Major championships arrive at the rescue of golf fans who fear shorter forms are chiselling away the sport’s traditions.
During the insurrection of indoor simulator leagues, 54-hole shotgun starts and events with no cuts, golf’s big four occasions have stood like statues that everyone still wants to look at.
Dame Laura Davies built one of the best careers ever in the women’s sphere, playing the longest form of the game and taking home four major trophies among her 86 professional wins, plus 12 consecutive appearances in the Solheim Cup for Team Europe.
The Englishwoman has no ill will to new formats on the block but the Hall of Famer believes, like at every major, there is only one route to take when determining the best player at a golf tournament.
“It’s a diverse sport now, you’ve got lots of different forms of it but for me, if you want to talk about championship golf, 72 holes around the best courses is the only way to go, men’s and women’s game, so I don’t dislike any of the other things that are happening,” Davies told NCG.
“I’ve got a friend that caddies on the LIV tour and every time his player is up there in contention I’ll always tune in and watch it because you can’t not – the leaderboard is mental. I like watching him do well and earn some money but other than that, for me it’s 72 holes or it’s not proper.”
The LIV Golf League shook golf’s established protocol to the core arriving in 2022. With the unstoppable financial backing of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, a new circuit was born that features just three rounds and every player starting at different points of the golf course at the same time.
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Laura Davies: ‘A 54-hole shotgun, I can’t get on board’
$25 million purses were made the norm and while lucrative payouts explained 99% of the players’ choices to leave the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour to join LIV, we can accept the perks of this new format too.
You can’t rue a bad draw or bad weather because everyone plays at the same time. Proceedings are over in five hours with no day-long tee sheet and there aren’t alarm clocks kickstarting a sunrise dash to the first tee.
Davies, who won an event every year but one between 1985 and 2010, admits she won’t blame the biggest names for accepting large sign-up offers from LIV Golf. The likes of Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson were all rumoured to have received north of $100 million each.
But with the nature of a shotgun start, Davies pointed to the ‘ridiculous’ idea that someone could win a tournament on the 6th hole, for example. As well as this feature, LIV Golf also has 13 teams that compete in a team discipline each week, running alongside the individual leaderboard.
While the seven-time LET Order of Merit winner gives LIV a chance to grow in the same way shorter forms of cricket have blossomed in recent years, her traditionalist stance will always be the same.
“Don’t get me wrong, back in the day if I’d have been offered something like that, I’d have seriously considered because why wouldn’t you,” Davies said. “You work hard to get into a position to be asked to do something like that and so I don’t criticise any players that play there.
“But it’s not really top championship golf for me which is the only letdown. Maybe they can change the format and make it better, but a 54-hole shotgun, I can’t get on board.
“It’s a flawed format, they’ve put the money up so they can do what they want the players love it, they all get on the course at the same time, they feel like the weather conditions never favour one or another. They’re done really quickly because there are not that many players on the course at any given time, so players, caddies and officials love it and why wouldn’t you?
“It’s something different. Everyone hated T20 cricket and look at that, but I personally would never get on board with that format.”
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