LIV Golf Now Closed?

[Moxley]

Another good tournament last weekend - not as good as Boston, but another close finish for the teams and competitive for the individual win too. 

Four aces are dominant!

[iacas]

4 hours ago, Moxley said:

Another good tournament last weekend - not as good as Boston, but another close finish for the teams and competitive for the individual win too.

I wouldn’t know. And whoopee. LIV fields stink. Even if you say they have 12 really good players… they’re beating guys you’ve never heard of or who proved they couldn’t make it on the PGA Tour.

It’s like LeBron playing a college team (and the college team winning sometimes). You have no real context for how well they played.

This week had no juice, either, because LIV juice is actually “who just left to join them?” Since nobody new joined them this week, there was so much less interest.

[turtleback]

On 9/17/2022 at 12:45 PM, imsys0042 said:

RIP Irony.

Meh to Phil.  The simple fact is that up until about the time Tiger showed up* there were no events, including majors, where substantially all the best players played.

 

*this didn't change because of Tiger, a lot of other things caused it.  I'm using that as a timepost.

7 hours ago, boogielicious said:

He did find his biggest fan. It was Greg Norman.

Strong the narcissism in this one is. - Yoda

7 hours ago, imsys0042 said:

@boogielicious beat me to the response!   Truly I can see Greg Norman using this to play with himself....

Hey, hey, it's a family board.  He had to do something with himself after Chrissy dumped him.

[Vinsk]

I’ve actually enjoyed watching the 1996 Masters lately. Just hilarious to watch GN collapse so epically. 

[Moxley]

6 hours ago, Vinsk said:

I’ve actually enjoyed watching the 1996 Masters lately. Just hilarious to watch GN collapse so epically. 

It sounds like you might have a bit too much time on your hands 🙃

[boogielicious]

9 hours ago, Vinsk said:

I’ve actually enjoyed watching the 1996 Masters lately. Just hilarious to watch GN collapse so epically. 

If you go to the Oxford English Dictionary and look up “colossal douche” there’s a picture of Greg Norman.

[ChetlovesMer]

3 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

If you go to the Oxford English Dictionary and look up “colossal douche” there’s a picture of Greg Norman.

[iacas]

If you isolate for a minimum of 4 events played, only 7 players have a stroke average in the 60s: DJ, Grace, Reed, Wolff, Ortiz, Louis and Gooch.

11 have a stroke average of 72 or worse!!! McDowell, Mickelson, Wiesberger, Piot, Swafford, Kaewkanjana, Ormsby, Norris, Pettit, Kim, Morgan.

Two courses have been par 70 and one par 71. 30% of the players to play at least 4 events have a stroke average over 72. To put that in to context, only 6% of PGA Tour players (11/191) had a stoke average of 72 or worse in 2022.

---

The comparative scoring averages are even worse when you consider the original tour numbers I posted were not their actual strokes but the field adjusted numbers. I just updated them. If you go by raw scoring, the gap gets pretty astronomical…where 85% of the PGA tour is shooting 70.99 or better on average vs. 42% of the LIV roster. And that is even with the LIV events likely having a much lower average par number thus far (71).

DJ was 70.5 scoring average on tour this season in 12 events. DJ is 68.1 scoring average on LIV this season in 5 events.

[Moxley]

9 minutes ago, iacas said:

If you isolate for a minimum of 4 events played, only 7 players have a stroke average in the 60s: DJ, Grace, Reed, Wolff, Ortiz, Louis and Gooch.

11 have a stroke average of 72 or worse!!! McDowell, Mickelson, Wiesberger, Piot, Swafford, Kaewkanjana, Ormsby, Norris, Pettit, Kim, Morgan.

Two courses have been par 70 and one par 71. 30% of the players to play at least 4 events have a stroke average over 72. To put that in to context, only 6% of PGA Tour players (11/191) had a stoke average of 72 or worse in 2022.

