CBS Opens Canadian Open With Strong Rebuke Of PGA Tour's Defectors

I’ve seen some wild stuff in this PGA Tour v. LIV situation but in a lot of ways, the likely fissures in the sport have only just begun based on CBS’s opening to Saturday’s RBC Canadian Open.

Nick Piatstowski at Golf.com summarized it here.

After showing some golf and maybe selling the leaderboard of 5 world top 18’s a wee bit hard—it is a doozy of a final group Sunday with Finau, McIlroy and Thomas—Jim Nantz explained how the LIV event in London had just concluded.

"Charl Schwartzel with his first win of any kind in six years, ranked 126th in the world, he was the victor of this 54-hole event of the tour that’s Saudi backed,” Nantz said.

Any kind and Saudi backed. That’s a declaration of war in the Hello Friendsphere!

Oh but it got better.

Faldo, speaking after clips of PGA Tour players talking:

“We’ve got two totally different golf tournaments. One, we play for tournaments and national championships over here. And the LIV Tour is what, 54 holes and no cut, shotgun start, you know, sounds crazy. 

“And the other thing that is very noticeable is the players that have left. Obviously they’re in mid-40s, they’ve been out here on Tour, they’ve been battling away and they probably know they can’t win out here against these youngsters. So they’re taking the easy option to go over and try and win a boatload of cash.”

Then Nantz turned up the heat after admitting that CBS’s relationship with the PGA Tour is something they’re proud of.

“But I think about — what I keep hearing from people, too, is a sense of disappointment, even a little betrayal. They’ve always been told the story, and I know it was true, that at some point in their careers the dream was to play on the PGA Tour, build a legacy, build your future financially. 

“And the Tour’s been good to them. It’s a Tour that’s come into these communities for decades and made these communities better than how they were when they first got there. I’m talking not millions; I’m talking billions of dollars into these communities.”

He hit the billions word hard, as you can see in the video I tweeted of Nantz’s remarks:

Credit CBS for addressing the topic at the top of the show along with disclosure of the obvious Tour partnership and conflict. And for doing it in a way that came off as genuinely believing in what the traveling circus format has done for communities on the calendar. These are points not emphasized enough in this entire debacle.

But all parties will have some soul searching to do after their partners failed to take the disruptive threats seriously until it was too late. The Global Home has never publicly suggested LIV’s money source is one their members should not be associating with (unless you count vague references in leaked memos).

So that’s why Nantz noting the Saudi source Saturday was significant.

Either way, we’ve just watched a series of events emblematic of intense coddling that is now coming home to roost when players are not always held to account publicly for their actions, are held up as the greatest to ever play the game, have excuses regularly made for them when making a poor decision, and often believe—in key cases—they are the game.