In the Oscar-winning Indian movie “RRR,” there’s a bleakly comedic scene in which a tyrannical politician berates an officer for training his gun on a woman from the lower orders, telling him that the cost of his ammunition exceeded the value of the life he intended to take with it. Adopting that ghoulish standard, one wonders why the overworked firing squads of social media even bothered taking aim at Chris DiMarco, who this week joined a lengthy list of professional golfers giving voice to unspeakably deluded notions.
“We’re kind of hoping that LIV buys the Champions Tour, to tell you the truth,” DiMarco said on a visit to the Subpar podcast, as he unfavorably compared prize money at the Players Championship with purses on the Toviaz tour. “Let’s play for a little real money out here. This is kind of a joke when we’re getting $2 million. There were like seven guys last week from TPC [Sawgrass] that made more money than our purses.”
He didn’t define the ‘we’ on whose behalf he claimed to speak, but DiMarco’s comments surely had his peers squirming in the Champions Tour locker room, itself a verdant pasture of conspiracy theories so kooky that even a Lyndon LaRouche-ite might think the crazy train had passed his stop.
It’s easy to cite DiMarco’s performances — a T-33 his best finish in 2024, and no better than a T-15 in 23 starts last season — and ask just how much value he thinks he adds to the Champions Tour, beyond being an amiable pro-am companion for a group of middle managers. Doing so would be a disservice to what was a respectable if fleeting career on the PGA Tour, and would overlook the actual point he was making. DiMarco didn’t say he personally deserves more from the cash spigot now watering every lawn in Jupiter, rather that the tour on which he competes does. But that’s an argument not even his most avaricious senior colleagues are making right now, with good reason.
Talk to most any player on the Champions Tour and you’ll find they are pissed at how the PGA Tour they helped build is being treated by the current generation as wholly their asset to remortgage, at how naked greed is trumping any sentiment about the greater good of the game. The flat-bellies might dismiss veterans with ‘get off my lawn’ memes and eye rolls, but theirs are important voices in any conversation about the Tour’s future. Which is why some experienced hands will find it frustrating that one of their own mounted a…
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