What is a golf legacy?
A pretty good reason some bigger names are leaving the PGA is linked to it.
I was watching some of the Canadian Open today, and while there’s a tremendous leaderboard going into Sunday (Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy and Tony Finau are tied atop the standings and in the final pairing together) the talk was of course at least somewhat about LIV and the golfers who were not there. And it got me thinking about the guys who have officially left (and a few who are all but over there) and what their legacy in golf really is.
Phil Mickelson is the obvious outlier - he’s won six majors and was one of the most dominant golfers of his or any generation. He’s not only a Hall of Famer, many would probably lock him in as a top-10 or better golfer of all time.
Right after that, we have Dustin Johnson. For a long time, you had to point out that DJ wasn’t just like all those OTHER guys who had won only a single major. Because DJ has won everything else, and been almost impossibly consistent in doing so. And when he got his second major win in Augusta in 2020, that somehow changed the conversation. (Similarly, after JT won the PGA this year, he’s immediately into the next tier conversation where he should have been all along.)
But then, the other major winners are guys like Bryson DeChambeau, Martin Kaymer, Bubba Watson, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen, Graeme McDowell and Charl Schwartzel. Two of those guys have two majors and everyone else has one. At first, I thought - wow, that’s a LOT of guys with majors.
And then I started thinking … sure, it is, but are those guys really GREAT golfers? Were they ever? I’d argue that Lee Westwood, who hasn’t won a single one, had a much more impressive career than almost any of these guys. (Reluctantly, I have to acknowledge Garcia, but he’s also a guy who fell way short of his potential.)
In the PGA, winning majors isn’t the ONLY factor in a legacy, but it’s the primary one. And it struck me how many golfers must have won just a single major, and why I will never think of Jason Day in the same category as his peers who have won more than one major.
Look at this distribution of major winners and golfers with that many titles:
If you’re a fan of golf at all, you know the top two names are Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, and probably that third with 11 is Walter Hagen. Every single name that goes down through three majors is a legit, no question, world class golfer. And in the entire history of professional golf, while 228 individuals have won majors, only 46 players have three or more wins, and only 29 have four or more.
It’s the clear cut-off line. And it’s why Kaymer and his two majors seems somehow much, much less than DJ’s, because of the rest of D.J.’s career. (In short, Kaymer won three times on the PGA Tour - the two majors and a WGC, and DJ literally won everything that matters, and often.)
But the point here is that this deeper analysis matters. If you look at names in the three win club, are you going to argue whether Hale Irwin, Vijay Singh, Padraig Harrington or Jordan Spieth are really that good? Of course they are. (Also, Jordan is still somehow only 28 years old. Pack that away.) As it climbs higher, it’s even more of a no-brainer.
With two major wins, you have names like Andy North, Lee Janzen, Angel Cabrera - I am old enough to know about these guys and their wins and during these periods that were all very, very good golfers. But not terrifying. Not a “let’s see what [insert name here] does this weekend” good.
If true elite legacy in golf is three majors (plus, if we’re honest, DJ because of the above), it becomes a lot clearer why most of these guys signed up.
(checks notes)
Yep, it’s still money.
But it’s money they might take with less questioning than one might think. I keep asking (and hearing others ask) how these guys could ruin “their legacy in golf” by breaking bad like this.
I think it’s because all of these golfers recognize where their legacies are, and that they simply can’t change that. If the legacy we are hope they are trying to achieve is out of reach … then what?
Sergio, Reed, Bubba (despite making a run at the PGA), Bryson or Louis are simply never going to get into that elite level. And if they know this, and they are morally okay with taking money from the Saudis* (and all that this comes with) … how could they NOT take a final, lifetime payout that will cement generational wealth?
*Admittedly, the moral “IF” here is doing a lot of work. I’ve deleted like five paragraphs detailing why doing business with Saudi Arabia stinks, why it’s hypocritical as Americans to say so because of our own dealings with them, etc. Suffice it to say it’s not hard to talk yourself into martyrdom in forsaking life changing money.
Indeed, everyone has their price. Take Pat Perez, for one. He railed out against Mickelson back in (checks calendar) February, a full four months ago.
Today, it was leaked that Perez is on his way to LIV Golf, for a reported $10MM signing bonus.
Everybody has a number.
That number may be very different if you have a legacy to protect - it’s why DJ and Phil got paid the very most, and how Bryson probably leveraged his payday (about $100MM) under the (in my opinion faulty) pretense that he could win two or more additional majors and then some.
With the recent additions of golfers, here are the guys so far who have joined forces with LIV Golf and all that it encompasses:
Phil Mickelson
Dustin Johnson
Bryson DeChambeau
Rickie Fowler
Bubba Watson
Patrick Reed
Jason Kokrak
Talor Gooch
Louis Oosthuizen
Matthew Wolff
Sergio Garcia
Ian Poulter
Lee Westwood
Graeme McDowell
Charl Schwartzel
Pat Perez
Martin Kaymer
Kevin Na
Hudson Swafford
Branden Grace
Now, not every golfer on this list is playing in his prime. Most, indeed, aren’t. But that’s 20 golfers out of a playing field of 48 each week that would be playing some amount (in many cases, as many as they’d want) of tournaments on the PGA Tour this season. They’re all gone.
Charl Schwartzel won $4,750,000 this week in LIV. He got paid something to join LIV (not a public number, but probably closer to Perez money, if that). That is more than twice as much as he won in any YEAR on the PGA Tour. There’s simply no way other golfers who aren’t on the list above YET aren’t looking at that number and wondering why, exactly, they’re not taking the money themselves. Everyone has a number. Better and better golfers are going to find out what their numbers are.
The PGA Tour is in serious trouble right now. Does it recognize this?
A small note here - I just re-read this and I think it might be the worst thing I've ever written. It's a complete mess of too many ideas. Hopefully it was intelligible at all.