The golf was wonderful final weekend. However did you tune in?

BOLINGBROOK, Ailing. — Jon Rahm was doing one thing he does rather well: courting every query in a press convention with care. Within the moments after profitable LIV Golf’s Particular person Championship Sunday, the 29-year-old Spaniard went deep on recommendation, hard-headedness, his LIV journey, driver shafts, even how aggravated he was that Tyrrell Hatton sprayed champagne into Rahm’s nostril. 

Jeff Koski, Rahm’s agent and basic supervisor of Legion XIII, seemed on from the again of the ballroom. He seemed completely happy, and he had each motive to be: He was going to get his star consumer, now $22 million richer, onto a personal jet shortly, headed house to his pregnant spouse and his personal mattress for just a few nights. It’s been a protracted summer season for Rahm, however all’s effectively that ends effectively. 

This was about six hours after Rory McIlroy had accomplished media of his personal, six time zones east, after a rousing however crushing end on the Irish Open at Royal County Down, about 40 miles from the place McIlroy grew up. In the meantime, Patton Kizzire — the chief by a handful of pictures on the Procore Championship in Napa — was nonetheless just a few hours from what could be his first post-win press convention in six years. 

The strongest area figuratively? It was in Chicago, the place a bunch of major-winners stuffed the tee sheet. The strongest area actually? It was in Northern California, the place a handful of Presidents Cuppers have been competing. The most effective fan expertise? That was in Northern Eire, at among the finest golf programs on the planet. Nationwide Opens, house opens — they convey out a connection between golfer and spectator that different occasions can not. 

So, yeah, the golf was wonderful Sunday, and whenever you add probably the most significant occasion of the day — the Solheim Cup — to the center of that schedule, the sport was on the telly from dawn to sundown.

Which raises an necessary query:

Did you watch all of it? Might you watch all of it? You had a proper to really feel overwhelmed.

Or did you simply watch soccer? 

IT’S WEEKENDS LIKE THIS PAST ONE the place the unraveling of professional golf is most obvious. As soon as a single, tightly wound rope, the sport final weekend felt looser and weaker than the sum of its components. Rahm used to love enjoying the Irish Open. His outcomes there: 1st, T4, 1st. He’s performed within the Napa occasion a number of instances, too.

In Illinois, Rahm battled one of many recreation’s brightest younger skills in Joaquin Niemann. In Eire, McIlroy misplaced to a different of the sport’s up-and-comers in Rasmus Hojgaard. What the 4 of them might have created collectively is sadly left to the creativeness. This week, McIlroy is enjoying the BMW PGA at Wentworth, outdoors London, the place he’s constructing a home strolling distance from the headquarters of the DP World Tour. Rahm flew house to Scottsdale for just a few days earlier than he’ll tee it up in Dallas at LIV’s group championship. McIlroy loves himself some group golf, simply not the LIV variety. Rahm loves himself some DP World Tour, however he owes them some huge cash. That is the state of professional golf today. Not precisely feel-good stuff. 

That McIlroy and his group felt compelled to spin up a PGA Tour-LIV match with Scottie Scheffler, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau — which just about definitely will go off with out a hitch but in addition with out involvement from the Tour or LIV — tells you one thing. The exhibition initially was slated for The Stanwich Membership in Connecticut, a just lately renovated, 60-year-old gem and among the many finest programs within the Northeast. However Stanwich can not host a golf match in mid-December, which, between the warring excursions’ manic schedules, is the possible date they’ve landed on. As an alternative, it will likely be performed in Las Vegas, the de facto host web site for made-for-TV occasions in pursuit of the hype that MMA and boxing fights get pleasure from in Sin Metropolis. As reported final week by Sports activities Enterprise Journal, the occasion is in search of an $8 to $10 million title sponsorship for a single spherical of golf on an undecided course on an undecided date. Relaxation assured, although, its identify is set: The Showdown. 

McIlroy says The Showdown will give followers one thing they need — one of the best gamers from both aspect enjoying collectively extra typically — whereas additionally selling the forthcoming season. The occasion could obtain each of these targets, however on this second, with out a solidified funding determine from the Saudi PIF, it additionally could function a reminder that LIV Golf’s finest gamers are all contracted for a minimum of one other yr. Merger or not, the rival league has a multi-year runway.

Till then, we have now the FedEx Cup fall working by means of a sponsorship cash situation of its personal. The Tour is awarding extra prize cash throughout its fall season this yr than final, however that’s to be anticipated with one extra event on the schedule. As an alternative, the true story of fall purses is a little more bleak. As Doug Ferguson of the AP reported final week, the vast majority of these tournaments (5 of seven) have seen their purse sizes lower in 2024, a shocking flip of the pattern that the majority professional sports activities have seen for many years: that the cash all the time goes up. At all times. Simply not on the PGA Tour this fall!

Taken on their very own, these newsy nuggets aren’t so startling, however within the mixture, it’s arduous to not have a look at the present state of professional golf as something however a sport-wide conundrum, and one which not solely is refusing to resolve itself but in addition is definitely getting a bit worse.

On the outskirts of Chicago this week, LIV Golf introduced a home file of 15,000-plus followers in attendance on Saturday. It’s indisputably nice {that a} top-tier pro-golf occasion visits the largest market within the American Midwest on an annual foundation. And lots of would argue it’s additionally indisputably nice that LIV is seeing progress. “It’s the perseverance of the LIV product and what all us gamers, 54 of us, together with employees behind closed doorways, have labored arduous to do,” Bryson DeChambeau mentioned Sunday night time. “That is only the start.”

However one can also make an apparent argument that LIV’s attendance numbers aren’t what they might be. When the BMW Championship visited Olympia Fields, in Chicago, greater than 120,000 spectators confirmed up over the course of the week — with greater than 30,000 on the weekend days — that means common each day attendance out-ranked LIV’s finest day in the US…ever. Followers prove to see gamers, to observe an occasion with that means and/or to expertise high-level competitors at a particular property. LIV Chicago had loads of world-class gamers, and there was loads of that means to the golf (or a minimum of money on the road), however the host course left loads to be desired, even when Paul Casey did earnestly word that on Bolingbrook Golf Membership‘s firm-and-fast structure, it “felt like a Chicago main had damaged out.”

Bolingbrook, a municipal course that may benefit from the publicity and cash that include internet hosting a LIV occasion, landed the event partly as a result of it was able to getting organized in pretty quick order. LIV’s work-in-progress nature calls for this flexibility of its host websites; the tour is piecing collectively its schedule on the fly, confirming host websites months upfront fairly than signing multi-year contracts. Finally, this method places a ceiling on the quantity of people that stroll by means of the gates, and the quantity of people that tune in. We gained’t know what number of viewers watched LIV’s Chicago occasion as a result of LIV, which has struggled to draw viewers en masse, doesn’t report real TV rankings. The PGA Tour, in the meantime, has been confronting its personal rankings swoon; 2024 will go down as one of the disappointing golf-on-TV years in latest reminiscence.

Which brings us again to final weekend, the place the patches of professional golf’s quilt lined up in a largely orderly manner for TV-viewing functions. The Irish Open was on within the morning on the East Coast, passing the baton to the Solheim Cup within the early afternoon, which led some followers into the again 9 of LIV’s particular person championship adopted by a Procore nightcap.

This coming weekend might be present fewer choices. With the PGA Tour off, followers will select the DP World Tour’s greatest occasion (BMW PGA), LIV’s greatest occasion (group championship in Texas) or the LPGA’s Kroger Queen Metropolis occasion in Ohio. Will you be inclined to observe another than the opposite?

Or will you simply watch the soccer?