At Chaotic Season’s Close, PGA Tour Banks on Patience and Its Stars

The campaign’s anchors have plainly been Tiger Woods, who went to Delaware last week to meet with players, and McIlroy, who wound up paired with Smith for the first two Tour Championship rounds. But others have lent support; this week in Atlanta, for instance, Jordan Spieth said he intended to be “as useful as I’m wanted and as behind the scenes as I’m wanted.”

The top players who are among the tour’s remaining stalwarts — other leading figures like Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson have aligned themselves with LIV — are almost assuredly acting for a complex mix of reasons.

There are financial explanations, of course, because a PGA Tour stocked with a greater share of the world’s finest players makes its product far more appealing and far more lucrative, for its organizers and its athletes alike. Some players harbor a measure of disdain for LIV Golf’s patron. And, even by the brooding standards of 2022, it is too cynical to discount players when they complain that LIV’s 54-hole, no-cut events, with shotgun starts, are putting a modern blemish on the ancient game they have spent decades trying to conquer.

Whatever the players’ motives, their response is coming into greater focus as the tour moves beyond finger-wagging and suspensions. The blended strategy is unlikely to end the exodus, but it could curb it.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/sports/golf/tour-championship-mcilroy-smith-liv-pga.html