AUGUSTA, GA. — The Masters, as the first scheduled and most familiar of golf's majors, has always represented the symbolic start of the golf season. This year, The Masters seems somehow even more important and symbolic, because LIV golfers did not compete at The Players Championship in March, making Augusta National the site of an awkward if promising reunion.

LIV golf's problem is that nobody is watching.

The PGA Tour's problem is that we are watching nobodies.

LIV, the upstart golf tour started by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), has been excluded from PGA Tour events. Golf's four majors are run by organizations other than the PGA Tour, so LIV players are allowed to enter, if they are invited or qualify.

Thirteen LIV players are in this year's Masters field, and seven have won green jackets. For the first time this season, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Scottie Scheffler will compete together.

The momentary reunion is occurring as both tours look diminished and are holding intermittent negotiations aimed at reconciliation.

LIV players are engaging in the ultimate form of "sportswashing" — acting as pitchmen for a country known for human rights abuses and producing most of the 9/11 hijackers, and for murdering journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The PGA Tour made this argument to gain the moral high ground in the rivalry, only then to backstab its most vocal defenders by agreeing to negotiate with LIV.

The PGA Tour players who remained vocally loyal to the traditional tour, like McIlroy, were left looking like their loyalty had been misguided.

Tuesday, many of the game's biggest stars held news conferences in The Masters' interview room, headlined by Rahm, the defending champion who is perhaps the player most emblematic of golf's still-cold war.

When LIV first courted him, he seized the high ground.

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