Opinion: Liv's So-called Rivalry With Pga Tour Looks Like A Joke

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Let’s start with what should be becoming obvious at the Masters. There’s no PGA-LIV golf rivalry. Not anymore. LIV looks cooked, if we can speak frankly about this.

There might have been a rivalry, once. For a hot minute. OK, so more than a minute, but that’s gone now.

Say goodbye to one of golf’s shortest-lived rivalries.

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A rivalry that lacks longstanding history requires both entities to have a pulse. LIV’s ephemeral relevance is up.

Whatever flicker of a rivalry once burned has since been extinguished. To revive a rivalry from the ashes, LIV’s going to need a lot more than Tyrrell Hatton’s 6-under 66 in Round 2 at Augusta National.

Ten LIV players competed in this Masters. That’s down from 18 LIVers at the 2023 Masters. Hatton marches into moving day as LIV’s lone bannerman anywhere near the top of the leaderboard, and PGA Tour golden boy Rory McIlroy sits in the lead.

To hear LIV’s Jon Rahm tell it, there’s no adjustment — “None,” he said — transitioning from LIV events to the Masters. “Golf is golf,” Rahm said, with his score at 4 over after two rounds.

Sure. Right. I totally believe that.

I totally believe playing an irrelevant tournament in South Africa against the likes of Abraham Ancer, Thomas Detry and Branden Grace preps you for the scrutiny and competition at the Masters and the challenges posed by this course.

Actually, on second thought, I don’t believe it at all.

Hey, I get it, it doesn’t pay to publicly criticize your employer. Hatton joined Rahm in saying there’s “no adjustment” going from a LIV event to the Masters.

“Whatever the tournament is, you're always giving it your best, and you're trying to prepare in a way to give yourself a chance to win the tournament,” Hatton said. “I don't think anyone that's playing this week would feel — would change anything. That would be my guess.”

Many of the LIV golfers probably would like to change their scores, at the very least.

Rahm carded a 6-over 78 in Round 1. By his own admission needed “an absolute miracle” to climb back into this thing.

No miracles materialized in Round 2. Just a 2-under 70 that leaves him hovering around the cut.

LIV golfers mostly go splat at Masters

Quick trivia question for you: Who won the LIV’s South Africa tournament in March?

You don’t know? That’s OK, neither does anyone else.

Bryson DeChambeau won it. He beat Rahm in a playoff. They went a combined 52-under.

Here, they’re both over par after two rounds.

Others from LIV fared worse.

Bubba Watson — remember him? — will exit stage at 6 over. He can take the weekend for himself.

Cameron Smith is at 5 over. He’s probably headed home, too. Smith finished second at the 2020 Masters, then third in 2022. Get the jacket measurements ready. He appeared close.

Never mind. Smith went LIV in 2022, and he hasn’t sniffed a green jacket since then.

Just another coincidence, I’m sure of it.

At least Dustin Johnson will make the cut this year. He missed it the past two years.

LIV offers money but can't match PGA Tour competition

LIV players absorbed a barrage criticism after the Saudis started raiding the PGA.

LIV-bound golfers were portrayed as traitors and accused of taking Saudi “blood money.”

I never saw it in such black-and-white terms. If the U.S. government does business deals with the Saudis, are individuals like Rahm and DeChambeau and Johnson and Phil Mickelson not supposed to consider it?

These guys are not international affairs expects. They’re golfers, as LIV’s Talor Gooch once put it so eloquently.

“I'm a golfer,” Gooch said in 2022. “I'm not that smart. I try to hit a golf ball into a small hole.”

Points for honesty, if not loyalty.

Look, LIV offered PGA players top dollar to do less work. I’d imagine that’s tempting, and some players couldn’t resist the temptation.

I interpreted the heel turn by players who left the PGA for LIV as less of an endorsement of all things Saudi and more of an endorsement of the power of the almighty dollar.

I’m not going to pillory golfers who jetted and ran for cold, hard cash. For many of them, I suspect it wasn’t personal, just business.

Enjoy your wealth, fellas, but know the best competition remains on the PGA Tour.

It wasn’t always so lopsided. LIV posed a legitimate threat a few years ago.

LIV twisted the knife on the PGA Tour by plundering Rahm after he won the 2023 Masters. It gave the knife another twist when one of its heists, Brooks Koepka, won the 2023 PGA Championship. Then LIV’s DeChambeau won the U.S. Open in 2024.

Koepka is now a prodigal son. He’s reversing course and returning to the PGA Tour. So is Patrick Reed. They’re in the hunt entering this weekend.

Tom Watson doesn’t like the idea of LIV players being allowed back to the PGA Tour. He suggests a lifetime ban or having them play their way back up through the Korn Ferry Tour. I respect Watson’s opinion, but don’t agree. I say Koepka and Reed are a walking, talking testament that LIV is a siren’s call, but the PGA Tour is better.

Just look at the Masters leaderboard.

Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: LIV golfers in Masters 2026 shows there is no rivalry with PGA Tour