The Masters feel the shockwaves of LIV Golf

Prior to last year’s Masters, an Englishman by the name of Paul Casey was ranked 25th in the golf world and there was no reason to believe that would change drastically in the near future.

Casey was thriving on the PGA Tour. There was no indication that a new Saudi-backed golf league called LIV Golf would change the professional landscape of the sport or Casey’s career. LIV had been declared “dead in the water” by none other than Rory McIlroy, one of the game’s hottest stars.

But the rookie circuit is not dead. Casey joins him. And now it’s a test of how LIV Golf’s tremors feel at this year’s Masters. Casey is absent in Augusta this year as he dropped precipitously in the sport’s official ranking system after joining a tour whose tournaments are not counted.

Casey is an example of the central tensions in the fight for the future of golf and how they are already affecting the game’s biggest event. LIV accused the golf establishment of unlawful collusion to crush him by marginalizing him, centering its case on the PGA Tour’s refusal to allow LIV players to participate in its events. The Tour responded that its bylaws are fair and that the players who left violated them, while accusing LIV of interfering in the affairs of the Tour.

This year’s Masters is the first since LIV Golf launched last summer. With litigation between LIV and the PGA Tour in federal court in the Northern District of California and a Justice Department antitrust investigation into the golf industry’s response to LIV, there is an intense focus on actions powerful game organs.

The Augusta National Golf Club, the famous secret host of the Masters, produced documents for the Justice Department investigation, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. The Department of Justice’s attention has also extended to the PGA Tour, the United States Golf Association and the PGA of America, which is separate from the PGA Tour and hosts the PGA Championship.

Augusta National has also followed in the footsteps of other major tournament hosts by not banning LIV players, at least this year.

But like golfers who have stuck with the PGA Tour, no LIV member has yet qualified to play in major championships like the Masters. The problem for LIV players hoping to eat Augusta’s Chilli Cheese Sandwiches is that LIV events currently don’t count towards your ranking, which is the primary way to access events like this.

Despite questions about whether Augusta National would ban LIV players, club chairman Fred Ridley said in December, when invitations were first sent out, that he would still invite anyone eligible, any changes club criteria to be announced this month.

“Unfortunately, recent actions have divided professional men’s golf by diminishing the virtues of the game and the important legacy of those who built it,” Ridley said in a statement at the time. “While we are disappointed with these developments, our aim is to honor the tradition of bringing together a pre-eminent course of golfers next April.”

Those who were lucky enough to one day open their mailbox and find a green envelope extending an invitation to play in the Masters were qualified using one of 19 criteria. The most common of these is being in the top 50 of the Official World Golf Rankings, either at the end of the previous calendar year or the week before the tournament.

The titanic clash of golf, in which established institutions face a league financed by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, attracted the entire ecosystem of the sport. In addition to battling for public approval in the courts and halls of Congress, there’s a surprising skirmish specifically involving the arcane body that accredits tours for ranking points.