LIV Golfers Need To Stop Whining, Austin Eckroat Plenty Cognizant, And A Terrible One And Done Run

Each week in the world of professional golf is obviously different, but they're starting to run together thanks to the biggest storylines largely remaining the same. With LIV Golf, it's turned into the Joaquin Niemann show with a side act of whining and complaining. For the PGA Tour, weather remains to be one of the main characters of the season along with longshot winners, and this week Austin Eckroat took over that role en route to his first-career win on Tour.

On a more personal note, my one and done competition for the year has officially hit nightmare status, and we simply have to talk it out. Let's get into another edition of Par Talk. As always, feel free to reach out via email at mark.harris@outkick.com or on Twitter @itismarkharris.

Austin Eckroat Gets It Done On A Monday

We may still be in the early stages of the 2024 PGA Tour, but we can officially declare this the year of the longshot no matter what happens from here on out.

After a brief break from players with 100-1 or longer odds to win, we're right back to where we started the new year with Austin Eckroat finding the winner's circle at the Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches. 

While Eckroat being crowned champion won't exactly move the needle in the direction the PGA Tour was hoping for, that doesn't take anything away from his showing his serious clutch gene down the stretch.

Thanks to the weather gods not cooperating yet again, Eckroat had the unfortunate circumstance of playing just seven holes on Sunday before things were pushed to a Monday finish. An extra night of trying to get sleep with a lead while hunting for your first-career PGA Tour victory can be no easy feat, but the former Oklahoma State Cowboy seemed unbothered on Monday morning.

After making the turn at two-under for the round, Eckroat appeared to show a bit of a leak when he made par on the simple and very gettable Par 5 10th. The tiny leak was stopped with back-to-back birdies on the 12th and 13th holes, but adversity reared its ugly head on the Par 4 14th when he carded a bogey giving legitimate life to chaser Min Woo Lee a couple of holes ahead of him.

Making a bogey on 14 headed into ‘The Bear Trap,’ one of the toughest stretches on Tour, is less than ideal, but Eckroat stepped up in a dominant way, going par-birdie-par letting him coast to a three-shot victory when it was all said and done.

The 25-year-old finished the week ranked first in strokes gained: total, first in greens in regulation, and a tie for third in putts per green. That'll get it done just about every week.

Some LIV Golfers Need A Public Relations Lesson

You could say Joaquin Niemann is a creature of habit: he wins golf tournaments and then finds something to complain about with a tongue-in-cheek comment seconds later.

Niemann is two-for-three so far this LIV Golf season after cruising to a four-shot win in Jeddah. While his win overseas was a bit easier to come by compared to his playoff victory over Sergio Garcia in Mexico in LIV's season opener, his post-round press conference made things feel awfully similar.

Moments after his win south of the border, Niemann stated "I want to win majors, but I've got to get in first", taking shots at both the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) system not recognizing LIV and the major championships themselves for not including the Chilean in their 2024 tournament fields.

Just a few short weeks later, Niemann accepted a special invitation to compete in this year's Masters, which features a field including a total of 13 LIV players.

Fellow LIV player Talor Gooch, who isn't in the field, made headlines earlier in the week when he said a Rory McIlroy Masters win, which would give him the career Grand Slam, would have an asterisk next to it. 

Gooch's delusional comments and mindset appeared to rub off on Niemann, even after picking up win number two on the season.

Despite receiving the coveted invitation to compete at Augusta National, Niemann showed more signs of frustration mere seconds after his win in Jeddah.

After being told by the on-course reporter that he has to be looked at as a favorite to win a major this season, Niemann questioned: "How is that possible if I'm ranked 100 in the world?"

Niemann is, without a doubt, a Top 50 player in the world and should be in the field for each major championship, but the current ecosystem of golf may not allow that to happen.

READ: Anthony Kim's Return To Golf Includes A Shank And The Highest Score Of The Day, But Goes As Expected

Like Gooch, Niemann's frustrations with the game today don't need to be aimed at the OWGR or the major championships as a whole, but the LIV officials who lied to every one of its players that they would receive OWGR points sooner rather than later.

Two and a half years into LIV, and players have yet to be recognized by the OWGR.

On Monday, Niemann confirmed he has also accepted an invite to play in this year's PGA Championship. Maybe that will slow down the complaining a bit from here on out.

Down Bad, Real Bad, In A Season-Long One And One

The good news: I had a small wager on Austin Eckroat to win this week.

The bad news: I picked Austin Eckroat in my one and done last week, which is a great representation of what a disaster the entire experience has become.

For anyone unfamiliar with one and done competitions, you pick one player each week and once you use them, you can not select them again for the remainder of the season. The point total is simply the amount of money your selection earns that week.

So far, through nine tournaments this season, I've managed to pick seven players who have made the cut. That would be an okay average, but only one of those seven players has finished inside the Top 10, and that was Xander Scahuffele at The Sentry.

Since then, things have gone downhill in a major, major way.

If you take away Schauffele's 10th-place finish, my six other selections to make the cut have an average finish of 41st place. FORTY FIRST!

You add that with Stephen Jaeger missing the cut at The Cognizant and Matt Fitzpatrick no-showing at The Genesis and you are looking at a guy who is ranked 568th out of 614 entrants.

It's a good thing I don't cover the PGA Tour as part of my living or else this would be that much more embarrassing.