THE MASTERS IS BIGGER THAN ANY LIV GRUDGE WARFARE, RIGHT? ... RIGHT?
Let’s hope the heated conflict between PGA Tour loyalists and Saudi-funded defectors — a feud grounded in greed and sportswashing — doesn’t disrupt golf’s greatest event at sacred Augusta National
Long before the 88 contestants were short-putt glimmers in their parents’ eyes, long before they had to identify as purists or unscrupulous Saudi-funded carpetbaggers, Augusta National was entrenched as golf’s sacred cathedral. The Masters tournament was prominent many decades before Greg Norman nuked the PGA Tour. Green jackets were awarded before a genteel sport was reduced to a garish cash grab.
The dogwoods, azaleas and green Georgia hills? The patrons and pimento cheese sandwiches? The old-time leaderboards? Heaven on Washington Road, where the unfussy 2-star inn that commands $79 from an August trucker goes for $1,993 a night?
All lived and thrived before LIV Golf bastardized and buffoonized the good walk as we’ve always known it. The murderous Saudis, nakedly sportswashing their human-rights crimes by throwing money at the greediest SOBs, have seen their circus gambit crash into irrelevance, lowered to near-invisible ratings on the CW Network. The country’s sovereign wealth fund shares air time with an offering called “I Spit on Your Grave,” which Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and appreciative Tour traditionalists eventually will do to Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and the rogue opportunists. It’s still a shock to the system, golf as something that belongs in an Octagon, waiting for Dana White to promote a slap-fighting sideshow in a series of sand traps.
And this week, now that the sport’s pecking order has been established as the varsity and junior varsity, let’s hope the rival leagues don’t turn Augusta into the news-team brawl from “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.” You know, where Brick Tamland says, “Yeah, there were horses, and a man on fire, and I killed a guy with a trident.” Would Tiger kill Phil with a trident? Probably not, in that Woods will gamely limp through each hole on a right leg that nearly was amputated after his horrific SUV crash, this after countless surgeries on both legs and his back.
“I don’t know how many more I have in me,” he said Tuesday of his Masters future, realistic at 47. “I know more guys on the Champions Tour than I do the regular tour. … I’m very lucky to have this leg; it’s mine. Yes, it has been altered and there’s some hardware in there, but it’s still mine. It has been tough and always will be tough. The ability and endurance of what my leg will do going forward will never be the same.”
So don’t include him in any back-alley bloodshed. But McIlroy, the biggest LIV critic, once described the project as “dead in the water” after Mickelson referred to his Saudi Arabia business partners as “scary mother f——s.” Since then, without apology, the PGA Tour has adopted two changes inspired by LIV: smaller fields and no cut line after 36 holes. “Without LIV Golf, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Jon Rahm, the world’s third-ranked player. Still, make no mistake. Rancor remains thick in the air.
The Masters might be a blood war. Norman, best known as the great who choked away a victory to a 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus, already has planned a ceremony if one of 18 LIV golfers is leading late Sunday. “If one of them wins, then the other 17 will hang around and be there to congratulate him around the 18th green,” said the caustic ringleader of the breakaway faction, who wasn’t invited this year by the Augusta fathers. “Can you imagine what a scene that would be, all these players hugging the winner? It just gives me goosebumps to think about.”
To which McIlroy chimed in: “I think that only puts more pressure on them — they are not just playing for themselves and they are playing for his cause.”
That is assuming no incidents happen before then, even if LIV golfers are nowhere to be found in featured groups starting Thursday. Will security be needed to do more than hunt down cellphones in the galleries? It was considered a relief if everyone could get through the Champions Dinner without a food fight. The de-facto host, Ben Crenshaw, was nervous before the Tuesday night event. “I’m a little concerned to be honest,” said the 1984 Masters champion. “I’m not sure what is going to happen. I’m expecting that cooler heads will prevail.”
They’d better. This is the Masters, after all, which can stand alone as an American heirloom without any of the participants. Defending champ Scottie Scheffler — who chose a menu of rib-eye steaks, cheeseburgers, firecracker shrimp and redfish — pleaded for sanity and peace. “With Augusta National being such a special place and with the history of the game and whatnot,” he said, “I think we can put all our stuff aside and just get together for a fun meal, all in a room together and just kind of celebrate the game of golf and Augusta National and just hang out.”
Echoing those thoughts was Woods, who sometimes seems more visible as a LIV adversary than a majors contender amid his reduced post-crash schedule. “The Champions Dinner is going to be obviously something that’s talked about,” he said. “We as a whole need to honor Scottie, Scottie’s the winner, it’s his dinner. So making sure that Scottie gets honored correctly but also realizing the nature of what has transpired and the people that have left, just where our situations are either legally, emotionally. There’s a lot there.”
Even McIlroy called for a brief truce. “Look, it’s a narrative and a storyline, but the Masters and the four major championships sit above all that noise, and that’s the way it should be this week.”
Is detente possible for several days? If the words have been contentious, the pending lawsuits stand to spill more ugliness into public view. Most of us are bored by it all, realizing LIV is slapstick absurdity just as the XFL and USFL are goofballish time-sucks when the NFL isn’t playing games. But every so often, someone like Fred Couples poisons the LIV pot and refers to Mickelson as a “nut bag” and Sergio Garcia as a “clown.” Promising to behave at the dinner, the 1992 champ said, “I have no problem with any of them. Just please do not bash a tour that I have 43 years invested in. It bothers the hell out of me.” Would Freddie throw a handful of firecracker shrimp at Phil?
“No expectations. We are grateful to just be able to play and compete and be part of it,” said Mickelson, whose has all but quit on his game since taking an astonishing $200 million from the “scary mother f——s” in the Middle East. “A lot of the people that are playing and competing in the Masters are friends for decades, and I’m looking forward to seeing them again.”
The feeling isn’t mutual, in many cases. “I know that some of our friendships have certainly taken a different path, but we’ll see how all that transpires,” said Woods, who has cut off his relationship, for instance, with LIV defector Bryson DeChambeau.
For those focusing on golf, it’s a good sign that Cameron Smith has been received cordially, at least thus far. Even so, the defending British Open champ already has drawn a line in the tee box. “I think it’s just important for LIV guys to be up there because I think we need to be up there,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of chatter about: ‘These guys don’t play real golf. These guys don’t play real golf courses.’ For sure, I’ll be the first one to say the fields aren’t as strong. But we've still got a lot of guys up there that can play some really serious golf.
“I’ve made my bed and I’m happy — very, very happy where I am, happy to sleep in the bed.”
Though it would have been easy to ban the LIV players and prevent riots, Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley is trying to finesse his way into the stated purpose of tournament founder Bobby Jones: “Our focus is to honor the tradition of bringing together a pre-eminent field of golfers.”
That will be difficult when LIV golfers are contractually obligated to wear LIV team gear — including colorful logos and “Golf Saudi” emblems on bags — in the one sporting event that comes closest to a religious experience. When the competition kicks in at the most hallowed grounds in the sport, if not all sports, tensions could simmer. It wasn’t long ago when Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player, cracked that LIV sympathizer Bubba Watson should sit at a separate table at the Champions Dinner.
“I’ll sit wherever he tells me,” said Watson, a two-time Masters champion. “It’s fine. I’ll just sit outside and stare in the window.”
If gods truly reside inside the gates, as they say, a LIV golfer will not win this week or any week at the Masters. Otherwise, Greg Norman will crash the scene and create a bigger mess than he did, well, on the back nine in 1986. A cheap shot? He asked for it.
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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.