AUGUSTA NATIONAL — Few places on earth do nirvana as impressively or as thoroughly as Augusta National Golf Club. To step through the gates is to enter another world, a divine expanse where the grass is always greener and birds sing in perpetuity.
Whilst the point of this annual gathering is to determine the next bearer of a green jacket, or, in the context of Scottie Scheffler’s epic flowering, to identify a player capable of beating the world No 1, there is another reality playing out behind this captivating canvas that has wide-reaching consequences for the sport.
The Masters Tournament sees itself as the custodian of values unique to golf that not only underpin the game but life. As Rory McIlroy puts it, central to golf’s identity is the idea that if you excel at the game and play by its rules, you have half a chance of being a good citizen and making a fist of life.
Yet in the ongoing power struggle between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, the sport itself has fallen short of its own standards, allowing money and rewards to dominate the narrative at the expense of the product.
Not only has this affected the standard of competition by separating the best players, it has alienated an audience fed up with multi-millionaires squabbling with each other over a few million more.
Viewing figures at the PGA Tour’s flagship, the Players Championship, won by Scheffler last month, was down on average by 12 per cent. The final Sunday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational a week prior and also won by Scheffler, was down 30 percent. The tour acknowledges that Scheffler is not the problem.
The Masters is the most watched event in golf, hitting a peak last year of 15 million in the United States alone. It is this brand power, built assiduously over many years, that gives the tournament its authority. Its standing is substantiated by the assembly at Augusta of the all the key players in golf, the organisers of the four majors, the game’s principal regulators and sponsors.
At a dinner hosted by the DP World Tour on Tuesday, all these bodies were represented. The organisation’s new chief executive, Guy Kinnings, spoke of his desire to pursue a path towards unity, to reclaim the values that define the sport and to provide the fans with the product they crave. In other words, the infighting and self-harming has to stop.
The sentiment was shared by Augusta National chairman Fred Ridely, arguably the most powerful figure in golf, in his annual address on the eve of the tournament.
“I believe everyone agrees there’s excitement in the air this week. The best players in the world are together once again. The competition will be fierce. Families are reunited, and friendships will be renewed. The best golf has to offer is on centre stage. That is good for everyone,” he said.
“As solutions are pursued to bridge the current divide in men’s professional golf, I hope there will be a focus on these and the other stakeholders who are the fabric of tournament golf, all of whom represent the values and virtues of the game. It is this culture that makes golf the greatest game. That is our focus once again this week, and it will always be for many years to come.”
The switch to LIV Golf last December by Masters champion Jon Rahm is increasingly viewed as a turning point in the power struggle that has so far failed to reach a conclusion following the PGA Tour’s decision last June to end hostilities and seek a way forward under a common leadership.
The PGA Tour accepted it could not fund a response to LIV’s multi-billion-pound incursion. And not just them. Marting Slumbers, outgoing head of the R&A Golf Club, host of The Open Championship, admitted last year the world’s oldest major had reached a ceiling on prize money and could not afford to go any higher than the record £2.5m banked by the 2023 champion golfer, Brian Harman, itself only 75 per cent of the sum banked by winners on the LIV Golf tour.
Rahm’s justification for accepting the best part of half-a-billion dollars to move to LIV was the willingness of the PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan to take the Saudi dollar. Rahm had hoped that his move would accelerate the drive towards a deal.
That the game is still waiting has considerably upped the ante at the Masters, where the principal focus is not birdies and bogeys but banging heads together.
The game is not served by the likes of Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Cam Smith et al, being denied competitive access to the Schefflers and McIlroys of this parish outside of the four majors. The moral arguments against Saudi association, initially weaponised by the PGA Tour, fell away when Monahan picked up the phone to the head of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, ten months ago.
The sense that things were moving towards a conclusion heightened in the Bahamas last month, where Tiger Woods headed a delegation of PGA Tour player advisory board members and played a round of golf with Al-Rumayyan. Monahan stopped for drinks at the DP World Tour dinner doubtless en route to other engagements that recognise the urgency to act.
On Sunday the Masters will celebrate a new champion. It might even be a LIV golfer given the muscle mass among their number. But henceforth the game can prosper only when distinctions disappear and all are under one roof.
