Our current sports era of “player empowerment” has been, as the name suggests, fruitful for players — particularly in recent years. But it has often come alongside bad news for sports fans. Prioritizing their long-term prospects, players miss more games, all while teams (and, indirectly, fans) fork out for juicier contracts, forcing organizations to tighten budgets as everyone prioritizes starry-er superstars. That’s not to say it’s wrong these players are undeserving, just that the majority of these changes benefit those on the field long before those in the stands.
With all due respect to college football, it’s possible no sport has known this imbalance better than men’s pro golf. The players have gotten bigger purses, bigger bonus money, even nicer courtesy cars (not to mention more porta-johns on courses). But what has player empowerment brought us?
Next week’s Crypto.com Showdown may seem like an unlikely answer to that question, but it’s an interesting test case, at least. The Showdown features Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka taking on Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler, yet another a made-for-TV exhibition, this one played in Vegas in front of a capped audience at our country’s most expensive golf course, paying out millions in cryptocurrency to the winners. But before eyes go rolling into the back of heads, know that this one should feel different. Because it is different. Fans are getting a kernel of what they swear they’ve wanted most: unity.
It’s coming in the smallest of doses and may rightfully be met with too little, too late, given we’re at the one-year anniversary of a failure to meet a deadline agreement between the PGA Tour and the Saudi PIF, a deadline that amounted to nothing more than a tease. But despite how long golf fans have waited, golf’s worst-kept secret is that they’ll end up waiting longer, at least until 2026, to see consistent unity. Exasperated? Rory McIlroy says, welcome to my world.
Despite being one of LIV Golfs biggest detractors years ago, McIlroy pivoted publicly on the belief that, with all the best players under one roof, the professional end of the sport could take off. It could spend a month in Western Europe and another month touring East Asia and Australia. It could spend 60% of its time in America, where the biggest golf market exists, but also tour around like F1 drivers, turning Jordan and Justin and Xander into global sports stars, not just golf stars. That’s all McIlroy could talk about 11 months ago, an idea that was dependent on other people getting on board. Which made him ripe for a pitch. Another wave of Tour faithfuls had left to play elsewhere, but TV producer Bryan Zuriff approached McIlroy in Dubai to sell him on LIV’s best vs. the PGA Tour’s best for the first time.
Unsurprisingly, the Showdown’s four participants came to an agreement right around the time their competitive paths stopped crossing — like summer camp pals planning a reunion to keep the good times going. Part of the appeal is rooted in what these four are capable of — McIlroy and DeChambeau delivered the battle of the season at the U.S. Open in June, a TV ratings delight. But part is also rooted in what we all knew would follow. Those two golfers haven’t been on the same golf course since July, unless you count the set of Happy Gilmore 2. Six weeks after their last bout, The Showdown was officially announced, right as a brooding McIlroy began suggesting the PIF may consider taking its money elsewhere.
“I think with everything that has went on, it was really about us saying, you know what, we’re going to take this into our own hands a little bit,” he said this week, “and we’re going to do something basically outside of either tour, to give something back to the fans. To show them, you know, at least let them know that we’re trying to provide entertainment … the players want to play together more often.”
The generosity in that mindset comes from a place of angst, as McIlroy made clear Wednesday. He and Scheffler were asked if agreeing to a match against the other side of golf’s cold war would just serve as a reminder of that war, and do more harm than good.
“I’ll take that one,” McIlroy said, jumping in ahead of Scheffler. “Because I think that’s a terrible question.”
What followed was his acknowledgement that, yes, Golf The Sport has risen in popularity while Pro Golf On Television has waned. No player has been more vocal about that than McIlroy, who has spent countless hours the last three years in meetings focused on improving a product — both on TV and otherwise — that solves that problem.
Let’s go back to March, to something McIlroy said at the Players Championship. “I think what needs to happen is you need to create things for the fans, for the sponsors, for the media, and then you have to go sell that to the players. Tell them to get on board with that, because if they get on board and we’re all part of the business now, if the business does better, we do better.”
He sounded annoyed when he said it. Because he is annoyed that the sport is fractured. He’s annoyed with himself for some of his response to it. He’s annoyed that it’s going to take more than two years to piece it back together again, if that actually happens, and he was big-time annoyed with the negative implication from a reporter.
All of which brings us back to this event’s conception. It was originally supposed to be played months ago, at Stanwich Club in Connecticut, but was shifted west as spots in the calendar filled up and temperatures began to drop. It has landed in December, importantly, during a week where there are no competing Tour events. Why next week and not this week? Next week keeps McIlroy and Scheffler from having to request a conflicting event release form from the PGA Tour. The Tour grants these requests frequently — and would no doubt have granted one for two of its biggest stars — but player empowerment works best when you have full clearance and no concessions. Next week is one of the few weeks on the calendar where Scheffler and McIlroy wouldn’t need to make many concessions to the Tour they’ve signed their media rights to.
“They’ve been very supportive,” McIlroy said with a tinge of sarcasm. “You know, it took a few conversations to get them to the point where they saw that this could be a good thing in the long run. It took a few conversations. It wasn’t all plain sailing, but we got there in the end.”
There could mean something bigger at some point, perhaps something as grand as what Koepka and DeChambeau alluded to Tuesday: a Ryder Cup-style event sometime next year. But for now it’s as simple as four of the most compelling golfers on the planet playing against each other, a tiny Christmas gift from players to fans, an acknowledgment that as they keep getting more, we need something, too.
