Brooks Koepka’s flipflop emblemizes politics of modern golf

If you’re a Titleist-playing, U.S. Open-loving Stateside golfer who grew up on the PGA Tour and its show-me-the-scorecard ethos, it is easy to be dismissive of LIV Golf. The funding (vast sums of Saudi oil money). The format (players competing against each other while, as teammates, pulling for another). The music, the shotgun start, the no-cut events, scattered all over the world. 

It’s always easy to be dismissive of anything from an elevation of 30,000 feet, or from a distance of 3,000 miles. And then you see the LIVsters, up close and personal, and something else hits you: Every last person involved in it is a human being on this earth, trying to figure out how to navigate this thing called life.

These last few days, LIV players and caddies and team managers and player agents and LIV executives have been all over West Palm Beach for photo shoots and interviews, along with less orchestrated opportunities for hanging and bonding, bonding and hanging. They’ve been at the spiffy Hilton hotel here on Okeechobee Boulevard, at the Palm Beach County Convention Center next door and at the nearby Dutchman’s Pipe Golf Club. 

They’ve been at the lovely outdoor mall across Okeechobee from the hotel called CityPlace, with its Equinox gym and Lululemon shop and dancing fountain. Hold it, hold it: Who is that at Sloan’s, an ice-cream shop where you can buy loose candy by the bag, tight white T-shirt, blue baseball cap on backward. It’s two-time U.S. Open winner Bryson DeChambeau and a small posse, loading up on the sweet goods!

In the wide-open spaces of the hotel lobby, there was the English golfer Paul Casey, talking about his brother, Simon, the managing editor for energy coverage at Bloomberg News and “the guy with the brain,” in this familiar game of brothers being brothers. There was Lara Toscani Weems, LIV Golf communications executive, talking about her two kids and how her husband steps on up and in when she is on the road. There was Scott O’Neil, the LIV Golf CEO, talking about his daughter, a college softball player.

Brooks Koepka said the other day he’s leaving LIV Golf and is returning to the PGA Tour. Dustin Johnson just signed on for at least two more LIV years. Jon Rahm says he’s happy where he is. Bryson DeChambeau is deep in negotiations. Phil Mickelson, 55, doesn’t have a path back to the PGA Tour and likely doesn’t want one. The politics of modern golf. An interesting picture maybe but not a pretty one, if you appreciated the old-world order. 

But there’s this, too: hot fudge or caramel? Both are in the air at Sloan’s, behind the counter. It’s a great thing, to have options.

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3 Things I’m Thinking 

1. Tiger’s new muse: Tiger Woods turned 50 and on Wednesday night at the Breakers there will be a bash for him, attended by Brian Rolapp, the PGA Tour CEO and a new and important person in Woods’s life. Rolapp, a former NFL executive, knows a lot about business and not a lot about golf. Woods knows a lot about golf but not a lot about business. Each needs the other.

2. Fans first: In the wake of Brooks Koepka’s PGA Tour return, Brian Harman posed this question: “Where’s the one-year suspension?” It is a question anybody who believes rules-are-rules would ask. Such an old-fashioned notion. Rolapp is seeing the Tour in ways his predecessor, Jay Monahan, cannot. It comes down to this: Give the fans what they want. He believes only good things can come from that.

3. New lens on women’s game: Earlier this month, the LPGA announced that it will have its own TGL league, the WTGL. The women’s version of this indoor, at-night made-for-TV team golf competition can do more for women’s golf than the existing version does for men’s golf. That’s because the men already are so exposed. We know what Wyndham Clark is like, Patrick Cantlay, Billy Horschel. Women playing team golf with mics on can give ordinary golf fans a chance to get to know Jeeno Thitikul and Minjee Lee and Rio Takeda (should those three play) in ways we don’t.