Golf Channel Admirably Handled the LIV Golf-PGA Tour Merger News

As the dust starts to settle, John Hawkins wonders what we'll see on our screens as two circuits continue under one umbrella.

Any landmark event that occurs on very short notice is a television producer’s most intense challenge. Thinking on the fly, burdened with the importance of getting it right while providing up-to-date, expedient coverage is a multi-task those watching at home have basically come to expect, which only heightens the standard and increases the pressure. It’s like writing on deadline about a no-hitter in the top of the ninth while everyone else in the press box is buddying up to the beer tap.

With significant help from its Comcast teammates at CNBC, which landed exclusivity on news of the PGA Tour/LIV Golf alliance due to its business format, Golf Channel did a commendable job in adding depth and perspective to the story. Seven hours of commercial-free airtime might qualify as overkill on an announcement that came with an alarming shortage of details and no depth to speak of. Then again, the less Tour commissioner Jay Monahan says these days, the better he sounds.

That’s how perspective enters the picture. With twin snipers Brandel Chamblee and Eamon Lynch firing at will, Golf Channel brought essential clarity to a union of enemies infected by Monahan’s myriad hypocrisies and a willingness to infuse his product with the same Saudi riches he spent 18 months condemning. Is Camp Ponte Vedra’s acceptance of LIV shocking? Well, of course it is, because the commish convinced us all along that the upstart rival was a malevolent threat to the game’s competitive structure.

There’s a disingenuous component to this partnership made more apparent by all the loose ends accompanying it. Golf Channel did well to acknowledge those uncertainties and ponder the underlying reasons for such an unforeseen coalition. It made for balanced TV on a day when it would’ve been easy to grab the pompoms, although it wasn’t until Chamblee and Lynch joined the telecast (via remote) that the overall tone of the coverage became both informative and objective.

Few things enliven a breaking newscast to greater effect than a couple of guys allergic to Kool-Aid. Co-host George Savaricas was also exceptional—nobody behind a Golf Channel desk can come close to matching his swift wholesale improvement. This was the biggest story in golf for 2023—no other nominees need apply—but one with very little factual heft to substantiate it, which makes it difficult to talk about and illogical to forecast.

Question marks and exclamation points. Sometimes, they look the same. Pro golf has been put back together again, but Humpty Dumpty isn’t smiling. Just waiting for answers.

“I am really rooting for [next week’s] U.S. Open to kind of rescue us all, even for a few days,” NBC anchor Dan Hicks said on a teleconference previewing the year’s third major. “Sports has a way of winning the day, and I think golf needs it now more than ever.”

It was a telling comment by one of the nicest men in the game, and like most things Hicks says, both incisive and to the point. Despite the shape Monahan has applied to the agreement, it would be naïve to think the Tour and LIV will create the same type of fellowship as Hunky and Dory. It would be presumptuous to believe the Saudis will fork over a gigantic sum of financial support and also accept any attempt to abolish its precocious little league.

If the September-December window seems like an appropriate time to stage a bunch of 54-hole shotguns that pay better than half the Tour events do now, doesn’t that disrupt anything we might still consider competitive equilibrium? Does NBC or CBS have any interest in ponying up additional rights fees to televise an end-of-year global junket with fields full of Korn Ferry refugees and all-but-done veterans?

Don’t they play football in the fall?

Do the Saudis understand that football isn’t soccer, even if it is?

Is Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of LIV’s Public Investment Fund, shrewd enough and tough enough to deal with Monahan, a man capable of changing his mind before a second cup of coffee? Will he insist on continuing to brand an identity for the rebel faction? If he’s willing to help pay compensatory fees to the McIlRahms of the game—the stars who remained loyal to the House That Beman Built—doesn’t the Tour owe him something other than a thank you?

Humpty Dumpty might be waiting for a while. The Tour has just launched its series of designated events, those high-end gatherings with $20 million purses that were designed to prevent further personnel leakage. Come next year, when the two entities are tentatively scheduled to become one big (happy) family, those tournaments might be contested without a 36-hole cut. Does that still make sense? We’re going to add a handful of top-tier players and still let everybody hang around through Sunday?

Whatever happened to singing for your supper? It’s not like these guys can’t afford dinner nowadays. Monahan has basically mortgaged the mansion to pay for a guest house. LIV needs the Tour about a hundred times more than the Tour needs LIV. The only resource the Saudis can offer to the mighty empire is their bottomless reservoir of cash, which is a pretty nice resource to have, so don’t think for 10 seconds that pro golf’s new farfetched alliance is for the so-called good of the game—a phrase Monahan has shown a tendency to hide behind.

This marriage is all about long-term fiscal stability, which the Tour apparently doesn’t have, and a strong reluctance to provide full disclosure of its overall operation, as would have been mandated by all that legal action hanging around in the smog until just a couple of days ago. Monahan’s no dummy. You open the books, you get dirty looks. Remember all that 9/11 stuff the commish cashed in on to denounce the Saudis while sitting next to Jim Nantz at last June’s Canadian Open? C’mon, man. You don’t resort to terrorist talk on national TV one spring, then sit down for a game of gin rummy with them them the next.

Sportwashing meets brainwashing. My, what a difference a year can make. Golf Channel ran at least one clip of Monahan’s visit to the CBS booth during its seven-hour superdive into the shallowest pool known to mankind. Its twin snipers shredded the myth while shedding reality, and when the marathon finally came to an end Tuesday evening, at least one exhausted viewer felt the need to take a shower.

That bar of soap wasn’t half as slippery as the slope.