I don’t agree with it being boring seeing the same guys, I think 50 is plenty to get to know over a season. Crucial is having a meritocracy for churn, LIV I don’t think turn over enough spots and PGA is not at all ruthless enough getting rid of struggling golfers (see JB Holmes, Snedeker, etc). I am for a big golf universe with secondary events and tours and ability to play your way up but don’t think max greyserman or tosti or whoever getting into pga events adds anything to my enjoyment.
I am a lifelong golf fan who has enjoyed LIV experience. I don’t think it was a good product pre LIV for fans and think it is heading toward a better product now
Tosti doesn’t add to your enjoyment? What planet are you living on? The guy has four lime-green chevy sparks parked strategically around the country because he refuses to pay for rental cars, has an entire instagram dedicated to his falconry, has used 6 caddies so far this year, is already live to get suspended for his on-course behavior, is 5’6, hits it like 320 off the tee, and will probably win an event in the next 6-8 months! What more do you want?
“why not embrace the two different tours and two different types?”
Because both types stink! I want to see highly competitive golf, where guys are trying hard to put the ball in the hole all week long, on a challenging (preferably windy, preferably in Ireland) venue where every aspect of their game is tested.
Somewhat changing the subject here, and I think something both of you may agree with to some degree: To me “excitement” is not about having a close finish on the last few holes on Sunday. I think some of the most exciting golf that I watched last year was Justin Thomas trying to make the playoffs at the Wyndham. He wasn’t in contention, but every shot mattered a lot to him, you could tell, and it was awesome. (I happened to be rooting against him, but who cares). As Matt noted, seeing someone make a putt to make the cut at the Players was awesome. Why not try to make every shot matter more?
So by my scorecard, LIV plays crappy courses, no relegation, everyone seems like they don’t care, and they never play. If I am critical of the PGA tour (which I am), why would I be happy about any of this?
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LIV does have Relegation and that gave us the awesome qualifying event where Kieran Vincent won a spot and totally changed his life. I bet his career earnings were maybe 1 million, he’s going to get 3 million now with chance for more.
I agree with you with wanting to see more meaningful shots, that’s why I think team golf and the season long points race/relegation are brilliant additions by LIV. PGA tour doesn’t really have the cutthroat side of things. When you lose your card, you don’t really lose your card for example. JT was great but that was more a Ryder cup influenced issue and not PGA Tour.
I agree broadly too many people on LIV don’t care (Dustin Johnson, Westwood, Kaymer, probably cam and koepka) but it’s hard not to say that about regular PGAT events for me also. Are cantlay and Rory really fired up to try and go win each week? I don’t think so.
Tosti is a great story, but would also be a great story on a second tier tour (which he basically is playing now). His story isn’t better just because Scottie Scheffler was in field with him in Houston.
Yes the season-long points race is such a brilliant addition by LIV. If only the PGA Tour had a points system that determined status for the following season, damn that would be awesome!!
Also yes, agreed that LIV is very cutthroat – just look at Anthony Kim. He’s earned his spot on the tour for the rest of the season for sure. Or look at the Majesticks team, where the 3 (aging) co-captains aren’t even eligible for relegation. Or the 52-year-old Mickelson – also not eligible for relegation. Or Marty Kaymer – who has completely lost it and is playing at a level below an average KFT player – he’ll also be around next year. Same goes for Bubba (1 finish better than 20th in his 17 LIV starts) and Na, both those guys would be on the verge of losing their PGA Tour cards. But still… apart from these minor issues, LIV is very cutthroat: the two Vincent brothers will be battling for status next year!
And yes if you are on a major medical extension (like Snedeker, Holmes) then ya you’ll get some starts, as you should. But otherwise guys who lose their card are going back to the KFT or playing a handful of PGA Tour events, unless they have a career earnings exemption.
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Mickelson, Kim, Westwood etc would all get starts on PGAT as well. PGA Tour doesn’t have a clear title race and I think eventually will because of LIV. No one considers FedEx Cup really a title race and the point system and schedule isn’t conducive to a title race, F1/premier league style.
Of course there are problems with LIV model but many of those come from the original contracts having to be guaranteed and huge money to start league in first place. Hopefully if last place team is automatically broken up and they can get a bit more clean and clear on the transactions
Ryan Palmer, CT Pan, maverick McNealy, Zach Johnson, luke Donald, webb Simpson, Stewart cink, etc all finish outside card range and have made plenty of starts
I assume you are kind of trolling at this point so this will be my last reply.
Westwood would not be getting starts on PGAT playing as bad as he is for last 2 years. He’d be back on DPWT. Phil obviously would have lifetime exemption but would be nowhere near elevated events; Kim would get a couple sponsors, sure. But with LIV these three hacks are locked in to what is supposed to be a top 50 elite player circuit.
FedExCup isn’t the greatest thing ever (no non-major thing ever will be in golf) but if that’s not a season-long race then I’m not sure what is.
Oh yes… there are a few problems with the LIV model. We haven’t even touched on economics: they make zero revenue, and yet their costs have to be 5x those of the PGA Tour and that’s not even considering the upfront contracts (which I assume will need to re-upped once the initial contracts expire?).
Pan, Mav are on major medicals. The other guys have all been on tour for decades, so I wouldn’t generalize from them to the avg player who finishes outside the 125. But sure, make it harder for veterans with past champions status to play, I’m fine with that. But the tour has big fields to accommodate this to some degree.
Anyways, enjoy LIV. Mid-day Friday and till waiting for the event to start this week… #innovation.
edit: I’m aware this makes me irrationally angry. Nothing I can do about it unfortunately.
