DORAL, Fla. — Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau will be the in the same place next week –at Augusta National for the Masters.
They’re saying the same things this week, albeit a golf world apart.
Sounding an alarm going into the year’s first major, McIlroy and DeChambeau were among players from both the PGA Tour and LIV Golf League on Wednesday speaking out – perhaps a bit more forcefully than before – on a need for the game to somehow reunite or risk further eroding its fanbase.
“If you look at the TV ratings of the PGA Tour this year, they’re down 20% across the board. That’s a fifth. That’s big,” McIlroy said. “I would say the numbers on LIV aren’t great either in terms of the people tuning in. I just think with the fighting and everything that’s went on over the past couple years, people are just getting really fatigued of it and it’s turning people off men’s professional golf. And that’s not a good thing for anyone.”
DeChambeau was a bit more succinct: “It’s up to the guys up top to figure it out and figure it out quickly, because we can’t keep going this direction. It’s not sustainable, for sure.”
Between the Valero Open in San Antonio and the LIV Golf League’s stop this weekend near Miami, there are 43 golfers – 30 from the PGA Tour, 13 from LIV – playing one last time before heading to the season’s first major. And the majors are one of the few places where players from the PGA Tour and LIV still play head-to-head, because of the divide that has fractured golf for the last couple years.
That means at the majors, and events like the Ryder Cup, the big names are all in one place. Otherwise, they’re not, and they haven’t been since LIV started luring players away – reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Sergio Garcia, Bubba Watson, DeChambeau and many more among them.
There have been talks about patching together the game again for months, going back at least to the agreement that the PGA Tour struck last June with the Public Investment Fund – Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund – in a deal that was supposed to be completed by the end of last year.
It still isn’t done, the tour has since come out with an equity program for players, and the divide continues.
“I think there’s room for both. It’s as simple as that,” Rahm said.
“I think we have the opportunity to end up with an even better product for the spectators and the fans of the game, a little bit more variety doesn’t really hurt anybody. So, I think, properly done, we can end up with a much better product that can take golf to the next level worldwide, and I’m hoping that’s what ends up happening.”
LIV’s ratings have been dismal, at best. According to Nielsen TV data from February, LIV Golf Mayakoba pulled in 432,000 viewers on the CW Network, its most ever. On the same day, a rerun of a PGA Tour round from Pebble Beach had 1.21 million viewers on CBS.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.