Interesting - I wonder if the courses on the regular tour events are just too soft at the moment?  I didn't watch the PGA event last weekend, but the rough certainly looked challenging at Boston(Liv). In this respect, I think LIV events are perhaps a bit more like the US Open , where par is considered a good score, as opposed to the PGA which maybe felt the need to live up their "live under par" slogan.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Moxley

[iacas]

31 minutes ago, Moxley said:

Interesting - I wonder if the courses on the regular tour events are just too soft at the moment?

All evidence speaks to the opposite.

31 minutes ago, Moxley said:

In this respect, I think LIV events are perhaps a bit more like the US Open , where par is considered a good score

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Dude. No. Might be the dumbest thing I will read this week.

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Of the 28 guys who had a decent amount of PGA Tour metrics:

• 10 guys are 2+ shots better
• 16 guys are 1-2 shots better
• Only 4 of 28 are worse, none by more than 0.82 strokes.

Again, another shout out to one of the money list leaders Pat Perez somehow being worse than he was on the PGA Tour stroke average wise.

[Elmer]

2 hours ago, iacas said:

 

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Of the 28 guys who had a decent amount of PGA Tour metrics:

• 10 guys are 2+ shots better
• 16 guys are 1-2 shots better
• Only 4 of 28 are worse, none by more than 0.82 strokes.

Again, another shout out to one of the money list leaders Pat Perez somehow being worse than he was on the PGA Tour stroke average wise.

This is my issue with LIV golf. They have golfers who were paid to play this tour, who are playing to win money in an odd format.
And there is Pat Perez, who I cant even remember the last time I saw him be competitive on the PGA tour. But now he is playing and winning money with a 71.5 stroke average. I am not even sure if this would make the cut on any PGA tour!

I very much feel like the LIV tour is MLS of golf. You know you cant be the Premier League so you get a couple of star players past their prime and some up and comers who could never make the Premier League and then change the format!

In 50 years will golfers still talk about the Liv Tour in the way we discuss the Masters or the Open??????

 

[iacas]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

"Pretty please retroactively include LIV results." Bah ha ha ha ha.

 

[imsys0042]

From the 7 items for OWGR I think this shows that LIV really is not meant to be a serious competitor to any real golf tour.  

LIV is (as of now):

1.  Invite only.  No official qualifying criteria to be included.  Also you'd have to let the professionals who have disagreed with them play, although you can make the case that the high profile ones could be "banned" for bad mouthing the LIV Tour

2. 54 hole only....

3.  No qualifying school...you can say "oh they could add one" but that completely changes a lot (more below)

4.  Yeah....48 with no sign it's upping.

5.  LIV babies won't stand for a cut where they don't get their money.  Or' they'll still be paid, a lot, which makes the cut meaningless

6.  This would make LIV a feeder tour to the 6 International Federation of PGA tours.   LIV operates completely the opposite, grab established players that are already popular/marketable.

7.  They don't have this and they have locked themselves into not having it unless they change their "team" concept.

The fundamental problem with LIV is that I don't see what their long term plan was.   This is 100% speculation but I think the Saudis have a completely different idea of what they wanted than Norman does.   Norman has a gripe with the PGAT and is happy to use this to hurt them.   The Saudis simply want to sportswash and at some point if they feel they've gotten what they want, then they will have to decide if they want to kill it or not.   However the Saudis have zero reason to continue this tour indefinitely.

Yeah, LIV can evoke and maybe someday the Saudis will spin it off on it's own and not pay all the bills.   Maybe it can get a TV deal and sponsors and dial back the guaranteed money and stand on it's own.   but that's a lot of maybes.

What LIV really smacks of is an approach where they will figure out the logistics later.   Like a start-up company run by shady people who throw stock options that end up worthless, LIV seems to think they can throw a lot of money and get big changes in the golf world.   Clearly the golf people who run the day to day on LIV must have been aware that their format and lack of qualifying would be a non-starter for OWGR points.   Yet they either must have figured they could solve that later, or didn't care.   The LIV players care, at least most of them, because them losing ranking points is going to hurt their major ambitions.   I don't think all of them realized that when they signed.