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I am not trolling. I truly enjoy PGAT as well, it’s not one or the other. The two tours playing off each other will make for innovation and improvements for the fan. I suspect Phil would have had a lot of Webb Simpson type sponsor invites to elevated events but that’s beside my point. LIV has never sold itself on an elite top 50 player league, Kalle samooja and Kieran Vincent are playing. I don’t think they have run teams as well as it could be, but see some sense in letting captains stay around for more than 1 year contract for example. I just think they had to overpay and overpromise to get Kaymer, Phil, Poulter, etc those guys never would have come if they said you play bad these 8 events you are out.
Economics wise it obviously doesn’t work for any sort of profit as it’s basically the sponsor in Saudi Arabia directly running the tour in many ways, which is maybe a worry but for now it doesn’t bother me. Similarly the PGAT I don’t think is in a good future economic spot asking for so much from sponsors but it doesn’t stop me from enjoying it now
I acknowledge that the LIV qualifier event was awesome.
any idea on if this will happen? I love watching a tournament with the odds up, and in my opinion the team events need it even more than the individual because it is harder to truly follow it closely. I think the team part adds so much to the broadcast and league as a whole (with much more potential) and hope the site adds it
I don’t know, I think we need more interest from our users in LIV to justify creating a new page for team predictions. Nobody cares about these events… probably in large part because they are just horrific from a betting standpoint. Here are views of our player profile pages by event this week:
And this is LIV going against arguably the worst PGA Tour event of the year and a below-average DPWT event (maybe not in terms of field quality, but it’s a new course and half the field is lesser-known Japanese players):
It’s a fascinating experiment, LIV is this product basically nobody cares about being propped up by Saudi billions. Their free Youtube streams get like 5-10K views throughout the week, and then max out at 20K in final rounds. The LIV bots claim they get their views elsewhere, but shouldn’t a free broadcast on the most popular website in the world do pretty well?
For reference the Myrtle Beach qualifier video with George Bryan and others averaged 20-25K throughout.
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But why not just add it in? I’ve noticed last few events the betting options are growing.
Those views don’t seem that bad when you figure LIV has less than 40% the field size of the two events ahead of it and you don’t offer any team specific stuff, there is no DFS, betting options are rare and they don’t offer shotlink data.
While you are broadly right that no one watches it. I think the arrow is up for LIV, they clearly work at improving the product a lot harder than the PGA does and I think team golf is a great idea that is at risk of dying because of how political it’s become in golf and partially how they haven’t nailed it
Well, it takes work to add it. We’d need to add stuff to our simulation code to get the probabilities, and then figure out how we want to display it.
The views are pretty bad. They are top-heavy by field, so field size isn’t that critical as the bottom half of fields wont get many views. Of the top 50 most-viewed players this week, 47 are in Zurich and 3 (Rahm, Bryson, Cam) are in Adelaide.
We do offer DFS for LIV, and most books offer the usual betting options (outrights and matchups) it’s just not very interesting because it’s the same 54 golfers every week.
What is the evidence that team golf is something fans want? I actually don’t think team golf is that politicized… all the “alternative” media folks (NLU, the Fried Egg) want team golf, for some reason.
You ask why not. I ask why. I would rather they not waste precious time coding something that nobody cares about and isn’t value added.
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Well I do care about so it is a selfish thing I guess. I actually think it would be huge value added as I think broadly most people can gut call which individuals have a chance reasonably effectively but team wise it’s much harder.
Fair point about DFS, that is maybe a new addition as I hadn’t noticed it. I don’t think having the same golfers week on week hurts it that much for DFS as MLB has broadly same player pool.
In terms of team golf, I don’t think it’s something Fans necessarily want now but think eventually it could be really additive and one of few things golf can do to improve product, why it’s so high risk now and why I want to push for tools to support it. I think the camaraderie of it is good for players, and it doesn’t detract at all from fans who want to just watch individual event while being additive to those who like to follow team event. Should eventually add stories when Teams trade/sign/bench players but they clearly are not at that point now. I think there is a big hurdle to get over to get it established and they are working on that now and I want to help that.
NLU long ago seemed to want the entire PGAT to be like LIV actually but now that LIV is here they have been, bar brandel, probably loudest voices against it and I think team golf on real courses is now kind of associated with LIV in a way
Here is the issue with “team golf”
For it to actually be interesting, it cannot run concurrently with a regular stroke play event. The way LIV does it now, effectively they just sum four random players scores together. There is no strategic team element. The point of team sports is for individuals to work together and earn a victory over other groups of individuals. You cannot just mash scores together and say hey, care about these teams!
There needs to be true head-to-head competition, probably utilizing match play to some extent. There also needs to be real stakes. The Ryder Cup is successful because we have elite players competing against each other, and they care a lot about the result. Oh and financial incentives are irrelevant. LIV Golf has none of that. It’s really that simple why people don’t care.
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While I agree match play works a lot better (and find the team title events really exciting) and agree broadly there is no strategy to team golf I still find it additive. It’s sort of exciting to see the pathetic IronHeads wearing absurd matching polls catch fire and lead the team event.
I don’t think abandoning individual play totally is the way to go either, which is why I like the blend here. It doesn’t hurt anything and adds a bit of drama. I agree no one will care at first but over time if you just keep at it people will care. Ironheads sort of have some identity now in a way just because they’ve been around for 25 events. Just have to keep at it and there will eventually be fans i think, get through the ridicule and early problems.
I think once teams go to 5 players and one guy has to be benched each week or there are better rules and clarity on how players are signed/contracts/etc that part will be additive also. Fans love playing GM
