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Good morning! Put some pimento on a sandwich today.
LIV golfers are contending … LIV isn’t
The weekend at the Masters is professional golf’s finest hour. The past two years, it was also a stark reminder of what was happening elsewhere at the sport’s highest level.
Two years ago this week, the 2023 Masters marked the first time the upper echelon of the PGA Tour got back together to compete against the players who had left for the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit.
Remember all the waves that conflict made?
Greg Norman promised if a LIV player won, his fellow PGA Tour defectors would meet him by the 18th green to celebrate. Augusta National Golf Club, worried Norman might draw attention away from the tournament, didn’t invite him. Two LIV players, Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka, tied for second. The player who beat them, Jon Rahm, ditched the PGA Tour for LIV riches a few months before the 2024 Masters. His failure to contend in that or any subsequent majors became a big storyline: Had Rahm’s move to LIV dulled his competitive edge? (A stretch, perhaps, but things are not going well.)
LIV players contend at most every major now, and two of them, Bryson DeChambeau (in second, a shot back of leader Justin Rose) and Tyrrell Hatton (tied for fifth, three back), are near the top of today’s leaderboard. The league could really use one of them to win, because otherwise, LIV has barely been a subplot at Augusta. Consider:
- The circuit put 12 players in the 95-man field, down from 13 last year and 18 in 2023.
- The ongoing lack of a deal between the Saudi Public Investment Fund and the PGA Tour has kept LIV players unable to earn world ranking points for most of their tournaments.
- Augusta has now twice extended a special invitation to Joaquín Niemann of Chile, on the grounds that he’s the game’s best player from Latin America. As for LIV’s other players who haven’t qualified? Tough luck.
The only LIV story to come out of the pre-tournament news conferences was Rahm saying that a PGA Tour-PIF deal is “not happening anytime soon.” The sides are approaching two years since they came to a vague “framework agreement” that has yet to become more. As The Athletic’s Gabby Herzig wrote last month, a sticking point is the PGA Tour’s desire to put the world’s best players back on one tour, while the Saudis favor LIV remaining a distinct product with team golf at its center.
On the one hand, the Saudis have a friend and business partner, Donald Trump, in the White House and with a keen interest in golf. They also have a new TV deal with Fox.
It’s not that LIV doesn’t have good players. LIV signees have demonstrated that they can win majors, both before and after making the move. DeChambeau and Hatton will be in the final few groups on Saturday. Two years ago, that would’ve prompted loud speculation about if other players, taken by the LIV crowd’s success, were chomping at the bit to join them.
Yet it’s hard to overstate just how little juice LIV has right now. After years of an endless rumor mill about PGA Tour players leaving for LIV, the hot stove nowadays is focused on whether LIV stars DeChambeau and Koepka might soon return to their old tour. The Fox deal has not resulted in many people watching. The league got a network TV slot last weekend, up against a lower-tier PGA Tour event, and more or less nobody tuned in. Koepka made headlines that week for saying LIV wasn’t as far along as he had hoped.
Instead of being a disruptor, LIV now finds itself a fringe story. And a win Sunday almost certainly won’t change that.
News to Know
36 down, 36 to go
We’ve seen a little bit of everything at the halfway point of the Masters. Fred Couples turned back the clock Thursday but couldn’t quite recreate that magic Friday (still timeless!). Rory McIlroy stole the show with a second-round surge to move two back of the lead. And there are plenty of big names in contention. Let’s start with the top three heading into the weekend:
Justin Rose’s first-round 65 has him hanging onto a one-stroke edge atop the leaderboard. The bad news for Rose: Since 2000, players leading men’s major championships by one shot after 36 holes have won just 21 percent of the time (6-for-28).
Back-to-back rounds in the 60s has Bryson DeChambeau in serious contention. The last three times DeChambeau opened a major with two sub-70 rounds? He finished first, second and first.
Tied in the third spot: McIlroy and Canadian Corey Conners. But McIlroy was the story of the day, shooting a second-round 66 after an underwhelming opening round.
Notable cuts: Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, and 67-year-old Bernhard Langer (in his 41st and final Masters). Koepka simply collapsed, carding a bogey on 17 before finishing off his round with a quadruple bogey on 18. Yikes.
But there’s plenty more starpower within shouting distance of Rose. Collin Morikawa and Ludvig Åberg are five shots off the lead, Max Homa made his first 36-hole cut since last year’s Open Championship, and Scottie Scheffler, of course, is still lurking. No, literally.
Check out everything you need to know from Round 2 ahead of the best weekend in golf.
College football’s first high-profile holdout
In case you needed any more evidence that the line between collegiate and professional sports has fully blurred, behold … contract holdouts! Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava was a no-show at practice Friday ahead of the team’s spring game today. Iamaleava’s absence comes amid reported talks between his representatives and Tennessee’s NIL collective to rework his contract from the current number of $2.2 million to closer to $4 million. Many more details here on what will surely become a growing trend.
More news:
What to Watch
📺 Soccer: Nottingham Forest vs. Everton
10 a.m. ET on USA/Peacock
Forest is the best story in soccer this year, sitting third in the Premier League with eight matchweeks to go. Manager Nuno Espirito Santo has done a bang-up job, as Paul Taylor writes. The league may be a Liverpool romp, but a Champions League spot is in Forest’s grasp. Crazy.
📺 Hockey: Western Michigan vs. Boston University
7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2
The Broncos and Terriers play for the national championship. Playoff hockey overtime has nothing on Frozen Four overtime, where WMU beat Denver on Thursday in St. Louis, 3-2. Later, BU dispatched the now-good-at-hockey Penn State in regulation, 3-1.
📺 Streaming: “The Clubhouse: A Year With the Red Sox”
Whenever on Netflix
I’ve watched a lot of access-driven sports docuseries that are more like commercials for their subjects. I’ve found Netflix’s latest look at the Sox — there’s another one — to be a cut above the norm. Jarren Duran’s revelation about a suicide attempt has gotten deserved attention, but each episode offers a window into MLB that we don’t see often.
Pulse Picks
The Athletic’s weekly sports news quiz.
Cadbury egg season. Soon. — Chris Branch
“Hacks” on HBO and Max. Season 4 just came out. It’s a brilliant show. — Alex Kirshner
Another great MLB player lifestyle piece from Britt Ghiroli, who found out what players do with all their old team swag.
“The Residence” on Netflix is a whodunit that takes place in the White House, but it’s also the perfect escape show. Bonus: The main character, Cordelia Cupp, a brilliant, eccentric and particular detective, is played by Uzo Aduba, who is a minority investor in NWSL’s Angel City FC. — Emily Olsen
Jack Black has been damn near a unique thing since The D was doing open mic night. Various ones. SNL was fun. — Chris Sprow
Jayson Stark’s perfect Weird & Wild bonus edition on the Mariners having two starters named Luis Castillo.
The Trader Joe’s balsamic rosemary steak tips are a must-try. Grab the Greek chickpeas while you’re at it and you have the beginnings of a delicious salad. — Sam Settleman
I don’t care that this makes me an enormous nerd: Aesop Rock has the biggest vocabulary in rap, and he has a new album coming out. The first single is called “Checkers” and I recommend pulling up a lyric sheet while you listen. Otherwise, you’re going to be discovering new clever turns of phrase well into your 30th listen. — Levi Weaver
Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Dan Shanoff’s story on words announcers are prohibited from saying at the Masters, and what they must say instead.
Most-read on the website yesterday: Brody Miller’s story on Jon Rahm’s angry Thursday at the Masters.
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(Top photo: Gary A. Vasquez / Imagn Images)