February 27, 2023
If a golf tournament is held on the CW network and nobody watches, does it make a sound?? Ha ha!! The abortion that is the LIV Golf tour teed off at Mayakoba on Friday, and it apparently held as much appeal as a root canal on your birthday. A laughable 0.2 Saturday market share laid bare the fact that the only people that ever tuned in were dipshit millennial yahoos titillated by a promise of “Golf, but louder,” that in the end only produced the sound of a wet fart. If the dismal ratings weren’t enough to paint a picture of gloom and doom, surely the sight of LIV promotional slates during commercial breaks was.
Word on the street is that LIV entered into an agreement with the indiscernible CW network in which their leverage was so weak they weren’t even paid a rights fee, but instead were cuckolded in an ad revenue-sharing deal. Problem was there apparently was very little revenue to share. A majority of the commercial breaks featured LIV slate boards, the type you see on 3am infomercials when there aren’t enough eyeballs for any viable entity to purchase commercial time.
Anyone with an IQ above room temperature saw this coming last year when it was obvious that the only people paying attention were there for anything but the golf. The promise of “big names” breaking from the staid PGA Tour has been swamped by the stark reality that the league is really a compendium of “superstars” mailing it in. All the big names fell flat this week as it becomes obvious that where there’s no incentive, there’s no desire.
Cameron Smith shot a respectable 6-under, but the other sellouts expected to draw the big crowds were virtually invisible. Phil Mickelson was 1-over for the week in what could actually be deemed progress considering his wretched performance last year. The rest of the league stalwarts were equally dreary: Brooks Koepka also was 1-over in what for many surely conjured visions of his epic battle with Mickelson at the PGA Championship in Kiawah less than two years ago. Snort! Meal ticket Dustin Johnson dazzled at 4-over while Patrick Reed took time from suing anyone who could fog a mirror to post a remarkable 5-over. Bubba made his playing debut with a scorching 6-over while perennial small fish in a big pond Lee Westwood joined Louis Oosthuizen at 8-over par. Sihwan Kim brought up the rear at 23-over but still robbed the vault for $120,000. Charles Howell III took home the trophy, making laughable the premise of many online dimwits that the PGA Tour’s opposing event at the Honda Classic didn’t have enough big names on the leaderboard for their tastes.
Oh, well! Such is the reality of guaranteed money. Some learn this ugly truth of life sooner than others; the others live in the gauzy world of mediocrity that they embrace through their support of college tenure, affirmative action, and participation trophies.
There is already speculation that Brooks Koepka is ready to pull the ripcord and bail on the league he smugly joined mere weeks after insisting his loyalty was with the Tour that made him laughably rich and famous. Many of the turncoats cited less play for more money, and more family time as incentive to join Greg Norman’s personal vendetta organization, but suddenly they’re whining for the chance to play the majors and several of the PGA Tour’s more glamorous events. This, on top of LIV’s change from eight to fourteen events this year, many in far-flung corners of the globe, uncovers the truth: obnoxious greed from a pampered collection of below-average wannabes and broken-down has-beens. My fingers are forever crossed hoping Jay Monahan sticks to his guns and slams the door on those that end up groveling to return to the fair meadows they sneered at while they were busy grabbing with both hands.