GOLF IS VERY WEIRD WHEN TIGER IS FINISHED AND SCHEFFLER FINDS MORE TROUBLE
With Woods reduced to ceremonial status, the sport needs Scheffler to battle Schauffele and should forget continuing warfare — with President Trump in the mixture — between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf
The best golfing challenge involves a broken wine glass and Scottie Scheffler’s right hand. He was maneuvering pasta dough for homemade ravioli. It was Christmas Day, and just as it was bonkers to see him arrested last May in Louisville, the man showed he was vulnerable to human weirdness.
“I had my hand on top and it broke. I’ve heard nothing but horror stories since this happened about wine glasses, so be careful,” he said. “It broke and the stem kind of got me in the hand. I can’t live in a bubble. Like, I’ve got to live my life and accidents happen. I was like, ‘Gosh, that’s so stupid.’ ’’
So, we’re still waiting for a third major championship from the best player since Tiger Woods. What happened after the Valhalla Club bust, when troopers with semi-crooked teeth jailed him? Scheffler’s gnarl corresponds with the mess involving the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, which continues to skirmish years after Saudi Arabia heaved unsoiled gazillions at major names. If you happen to be weary of the slog, consider players who aren’t sure which rivals are where these days.
“I think we're kind of past the level of exhaustion,” Justin Thomas said. “There's just so many of us, really on both sides, both us on tour and I think the LIV players, that we don't really know what's going on and we're just playing golf and hoping for the best. Because there's a lot that we don't know and that we can't control.”
“I don't think it's ever felt that close — and it doesn't feel like it's any closer,” Rory McIlroy said. “It takes two to tango. So if one party is willing and ready and the other isn’t, it sort of makes it tough.”
The sport is dawdling as it pauses for Scheffler’s rise. The Tour is here, LIV is there, and neither is really watched by the masses. Every so often, Fred Couples says Brooks Koepka wants a return to the Tour, prompting Phil Mickelson to aim his driver at both. Scheffler must win two majors this season if he’s meaningful about approaching Woods, who has 15 titles, and Jack Nicklaus, who holds the record at 18. What’s lamentable about Tiger: He participates only as a ceremonial sort, rupturing a left Achilles tendon that will sideline him until after his 50th birthday in December.
“As I began to ramp up my own training and practice at home, I felt a sharp pain in my left Achilles, which was deemed to be ruptured,” Woods said on social media this week.
He is finished as an unshakeable competitor, as the world knew already after six back surgeries and multiple issues with his leg, knees, back, tibia and tendons. His SUV crash almost killed him in southern California. Would good fitness have allowed him to win his 19th major? “If he’d have been healthy, I think he would have got it,” Nicklaus mentioned two weeks ago. “But he didn’t remain healthy. We all have injuries, we all have different things that change things. Tiger had his problems. I feel bad for him.”
What did he say to Woods? “Nobody wants their records to be broken. But I don’t want it not to be broken because you don’t have the ability to do so,” Nicklaus said. “I feel bad for him on that.”
The Masters is where Woods will “get my little buggy” and hear a proud announcement in due time. “It sucks. He doesn’t have much luck when it comes to injuries and his body,” McIlroy said. “Hoping he’s OK. We obviously won’t see him play this year, and hopefully we see him maybe play in 2026.” Until then, Scheffler is looking at his third green jacket. His biggest opponent is Xavier Schauffele, who won two majors last year. Jon Rahm isn’t the same force after signing a $300 million-plus deal with LIV. Koepka, winner of five majors, ranks 22nd of 55 players in the LIV standings.
“I’ve got a contract obligation out here to fulfill, and then we'll see what happens,” Koepka said in Singapore. "I don't know where I'm going, so I don't know how everybody else does. Right now, I'm just focused on how do I play better, play better in the majors, and then we'll figure out next year and how to play better again. “It's the same thing. It's just a revolving cycle. I've got nothing. Everybody else seems to know more than I do.”
President Trump has tried to calm tensions between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund at the Oval Office. McIlroy says Trump favors the Americans and reunification, but the Saudis aren’t budging. “I continue to see LIV Golf growing,” Bryson DeChambeau told media at LIV Hong Kong behind PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan. “It’s going to grow at an exponentiating pace for years to come. We aren’t going anywhere.”
At some point, Trump might realize he picked Kansas City to win the Super Bowl and saw his favored New York Yankees lose pitcher Gerrit Cole. Golf? A four-putt? “It's not like you or anybody can say, ‘All right, this is what we're going to do,’ ’’ Thomas said. “I think obviously everybody needs to be on the same page, and I think when it gets to that level, I don't know if the government's getting involved. There's just so many things above my pay grade that are involved that I don't know about, and that I probably shouldn't or can't speak to.
“There's a couple guys like a Phil or a Bryson — how they went about it maybe isn't exactly how I would have. The game of golf as a a whole, if it's separated in different (tours) and creating some animosity, then that's not better.”
How nice if we return to the game. Scheffler could win the Players Championship this weekend and prepare for Augusta. Then we can sit there and yawn as Tour commissioner Jay Monahan says, “The talks are real. They're substantial. We believe there's room to integrate aspects of LIV Golf into the PGA Tour platform. We will not do so in a way that diminishes the strength of our platform.”
But what he says is not what’s happening. Woods was supposed to join a group that will meet again with Trump. For now, that isn’t possible after Achilles tendon surgery.
More years only bring more tears. Ravioli is the only hope.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.