Sergio Garcia blames the rift between the LIV and PGA Tours on media coverage

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Sergio Garcia believes the conflict between the PGA Tour and the LIV Tour is a media creation.

“The professional game, maybe it’s a little more separated, mostly because of the media, not so much because of the players,” Garcia said Tuesday at the Masters.

This, of course, is absurd.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has poured billions of dollars into LIV Golf, poaching huge PGA Tour stars such as Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, and Jon Rahm. Before he joined LIV in 2022, Mickelson called the Saudis “scary.” LIV hired former PGA Tour star Greg Norman, an outcast for years, to be its CEO, and Norman consistently has fanned the flames of division. Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy publicly rebuffed offers to join LIV that would have made them hundreds of millions of dollars. The PGA Tour banned LIV golfers, who sued for reinstatement (and lost), one of several lawsuits and countersuits between the entities. The European tour fined and suspended LIV defectors, also was challenged in court, and also won. All suits were dismissed in June, when the two sides decided to work on a partnership.

» READ MORE: LIV Golf, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy and the merger: Issues eclipse the Masters

As these events unfolded, high-profile players like Rahm and McIlroy consistently criticized LIV’s format and their peers’ decisions to abandon the tours that made them rich.

These all are facts. The following Garcia statement is not:

“You guys love to kind of dig and just kind of try to make it sound like we get in the locker room and we’re fighting each other and stuff like that.”

Garcia probably isn’t the best arbiter of bad intentions. Despite his lengthy and successful career, which includes 11 PGA Tour wins and capturing the 2017 Masters, Garcia:

When world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is on the course he’s usually is as cool as a corpse, but for a few minutes in 2018, with his future on the line, Scheffler was as jittery as any Sunday hacker on the first tee of the club championship.

On the final hole of qualifying school to earn his Korn Ferry Tour card for 2019, Scheffler pulled off an easy approach shot to an easy pin placement over the green and had to get up-and-down to assure his status, avoiding a return to the mini-tour grind.

“I have this really hard chip off a down slope, down towards the green. The green’s on a down slope, it’s a fast chip, and I’m standing over it,” Scheffler said. “That was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been.”

Scheffler chipped it close, made the putt, shined on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2019, and, three years later, won the 2022 Masters.

Some golfers can ignore everything, but Jordan Spieth is hyperaware of his surroundings. Augusta National is unique in that it does not allow anyone, whether patrons or press, to carry a cell phone with them on most of the property. Instead of having thousands of smart phones pointed and poised to capture every shot, fans pay attention.

Spieth loves that.

“It’s amazing,” the 2015 Masters champion said. “What’s really cool about it is, you just feel that everyone’s very, very present. They’re not focused on if they got the right shot that they’re sending, and maybe they don’t even know where your ball went, right? … It’s very nice because you feel like everyone’s there with you all the time.”

Jason Day, 36, upon learning he will be paired with his idol and friend Tiger Woods, 48, on Thursday and Friday: “As long as I beat that old man, I’m happy.” … Min Woo Lee fractured the ring finger of his right hand last Saturday by dropping a dumbbell on it at the gym. He didn’t swing a club for six days, resumed full preparation Friday, and practiced with it bandaged on Tuesday.