LIV Golf made a smart planning move. Is it a sign of the future?

On paper, it looks great that LIV Golf will start its 2025 season in the dark. literally, starting from round 1 at 18:15after dark and fixated on the spotlights in Saudi Arabia. It looks good on paper because it will look good on their bottom line. More people will have FOX on their television at 11am Eastern than 11am Saudi time. This is a business decision.

In reality, it can feel good too. We are slowly getting used to seeing golf played at all hours of the day. We are slowly figuring it out golf under the lights it’s not as revolting to the senses for us watching at home. But, no matter how reasonable this decision seems, it gives the impression a little The Rorschach test for the future of the game. What might seem great this week could mean something very different down the road. How you perceive it says more about you than anything else.

That LIV is making a business decision is not a bad thing, but the reason why — the all-important American television audience — is foreboding.

In order for the multi-million dollar production cost (which LIV is paying for) to be offset by a broadcast rights fee, you need a predictable, core audience that FOX can sell to advertisers. The good news for LIV is about six times more people watch FOX than LIV’s previous rights holder, The CW. And I don’t blame them. FOX is FOX, where Tom Brady talks and Gus Johnson calls basketball games. Say “The CW” fast enough and it sounds like a body of water.

When it arrives in America, the year-over-year ratings will be interpreted as an apples-to-apples measure of LIV’s success, all while the PGA Tour looks to bounce back from a tough 2024 campaign in the golf department. assessments. But for LIV to ever really punch above its weight class — it has struggled to capture viewers — it will have to be in prime time on the East Coast. Which means your tour has to be organized in the West Bank, a long way from Saudi Arabia. Changing the schedule of matches in Saudi Arabia is an open admission that the professionals can come out too late in the Middle East and too early in the Far East, if we are bold enough to bring the best players there.

And isn’t that what the pro game is all about these days? How much of it should revolve around the United States and how much of it can be brought elsewhere?

To its credit, LIV is the venture with which we are answering this question. A kind. It has pledged to bring top-level professional players to east Asia and Australia – some of its players will even compete in India next week – initiatives that worry players interested in growing golf’s global footprint and upset others who they don’t want to go abroad. . (Also the phrase go abroad feels very optimistic about some of the game’s best talent. A more convenient one is leave the house.)

It was just last year I talked to Rory McIlroy about itour feet rest on the green, green grass of Emirates Golf Club in the Middle East. A former member of the PGA Tour’s policy board, McIlroy is well aware of the value of the American eye and the American dollars poured in by American sponsors.

“There’s a reason we all migrate to America,” he told me. “Here are the biggest tournaments. It has a cozy part that is really attractive. That’s why many of us have bases there. But I think the PGA Tour, as far as America is concerned, has reached its capacity and its maximum. Which is great. They have $2.3 billion in annual revenue. They do really, really well. But I think they’ve probably reached their limit in America.”

Now, will Tour brass — especially McIlroy’s Tour colleagues (and really only those on his policy board) — ever agree that golf’s biggest tournament can hit a ceiling in America? Probably not. But when asked last week if there was any upside potential McIlroy could see on the horizon, he reiterated that idea.

“With everything that’s happened in the game over the last two or three years,” he began, “I guess what I could imagine is that the dominance of the American side of things might come back a little bit in terms of—no the game never has been globally – but you know, kind of trying to build on the opportunities globally. So I think where we are, I think we’re in a good position to try to grow that part of it.”

With ease, McIlroy pronounced those words as a report was published tying it to a yet-to-be-announced event in India to be played in October as part of the DP World Tour schedule. As great as it would be to see the game’s most global star make that trip to New Delhi, if he goes at noon local time, basically no one in America will see him. And UK pubs won’t open in time to have it on their screens.

All of this makes LIV’s hot pursuit worth it. They hope to prove that the shape of golf tournaments — that is, when they start and end — can be manipulated. And why not? The PGA Tour bowed to the sun god late last year, changing its annual membership qualifier simply because of the hours of daylight in America. leagues MUST to be innovative and push against the boundaries of something as uniform as the rising and setting sun.

But what does it mean for the on-site experience? For both fans AND the players. When spotlights shine on a deciding surface, one’s ability to truly SEE a ground ball from 150 yards away is largely eliminated. We learned that by watching Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka play in The Showdown. We also learned that the temperature drops at night! Not a new concept, no, but one that LIV players will find in Riyadh next week. If the tournament had started on Wednesday, the sensible temperature as they finished their rounds would have dipped into 40 Fahrenheit. like Will Knights from Fried Egg reminded us, bright, fixed lighting causes shadows that wouldn’t exist during the day and affects most players’ ability to read the greens. At some point, night golf begins to feel different than golf during the day, and not just visually. When changes begin to be felt PHYSICALhave they gone too far?

Or… is that exactly where the game needs to go? I suppose we will begin to answer that question next week, in Riyadh.