The narrative heading into this week’s Masters is that LIV Golf players don’t play ‘real’ golf and they’ll be far too rusty to compete for the fabled Green Jacket.
That simply can’t be true.
Cameron Smith has admitted that LIV fields are weaker but has hit out at the claims they don’t play real golf.
The controversial league does play just 54-holes and players don’t have to worry about missing a cut with the added peace of mind that they’ll be picking up at least $120,000 in prize money no matter how they play.
Playing that format vs big, designated PGA Tour events where you must make the cut to cover your expenses around the likes of Riviera and Bay Hill is obviously not as taxing, but you can’t rule out the LIV players purely based on the format that they’ve been playing for less than a year.
The quality of players the league has signed up since June has been fairly remarkable, with the likes of Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka, Abraham Ancer and Joaquin Niemann all capable of winning on any given week around any given golf course.
Open Champion Cameron Smith was T3rd at Augusta last year and T2nd in 2020
(Image credit: Getty Images)
DJ won The Masters in 2020, Smith won The Players and the 150th Open last year among others, Reed won the 2018 Masters and took McIlroy all the way at the Dubai Desert Classic in January, Koepka sounds like he’s fit again and motivated to go back to winning Majors like he was doing between 2017-2019, Abraham Ancer won a WGC just over 18 months ago and Joaquin Niemann opened the week 63-63 to win the Genesis Invitational round Riviera last February.
They’re six of the league’s ‘best’ players right now and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see any of them contending on Sunday afternoon.
Of course there’s also 2020 US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau, who looks well out of form to be fair, Mito Pereira who almost won the PGA Championsip last year, seven-time DP World Tour winner Thomas Pieters and plenty of other talented and winning golfers who could surprise people this week.
Will a LIV player win The Masters? It’s probably unlikely but certainly not out of the equation. A good amount of them will inevitably miss the cut but to simply rule them all out is naive.
- Abraham Ancer
- Bryson DeChambeau
- Sergio Garcia
- Talor Gooch
- Dustin Johnson
- Brooks Koepka
- Jason Kokrak
- Phil Mickelson
- Kevin Na
- Joaquin Niemann
- Louis Oosthuizen
- Mito Pereira
- Thomas Pieters
- Patrick Reed
- Charl Schwartzel
- Cameron Smith
- Harold Varner III
- Bubba Watson
..
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