PGA Tour v LIV – why ‘The Showdown’ is significant

Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler will take on Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka in Las Vegas
A supposed peace deadline had just passed and men’s professional golf was mired in more uncertainty, when the idea to create a match between PGA Tour players and those from the breakaway LIV circuit was first pitched.

The initial approach, by TV producer Bryan Zuriff, was made to the Rory McIlroy camp in Dubai last January. Zuriff was responsible for previous iterations of ‘The Match’ – televised silly season clashes for cash.

But this concept seemed to carry more significance. McIlroy certainly saw it that way as did three of his most notable peers, which is why ‘The Showdown’ comes to fruition in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

McIlroy partners world number one Scottie Scheffler against LIV recruits Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka in an 18-hole Ryder Cup-style matchplay event. For once, this is a confected contest tasty enough to be worth watching.
PGA versus LIV – the establishment against the upstarts and McIlroy against DeChambeau – the man who capitalised on the Northern Irish star’s US Open capitulation last June.

Scheffler competes fresh from reminding us of his prowess with victory in the Bahamas last week, while DeChambeau and 2023 US PGA Championship winner Koepka are past sworn enemies now united as the only players to land majors while playing under the LIV umbrella.

These are attractive storylines and this is the first time since The Open in high summer that this quartet of superstars have all been able to play in the same event.

If you wanted to put on a match, these are the four players you would want, which is telling, because professional golf remains a fractured, split sport. But this week’s competition is the vehicle to demonstrate that some of the biggest names have had enough of an increasingly tedious and debilitating divide.

Last week McIlroy was asked whether this event would serve as a detrimental reminder that men’s professional golf is still a sport at war. The world number three thought it was “a terrible question”, but it did yield an interesting response.

“We’re trying to bring these players together, and the more opportunities we can get to do that, the better,” McIlroy said.

“Does it remind people we’re not playing together all the time? Yes. But at least we’re making the effort to try to bring the best together more often. If we can start by doing something like this, that’s only a good thing.”

He is saying, in other words, that the stars are taking this into their own hands to make an influential push to end the stalemate. This is another example of how the power of leading players has increased while rival factions have been battling for the game’s future.

Scheffler weighed in by saying: “There’s been so much talk about LIV versus the PGA Tour, all this talk about money. We want to get back to the competition. It’s fun to get together to compete.”

It is fair to say the PGA Tour was lukewarm about two of its most prominent members’ involvement in competing against a pair of LIV stars, who remain suspended from the tour for joining the Saudi Arabia funded league.

Significantly this match occurs in a week when there is no conflicting PGA Tour tournament. “It took a few conversations to get them to the point where they saw that this could be a good thing in the long run,” McIlroy admitted.

“It wasn’t all plain sailing, but we got there in the end.”

PGA Tour boss Jay Monahan and his board continue negotiations with the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) over a reported acquisition of six percent of the tour’s commercial arm by the PIF.

This is the deal that is now almost a year past its initial deadline, but it could still herald peace in golf’s so called ‘civil war’.

If Saudi Arabia becomes formally invested in both sides, LIV and PGA Tour players being reunited at tournaments beyond the majors is a more likely scenario.

But until a contract is signed and receives US government approval, we have only a handful of DP World Tour events where LIV recruits have been welcomed and this week’s ‘Showdown’ at Shadow Creek as opportunities to see together golfers from the conflicted constituencies.

The players will be mic’d up, but the golf should do the talking because there are enough ingredients to give the contest a degree of edge which has been missing from previous iterations.

Genuine interaction between the players will be fascinating to hear. We do not need faux banter that can so often infect this kind of occasion and hopefully the players will remember they are golfers rather than comedians.

It is no joke to say that this is possibly a glance into the future and not just because the spoils are coming in the form of Crypto currency. The LIV camp is already talking up an enticing prospect of a Ryder Cup style match between the rival tours.

It is a concept that could excite fans and maybe replace the moribund Presidents Cup put on in non-Ryder years by the PGA Tour, which is contested by teams representing the US and non-European internationals and is not open to LIV golfers.

Such developments in pro golf do not tend to happen in a hurry, though. Nevertheless, the fact that this week’s contest is occurring at all is a start.

And through its relative competitive validity it is, maybe, a significant step towards some kind of reconciliation.