Learned Helplessness and Covering Men’s Pro Golf
A funny thing happened over the weekend in the world of men’s professional golf and Mother Nature was the catalyst.
The PGA TOUR’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was shortened to 54 holes after a severe weather system moved through the Monterey Peninsula, thus crowning Wyndham Clark the champion after Sunday’s final round was canceled. This meant that many golf fans chose to watch LIV Golf’s 2024 debut at Mayakoba in Mexico, where Joaquin Niemann defeated Sergio Garcia in a playoff.
For many fans, this may have been the first time they’ve ever watched a LIV Golf event. The controversial tour enters its third season with the support of more television coverage in more markets, coupled with the addition of Jon Rahm’s “Legion 13” team into the mix. Those of us who are chronically online and pay much too close attention to this sort of thing also noticed how Golf Twitter shifted its snark and attention to watching LIV. It was as amusing to notice as it was disappointing, especially since many of the individual accounts from Golf Media’s most popular commentators were suddenly… objectively watching the tournament?
Before I go on, allow me this preface. It is not lost on me that many of these media types are paid to comment on all things pro golf. It’s their job in every sense of the word, and LIV Golf appears to be alive, well and thriving. Therefore, it is no surprise that these media personalities must now comment on a segment of pro golf that they were openly ridiculing mere months prior.
But this doesn’t mean I have to like it.
When LIV burst onto the scene, it was in the midst of the most confusing and anxiety-inducing period of a generation. The pandemic was roaring, social upheaval was brewing, and at least here in the US, political divisiveness had never been worse. Fans of golf required a distraction, and it created ample opportunity for a disruptor like LIV to emerge. At a time when every aspect of life’s status quo was being questioned, LIV offered the proverbial “Why not us?” to golf’s fandom.
What followed was an onslaught of debate among golf’s media, including most of us taking holier than thou stances against the upstart league. Most of us hated that LIV’s funding came from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) due to the kingdom’s abhorrent civil rights record. Others hated that the PGA TOUR was no longer the only show in town; a sports league that we grew up watching and idolizing. And, yes, golf media also grew fearful of what might happen to the golf tour they were paid to cover for their careers.
It felt like the only thing to do was to protect one’s self interests, and that included going on social media and criticsizing LIV Golf into oblivion. Or at least try to. Obviously, this didn’t work.
Here is where I’m going to lose some of you reading this.
On its surface, LIV Golf has remained unchanged. The addition of a few names — and continued rumors of other names yet to be revealed — doesn’t change anything about the tour’s origins, financial backers, or ulterior motives. They’ve just persevered and hung around longer than we expected, despite multiple attempts to dissolve their legitimacy and legality. LIV Golf knew this would happen if they just survived. They were right.
The result: we are now seeing dozens of media outlets and their employees turning an about-face on their coverage of LIV.
To be fair: we’ve not reached the point where ESPN, CBS, or any of the major independent outlets are inviting LIV players into TV studios or onto podcasts. But if this weekend’s social media commentary is any indication, it’ll happen soon enough.
Where did all of the energy go? Was the outrage that many expressed in the wake of LIV’s debut all for show? Fake outrage is nothing new among journalists, but this feels like a rapid 180 among some outlets and their journalists. Did everyone hop on a conference call and suddenly decide, “Welp, we still need to get paid to cover golf, so we better change our tune?” Of course this happened, at least in the proverbial sense.
A few days ago I noticed this gem from our friend Will Bardwell, which pretty much sums everything up nicely.
This was the plan from LIV all along. They knew that golf media would simply stop caring as much at some point. Truthfully, I probably knew this, too. It’s a hard thing to admit, and it’s a tale as old as time.
Let’s make something abundantly clear: LIV Golf is an opportunistic organization that serves a dual purpose. For their players, it’s an “escape” from the constrictive nature of the PGA TOUR to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. For Saudi Arabia, it’s one-hundred-percent, without a doubt sportswashing. Both things can be true at the same time, and they are not pretending like it’s anything different. In fact, LIV brass straight up told us so.
To my media colleagues — both independent and otherwise — you have a choice here. You can continue to take your stand against something you truly do not believe in from a moral perspective. That doesn’t have to change, and any employer that asks you to do otherwise is not worth your time. Yes, this is a very easy thing for me to say, and I am well aware of the complexities of staying employed and toeing the company line.
You have another choice: just come clean. We all criticized players jumping to LIV and their ridiculous rationalizations for doing so when we all knew they were just doing it for the money. You have the chance to stand up, say something to the tune of, “I have to cover this league now, so you are going to see me start doing that as objectively as I can” and then move on. We will understand.
But to simply shift your perspective overnight comes off as disingenuous at best and hypocritical at worst. We all do things in our day jobs that we don’t like to do because our bosses ask us to, so why not just call it out and clear the air? I may be naive in this, but taking a moment to offer anything to your readers in this regard could go a long way.
Speaking only for myself and not my teammates at GU: I cannot support LIV, I will not support LIV, and people will disagree with me about that. And that’s OK.
All I ask is that you make your stance known publicly and then continue to do the best job you can to cover the game while staying true to yourself.
