Despite LIV Golf Distractions Outside the Gates, This Masters Feels Like Any Other

LIV golfers want to play well and Greg Norman wants attention for his league, but as ever, what matters at the Masters is the Masters, writes Michael Rosenberg.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – LIV Golf prime minister Greg Norman said recently that if one of his players wins the Masters, the 17 other LIV golfers here should celebrate on the 18th green, and it is not clear whether this was a daydream, like the rest of Norman’s Masters celebrations, or an order from the Saudi Arabian royal family, which subsidizes pro golf’s hot new nonbusiness enterprise. But if I were LIV star Phil “I Said They Were Murderers but Didn’t Think You’d Quote Me” Mickelson, I’d put champagne in my golf bag now. When the prince says dance, dance like Prince.

The PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf is both an ongoing lawsuit and daily story line, following the world’s best golfers wherever they go: tournaments, press conferences, the swankiest joints in Jupiter, Fla. The battle is the biggest story in the sport. But to viewers, at least, golf’s most popular tournament will probably seem … exactly the same.

Golf is weird in many ways. This week Augusta National sent a “news bulletin” to literally update the media on how the grass was growing, and the club once mourned the removal of the Eisenhower Tree so thoroughly that I thought the former president was living in it. One primary weirdness: The PGA Tour, the sport’s premier circuit for decades, does not run any of the four most important events of the year.

This means the Tour has never set the Masters field, and it means longtime golf fans have always watched players from different tours compete for the green jacket. In 1996—a year that I picked totally randomly, for no reason at all, it could have been any year—Masters winner Nick Faldo played primarily on the European Tour. So did fourth-place finisher Frank Nobilo. The next year, Colin Montgomerie was too dizzy picking his eyeballs off the fairway to worry about the fact that the game’s new superstar, Tiger Woods, played primarily on America’s tour instead of in Europe.

Back then, before they became partners, the PGA and European Tours really were rivals. They competed to see who could produce more major winners. People in the sport discussed it. But it did not get in the way of the event.

The PGA Tour–LIV feud is much more contentious, and LIV needs to produce a major winner at some point for credibility. Otherwise, LIV Golf’s official slogan should be “Golf, but Irrelevant.” LIV’s majors performance will be monitored closely—especially with LIV players slipping in the Official World Golf Rankings and losing future spots in majors.

Cam Smith, currently the best of the players who jumped yacht, said “we need to be up there (on the leaderboard). There’s a lot of chatter about ‘These guys don’t play real golf. These guys don’t play real golf courses.’” But for now, at least, the Masters is a reminder of how hard it will be for LIV to dent the public’s consciousness.

LIV is selling itself as a disrupter, but the uncomfortable truth is that LIV cannot disrupt the events that drive the sport. Why would the casual viewer care where Bryson DeChambeau played last month? Are we supposed to treat a LIV team logo on Dustin Johnson’s shirt like a meaningful statement? It just means another company we never heard of bought an expensive piece of polyester real estate.

I grant that LIV has finally given fans a reason to cheer against Patrick Reed. So there is that.

Even on the course, this will feel normal. That is what everybody wants. It is standard for major tours to be represented at every major, but Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley said Wednesday that he did not invite Norman because he wants the focus on the competition. If Norman takes that personally—he takes a lot personally—he is both right and wrong. If he were here, he would somehow make the event about him and LIV. Of course the club doesn’t want that.

There is more tension than some players will let on. Mickelson, always looking for the right angle, has chosen to drive the “Being here is wonderful and I love everybody” message down Magnolia Lane, which is probably wise. Long before LIV, Mickelson played with players he did not like, and who did not like him, without incident. You will see the same this week. Golfers are not going to push each other into Rae’s Creek. I think they will actively avoid confrontation—both out of respect for Augusta National, which could disinvite them next year, and out of self-interest. They want to play well, and it’s hard to do that when your putter is lodged in your playing partner’s ear.

This week will look like it usually does, which is a win for the PGA Tour—the equivalent of a winning football team exchanging punts. The longer it takes for LIV to catch up, the more likely it never will. Augusta National was correct to retain its qualifying criteria, and, though Ridley would never say it, that fits into a larger golf Establishment strategy of letting LIV gradually sink. The Tour is fighting hard, but the people running majors seem content to watch LIV players become ineligible on their own.

Despite the defections, the PGA Tour has a much deeper roster of stars than LIV, and Smith acknowledged this week that LIV fields “aren’t as strong.” Because of the small field, the inclusion of former champions, the importance of length and wisdom, there are generally fewer players who can realistically win the Masters than the other majors. Who from LIV is on that list? Smith, certainly. Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson. Maybe a couple of others. But there is probably a 90-something percent chance that the winner will come from the PGA Tour, and, even if a LIV player wins here, the PGA Tour will still be heavily favored to produce the champion at the next three majors.

However Ridley feels about LIV, the battle against it was never Augusta National’s to fight. This year, as always, what matters at the Masters is the Masters. Norman’s comments about the 18th green were silly and revealing. He thinks his players joined LIV to fight his fight, but they just did it to cash the Saudis’ checks. They don’t want to win the Masters as a statement for LIV. They just hope playing on LIV doesn’t keep them from winning the Masters. To LIV golfers, like everybody else those inside the gates, Greg Norman is just another guy they don’t see, don’t think about and don’t miss.