And the whole team format is completely incompatible, as is, with any type of open qualifying.  You can't have teams that persist event to event in a limited field unless you expand the field and only a core group of golfers are in the teams.   Or you draw new teams every event, and that isn't what they seem to be going for.

So how does this really succeed in the long run?   This seems more like the XFL, or even the tedious weeks of the John McEnroe show on CNBC that actually hit a 0.0 rating by the time it was shot in the head and out of it's misery.   It would take substantial change to turn LIV into what would be necessary to make it eligible for OWGR points and those changes directly conflict with major incentives that the LIV golfers who signed wanted.  It also directly conflicts with what we know about their business model, especially wrt teams and turning those into franchises with real money making capabilities.

I wonder if anyone who signed with LIV is wondering what is going to happen since an argument of "well a bunch of golfers are playing here now so you HAVE to include them".   how many people did Norman lie to, or say "we will take care of it".   Maybe somehow they will bully their way in, who knows?   Pat Perez doesn't give a crap, but it seems like a bunch of them are stupid enough over it to want RETROACTIVE POINTS for events that clearly don't meet the criteria.

The only thing I see is that there are events like Tiger's Hero Challenge that manage to get points.   I assume those are one-offs or somehow the event is under the PGA Tour umbrella and maybe there are adjusted points that come out of it.   But things like that seem to be one-off events, not full fledged (half baked!) tours.   This really smacks of Mickelson hitting a bong and thinking "Oh yeah man!  We'll get 48 people together with enough existing points and they'll HAVE to recognize us.  We'll be set and work only 8-10 weeks a year for life."  And then call his bookie and blow all his LIV money and his next stop will be the Kim Jong-Un Tour of Perpetual Happiness where as long as you are second to "Dear Leader" you can keep your head intact.

[ChetlovesMer]

46 minutes ago, imsys0042 said:

The Saudis simply want to sportswash and at some point if they feel they've gotten what they want, then they will have to decide if they want to kill it or not.   However the Saudis have zero reason to continue this tour indefinitely.

While listening to sports-talk-radio I heard that the Saudis have promised to run the LIV tour through 2025. Didn't mention what their plan was after that. 

[dennyjones]

5 minutes ago, ChetlovesMer said:

While listening to sports-talk-radio I heard that the Saudis have promised to run the LIV tour through 2025. Didn't mention what their plan was after that. 

It would be an interesting situation if the league folded after 2025.   

Edited September 20, 2022 by dennyjones

[Moxley]

Interesting, but I thing with Perez is that he's made that money due to being in the Four Aces, who have completely cleaned up in the team competition - he's being carried (obviously not literally) by DJ and to an extent Gooch - his own results have been poor and I think he's probably finished now as a golfer. 

He's just been very lucky to have jumped to LIV early when the money for his sort of caliber was so good. He's definitely not the only one in that category, but more lately those types have been the exception rather than the rule, with LIV trying for players like Niemann, Smith etc whose best days are ahead of them. 

 

[turtleback]

1 hour ago, Moxley said:

Interesting, but I thing with Perez is that he's made that money due to being in the Four Aces, who have completely cleaned up in the team competition - he's being carried (obviously not literally) by DJ and to an extent Gooch - his own results have been poor and I think he's probably finished now as a golfer. 

He's just been very lucky to have jumped to LIV early when the money for his sort of caliber was so good. He's definitely not the only one in that category, but more lately those types have been the exception rather than the rule, with LIV trying for players like Niemann, Smith etc whose best days are ahead of them. 

 

Except now they won't have any best days.  You don't get to quiet quit and still get taken seriously.

[imsys0042]

Greg Norman has been uninvited from his own tournament.  🤣