Tournament within tournament: How LIV is taking on world at US Masters
Jon Rahm’s US Masters victory last year was trumpeted as a win for the traditionalists – and then he joined LIV golf, helping to set up a tournament within the tournament.
A lovely silver-haired bloke is near the grimacing statue of Raymond Floyd inside Augusta Regional Airport. He’s a courtesy driver for the US Masters. Reckons he’s done a thousand trips down Magnolia Lane. And then a thousand more. He apologises for being late for a pick-up by saying, “Traffic is backed up all the way from here to Bobby Jones.”
Welcome to golf country. Sportswriters spend a lot of time returning to the same old joints, which is great, because you get to know certain stadiums and theatres and empires of dirt rather intimately, but every now and then something new pops up. I’ll admit to butterflies all the way from here to Bobby Jones at the prospect of stepping inside Augusta National Golf Club. Every man, woman, child and scribe in this glorious vocation believes it’s the single most beautiful sporting arena in the world.
“It’s a special week and a special place,” says the lovely silver-haired bloke near the grimacing statue of Raymond Floyd. “I’ve gone every year since I was 16. I’m about to turn 70. Haven’t missed a year. And I don’t even play golf.”
We’ll find out soon enough. Just need to find some long pants and a collared shirt. Folks are arriving in dribs and drabs. William Shatner was on my flight from Los Angeles to Charlotte. I’m unsure if Captain James T. Kirk was planning to go boldly to the Masters but Justin Leonard was definitely incoming, from Charlotte to Georgia, as an analyst for the Golf Channel. The ex-British Open champion paraded the textbook golfing attire accepted everywhere from Royal Queensland to “The National”, as the locals seem to call it – knee-length shorts, ankle socks and polo shirt – and when he was waved through to his business class seats, he tipped his cap at the American Airlines hostess like he’d holed a ten-foot putt and expected an outbreak of applause.
Special week. We’ll see. Special place. We’ll see. The tournament within the tournament, of course, shall be LIV Golf versus the world. There’s niggle all the way from here to Bobby Jones now that Jon Rahm, the beloved defending Masters champion, has jumped ship on a $450 million deal. He’s a little less beloved than before.
We know what Rahm said before he started LIVing large. He wasn’t playing golf for the cash. No, no, no, he craved the legacy and prestige of the traditional tours. We know what he did next. He scooped up the money and ran.
“When I said those things, I fully meant it and it was true,” he tells GOLF magazine. “When they slap a large amount of money in your face, your feelings do change.”
Rahm’s victory last year was trumpeted as a win for the traditionalists. Feelings do change. They’re seeing red now that he’s well and truly gone for the green. Golf’s Klingons, those swarthy, prideful, ruthless humanoids, according to some, will be doing cartwheels all the way to Ike’s Pond if an LIV player grabs the most prized title and garish jacket in the sport.
The rebels’ 13-strong contingent is powerful enough to warrant horses and chariots charging down the fairways, led by Rahm, Cam Smith, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Charl Schwartzel, Bubba Watson, Patrick Reed and Bryson DeChambeau.
“There are quite a few major champions in LIV, and there are a few that are major champion-quality golfers,” Rahm says. “Just pure numbers. If you go with maths, the odds of a LIV player winning wouldn’t be the highest, but I’m confident that one of us can get it done this year.”
One of us. Versus them. LIV’s Bubba Watson, who won two Masters’ on his clubhouse diet of a couple of burritos a day, adds: “There’s some great golf being played out here in LIV, some great golf being played on the other tours, and so it’s going to be a battle. We’re pulling for our friends no matter where they play but it’s going to be a battle and hopefully it’s a LIV player. Hopefully I’m in that top five or challenging on Sunday.”
There’s a pair of superstitious no-nos for wannabe Masters champions. Firstly, don’t win the Par 3 Contest. You may as well pack up and go home. Sam Snead won it in 1960. He slumped to 11th in the actual tournament like a curse was backed up all the way from here to Bobby Jones. Sixty-four years later, the trend continues. No Par 3 winner has won the Masters the same year. Floyd was victorious in the hit-and-giggle in 1990 only to lose a playoff for the title proper to Nick Faldo. He’s never grimaced quite like it.
The other taboo is signing your autograph inside the Augusta National logo on patrons’ merchandise. Which Rahm didn’t know on his first visit to Georgia for the second week in April: as famous a date here as our first Tuesday in November.
“People ask you to sign the logo before you’ve won,” Rahm tells ESPN. “Early in my career, it was 2017, I signed a couple inside the logo and it wasn’t until somebody told me, ‘Hey man, you’re not supposed to do that.’ I was like, ‘Why not?‘ And they were like, ‘It’s for champions only.’ I thought, ‘Well, there you go, I’m jinxed for life. I’m never winning the Masters.’ Luckily enough it’s just superstition. I meant well. People were asking me, so I did it. For six years I told people I couldn’t – and now luckily I can.”
The Australian having the best time for now is Jasper Stubbs. The 22-year-old Victorian is one of a handful of amateurs in the field. The perks are backed up all the way from here to Bobby Jones – the legendary Augusta National and Masters co-founder who was the greatest of all amateurs and demanded their continued inclusion when professionalism arrived. Jones insisted they always stay at the Crows Nest, the exclusive accommodation directly above the Augusta clubhouse, accessible only by a small staircase behind a hidden door. The beds and furniture are old enough for your grandma’s house. It’s magical.
Imagine being Stubbs on Monday morning, waking up and making himself a cuppa in his little kitchenette, gazing across the most beautiful sporting arena in the world.
“Paradise,” says Ben Crenshaw. With a tip of the cap to Bobby Jones.
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