Golfer Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra at 22 is one of the youngest members of the LIV Golf lineupGetty Images
Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra won his first LIV Golf event Sunday in Bangkok by three shots, and the victory for the former No. 2-ranked amateur was the kind LIV has “undoubtedly been waiting to see for some time now,” according to James Colgan of GOLF.com. Chacarra is one of the youngest members of “an uber-talented crew of twenty-somethings” for LIV. His victory “checked a few more boxes” for LIV. But only if “you were awake to see it.” Chacarra’s final putt dropped at 4:25am ET. Colgan noted on YouTube, the Bangkok event earned “less than half of the 600,000 or so fans” who tuned into the final rounds of LIV Boston, Chicago, and Bedminster. The reaction on social media was “decidedly muted.” The reaction “even appeared blunted in Thailand itself, where a decidedly smaller crowd turned up than for any of LIV’s previous U.S. events.” These were “expected outcomes, of course.” LIV “knew that bringing its tour to the other side of the world would blunt its signal with fans.” This is “what happens every time the PGA Tour heads to Europe for the DP World Tour or the Open Championship, or what happens each week for PGA Tour fans abroad who tune in at weird hours to see their favorite players.” LIV “is a global tour, but not everything that comes with a global tour is good for business" (GOLF.com, 10/9).
POWER RANKINGS: The WALL STREET JOURNAL’s Radnofsky & Beaton wrote the struggle between the PGA Tour and LIV is "playing out not just on golf courses, but across all three branches of the American government.” It is “also being fought around a little-known entity based” in Surrey, England, whose statisticians “churn out a weekly pecking order for the best golfers on the planet.” The Official World Golf Ranking is “no mere fan compendium.” It is “a critical pathway for golfers to get into events such as the Masters.” Players’ deals with sponsors also “often escalate based on where they stand in the rankings.” LIV players are "tumbling in the rankings," and are "only set to grow more anxious the steeper they fall.” In effect, the fight for OWGR is “about control of the game,” and whether the golf establishment “can continue to apply its traditional standards, or has to yield to a new, hungry challenger.” It could “fall to a U.S. court to decide.” People familiar with LIV’s position said that if LIV “doesn’t get its way,” it could also “trigger additional litigation on this specific issue in Europe, or a push to get the majors to accept alternative rankings” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 10/8).
WHAT’S NEXT? GOLFWEEK’s Eamon Lynch noted the “onus is upon the OWGR to stand firm against LIV’s artless intimidation and to follow its established protocols.” LIV tournaments should “receive ranking points when the tour is eligible, not because its CEO and players pitch a public tantrum as the consequences of their career decisions become apparent.” If LIV CEO Greg Norman “sold his players a bill of goods -- they couldn’t be suspended by the PGA Tour, they would continue to earn ranking points, they would be hailed as game-changing visionaries and not castigated as stooges for Saudi sportswashing -- then that’s a problem for him and those who might privately feel hoodwinked” (GOLFWEEK, 10/8).
