Over the past few months, the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league has caused quite a disruption in the world of professional golf, luring many of golf’s top stars to the new tour with massive guaranteed payouts. But despite the star power, on Hall of Fame golfer isn’t exactly impressed with LIV Golf’s product.
This week, World Golf Hall of Famer Fred Couples was invited to be a guest speaker at a PGA Tour Champions breakfast ahead of the Hoag Classic in Newport Beach. During his speech, he had a few brutally honest things to say about the Saudi-backed tour.
“If you’re giving Phil Mickelson $200 million at age 52 to shoot 74 and 75, God bless you,” Couples joked, according to The Orange County Register.
During his speech, Couples said he tried to watch LIV’s most recent event at Playa del Carmen, Mexico – the first of 14 LIV Golf events that will be broadcast on The CW this year, as part of a new deal announced in January. Unfortunately for LIV, he found the broadcast nearly unwatchable.
“It was on the CW a couple weeks ago, or whatever that channel everybody is laughing about,” Couples said, poking fun at the conversation surrounding LIV Golf’s deal with the network. “I turned it on three times. It was so bad, I couldn’t even watch anyone that I liked. They don’t show ’em. … Who won the last one? I don’t even know.”
It’s a harsh assessment, but it’s clear that Couples wasn’t the only one who was less than interested in the broadcast. The ratings from the first LIV Golf event of the year were quite disappointing, pulling just a 0.2 overnight and failing to average more than 300,00o viewers on either day.
It’s been a rough start, by all accounts. But it sounds like everyone involved is still optimistic.
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