Golf's Villain Problem

There was something bothering me about Sunday’s seemingly epic final day of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and it was very hard for me to identify it. On the surface, it was pretty much an ideal finish, right? You had three of the top five players in the world — No. 2 Scottie Scheffler, No. 3 Rory McIlroy and No. 4 Patrick Cantlay — all in serious contention. You also had Jordan Spieth, who is just fun, and you had Harris English, who has been on the way back after injury, and you had 5-foot-7 Kurt Kitayama trying to win his first tour event at age 30 after being doubted for years.

I mean, that’s about as good as it gets, right?

And yet it felt kind of blah for me.

I think it comes down to this: I miss the villains in golf.

Or more to the point: I miss them not all being on one tour together.

Last year, right when the LIV Tour was beginning to kick up some dust, I was talking to someone who made a fascinating point: He said that while he didn’t follow golf at all, the LIV thing reminded him of a split between Indy and CART some 25 years ago.

I don’t know a lot about that split, but I remember that Tony George, president of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, had some fairly radical ideas about changing open-wheel racing in the U.S. The CART people didn’t like George’s ideas, he didn’t like them not liking his ideas, they booted him out, he created his own Indy Racing League, the Indianapolis 500 became half a race, the star drivers and owners split into two leagues, and the whole thing more or less destroyed open-wheel racing. I guess they reunited a decade or so later, but by that point few knew or cared, and even today, it seems, that few know or care.

Anyway, my friend thought that was the path that LIV was taking golf.

I don’t know if it’s quite that stark — just about all the best golfers in the world today are still playing on the PGA Tour, while LIV, frankly, is made up mostly of has-beens — but it seemed to me there was something palpable missing from Sunday’s final round.

There was nobody for me to root against.

On so many Sundays, I could root against Patrick Reed. I could root against Bryson DeChambeau. I could, if I wanted, root against Brooks Koepka or Dustin Johnson or Sergio Garcia or Ian Poulter or Bubba Watson. I didn’t necessarily root against all those guys, but they were there weekly as delightfully wicked foils if a favorite of mine like Spieth or McIlroy happened to be in contention.

I didn’t actively dislike Lee Westwood or Henrik Stenson or Charl Schwartzel or Louis Oosthuizen or Martin Kaymer or Paul Casey or Kevin Na or Graeme McDowell or Cam Smith, but I never rooted for any of them. They were familiar, and they were contenders, and I didn’t particularly want to see any of them win, and they gave the weekends shape and rhythm.

And, of course, there was the whole Phil Mickelson soap opera.

Those guys provided golf tournaments with color and spark and feeling. Golf is not a sport that naturally offers any of that. It is an objectively bland spectator sport that sells Mercedes E-Classes, Rolexes and the latest driver from TaylorMade. It’s a sport that weekly invites the head of international sales and relations from Fortune 500 companies into the booth to waste five minutes of your time telling you how proud MasterCard/Wells Fargo/AT&T/Travelers/3M and Wyndham are to continue their longstanding association with the tournaments that bear their names.

He might not be racking up wins, but Mickelson is always a fun guy to root against. (Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

The thing that keeps many of us coming back is that we like to watch the competitive drama, we like to see players try to stand up against immense pressure and make a great shot or sink a tough putt. We like to have a weekly rooting interest. We want to invest a few emotions.

I felt few emotions watching on Sunday, even though my two favorite current golfers were in contention. I don’t know, the field just felt thin, combed over, one or two dozen familiar names were not to be found, pretty much all of the players I have enjoyed rooting against were missing. It was all pretty unsatisfying.*

*This didn’t change when they showed that the winner would get $3.6 million; a million-plus more than the winner got last year. I don’t know how you feel about this, but the amount of money the winner of a golf tournament gets means absolutely nothing to me. If they were playing for $5 or $10 bajillion it would mean exactly the same thing to me.

When I mentioned my golf ennui to a golf-loving friend, he pointed out (somewhat aggressively) that the only two great players missing from the PGA Tour now are Dustin Johnson and Cam Smith, and that it should feel exactly the same. He might be right. But, for me, it just doesn’t. I suppose if I stick with it, I’ll get to know more of the players on the PGA Tour, and maybe some of that emotion comes back. Maybe.

Then again, maybe not. I haven’t watched the Indianapolis 500 in many years.