LIV just lost the Masters championship, but what happens next?
BUBBA WATSON is paying attention to the LIVA championship in Chicago
Baba Watson was one of the golf players in the emission area since Sunday.
The burden of the improlished ironic golf competition structure. You can have a roster full of aging stars, or you can have a fully functioning competitive meritocracy—but you probably can’t have both.
This irony begs the question: Will the league abandon its stars in the name of competitive integrity, or will it abandon competitive integrity in the name of its stars? From afar, the answer seems obvious: Competitive meritocracy is at the heart of all we value about major professional sports, and centuries of human biology tell us that physical skill declines with age. The laws of nature dictate that the old guard will eventually be replaced by a cadre of new, young stars.
But the laws of economics say otherwise. In the end, there is a reason for which Liv initially targeted its group of aging captains: they give the League a certain level of star, and Starpower helps sell tickets. Without names such as Phil Mikelson and John Ram, every week, the League will not be able to attract sponsors, television partners or fans to pay attention to their product and the league with the preparation of fans, it is a powerful risk So last week at the LIV Individual Golf Championship in Chicago, the league slipped a major update to its competitive structure into the margins of a press release: From now on, everyone will be subject to relegation under the league’s so-called “drop zone,” which eliminates the bottom five players from the standings at the end of each year. Including the captain.
At first, the news came as a bit of a shock. In the past, the league has made the mistake of siding with its stars and protecting team captains (the central figures in the financially significant “franchise model”) from relegation, but now the league appears to be changing course, a sign of serious problems to come. The LIV can be started seriously with Fila Michelson, the founder of the league Defacto. How did John Lam and Bryson Desmo, the competitive future of the league, suffered from a 12 -month stallion? After questions were asked, the league quickly issued the following update: Captains can be demoted, but can also remain on the roster if team management presents a competitive business case for keeping them in the league. Since competing business cases are the origins of the franchise model, this clarification amounts to more of a reversal: the captains were safe. Their inclusion in the drop zone simply gave the league’s franchises a plausible reason to distance themselves from a toxic asset if any of the captains ever reached that point, but most franchises are led by longtime friends or colleagues of the captains, and so it seems unlikely that a captain would be removed from the team against their will. For better or worse, that theory is about to be tested. On Sunday night, LIV confirmed its 2024 Drop Zone finishers, and that group includes one notable name: Bubba Watson, a two-time Masters champion and captain of the RangeGoats. Watson is the biggest name among those eliminated, joining brothers Scott and Kieran Vincent, Carla Samoha and Branden Grace in the drop zone. His “out” makes Watson the first team captain to be included in the drop zone, but it remains to be seen whether he will actually be among the players ruled out when the 2024 season concludes in Dallas this week.
Given the league’s language, Watson’s status as a two-time major champ, and the reported $50 million signing bonus it gave Watson back in 2022, the “business case” for keeping him on the RangeGoats roster seems increasingly strong. Would LIV consider making an example out of Watson in the name of competitive integrity? That’s possible, but it seems highly likely Watson will be back with the Rangers when the 2025 season kicks off in Riyadh next February. For the time being, it’s probably good for the league, but probably not for a long time. Since the end of the 2024 season, the average age of Captain Rive 40.07 is much older than golf typical competitive growth. As the league’s veterans continue to decline, can the league abandon players whose captaincy and performance have declined, or will it quietly wait for the captains to sort it out themselves, even if it means damaging the product on the course? The day when LIV will be forced to make a difficult decision is approaching, maybe sooner than expected.