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Mac Engel: LIV golf vs. PGA Tour continues to crush golf, and the ramifications are endless

Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star-Telegram on

Published in Golf

FORT WORTH, Texas — Fort Worth’s Colonial Country Club on the LIV Golf schedule is preposterously possible. That’s where the state of professional golf exists; if you think it, it may happen.

The damage LIV Golf has done to professional golf cannot be calculated, and there is no visible end to a mess that Saudi Arabia has made in an attempt to diversify its bank account. The best comparison here is when open wheel auto racing split between CART and the Indy Racing League in the 1990s. The sport never recovered.

Professional golf will endure, due in part because it will intentionally/unintentionally lean more heavily into the 1 percenters even more than it does now. That 1% will keep pro golf afloat, however it looks.

This week, the PGA Tour’s schedule continues with the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club. The field is about as good as PGA Tour event can draw outside of the majors.

Jordan Spieth and that recently jailed thug Scottie Scheffler are playing Fort Worth this week, with the future of the entire sport in a rough so deep no can see their Titleist. What that future looks like no one knows, but all concepts are on the table.

“The hard part to that answer is the PGA Tour has a vision of what it wants to look like, and what it should evolve into,” PGA Tour regular and former Colonial champion Adam Scott said Wednesday. “At the moment, there is another party they are negotiating with, and they have to believe in (the Tour’s) vision. I don’t know what that vision is.”

 

It has been nearly one year since the announcement that LIV Golf would “merge” with the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour. We really don’t know much beyond that. The PGA Tour declined to comment for this story.

Policy and board members have resigned, and high profile players such as Tiger Woods and Spieth have joined the negotiations. On Wednesday at Colonial, Spieth disagreed with the speculation that the negotiations are in a “bad place and moving slowly.”

“Things are moving positively from both sides,” he said. “I think we’ll ultimately end up in a place where professional golf is the best it’s ever been. Both sides believe that. ...

“I’m very optimistic. I think that’s starting to resonate among the players as they get more information.”

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