The golf was excellent last weekend. But did you tune in?

BOLINGBROOK, Ill. — Jon Rahm was doing something he does very well: facing each question at a press conference with caution. In the moments after winning the LIV Golf Individual Championship on Sunday, the 29-year-old Spaniard delved into his advice, stubbornness, his journey to LIV, steering shafthowever upset he was that Tyrrell Hatton splashed the champagne IN Rahm’s nose.

Jeff Koski, Rahm’s agent and general manager of Legion XIII, watched from the back of the ballroom. He looked happy, and he had every reason to be: He was getting his star client, now $22 million richer, on a private jet soon, to go home to his pregnant wife and his bed for a few nights. It’s been a long summer for Rahm, but all’s well that ends well.

That was about six hours after Rory McIlroy had done his media, six eastern time zones, after an awakening but overwhelming one finish at the Irish Open in Royal County Down, about 40 miles from where McIlroy grew up. Meanwhile, Patton Kizzire – the leader by several strokes in the Procore Championship at Napa – was still hours away from what would have been his. The first press conference after the victory in six years.

Figuratively strongest field? It was in Chicago, where a group of big winners filled the sheet. Strongest field literally? It was in Northern California where a handful of President Cuppers were competing. Best fan experience? It was in Northern Ireland, on one of the best golf courses on the planet. National Open, HOUSES opens – they highlight a connection between golfer and spectator that other events cannot.

So yes, the golf was excellent on Sunday, and when you add more SIGNIFICANT event of the day – Solheim Cup – by the middle of that schedule, the game was on television from sunrise to sunset.

Which raises an important question:

Have you watched them all? Can do you see them all? You were right to feel overwhelmed.

Or did you just watch football?

WEEKENDS LIKE THIS PAST where the breakdown of pro golf is most evident. Once a single, tightly coiled rope, last weekend’s game felt looser and weaker than the sum of its parts. Rahm once upon a time love playing in the Irish Open. His results there: 1, T4, 1. He has also played in the Napa event several times.

At Illinois, Rahm battled one of the game’s brightest young talents in Joaquin Niemann. In Ireland, McIlroy lost to another of the game’s young players in Rasmus Hojgaard. What the four of them could have created together is unfortunately left to the imagination. This week, McIlroy is playing the BMW PGA at Wentworth, outside London, where he is building a house within walking distance of DP World Tour headquarters. Rahm flew home to Scottsdale for a few days before he will make it to Dallas for the LIV Team Championship. McIlroy fancies himself a team golfer, just not the LIV kind. Rahm wants himself a DP world tour, but he owes them a lot of money. This is the state of pro golf these days. Not exactly feel good stuff.

That McIlroy and his team felt compelled to rotate a PGA Tour-LIV Match with Scottie Scheffler, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau – which will almost certainly go smoothly, but also without involvement from the Tour or LIV – tells you something. The exhibition was originally planned for The Stanwich Club in Connecticut, a recently renovated 60-year-old gem and among the best courses in the Northeast. But Stanwich can’t wait for a golf match in mid-December, which, amid the manic schedule of warring tournaments, is the feasible date they’ve landed on. Instead, it will be played in Las Vegas in fact host to made-for-TV events following the hype enjoyed by MMA and boxing in Sin City. like reported last week from Sports Business Journalthe event is seeking a title sponsorship of $8 million to $10 million for a single round of golf at an undetermined course on an undetermined date. Rest assured, though, his name is set: Confrontation.

McIlroy says The Showdown will give fans something they want – the best players from each side playing together more often – while also promoting next season. The event may achieve both of these goals, but at this point, without a solid investment figure from the Saudi PIF, it may also serve as a reminder that LIV Golf’s top players are all contracted for at least one next year. Merger or not, the rival league has a perennial track record.

Until then, we have the fall FedEx Cup running through its own sponsorship money issue. The tournament is giving away more money during its fall season this year than last, but that’s expected with an additional tournament on the schedule. Instead, the real story of fall wallets is a bit murkier. like Doug Ferguson i AP reported Last week, most of those tournaments (five out of seven) saw their purse size dwindle in 2024, a stunning reversal of the trend that almost all professional sports have seen for decades: that the money always goes up. Always. Just not on the PGA Tour this fall!

Taken on their own, these nuggets of news aren’t all that surprising, but overall, it’s hard not to view the current state of golf as anything but a vast sports puzzle, and one that’s not only refusing to sort itself out, but it’s also actually getting a little worse.

In suburban Chicago this week, LIV Golf announced a local record of over 15,000 fans present on Saturday. It is undeniably wonderful that a top-level pro-golf event visits the largest market in the American Midwest every year. And many would argue that it’s also undeniably wonderful that LIV is seeing growth. “It’s the persistence of the LIV product and what all of us players, 54 of us, including the staff behind closed doors, have worked hard to do,” Bryson DeChambeau said Sunday night. “This is just the beginning.”

But a clear argument can also be made that LIV’s attendance numbers are not what they could be. When the BMW Championship visited Olympia Fields, Chicago, more than 120,000 spectators turned up during the week – with more than 30,000 on weekend days – meaning the average daily attendance surpassed LIV’s best day in the States United…EVER. Fans come out to see players, to see an event with him MEANING and/or experience high level competition in a particular property. LIV Chicago had many world-class players and made a lot of golf sense (or at least money on the line), but the host course left a lot to be desired, even if Paul Casey pointed out earnestly that in Bolingbrook Golf ClubHis strong, fast delivery “looked like a Chicago major had exploded.”

Bolingbrook, a municipal course that will enjoy publicity and money that come with hosting a LIV event, brought the tournament in part because it was able to be organized in such a short amount of time. The nature of LIV’s ongoing work requires this flexibility of its host countries; the tour is piecing together its schedule on the fly, confirming venues months in advance rather than signing multi-year contracts. Ultimately, this approach puts a ceiling on the number of people passing through the gates and the number of people entering. We won’t know how many viewers attended LIV’s event in Chicago because LIV, which has struggled to attract viewers LOTdoes not report true TV ratings. Meanwhile, the PGA Tour has faced its own declining ratings; 2024 will go down as one of the most disappointing years of golf on TV in recent memory.

Which brings us back to last weekend, where the pieces of the golf quilt were lined up in a mostly orderly fashion for TV viewing purposes. The Irish Open took place in the morning on the East Coast, passing the baton to the Solheim Cup in the early afternoon, which took some fans to the last nine of the LIV Individual Championship, followed by a Procore nightcap.

This coming weekend will offer fewer options. With the PGA Tour off, fans will have their choice of the DP World Tour’s biggest event (BMW PGA), the LIV’s biggest event (Texas Team Championship) or the LPGA Kroger Queen City event in Ohio. Will you be inclined to watch one more than the other?

Or are you just going to watch football?