The fracturing of the sport has only really been good for the players and their bank accounts, with fans and the PGA Tour set to lose out again this week at the Mexico Open.
The PGA Tour is weakened without some its former biggest names making up its fields. Take this past weekend’s action, a host of LIV Golfers have won the Genesis Invitational including the last two years’ champions, Jon Rahm and Joaquin Niemann.
The Riviera event would have been better with Rahm, Niemann and the likes of Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith. But you can say that about every week on the US circuit.
This week, though, the LIV effect is felt a little differently. The Mexico Open is a young PGA Tour event, having previously been held on the PGA Tour Lationamerica.
Jon Rahm captured the title in its first year on the top circuit and the Spanish great was back there last year. In pre-LIV times, he headlined the field alongside Patrick Reed and home favorites Abraham Ancer and Carlos Ortiz. Rahm is obviously not at the Greg Norman-designed Vidanta this week after joining LIV Golf, and neither are Mexico’s two best golfers.
Mexico’s most successful male golfers Abraham Ancer and Carlos Ortiz are both ineligible for this week’s Mexico Open due to their ties with LIV Golf
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Abraham Ancer and Carlos Ortiz find themselves suspended by the tour, as do a number of the world’s top Central and South American golfers, and therefore ineligible for their national Open.
The Spanish-speaking Joaquin Niemann, especially, as well as Mito Pereira and Sebastian Munoz would add a great deal to the event for the home fans, but they’re also suspended and getting ready for the LIV Golf Saudi Arabia tournament next week.
All of these players knew what they were signing up for when they joined LIV Golf, but without them in the field, the fans are missing out and so is the tournament and its sponsors.
Luckily for the home fans, they had the chance to see their country’s top players earlier in the month at the LIV Golf Mayakoba event, where the Mexican supporters also got to see the rest of LIV’s top names like Rahm, Niemann, DeChambeau, Smith, Koepka, Johnson and Garcia.
Joaquin Niemann won the LIV Golf Mayakoba event earlier this month
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It’s a strange place that golf currently finds itself in, and this week’s Mexico Open, without its own top players competing, really does illustrate just that.
The PGA Tour’s coffers are doing just fine without its LIV Golfers following the $3bn deal with Strategic Sports Group, but it can’t be argued that the product has been weakened since the game tore itself in half when LIV Golf entered the market.
The PGA Tour’s new Signature Events can certainly hold their own thanks to the number of top players it still possesses, just like the Genesis Invitational showed, but it’s the ‘full field’ weeks in between the big events, like this week’s Mexico Open, that are suffering.
The event is still going to have a field of incredibly talented golfers but it really could be, and should be, a festival of Latin American golf. Sadly it’s not going to be that, but with the Mexico Open and LIV Golf Mayakoba, there’s surely hope for one big Mexico event in the future if, and hopefully when, golf sorts itself out.
The country formerly hosted the superb WGC-Mexico at the treelined Chapultepec GC in Mexico City. That was an excellent tournament at a cool and quirky old school golf course where the world’s best players showed up.
Phil Mickelson won the 2018 WGC-Mexico Championship in front of packed galleries at Chapultepec GC
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Perhaps we can see the Mexico Open go there in the not too distant future – and have a field made up of all of Latin America’s top golfers as well as some of the best players from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.
Rory McIlroy is very keen for the game to unify and a global tour to come out of it. Let’s hope a star-studded Mexico Open is on that schedule.
