Honest Confessions About LIV Golf, Putting Respect On Wyndham Clark's Name, And The Mystery Of Viktor Hovland
The ability to agree or disagree with the opinions delivered in each edition of Par Talk is a beautiful thing, it's encouraged. What isn't up for debate every Monday when the column hits your screen is a lack of honesty, and this week we're getting real honest about LIV Golf and the spotlight it acquired this weekend in Mexico.
LIV wasn't the only circuit that played 54 holes this past week. The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was cut short thanks to some wicked weather in the area on Sunday and into Monday, resulting in Wyndham Clark earning the 54-hole victory. The win, plus his 12-under par 60 on Saturday, is just the latest example of Clark having a different gear.
Viktor Hovland teed it up at Pebble Beach as well, but you may not have noticed. He won't be in the field for this week's Waste Management Phoenix Open as the curious case of the Norwegian to kick off 2024 adds a new layer.
You Can't Ignore LIV Golf Anymore, Nor Should You
Friday afternoon rolled around and I was genuinely intrigued and excited for the first round of LIV's season opener in Mayakoba to get underway. That's not something I could have said in each of the last two seasons. I expected those feelings to wear off after a couple of hours of watching the broadcast and then basically give the event a bare minimum amount of attention over the weekend.
But that didn't happen. I was checking the leaderboard throughout the day, reading more tweets about a LIV event than ever before, and knew how things stood heading into the back nine on Sunday. These were all firsts for me, and if anyone paid attention to Golf Twitter this week, it seems like I wasn't alone in giving more attention to LIV than ever before.
Eventual winner Joaquin Niemann firing a 59 on Friday and the incoming severe weather at Pebble Beach certainly helped LIV's cause, but I genuinely don't think it had the end-all-be-all effect as some may assume when it comes to people keeping a close eye on things unfolding in Mayakoba.
It all comes down to two very simple, yet crucial factors.
LIV adding Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, and other recognizable names to an already stout group of players this offseason has forced golf fans and media members alike to pay attention. When you add two premier names to a tournament field of just 54 players, the leaderboard is going to be intriguing through all 54 holes more often than not. That was the case in Mexico, and people enjoy watching big-name players battle it out against other big-name players.
The keyword there is ‘watching.’
For all the jokes of LIV being streamed on YouTube and broadcast on CW Network, the league actually allows fans to watch golf shots. With zero commercials, viewers get to see leaders hit every shot of their rounds, uninterrupted, without the latest Cialis commercial popping up on their screen or a 10-minute interview with the CEO of the tournament sponsor disrupting the flow of things.
For the casual golf fan, it comes down to players and the broadcast.
When it comes to the broadcast, LIV is winning in that department by delivering actual golf shots. The argument that LIV can broadcast its tournaments uninterrupted because advertisers don't want to touch the product is fair, but at the end of the day, LIV shows golf shots and people want to watch golf shots, not commercials with a sprinkling of golf shots.
As for the players on the Tour vs. the players on LIV, the top dogs on each side have, obviously, never been more equal. The glaring difference is that the top LIV players have more personality than the top players on Tour, and most people, and most certainly the casual golf fan, are drawn in by players with more personality. You don't have to like the player's personality to be intrigued by them. LIV also has the luxury of promoting its personalities as much as it possibly can without worrying about sponsors or not giving one superstar too much attention given the smaller crop of players LIV is dealing with.
While watching Niemann take down Sergio Garcia in a playoff on Sunday evening, I caught myself wondering whether I'd be watching the LIV finish or things wrapping up at Pebble Beach if the broadcasts overlapped. I think the fact that the question even crossed my mind proves that LIV made tremendous strides this week in what is a culmination of what it has slowly been building over the last two years.
Wyndham Clark Is A Bad Dude
Wyndham Clark shooting 60 with a bogey (!!!) on Saturday at Pebble Beach was truly absurd. It doesn't matter that the course was as soft as possible, he played 18 holes at Pebble Beach and got around the place in 60 strokes. The hole appeared to be the size of the Pacific Ocean based on how he was rolling the rock, and he took advantage of the settable conditions better than any other player on the property.
It's not Clark's fault the Tour scheduled a signature event on the coast of California at the start of the state's worst weather month of the year and Mother Nature reared her ugly head on Sunday to shorten the event.
Maybe Clark's win at Pebble Beach will force everyone to put some much-deserved respect on the guy's name.
Entering the week, Clark was 100-1 to win the event in some sportsbooks before settling around the 80-1 mark before Thursday's opening round. His start to 2024 had been nothing to write home about, but we're talking about a guy who won the U.S. Open in Los Angeles just seven months ago.
With his win at Pebble Beach, Clark has now won three times in his last 13 official starts on Tour with an appearance at the Ryder Cup sandwiched in between.
Circling 13 starts is a small sample size, but when it includes three wins it's tough to ignore.
Clark is up to being ranked No. 6 in the world following his win, which isn't too bad for a guy who was ranked 163rd at the end of 2022.
Something Is Up With Viktor Hovland
It's been an interesting few months for Viktor Hovland, to say the least. After winning three times in 2023, winning the FedEx Cup, and helping lead Team Europe to a dominant win at the Ryder Cup, things have oddly slowed down for the guy who seemed to have all the momentum in the universe.
While Hovland earned the luxury of starting 2024 off slow, I'm not sure anyone predicted him coming out of the gates quite like this in the new year with a T-22 finish at The Sentry and a T-58 finish at Pebble Beach.
On top of being a non-factor in each of his two starts on the PGA Tour, he opted not to play in any of the early events on the DP World Tour as well. Hovland also fired his swing coach Joe Mayo at the start of the year, which came as a major surprise given that Mayo helped revolutionize the 26-year-old's shortgame. His parting of ways with Mayo came after a stint with coach Jeff Smith out of Memphis.
Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Players change swing coaches all the time, but it's not too typical they do so while arguably playing the best golf of their life.
To add another wrinkle to the curious case of Hovland, he's elected to withdraw from this week's Waste Management Phoenix Open. He was spotted wearing some tape around his right wrist at Pebble Beach, but all indications point to him being healthy enough to tee it up in the desert this week.
Marius Thorp of Eurosport is reporting Hovland is simply taking the week off to practice. That's fair, but skipping out on one of the Tour's premier events on the schedule is an interesting move, to say the least.