LIV Golf was given a possibility on Sunday.
The PGA Tour’s closing spherical was pushed off as a result of some really gnarly climate circumstances at Pebble Seaside, giving LIV’s first occasion of the 2024 season the total stage. And it was Jon Rahm’s first occasion as a LIV golfer, with Rahm in competition for the win at Mayakoba, Mexico. As a lot cash as LIV has spent to get off the bottom and fill its 54-man roster, typically luck nonetheless brings the best possibilities you’ll get.
So how did the 3-year-old product do? I had some ideas.
Legion earlier than me
Rahm didn’t win Sunday — he completed bogey-bogey, dropping off the shared lead and ceding the stage to Joaquin Niemann and Sergio Garcia for a four-hole playoff, dramatically received by Niemann with the one gentle on the course coming from the leaderboard overlooking the 18th inexperienced.
Rahm was dejected, as anybody who has ever watched Rahm play golf would think about, and took some cajoling from the LIV broadcast staff to acknowledge that his Legion XIII staff had received the staff competitors. It’ll be fascinating shifting ahead to see how Rahm handles that push and pull. Most of those guys are nonetheless hardwired to solely care about their efficiency, and LIV asks for a reset of priorities.
Jon Rahm completed third at his first LIV occasion. (Manuel Velasquez / Getty Photos)
Rahm’s LIV Golf impression
Rahm’s largest impression on the league to date is that his presence appears to have tilted the scales for LIV relating to relevancy.
The preliminary roster was so filled with has-beens and those that by no means will probably be that Dustin Johnson felt like a complete outlier. Effectively, Brooks Koepka made it a bit higher. So did Bryson DeChambeau. Then Cameron Smith. It nonetheless wasn’t sufficient to shake the sensation that each week a longtime star didn’t win the LIV occasion was a missed alternative, and if two or three of these guys had an off-week it was simple to scoff on the leaderboard.
However Friday’s first spherical felt totally different with Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton. There have been extra guys that you just wish to watch play golf, not out of sentimentality or curiosity however since you wish to watch the perfect of the perfect.
The highest 10 from Mayakoba included Niemann, Garcia, Rahm, Johnson, Koepka, Hatton, Smith and Louis Oosthuizen. You’re telling on your self in the event you dismiss that.
Niemann needs into Augusta
Unsure what to take from Niemann dropping within the profitable putt and making a lot of his victory interview about his exclusion from the foremost championships. “I’m not within the majors,” was the very first thing he mentioned when given a mic. Is it an indication of his competitiveness that his thoughts instantly went to the subsequent factor, or one thing else?
The 25-year-old Chilean has competed within the final 12 majors however is presently on the surface trying in for the Masters at No. 66 on the earth, per Official World Golf Rating. (He’s ranked twenty seventh on DataGolf.com, which takes under consideration LIV outcomes.)
Niemann is into the Open Championship due to his Australian Open win in December. Nonetheless, he’ll need to work on Asian Tour occasions and hope to build up sufficient factors to get into the OWGR prime 50 earlier than April.
Whereas sympathetic to his plight, all of us understood the deal right here. LIV has had an OWGR drawback since Day 1.
LIV on TV
Let’s speak in regards to the broadcast.
First, the positives: Most of what’s placed on the display screen is sort of good. The leaderboard is a plus, related stats are on the prepared, and the placing line graphic helps the viewer to know what they’re watching. Additionally they did a pleasant job of laying out and letting us hear the participant and caddy focus on photographs, and that’s the good things. There are additionally simply loads of golf photographs proven, which mustn’t really feel so revolutionary, however for a public subjected to NBC’s PGA Tour broadcasts it simply does.
As for every thing else? It leaves so much to be desired.
The most important drawback with an LIV Golf broadcast is that it’s consistently attempting to persuade us of one thing, as an alternative of simply letting occasions communicate for themselves. There’s a relentless barrage of Tweets, which as a storytelling mechanism feels stolen out of a 2012 recreation broadcast anyway — they usually’re all about the identical. That participant is nice. That is thrilling. I’m watching proper now. They don’t add something, and if Arlo White isn’t studying them for us they’re scrolling alongside the underside of the display screen.
White is usually on this place, extra pitchman than broadcaster. There’s a three-man sales space and two on-course reporters, and loads of time for them to speak. However treasured little perception is obtainable, and it usually seems like they’re all simply passing the baton of who’s going to repeat the corporate line this time.
Whether or not that’s how they really feel or simply what’s being requested of them, it has the identical impression. When you find yourself consistently telling me every thing is superior and regular rounds of golf are one thing extra, then when the really high-level second comes alongside there’s no larger stage to go. It’s why newspapers didn’t run the Pearl Harbor font measurement day-after-day. It will cease getting your consideration.
So on Friday as Niemann hunted down a 57, which might have been the bottom spherical ever on a serious professional golf tour, the printed couldn’t sufficiently rise to the second. It had nowhere else to go.
LIV has an opportunity to get extra eyeballs this 12 months. The on-course product is miles higher than when it began. The remaining simply must develop with it.
(Prime photograph of Joaquin Niemann: Manuel Velasquez / Getty Photos)