With a fifth main win within the type of his third PGA Championship triumph, $3.1million in prize cash and adoring followers, 5 days in the past Brooks Koepka was flying excessive. How far and the way rapidly he should now really feel he has fallen.
For all of the furore and controversy, the tit for tat and digs between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, simply as at The Masters, the supposed bitterness between the 2 warring sides didn’t spill out from the media mouthpieces and the courthouse onto the course on the PGA Championship.
Koepka was welcomed again with open arms. A champion embraced by the a whole lot of hundreds of followers at Oak Hill because the respectful spectators, regardless of the stray name of ‘sellout,’ showered him with the reward he rightfully deserved on the 18th inexperienced.
However after per week of parading the Wanamaker trophy round south Florida, it was again to actuality for Koepka.
The 2023 PGA Championship winner was not battling it out towards the likes of World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm once more. As a substitute, he was at Trump Nationwide Golf Membership in Washington, DC, again along with his rebellious cohort of brother Chase, Jason Kokrak and Matt Wolff on the LIV Golf collection.
Brooks Koepka gained his fifth main along with his third PGA Championship victory simply final week
5 days later, it was again to actuality for the American as he returned to the LIV Golf circuit
But there gave the impression to be extra pleasure about Donald Trump from the followers on the LIV occasion
And whereas the followers had been simply as enthusiastic to see him play, that they had considerably shrunk – a far cry from the hundreds gathered final week.
The vast majority of the spectators did naturally gravitate to Koepka on the driving vary to get a glimpse of the 2023 US PGA winner warming up.
Equally, Koepka’s group that includes himself, Open champion Cam Smith and Dustin Johnson had attracted the biggest crowd round their tee field on the primary for the controversial breakaway’s shotgun begin.
However once more this might hardly represent a crowd in comparison with final week’s hordes. Barely two rows deep and solely simply stretching previous the tee field, round simply 100 folks watched Koepka begin his marketing campaign to hold his major-winning type into one other week.
Most claimed that they had all the time meant to come back to LIV this weekend for the usual causes; they occurred to reside shut, or it was an excuse to see professionals up shut and private. They actually didn’t need to battle any crowds so as to combat their strategy to the entrance of the ropes this week.
In reality, many spectators mentioned they weren’t even there for Koepka. Some listed Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, or higher but, Donald Trump, because the names luring them to the outskirts of the nation’s capital.
The LIV Golf spectacle seemingly had attracted its normal numbers, for the same old causes. And what a spectacle or, maybe extra appropriately, a fanfare it was.
The 33-year-old greeted a bunch of youngsters sporting Smash GC – his group – t-shirts
LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman had greeted Kopeka with a No. 5 balloon earlier than the match
Trump unsurprisingly labored his approach into the focal point, waving to his loyal topics from his golf cart, with extra chasing after the previous President and his motorcade of round 15 golf carts as he exited the vary than these following Koepka on his strategy to the primary tee.
And whereas Koepka, Smith and Johnson stood ready on the tee field, the string of patrons oohed and ahhed on the Frog-X Parachute Crew descending with the Star-Spangled Banner and LIV Golf flag in tandem.
All of the whereas the music pounded throughout the course, a steady thud of heavy beats and even an upbeat remix of Oasis’s Don’t Look Again In Anger – a message Greg Norman must pay attention to.
However maybe LIV felt the necessity to blare the tunes because the cheers actually weren’t producing an environment. Ian Poulter’s effort to rile the gang up when he took to the observe floor was met with one lackluster jeer and the announcer on the tee additionally failed in his try and ‘get some noise within the capital.’
It didn’t maintain a lightweight to the raucous crowds of New York state who had celebrated Koepka simply 5 days in the past and even high-fived and fist-pumped membership professional Michael Block, who paradoxically was the one making an look on the PGA Tour this week fairly than the key winner.
Whereas Block was on the tv screens once more, Koepka was not. The week after getting a freshly topped main winner – a five-time main winner no much less – on its books, the breakaway couldn’t even present him off on nationwide tv.
Former President Donald Trump discovered himself on the focal point as soon as once more
The forty fifth president of the USA was adopted by a motorcade of round 15 golf carts
The morning of Spherical One in DC, LIV introduced that it was reverting to its YouTube protection. The Saudi-backed breakaway tried to promote it as a bid to convey much more protection to its followers however it smacked of a regression with the PGA Tour’s rival returning to the place it started in 2022.
LIV’s multi-year revenue-sharing take care of the CW Community, which it struck again in January, remains to be in place, that means viewers within the US, Canada, Mexico and South Korea might want to pay $3 per day to see the match on YouTube to guard the circuit’s present broadcast offers.
However the CW’s protection, which has seen scores drop however 24 % week-over-week, was restricted to its app for Friday’s spherical, whereas Saturday and Sunday can be lucky sufficient to make it on to each the community’s linear and digital platforms.
What Norman and his band of merry males undoubtedly had hoped to be a watershed second for the LIV revolution, turned out to be nothing however one other flop, with even a 2023 main champion not a large enough magnet.
