DETROIT — On the grounds of Detroit Golf Club this week, there was precisely one reminder that there is a rival golf tour these days. When you walked through the opening gates to attend the Rocket Mortgage Classic, you were greeted by the "Wall of Champions" — Nate Lashley in 2019, Cam Davis in 2021, and smack dab in the middle, Bryson DeChambeau, who won in 2020, signed an endorsement contract with Rocket Mortgage in 2021, then left the PGA Tour in 2022, joining the upstart and controversial LIV golf circuit.
DeChambeau this week took his bag and balls to Bedminster, which was hosting the Saudi Arabia-financed LIV tour's third tournament of its inaugural season. And while the national attention was on New Jersey, where the event was tackily held 45 miles from Ground Zero (on a Donald Trump course, with the former president a VIP all week), if anybody in Detroit gave a rip about DeChambeau or fellow defectors Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed and, new this week, Bubba Watson, well, they weren't saying.
LIV had zero effect on the fourth playing of the Rocket Mortgage Classic, which yet again yielded bunches of birdies, two aces and a star champion in Tony Finau, while welcoming back another large Sunday gallery — the 18th green around 6 p.m. was more congested than I-96 at rush hour — all while basking in a Detroit narrative that, as tournament executive director Jason Langwell said, "is ours."
That narrative, of course, no longer includes DeChambeau, who was axed by Rocket Mortgage after he took a LIV payday reportedly worth more than $125 million. He was 5 over par. Mickelson was 6 over. Abraham Ancer was 8 over. Had to look all that up. Nobody here knew, or, frankly, cared.
Certainly, the young boy, 11 or 12, who was walking through the tunnel behind the 18th green with Cameron Young's hat, autographed, didn't care. He didn't ask to trade the hat for Mickelson's.
"The whole thing stinks," said Scott Simpson, a seven-time PGA Tour winner who won the 1987 U.S. Open, of LIV while on PGA Tour Radio earlier Sunday, previewing the final day of the Rocket Mortgage Classic for SiriusXM — which, for its part, noticeably omitted DeChambeau's name when running down the list of past Detroit champs, and their winning scores. "Nothing compelling about it.
"I just can't stand this tour."
'Dirty' money
There's a whole lot to dislike about the LIV golf tour, starting with where the money comes from, the Saudi's Public Investment Fund, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the man our own CIA says signed off on the brutal killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Saudi Arabia's human rights record, on so many fronts (gays, women, etc.), is atrocious. The Saudis were allegedly involved in 9/11, hence the protests that greeted Trump and the golfers at Bedminster. They're not using the LIV golf tour to "grow the game," as they've instructed their players to say, but rather to clean up their own image, which, they hope, will lead to increased business relationships. Spend the billions now, make back trillions later.
"The Saudi money," said golf fan Matt Wood, 56, of Flint, "is just dirty."
It's also aplenty. Mickelson, the big story of the 2021 Rocket Mortgage Classic, reportedly received more than $200 million to join LIV — probably 400 times the backdoor deal he got to play in Detroit last year. Johnson, a reported $150 million. Even James Piot, the recent Michigan State graduate and reigning U.S. Amateur champion who had no tour status anywhere else, received a two-year guarantee of nearly $6 million — that included a $3 million signing bonus, and guaranteed prize money of nearly $3 million over the course of eight events this year and even more next year. Last place on LIV pays more than $100,000. What incentive.
At the last LIV tournament, a veteran golfer named Pat Perez shot an 80 in the final round, and celebrated like he had just won the lottery. He pretty much did, taking home more than $850,000.
"Hey," said PGA Tour player Ryan Brehm of Traverse City, "call it what it is.
"At this point, it's an exhibition."
At the Rocket Mortgage Classic, meanwhile, Joohyung Kim shot a tournament-record-tying 63 Sunday to finish in seventh place. He won $304,500.
That might not matter a lick to a LIV golfer, but to Kim, a 20-year-old from South Korea?
"It means everything," he said after finishing 18 under for the week. "Every day I've played golf I thought about playing on the PGA Tour; it was nothing else.
"It's definitely been a dream."
Fact is, while LIV is rattling the cages of PGA Tour executives — and even forcing its hand to make long-suggested changes, namely a shorter schedule, coming now in 2024 — it's hardly great golf.
The fields include only 48 players (most PGA Tour events, including this week's, have 156). They play 54 holes (72 on the PGA Tour). There is no cut. There are shotgun starts. There's a team event that's hard to follow, and even harder to give a flying you-know-what about. They have no TV partner, and are broadcast on YouTube, where the tone is decidedly state-TVish (though they did land a golf broadcasting star recently in David Feherty; Charles Barkley took a meeting with Greg Norman, LIV's front man, but said no). They have signed one player in the top 20 in the world rankings, Johnson, and none in the top 10. For all the players who've taken the money, many more have said no. The four major championships are considering a ban of LIV players, and even if they don't, the Official World Golf Ranking, which doesn't award points to LIV (good; they don't give points to your Friday night league, either), eventually will phase most players out of the majors.
Jack Nicklaus' goal in the game always was to set the major-championship record, and he did, winning 18. Tiger Woods, as a kid, kept a poster of Nicklaus on his wall, dreaming of breaking that record. He has 15 majors. No surprise, then, that when LIV offered Woods nearly $1 billion to join, he shot them down — and as for the players who have gone, Woods said at The Open Championship in July, in a rare instance of him taking a stand on anything controversial, "They've turned their back on what has allowed them to get to this position." Nicklaus was offered $100 million to be the face of LIV. He said no, and the job went to Norman.
