CLEARY: PGA or LIV, major or minor, every pro golf tournament is an exhibition

But when you think about it, analyse it, come at it from so many angles, all professional golf tournaments – indeed all professional sports events – are exhibitions.

A sporting event is a show, a piece of theatre, with actors and ‘players’, produced for the express purpose of charging people money to watch.

They exhibit performance. They exhibit therefore they are. 

I know. Deep.

Yes! Some exhibitions are more equal than others and hold greater status due to historical context and money. We romanticise the Open Championship and the Masters and our Australian Open.

And that’s fair enough. For certainly it would indeed be super-cool to win a Claret Jug with your name next to Young Tom Morris’s and Bobby Jones’, or have your name engraved next to Jack Nicklaus’s and Gary Player’s on our Stonehaven Cup, first presented by Lord Stonehaven the Governor-General of Australia from 1925 to 1930, it says so on the internet.

But major or minor, PGA or LIV, Korn Ferry or Korean Tour, they’re all still exhibitions.

We assign greater ‘value’ to some tournaments over others. But take the money away from the Open, Masters, The Players, the Valspar, whatever that is, something to do with paint, see how many professionals find other avenues to earn their quid.

Fact: it would be just about all of them. And they would stream to LIV Golf.

LIV is knocked because people say it’s meaningless. That everyone’s already been paid, so why compete. (The answer is more money, competitive spirit, ego, golf is fun, it’s better than working, money again, plus several other reasons we could fit in another column.)

But compare the weekend of LIV Golf in Chicago with another tournament on the never-ending loop that is the PGA Tour, the Procore Championship in Napa. One was won by a generic, lanky American, Patton Kizzire, who earned world ranking points. The other by two-time major winner, Jon Rahm, who did not.

Two exhibitions. Only one with ranking points and thus context.

Not earning OWGR points remains LIV’s major issue to legitimacy. It’s why Chicago is considered an exhibition golf while the Procore Championship is considered … whatever people think that is, the first of the ‘Fall Series’ of PGA Tour tournaments, sweet ghost of Bobby Jones can they not take a break.

It’s how things roll, on and on and on: from Korn Ferry to PGA Tour to Masters invite, every step up is secured via playing an exhibition that awards prize money and order of merit points for graduation to the next exhibition.

Not earning OWGR points means LIV Golf’s exhibitions lack the ability to get their players into the higher-profile, more contextual exhibitions. And it may take a while for that to be corrected, just as it will take time for fans to become invested in the Majesticks and Hy Flyers and what have you (though Aussies are into the Rippers), historical context takes time because things have to happen for them to be included in history.

It can be revealed.

Top of that, because the OWGR people work slower than the slow-drift of continents that once formed Gondwanaland, LIV Golf’s players are in limbo, earning their way into the exhbitions known as major championships, which makes it hard to recruit really good new ones.

The PGA Tour, meanwhile, with its Player Impact Program and events ‘designated’ to be worth twice as much as others, has countered the existential threat of LIV Golf’s limited field, cut-free exhibitions with a series of – get this – limited field, cut-free exhibitions that they trot out as context-rich golf tournaments with OWGR points and famous dead people’s names on the trophies.

Scottie Scheffler earned $62 million in 2024 which included $29 million in prize money, $25 million for the FedEx playoffs, $8 million for leading the Comcast Business Tour Top 10. PHOTO: Getty Images

There is, of course, another way LIV Golf can gain context and legacy (if not OWGR points). And it is this: invent it.

Look at the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup. A play-off finals system was Invented in 2007 because golf didn’t have one, it had less historical context than then 13-year-old Justin Bieber.

And it was, and remains, a confected bit of kit. The PGA Tour is a series of template exhibition tournaments which ‘climax’ at the end with four more of them called the FedEx Cup play-offs which award massive money to already super-wealthy people.

The top golfer also gets a nice trophy and a fine feeling of being great at golf and of beating a lot of other great golfers. Without doubt, win the FedEx Cup, you can say you’ve played the best golf in the world over a four-week stretch.

But historical legacy? Riddle me this, sports fan: Who won the FedEx Cup in 2015? Or 2019? Who won the first one? Where were you when Jim Furyk won the FedEx Cup in whatever year he won it?

I would bet six hundred Australian dollars to a six-pack of cinnamon donuts that you don’t know without a Google.

(Psst: it was in 2010. It was quite the exhibition.)