Monday Leaderboard: LIV Golf’s large win, Rory McIlroy’s legend grows

Welcome to the Monday Leaderboard, the place we run down the weekend’s prime tales within the fantastic world of golf. Seize an Arnold Palmer, pull up a chair, and assemble your crew …

1. LIV Golf’s best hour

For many of its existence, LIV Golf has been an especially costly punch line: Most of the world’s greatest gamers competing for hundreds of thousands whereas nearly nobody watches, both in individual or on screens.

Go away it to Australia, then, to show all the enterprise on its head. LIV Golf is outstandingly well-liked Down Beneath, a lot in order that an estimated 94,000 golf followers flocked to Adelaide to observe home-country hero Cam Smith and his Rippers GC win the group occasion. (Brendan Steele took the person honors, outlasting Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel.) The whole occasion might go toe-to-toe, energy-wise, with something that the PGA Tour can produce proper now.

Right here’s the factor with golf: People have a tendency to consider it as an American sport, largely as a result of we’re People and suppose the world revolves round us. Greater than that, although, three of the 4 majors are held in America, and most of golf’s immortals (Nicklaus, Palmer, Woods) are as American because the Fourth of July.

However golf is a global sport, exploding in recognition in Australia, the Center East and significantly Asia. LIV Golf is poised to benefit from that in a method the America-bound PGA Tour largely can’t, and that’s the pathway that LIV has for fulfillment.

Will LIV Golf set up itself as a viable long-term a part of the golf world? But to be decided. However occasions like Adelaide confirmed that there’s an urge for food on the market for golf that has nothing to do with the PGA Tour … and that should make the Tour listen.

2. The legend of Rory McIlroy grows

Occasionally, Rory McIlroy reminds us that along with being the As soon as and Future Face of the PGA Tour, he’s additionally a reasonably respectable participant, too. On the Zurich Traditional of New Orleans, he and associate Shane Lowry received in a playoff, giving McIlroy his twenty fifth profession win on Tour. (Whether or not group occasions ought to depend as particular person victories is one other dialogue completely.) McIlroy now has as many profession Tour wins as Johnny Miller and greater than Gary Participant and Raymond Floyd. Plus, as he demonstrated afterward, he can tear up a stage, too, ripping via “Don’t Cease Believin’”:

Everybody’s appearing all shocked that McIlroy has pipes like that, however come on, the man grew up in pubs. That’s a compulsory ability to develop.

3. Workforce golf will get its second

Each couple years, the Ryder Cup will get the golf world hyped out of its collective thoughts for the idea of group golf. Think about the best gamers on the earth … collectively! How nice is that? Not all that nice exterior the Ryder Cup context, normally. Golf is a person sport, and shoehorning a bunch of lone wolves right into a group format typically finally ends up as awkward because the dance flooring at a marriage when “The Cupid Shuffle” comes on.

Nonetheless, there are prospects on the market. LIV gamers typically comment on how the group format brings them again to the camaraderie of their faculty days. Sunday in Adelaide was the first-ever group golf playoff in LIV, and the all-Aussie Ripper GC beat the all-South African Stinger GC on the second playoff gap.

At its non-Ryder greatest — like Sunday on the Zurich — group golf might be fascinating and compelling. (Pity poor Martin Coach, who would’ve gotten a two-year exemption with a win, and as a substitute fell to McIlroy and Lowry within the playoff thanks to 2 sudden-death mis-hits.) There’s an entire lot of cash using on group golf — not simply in LIV however within the yet-to-debut TGL indoor golf league, too — nevertheless it’s going to wish much more buy-in from each gamers and followers to stay.

4. Hannah Inexperienced goes back-to-back in Los Angeles

With Nelly Korda off for the week, the remainder of the sphere within the LPGA’s JM Eagle LA Championship at Wilshire Nation Membership … so Hannah Inexperienced stepped up and received her second straight title on the match. Not like final yr, the place she wanted to win in a playoff, Inexperienced rolled to a snug three-stroke victory this time round. Wilshire is Inexperienced’s territory; she completed T3 in 2021, solo second in 2022, and a winner the final two years. Together with Korda, Inexperienced is the second multi-time winner on the LPGA Tour this season.

5. Tim Widing reveals the way you begin a profession

What’s it with a number of winners in golf today? Whereas Korda and Scottie Scheffler are wrecking store on the highest degree, Tim Widing is now doing the identical factor on the Korn Ferry Tour. Widing received this previous week’s Veritex Banking Championship in Arlington, Texas, his second straight win on the developmental tour. On the Veritex, he completed at an astounding 31 below par, a brand new document for the Korn Ferry Tour relative to par. Widing is on tempo to qualify for the PGA Tour on the finish of the season, but when he wins as soon as extra, he’ll instantly advance because of Korn Ferry’s “three-victory promotion” rule. Earlier than lengthy, it’s simply going to be Scheffler, Widing, Korda and Inexperienced, profitable each match on the market.

The Mulligan: Calm down, Australia

We’re all for a full of life golf scene, nevertheless it appears the Aussies are not any higher at containing themselves than the galleries on the WM Phoenix Open. At this previous weekend’s LIV occasion, anyone launched a full water bottle and nailed Lucas Herbert’s caddie proper within the head as he was changing the pin:

Ouch. LIV: Golf, however wilder.

Swing away and roll ‘em true this week, buddies, and we’ll see you again right here subsequent Monday!