AUGUSTA — Opponents of LIV golf have argued since its inception that the players who jumped to the upstart circuit won’t be in proper form to compete for major championships.
But based on the results at this week’s Masters, that seems like a false narrative.
Seven of the 12 LIV players in the field made the cut and two of them — Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed — were inside the top five when the final round began Sunday. The other LIV survivors were Tyrrell Hatton, who spent most of Saturday on the leaderboard before a late swoon; Joaquin Niemann; and former Masters champions John Rahm, Bubba Watson and Charl Schwartzel.
Opponents belittle the smaller LIV tournament fields, the quality of the players (especially on the bottom half of the league’s roster), the 54-hole formats and the shotgun starts. Detractors cite all these elements as reasons LIV players shouldn’t be able to thrive on a big stage. But much of the opposition revolves around those nontraditional elements.
“It’s different,” Reed said. “It’s faster-paced, obviously, and then with it being 54 holes, it’s definitely a sprint. I didn’t really think it was going to be that much different, but you come off, you have a nine-hole stretch where you’re playing blah kind of golf, you’d better step on it the rest of the way because you don’t — that whole extra day you can make up a lot of mistakes.”
The Masters is the first of four opportunities — along with the PGA Championship, Open Championship and U.S. Open — that LIV players get a chance to play alongside their brethren on the PGA Tour.
“Anytime I get an opportunity to play against everyone, the best players in the world, it’s great,” DeChambeau said earlier this week. “I think that’s what we’re all hoping for at some point for that to be figured out. That’s beyond me and beyond my scope, unfortunately.”
The problem is access to the fields. The Masters is an invitational and abides by its own standards. But over the past three months the USGA and the R&A, the game’s two governing bodies, took steps to ensure more worthy LIV players could join their fields. This helps sidestep some of the problems caused by the Official World Golf Ranking decision to deny ranking points for LIV tournaments, the most often used qualifying standards used by major events.
“Some of the issues that have been raised in connection with world golf rankings — and that is a pathway for players to come and go on the LIV tour as well as the team aspect of LIV golf — certainly creates some concern in that regard,” Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley said Wednesday.
“As it relates to the USGA and the R&A, they certainly act independently. We respect their decisions. We are an invitational tournament. We are an invitational tournament. We have historically considered special cases. We feel we can deal with that issue, whether it’s a LIV player or a player on some other tour that might not otherwise be eligible for an invitation, that we can handle that with a special invitation.”
The Masters extended a special invitation this year to Niemann, who was No. 2 on the LIV points race behind Rahm and has won twice this season and was proclaimed by Phil Mickelson to be the No. 1 player in the world. It was the second consecutive year that Niemann has played as a special invitee.
“It’s pretty special being called from the chairman two years in a row. I really appreciate that, and it tells me they appreciate the good golf that I’ve been playing,” Niemann said. “Obviously it’s kind of frustrating for golf that there is a lot of LIV players that deserve to be here, but I feel like there’s going to be a pathway into the Masters, into the majors, which is happening right now. The future looks good.”
The hottest LIV player who is not going to the Masters is veteran Sebastian Munoz of Colombia, who also plays for the Torque Golf Club. He has finished sixth or better in three of the first tournaments and was runner-up at the season-opening LIV Riyadh. He last qualified for the Masters in 2021.
The old guard remains doubtful that the PGA Tour and LIV tour can find a way to come together and coexist. A framework agreement has been in place for almost two years, but little has happened to make consolidation a reality.
“It’s really up to the powers that be to see if there’s a framework in which the two tours can cooperate,” two-time Masters champion Tom Watson said Thursday. “I don’t see that framework happening.”
Jack Nicklaus said, “Would I love to see them all come together? Sure, I think we all would, but I think the PGA Tour is ‘the Tour’ and that’s where most of your good players are, and I think it’s very healthy no matter which way it goes, but obviously we’d like to see everybody together again.”
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