive best product.
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You said the points race was previously “non-existent”. Even though the fedexcup has been endlessly promoted by the tour since its inception. Anyways this is pointless, you don’t respond to any specific arguments.
I do find it interesting that you, and presumably the LIV bots, are already preparing the arguments for why LIV failed (black balled by the majors). The reality is that I never could have imagined that there could be so little interest in a golf event that had Rahm, Bryson, Brooks, DJ, Niemann, Cam, etc… and I don’t think it’s all LIV’s fault, it’s just really hard to start a new sports league from scratch.
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Finally got caught up on this thread and wow, @hogtrough has made a lot of compelling arguments. In an effort to fight back against the hardships LIV players have had to face, through not fault of their own, I am going to jump on a plane (perhaps on the Legion XIII private jet) in early May and run the live blog from on site at LIV Korea! Matt can’t make it but I’m hoping Foltz and Perez can help crank out some insights. Hog… if you’re going as well let’s meet up at Club 54, it will be positioned right behind the Watering Hole, blaring club music.
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I don’t think the TV ratings really matter that much. LIV often plays middle of night and hasn’t really been on TV until now and golf fans are mostly old guys set in their ways.
I think as a competitive spectacle it would be massively better without being black balled by the majors. I mean if the PGAT suddenly didn’t lead to major qualification it would collapse as a competition worthy of viewing instantly. So, yes it is a huge deal and while I prefer the creativity, innovation and energy of LIV…it can never compare to majors. Particularly the Masters
I do not think what we had pre LIV was a competitive product really.
PGA never really crowned a winner, and doesn’t really do so now. The point system is significantly worse as well with everyone playing different events
I don’t really care about it for the individual LIV guys who make so much. But more as a fan of the entire golf universe where I think the majors are blowing up what could be a great system
This is all just such utter nonsense. All the top players are already qualified for the majors. So you would stop tuning into to Scheffler trying to win the Arnold Palmer if it didn’t have any implications for the majors?
Over time it would crush PGAT as a product. If bhatia relied on special invites or had to go play 2 great rounds of qualifiers to make the masters, us open or British then yes the relevance of the PGAT would crater
Is there any metric anywhere that indicates there is interest in what LIV is doing? I know you can come up with excuses for why TV ratings or in-person attendance of whatever isn’t relevant, but is there a single statistic or metric out there that shows an appetite for LIV? Anything? They’ve had a successful in-person event in Australia, which mostly just seems like a big party. Is there anything else?
I am talking about what I like here. I don’t really care what the tape delayed ratings of an event in Singapore are on the CW. If you switched LIV and PGAT start times and TV listings the ratings would broadly switch.
I am talking about quality of the product as a whole
But if the product is so good, then fans should be interested (at least somewhere on the planet), and shouldn’t there be some metric out there that can capture this? And if there isn’t… well maybe the product just isn’t very good. You might like it, more power to you, but it doesn’t seem like anybody else does.
I am not sure that’s how golf really works. Audience is just mostly old guys who aren’t going to change from cbs and nbc to cw to watch tape delayed coverage.
And like I said the biggest obstacle to competitiveness is being held from them via collusion to knee cap them
TV ratings don’t matter that much? I wish Monahan knew that. Instead of cramming in the tour schedule to make sure it’s over by NFL season. At least it’s a Ryder Cup year, we have one golf tournament to watch during the months of Sep Oct Nov and Dec. What’s the second biggest fall event these days? The PNC father son?
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Just an incredible thread here. “Majors colluded to screw LIV” is akin to “I would have been all-state in high school but coach wouldn’t play me!”
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It’s not really a question if they did, just why they did
But it’s not collusion. The Masters likely just didn’t want the clowns who took the cash and harmed professional golf in their fields. Again, I find it very unlikely that the Green Coats are actively talking with anyone about how to set their field.
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