PGA Tour, LIV stars ready for ‘bigger and badder’ showdown in Las Vegas
Four of the best golfers in the world will be in Las Vegas on Tuesday playing in a made-for-TV event. Whether it satisfies fans’ desires to see players from rival tours on the same course again is up for debate, but the golfers believe it’s a step in the right direction.
The PGA Tour’s Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy will take on LIV Golf’s Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka at Shadow Creek in an 18-hole event that will combine fourballs, foursomes and singles play over the course of the afternoon.
All four players are promoting the Crypto.com Showdown as an important competition where the goal is nothing short of winning. Each player, however, is reportedly taking home seven figures in cryptocurrency for showing up.
“The showdown is a great showcase for bringing the two tours a bit together,” DeChambeau said. He labeled the competition as something “bigger and badder. So we can have, at least one more time, we can see the best players on both sides competing.”
Because of the divided golf world, players on the two circuits only see each other in the four major championships each season. LIV Golf players have been banned from PGA Tour events since the breakaway circuit formed three years ago. That leaves golf fans mostly unable to see DeChambeau, Koepka, Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson and a handful of other stars beyond those four weeks.
“From a purely, you know, people watching on TV and wanting to see the best players in the world together, it’s not where we want to be,” an agitated McIlroy told the Review-Journal when asked if an event like the Crypto.com Showdown does more harm than good. “We’re trying to bring these players together, and the more opportunities we can get to do that, the better.
“Does it remind people that we’re not playing together all the time? Yes,” McIlroy continued. “But at least we’re making an effort to try to bring the best together more often. And you know, if we can start by doing things like this, I think that’s only a good thing.”
Koepka said he hopes the event will grow in the future.
“I would love for this to transcend into something cooler down the road,” he said, imagining a Ryder Cup-style event with full teams from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf going head-to-head.
DeChambeau is all for the idea.
“It’s time for the tours to have a battle of the best,” he said.
Players have clearly grown impatient waiting for a merger or some arrangement that allows the players to compete against each other more often. An agreement was reached between the tours 18 months ago to come together, but negotiations to iron out the details have gone slowly at times and nowhere at others.
Koepka said players have heard rumors of unity for such a long time that he ignores the chatter.
McIlroy said the lack of progress was one of the reasons for doing the event in Las Vegas.
“I don’t know if it was to spur this, but I think with everything that has went on, it was really about us saying we’re going to take this into our own hands a little bit, and we’re going to do something basically outside of either tour to … show the fans at least we’re trying to provide entertainment,” McIlroy said.
Scheffler said from his perspective, he just wants to play against the best.
“All this talk about LIV and PGA Tour and money,” Scheffler said. “I think most of us just want to get back to the competition.”
Crypto.com Showdown officials did not offer any tickets to the public, although they claim to have given away 1,200 to 1,500 tickets to golf fans in Las Vegas. How that process took place was not revealed.
Greg Robertson covers golf for the Review-Journal. Reach him at grobertson@reviewjournal.com.