It was Nicklaus, after all, and Arnold Palmer who helped lead the revolt in the late 1960s that led to what we know today as the PGA Tour. The stars of the early and mid-1900s often had to moonlight as club pros to make ends meet, but the PGA Tour changed all that. Then the Woods boom came in the 1990s, and made rich men out of many golfers, Mickelson chief among them — he made nearly $100 million in PGA Tour on-course earnings, and many times that in endorsement deals. That's very much a part of the legacy of Nicklaus, Palmer and Woods. And likewise, the LIV will be a legacy play, each player showing for all to witness what means most to them.
"We are the best tour," said Will Zalatoris, 25, one of several rising stars who played the Rocket this week. "Here, it's earned, and I think that's the biggest difference.
"I've wanted to win a major my entire life, and I've wanted to play out here."
Cash is important, of course.
We're all trying to get more of it, and PGA Tour players are no exception.
"We're out here to make money," said Brehm, a Michigan State alumnus who entered the week wearing one corporate sponsor's logo on his shirt and left wearing a second after brokering a deal over a round at Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Township earlier in the week.
"Somebody this week is gonna make over a million bucks, so that's pretty damn good."
That will be Finau, a PGA Tour winner for the fourth time and second time in as many weeks. He won $1.512 million — direct-deposited Monday morning — for beating 155 guys, including world-ranked No. 4 Patrick Cantlay, who finished tied for second with Young and Taylor Pendrith, two rated rookies.
At Bedminster, Henrik Stenson — who gave up his captaincy of Team Europe in the Ryder Cup to join LIV (Team USA Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson and new Team Europe captain Luke Donald played in the Rocket Mortgage Classic this week) — won $4.375 million for beating 47 other guys, including Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace, the LIV tour's previous two winners.
"Winning on the PGA Tour," said Finau, "is where the best players in the world are."
LIV certainly is good money, and pays for players' and caddies' travel and lodging expenses to go with the generational-wealth signing bonuses. But it's not like players at the Rocket this week were driving Chevy Sparks. (They were driving Cadillac Escalades.)
And at the end of August, somebody on the PGA Tour is going to win the FedEx Cup playoffs, and a cool $18 million. Second gets $6.5 million. Third gets $5 million. The next seven in the standings still will get nine-figure checks. More than 100 others will get six-figure checks.
And they'll have earned it not just for showing up — but by playing against the best players in the world.
"I mean," said Rob Hermes, 23, of Plymouth, "it isn't as competitive as what the PGA Tour is as a whole."
'A special stop'
It remains to be seen what the future is for LIV golf. There'll be at least a second season, with more events and more money. There's talk about creating a soccer-like relegation system, where the bottom players move out to the Asian Tour, and the top players on the Asian Tour — or new signings from the PGA Tour — move in.
Certainly, they'll get some more PGA Tour players. Rickie Fowler has had talks with the league, but is staying on the PGA Tour for now (we'll see how he feels if he misses the FedEx Cup playoffs). There have been some rumblings about Cantlay, who addressed the rumors earlier this week in Detroit, but didn't dismiss them. Cantlay won the FedEx Cup last year, and the $15 million prize that came with it, and is sixth in the standings this year with the playoffs starting in two weeks.
But until LIV gets some really big stars, who also are in the prime of their careers (you could argue they have one or maybe two of those now), it's going to be a hard sell to fans who want to see Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa and the best up-and-comers in golf.
"I'm 43," said Adam Nelson of Wyoming in west Michigan, "and I've known the PGA Tour my whole life."
Galleries on LIV aren't tiny — they offer nearly everyone heavily discounted or free tickets — but they don't compare to the PGA Tour's, even though Talor Gooch at Portland earlier this month compared those galleries to a Ryder Cup atmosphere. Gooch has never played in a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup, and never will. Johnson has and, while standing nearby, smirked.
The Saudis have hundreds of billions to spend, and they don't need or expect to make a profit anytime soon. This surely is a long-term play for them. But they can't stand to lose money forever, either, particularly if the not-so-subtle "sportswashing" efforts don't pan out. LIV has fewer sponsors than your local Little League, companies staying away from the league and the players.
As for the Rocket Mortgage Classic, it took many decades to bring a PGA Tour stop to the city of Detroit; it finally happened in 2019, and it's here to stay, through at least 2027, with the PGA Tour and the title sponsor announcing a long-term extension last fall. The grandstands are getting bigger, so is the capacity (the PGA Tour doesn't release attendance figures, but this week's crowds, especially Sunday's, only trailed 2019), and the fields are getting deeper. And the PGA Tour likes the idea of having a tournament inside an inner-city's limits. There are so few of them. It also likes the impact it's having on Detroit, with millions generated for charity over the last four years, most of it going to help end the city's digital divide. There's also the John Shippen, a tournament before the tournament for the top golfers of color without tour status, amateur or professional, playing for a spot in the Rocket. It's the first of its kind on the PGA Tour.
The only Rocket regulars who were lost to LIV were DeChambeau (ranked 30th), Reed (45th), Watson (86th) and Matthew Wolff (78th), replaced by the likes of Finau, Cantlay, Zalatoris and Young, all top 20 in the world.
"You're going to see more and more players add this great classic to their schedules," PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan told The News last fall. "Our players have taken note.
"Detroit is a special stop on the PGA Tour."
And this week, in Detroit, the only tour stop that mattered.
