AUGUSTA, Ga. — There was plenty of talk about golf – How did Tiger look? And how about what that change on No. 13? – as the field for the 87th Masters Tournament turned out in force for Monday’s first official practice round.
There was also the inescapable shadow that LIV Golf has cast over the tournament, and the different ways it might impact the tournament. There are 18 players, most of them formerly from the PGA Tour, in the field from LIV Golf, which has disrupted the sport as nothing ever before at the professional level.
LIV, which didn’t start its first season until June 9, 2022, used multi-million dollar contracts and purses to lure away a number of PGA Tour stars. Some of them took verbal shots at their old tour on the way out the door, creating hard feeling with their former mates. There is a possible scenario that a PGA Tour star could be battling a LIV golfer for the green jacket on Sunday.
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Six LIV players are former Masters champions and are expected to be among the 33 people at Tuesday’s Champions Dinner.
Some champions, such as Mark O’Meara, believe the dinner “is going to be fine, totally fine.”
Ben Crenshaw, the moderator of the dinner, isn’t sure how it will go.
“It’s going to be difficult,” Crenshaw recently told Golf Channel. “It’s probably going to be tense in a few moments, I would suppose.
“But you know, we’re all champions in that room. By last count, I think there’s six players that have joined LIV. But my insistence is going to be on, look, everyone’s together in this room, everybody fought really hard to get into this room, we should all be happy that we’re together. People make choices in life. I’m very old-fashioned. I don’t particularly like what’s going on. I think the worst thing to me is it’s fractured some relationships, from player to player, golfer to golfer. Golf has never really been that way. Golf is a very traditional game.”
Last year Phil Mickelson skipped the dinner – and the tournament – after making inflammatory comments about the PGA Tour, where he had played for 30 years. Two months later, he signed with LIV.
“My take is I’m friends with all these guys, whether it’s Sergio (Garcia) or Patrick Reed or Dustin Johnson, whoever you want to talk about,” O’Meara said. “Tuesday night will be about Masters history and Scottie Scheffler as the defending champion. As I player, I hope that is…
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