Cut Line: Can the Ryder Cup unite golf or is the divide too wide?
In this week’s edition, we eye a potential path back for players who joined LIV Golf, the inexact science of the injured golfer and the damaging narrative that players are in it only for the money.
Made Cut
A path back. Secrecy has made it difficult to pull back the layers of the negotiations between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which owns LIV Golf. But you don’t need to read too deeply between the lines to see that a path back to the Tour for players who joined LIV Golf is a central theme of those talks.
Some, like Rory McIlroy, have lobbied for a clear and straightforward return, while others, like Jordan Spieth and Scottie Scheffler, have pushed back on that notion.
Enter the Ryder Cup.
The DP World Tour’s Ryder Cup advisory board met this week to discuss how to assure the Continent’s best players, regardless of what tour they play, are at Bethpage next year for the matches.
“Under the current systems, [LIV players] are not going to be eligible,” former European captain Paul McGinley told the Belfast Telegraph. “So the rules will have to be changed if they are to be played. But there are a lot of hurdles to jump to get to the place where they’re going to be eligible.
“There’s a very, very strong sentiment among the players who have stayed that they’re the reason the game is divided and the product diluted. A diluted product lessens their value. So there’s an argument on both sides. And then there’s the Ryder Cup brand. Is that going to be affected if some top players are ineligible to play?”
The politics of the moment will keep players polarized on the issue for the foreseeable future but if there is a solution that reunites the game, whatever that might look like, the European Ryder Cup advisory board seems as good a place to start as any.
Copperhead callout. A longtime Tour observer texted last week to ask, “Should Innisbrook hold a major?”
After you wrestle through the obvious — playing a major championship in Florida in the summer would be brutally hot and likely short-lived (1987 PGA Championship, anyone?) — the point was valid: the Copperhead course at Innisbrook is one of the most demanding and one of the most popular courses on Tour.
Last week’s 71.408 scoring average left Innisbrook as the year’s toughest test, ahead of Torrey Pines’ South Course (a major venue), Bay Hill and TPC Sawgrass (a mid-major venue). Last year it ranked seventh on Tour behind only Oak Hill (PGA Championship), Los Angeles Country Club (U.S. Open), Royal Liverpool (Open Championship), Torrey Pines, Muirfield Village (Memorial) and Augusta National.
That one of the year’s most demanding tests is also a major draw for the game’s best players is a testament to a course that likely won’t ever host a major but is certainly a major-worthy layout.
Made Cut-Did Not Finish (MDF)
Injury report. The hackneyed cliché of “beware the injured golfer” came with a dollop of truth this week with both Scottie Scheffler and Wyndham Clark getting off to solid starts at the Texas Children’s Houston Open.
Scheffler “struggled” with an ailing neck at The Players Championship two weeks ago, although not enough to keep him from winning the PGA Tour’s flagship event for the second consecutive year, and he said he made an effort to get extra rest last week.
“I took a lot of last week to get some rest and kind of come down from the last couple weeks. Got some good rest at home and I'm going to go get some more rest this afternoon,” Scheffler said following an opening 65 in Houston that left him tied for second. “[The] neck’s feeling better, body feels good. The off week was good for me to get some rest, get some rehab. I took a couple more days off than I typically would last week, so it was some good recovery time.”
Clark told reporters that he injured his back last week while working out.
“Just kind of like a muscle. I threw it out. I was in pretty bad shape [Tuesday], but fortunately I have a great team that has gotten me to be able to swing and hit,” said Clark, who shot an even-par 70 on Thursday. “I was only really able to chip and putt, then I did a bunch of rehab and I was able to hit balls today.”
Of course, the cliché only goes so far with Scheffler and Clark, who would have been heavily favored this week with or without an injury.
Missed Cut
Changing the narrative. Peter Malnati spent March 18 in the Bahamas playing in arguably the professional game’s most important pro-am, alongside the other player directors of the Tour’s policy board and PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan. On Sunday, he celebrated his second Tour victory at the Valspar Championship.
But one could argue that Malnati made his biggest impact this week when he was asked why his victory at Innisbrook seemed to resonate with fans.
MJ, Tiger... Malnati? Why Malnati believes his win resonated with fans
Amidst all the talk of money in pro golf, Malnati said his win and ensuing waterworks hopefully reminded viewers of the real reason we he plays and they watch.
“People are just sick of the narrative in golf being about contracts on LIV, purses on the Tour, guaranteed comp on the Tour. I think people are so sick of that,” Malnati said. “They want to see people who are the best in the world at what they do do it at a high level and celebrate that, celebrate the athleticism, celebrate the achievement.
“Obviously, this is a business and to the top players who drive a lot of the value in this business, we've got to compensate them fairly, we've got to make that happen.”
While two things can be true — golf fans have heard enough about contracts and compensation and the stars should be compensated — it was the Tour that upended its schedule with designated-now-signature events with purses of at least $20 million. It was the Tour that sought private-equity investment that will be doled out to players via equity shares in the new for-profit arm, PGA Tour Enterprises.
To be fair, the Tour didn’t seek out this fight but it did embrace a bidding war that will take years to undo with the fans.
