Golfers in the Tri-State area were surely disappointed when the PGA Tour inexplicably announced its 2021-2022 schedule without a single tournament in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area.
After all, Liberty National Golf Club has hosted four successful PGA Tour events with its picturesque backdrop of New York City, while New York has the largest television market in the nation, with nearly 19 million viewers in the 2020-2021 broadcast year. The PGA Tour should find both factors appealing, particulary given declining viewership in recent years.
Gotham area golf fans struggling to understand the Tour's odd decision to skip the New York market were treated to an alternative this summer, as the Greg Norman-led team-based LIV Golf Invitational Series held its second event on U.S. soil. The venue was the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The field this past weekend was stacked with major champions like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, and Louis Oosthuizen. It also featured an emotional victory for Sweden’s Henrik Stenson, who won the tournament in his debut event on the LIV Golf series just days after being stripped of the European Ryder Cup captaincy for playing in the tournament.
The Bedminster tournament also continued the trend of LIV golf events boasting stronger fields than the PGA Tour tournaments played the same week. The LIV Golf Invitational, contested in Portland Oregon in late June, boasted 21 of the top 100 ranked golfers in the world and 10 of golf's last 24 major championship winners. By comparison, the PGA’s John Deere Classic held the same weekend had 9 of the top 100 players and no recent major winners. As for last weekend's tournament, the New York Post argued that a field consisting of 11 past major winners was more “compelling” than the field at the PGA’s corresponding event in Detroit.
Unsurprisingly, the PGA Tour has continued to suspend and ban golfers for competing in LIV events even though the Tour enjoys non-profit, tax-exempt status as a business association that exists to promote and enhance the sport of professional golf and the careers of professional golfers. "Sadly, the PGA Tour seems intent on denying professional golfers their right to play golf, unless it's exclusively in a PGA Tour tournament," said Greg Norman, LIV Golf CEO, former world number one, and two-time major champion. "This is particularly disappointing in light of the Tour's non-profit status, where its mission is purportedly to promote the common interests of professional tournament golfers."
Norman has called the PGA Tour's actions "anti-golfer, anti-fan, and anti-competitive," and has vowed to "continue to give players options that promote the great game of golf globally." It's hard to disagree with Norman's characterization of the Tour, given its visceral reaction to players' desire to venture beyond the confines of Tour-dictated events. The Tour does hold non-profit status, despite raking in billions in revenue, and refusing to allow players to participate in other events is hardly promoting those golfers' common interests.
The old kid on the block is clearly feeling a little threatened by LIV Golf, which is promising a more exciting tournament format than the typical PGA Tour offering. Instead of 72-hole stroke play tournaments relied on almost exclusively by the PGA Tour for decades, LIV events are three-day, 54-hole, no-cut events. Each tournament features a shotgun start, meaning all players start on the course simultaneously, and crucially, the field is divided into 12 teams of four players each. This Ryder Cup-inspired format means that every player will compete for a share of the richest tournament purses in golf, with $20 million up for grabs in the individual competition and an extra $5 million to be shared by the winning team.
While some New York area golf fans may bemoan the lack of a PGA Tour event coming to town this year, Norman's upstart tour has created plenty of buzz around a sport that is clearly in need of a shake-up. After a month off, LIV Golf heads to Boston for Labor Day weekend, where it's anticipated that even more of golf’s biggest stars will join the LIV tour after the PGA Tour concludes its season. The tournament will give Beantown fans a look at what Big Apple sports fans got over the weekend – a front row seat at what the future of pro golf may look like.
