AT AUGUSTA NATIONAL, wrote the author Curt Sampson, “it is more important to be correct than right.”
There are established and strictly enforced codes of behaviour around here: the second page of the spectator’s guidebook features a code of conduct written by co-founder Bobby Jones back in 1967. (It’s opening gambit: “In golf, customs of etiquette and decorum are just as important as rules governing play.”)
Yet arriving this week to inject a bit of Millwall FC into this festival of Southern gentility is Greg Norman and his self-identifying band of disruptors on the LIV Tour.
Given the Masters might class a journalist who takes a phonecall outside of the press building as a disruptor, the presence of LIV players in the field this week makes for a fascinating sub-plot: this is the first meeting of players from golf’s rival tours of the year.
Players on the LIV Tour are still not receiving world ranking points, so their contingent here have qualified through other means. Six are here under their lifetime exemption as past champions, which Ben Crenshaw has admitted might make the Champions Dinner slightly awkward. Amid last year’s mudslinging, for instance, Freddie Couples referred to Phil Mickelson as a “nutbag” and to Sergio Garcia as a “clown.”
Another seven LIV players are here having clung on in the world’s top 50 during the early months of their defection, while Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, and Cameron Smith have been invited thanks to their wins at other majors.
Chairman of Augusta National and the Masters tournament Fred Ridley put an end to speculation that all LIV players would be banned from the tournament with a statement released last December confirming everyone eligible for the competition would be invited but while he didn’t mention LIV by name, the target of his scold was clear. “Regrettably, recent actions have divided men’s professional golf by diminishing the virtues of the game and the meaningful legacies of those who built it.”
As to whether the eligibility for LIV players will change soon remains to be seen, and a press conference with Ridley later this afternoon may provide some answers. But the longer LIV events go without world ranking points, the fewer of their players will be eligible to compete at majors like the Masters.
There are 18 LIV players in the Masters field this week, but Norman isn’t here with them: he wasn’t invited.
“I’m disappointed because it’s so petty but of course I’ll still be watching”, Norman told the Telegraph last week. Norman didn’t quite chant nobody likes us but we don’t care at the Telegraph, but he has promised shows of LIV unity around Augusta’s hallowed ground.
“They’ve said that if one of them wins then the other 17 will hang around and be there to congratulate him around the 18th green”, said Norman. “Could you imagine what a scene that would be, all these players hugging the winner. You only see things like that in the Ryder Cup, although it’s happening in our events more and more.”
Norman constantly champions the team element of their breakaway tour, and Cameron Smith admitted on Monday that LIV golfers are contractually obliged to wear the logo of their team at the Masters.
Names like Ripper, Firesticks, and RangeGoats are jarringly kitsch against Augusta’s familiar background, mind, and Smith did admit that he has packed a few unmarked shirts in case he gets a tap on the shoulder from a tournament official.
“I think that only puts more pressure on themselves that they are not just playing for themselves and they are playing for this cause”, said Rory McIlroy when asked about Norman’s ‘Us versus Them’ complex. “That might help in some way, I don’t know. But I think this tournament is bigger than all of that. 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.”
But while Norman is launching his unpolished barbs from a safe distance, everyone else seems to be playing sweet.
“I really wasn’t sure what I was going to expect walking on to the range”, said Smith, “but it was good to see some familiar faces and lot of smiles.”
John Rahm and Sergio Garcia embraced on the practice range on Monday morning, while McIlroy played nine practice holes with Brooks Koepka on Tuesday.
“It’s a very nuanced situation and there’s different dynamics”, said McIlroy. “You know, it’s okay to get on with Brooks and DJ and maybe not get on with some other guys that went to LIV, right? It’s interpersonal relationships, that’s just how it goes. But this week and this tournament is way bigger than any of that, I feel, and it’s just great that all of the best players in the world are together again for the first time in what seems to be quite a while.”
Smith says the media have “wound up” the LIV/Tour rivalry too much, echoing Bubba Watson’s pre-tournament comments. Watson, a two-time champion around here, gave an interview to the New York Times where he dubiously claimed that “outside the U.S., LIV is loved”, saying the Tour is being “unfairly” stunted by “negative press” in America.
Phil Mickelson, who missed last year’s Masters after infamously telling the journalist Alan Shipnuck that the Saudis are “scary motherfuckers to get involved with” while describing the PGA Tour as a “dictatorship”, is back at Augusta for 2023 and says the Masters is a chance to “validate the amount of talent that is over there on LIV.”
The LIV Tour does have talent, but the question is whether their best players are sharp enough to compete with the PGA Tour’s battle-hardened stars. Koepka won the LIV event in Orlando last weekend and is very positive about his form, saying his own potential is giving him “chills.”
“Look, I’ve played five events this year”, he said after yesterday’s practice round with McIlroy. “I think usually I’d play six coming into this. So I’ve played enough golf and I’m ready.” Johnson, Smith, and Koepka are the three best-fancied LIV players in the betting, but all are adrift of a clutch of PGA stars: most obviously the Big Three of McIlroy, Scheffler, and Rahm, but also Spieth, Cantlay, Finau, Homa, Thomas, Schauffele, and Morikawa.
This detente between players won’t make the headlines screaming faction go away, however. Litigation is ongoing in the background: in that regard, LIV can count almost as many suits as green jackets.
LIV are reportedly about to suffer defeat in an arbitration fighting back against the European Tour’s barring of LIV players from their events, a result which McIlroy says “changes the dynamic.”
Potentially a much bigger case is the antitrust suit launched by LIV against the PGA Tour, into which they have drawn in the Masters. LIV accuse the Masters of contributing to an anti-LIV campaign, supposedly threatening to disinvite players from the tournament if they joined the Saudi-backed Tour.
Mary Meeker, a cirector of the PGA Tour, says these claims are “entirely baseless”, citing the fact that LIV players will play at the 2023 Masters.
LIV also claim that Augusta National member and former Secretary of State (we are genuinely not sure which of those two titles should be given precedence) Condoleezza Rice attempted to influence the US Department of Justice not to investigate the PGA Tour.
With this lawsuit, LIV have threatened to bring the club behind the Masters into the terrain they have zealously avoided: the public view. In January, LIV requested that the communications between five PGA Tour board members and “any member of Augusta National” relating to a breakaway tour, but they lost the decision.
Their filing makes for interesting reading. LIV describe the Augusta membership as being made up of “approximately 300 people, virtually all of whom are in rarefied positions of power and influence”, adding that Augusta National is “a small club with a small membership comprised of America’s most powerful people that hosts the most important professional golf Major.”
But the power of the Masters begets the power of Augusta National.
LIV are outside golf’s establishment and increasingly out of sight, if not entirely out of mind. This week at Augusta offers them a rare chance to make their every word heard, so expect them to continue making some noise.
The LIV 18 at the Masters
- Phil Mickelson
- Charl Schwartzel
- Bubba Watson
- Sergio Garcia
- Patrick Reed
- Dustin Johnson
- Brooks Koepka
- Bryson DeChambeau
- Cameron Smith
- Mito Peirera
- Joaquin Niemann
- Abe Ancer
- Thomas Pieters
- Harold Varner III
- Jason Kokrak
- Kevin Na
- Louis Oosthuizen
- Talor Gooch