by When it comes to golf tournaments, “The Match,” which pits celebrities and/or golf stars against each other in a televised contest, doesn’t exactly have the status of a major event. Previous matches, which have featured everyone from Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, have been rich in stars but few in real life. golf drama.
Let’s say this for The Match, though: at least someone attempts to reunite golf’s divided stars.
The latest edition of the event, which kicks off in December in Las Vegas, will pit PGA Tour stars Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy against LIV Golf’s Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka. In other words, The Match has achieved what the PGA Tour and LIV Golf failed to do: bring golf’s stars together again.
Men’s professional golf has split into two distinct camps since LIV Golf began play in 2022. While the PGA Tour has the legacy and the biggest names—Woods and McIlroy—LIV Golf has managed to attract most of the most interesting characters in golf. Players like DeChambeau, Koepka, Mickelson and Jon Rahm now play on the LIV Tour, and the only time they cross paths with their former PGA Tour comrades is at majors and the occasional non-PGA Tour event like the Olympics.
What makes this so galling is that the LIV’s top players clearly still have the competitive muscle to match their Tour counterparts. This year’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst was one of the best tournaments—not just majors, but tournaments of any kind—in recent golf history, and DeChambeau’s victory over McIlroy came down to the final shots of the final hole. Olympic golf at Le Golf National in Paris looked like The Rahm Show until Rahm imploded and Scheffler stole the gold he was wearing around his neck.
There appears to be no visible urgency behind the scenes for any reunification. The Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, LIV Golf’s financial backer, announced a surprise end to hostilities in June 2023, and since then there has been virtually no concrete progress.
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan doesn’t often speak to the media (and, by association, fans), but he did so last week ahead of the Tour Championship in Atlanta. Although he was asked five times about the status of negotiations between the PIF and LIV Golf, he declined to elaborate.
“These discussions are complex. They’re going to take time. They have taken time and they’re going to continue to take time,” Monahan said, before repeating a variation of the same phrase that so many involved in the deal have said over and over again: “I’m not going to negotiate the details in public or disclose any details or specifics. All I can say is that the discussions are ongoing and they’re productive.”
The biggest enemy of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf is not each other, it is indifference. The longer these “productive” negotiations drag on, the more fans find other things to do with their time.
“I just think this has gone on long enough,” McIlroy said last week of the drawn-out negotiations to unify the country, adding: “I think if it doesn’t happen soon, then honestly, I think the PIF and the Saudis are going to have to look at alternative options, right?”
Now that the PGA Tour season is over, the LIV Tour is winding down and football has resumed, golf is set to fade from the public consciousness even further than it already has. That’s not the path to a sustainable future for men’s golf, no matter how many corporate sponsors each team lines up.
And now The Match is filling the void left by the Tour and LIV. The stories abound. There’s the Pinehurst rematch, Koepka trying to get his game back, McIlroy going back on his word about wanting nothing to do with LIV, Koepka and DeChambeau getting along, Scheffler dominating everything in sight… Every hole should have enough suspense to inspire a million Twitter reactions. Sure, it’s manufactured suspense, but at this point, we have to be happy with what we’re getting.
“This is not just a competition between some of the greatest champions in golf; it’s an event designed to energize the fans,” McIlroy said in a text to Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch. “We’re all here to put on a great show and contribute to a goodwill event that brings the best together again.”
McIlroy has been one of the LIV’s most vocal critics, but he’s also one of the few PGA Tour players who has publicly embraced a game-first approach. He understands that golf is, at its core, a spectacle — and when golf stops being a “good spectacle,” fans go elsewhere.
The Match will not solve golf’s problems. But it does at least prove that reunification is possible… even if it means accepting some awkward banter and forced jokes to get there.
