Over the past year, LIV Golf has injected a virtually unprecedented amount of drama into a sport that’s historically been known as a “gentleman’s game” largely absent of the bitter feuds and heated rivalries you can expect to find in most athletic realms.
That’s all changed courtesy of the upstart league that set out to take on the PGA Tour by poaching some of its most notable names over the course of 2022. However, LIV didn’t only limit itself to players when it came to acquiring talent from some more preestablished institutions.
Last summer, golfer-turned-broadcaster David Feherty announced he’d be leaving NBC in favor of LIV after inking a deal to work as an analyst during its events.
It’s safe to say that move didn’t do a ton to boost Feherty’s profile when you consider the organization wasn’t able to find a television broadcast partner until earlier this year, and he’s certainly not getting the attention he was at his former network based on the fairly abysmal ratings LIV Golf posted during its debut on The CW over the weekend.
Based on those numbers, there’s a very, very, very good chance most people reading this did not tune in to catch the action.
Thankfully, golf writer Geoff Shackelford was kind enough to devote valuable hours of his life to watching the broadcast, which included a patently bizarre moment where Feherty made a truly outrageous claim while talking about LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman.
The Shark was undoubtedly one of the bigger names in golf in his prime, but Feherty really pushed the limits of hyperbole when he asserted Norman was “probably the most recognizable athlete on the planet” in the 1980s and ’90s.
I can only assume David Feherty was too busy playing golf during that period to be aware of the existence of Michael Jordan.
[Awful Announcing]