It’s a sobering move on the Presidents Cup’s lack of competitiveness, as Mark O’Meara — who retired from the game this weekend at the mummified age of 67 — was the second-ranked golfer in the world when the United States suffered its last (and only) defeat in 1998. The last (and only) time the Internationals managed to tie was in 2003, when the top 20 in the world rankings included only two men not on the senior tour: Tiger Woods and Freddie Jacobson, and Freddie gets his AARP card Thursday, the day the 16th Presidents Cup begins in Montreal.
There is a passionate following for team golf that delights fans and challenges competitors. all Team golf offers that. The Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup do, but for multiple reasons, the Presidents Cup has struggled to gain traction. It’s not a lack of history (the Solheim Cup is only four years older) that’s the problem, but rather an amorphous team identity and a lack of competitiveness.
It’s hard to rally the Internationals without suggesting an anti-American vibe, a delicate balance made even more difficult by the fact that this year’s “away” game is less than 30 miles from the New York border. (At ProV1 time, Royal Montreal is closer to U.S. captain Jim Furyk’s hometown in Pennsylvania than to his Canadian counterpart Mike Weir’s hometown in Ontario.) And for a compelling contest, there has to be the possibility that Goliath will lose, and the last time that happened, R. Kelly was No. 1 on the Billboard charts, not inmate No. 09627-035 at a federal correctional facility in North Carolina.
That’s not to say the Presidents Cup doesn’t inspire effort or pride. Generations of international skippers have gotten their money’s worth, and Furyk recently took exception when my colleague Adam Schupak suggested a U.S. defeat would be better for the event’s relevance. “Kiss my ass” “The American leader delivered a delightfully unparliamentary rebuke. But Captain Jim may be the only Ponte Vedra Beach resident so firmly opposed to the benefits of defeat.
The next week will be a defining moment for the Presidents Cup. It is profitable (the amount varies widely by venue), but with every aspect of the PGA Tour business under scrutiny from private investors, another easy win for the United States could force a rethink of how to better maximize the value of the product. There are frequent calls for the Presidents Cup to become a co-ed event, but it is not far-fetched to wonder whether it will be reimagined as a bridge between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, if the Justice Department insists that the Saudi circuit not be eliminated as part of a deal between the Tour and the Public Investment Fund.
It seems likely that team golf will be a component of any final deal with the PIF, whose governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, is apparently convinced that such franchises will have great value. Even if he is right (a generous subsidy), it will take years to realize the value. In the short term, it remains a tough sell, and not just because LIV’s laughably awful product has poisoned fans’ perceptions of team golf that is not organized around national loyalty.
Any future team platform operated by PGA Tour Enterprises will likely be spun out of TGL, the simulator-based league backed by Woods and Rory McIlroy, though it also involves LIV teams competing. But like any concept mooted in golf these days, it raises questions with no obvious answers. Will consumers who enjoy the biannual feast between the U.S. and Europe accept being stuffed with team events more frequently? Will they embrace simulator golf as a packaged entertainment on Tuesday nights in the winter? What about on nights when Woods and McIlroy aren’t playing? Will they care enough to invest in the team standings week after week?
And, most tricky of all, what will they sacrifice from their normal diet to adapt to team golf?
If team franchises are to gain value, they need a season that extends beyond a few weeks of indoor winter in Florida. There also needs to be an element of green turf. And that’s where team golf runs into the brick wall that impacts every aspect of the PGA Tour’s negotiations with the PIF: the schedule.
Top golfers won’t work more than 24 to 26 weeks a year. Earlier this month, McIlroy said he only wanted to play 18 to 20 weeks. For players who aren’t LIV members, that doesn’t leave much time after factoring in the majors, the Players Championship, the Ryder Cup, the FedEx Cup playoffs, the Tour’s marquee events and the various stops players feel compelled to make on national tours. The only way to not have team golf take away from another part of the schedule is to integrate it into existing tournaments — say, Tuesday afternoon matches at the Memorial or the Travelers Championship. Even that solution requires those sponsors to be willing to share their week and leaves open the question of scheduling a playoff or a grand finale for teams.
All of these unknowns exist in a context of fan apathy. If there were a public hungry for team golf, then LIV would have drawn more people, even allowing for garish theater and players who would have a hard time winning a popularity contest if it were held at Smith College and the only other contender was J.D. Vance.
The best-case scenario we can hope for is the emergence of a team product that engages fans and harnesses the passion we see around the Ryder Cup and the Solheim Cup. The second best-case scenario is that if team golf fails, it should fail quickly. Because at this point, it looks more like an off-ramp being built to save Al-Rumayyan’s skin than the shiny new highway he imagines it to be.
This article was originally published on Golfweek: Lynch: Fans don’t like the Presidents Cup, so will they embrace team golf designed to keep Saudi Arabia out of trouble?
