Even LIV’s golfers look embarrassed by this charade – so how are we meant to care?

Follow sport for long enough and you realise that certain opinions are cyclical. Once every four years during the Winter Olympics we all remember that curling is brilliant. We must give it a try! Why aren’t we watching it all the time?! Eve Muirhead is a hero!

Then, exactly 1.5 years later, with curling still untried, we have the same thoughts about volleyball. This is brilliant! Why aren’t we watching it all the time?! That bald 6’9” bloke from Lithuania is a hero!

The golf version of cyclical sporting opinion syndrome occurs during every Ryder Cup. Match play is the future! Forget the impossibility of basing a television schedule around it, and narrowing a field of 150ish to a couple of dozen, this is golf in its purest form. Surely there should be more of this?

The lovable dreamers behind LIV Golf clearly had similar thoughts when drawing up their new version of the sport. As such, its season finishes with a Team Championship at the spiritual home of golf - the royal and ancient Donald Trump course next to Miami airport.

You surely do not need telling that this season’s Championship was won at the weekend by the storied Crushers GC. If unversed in Crushers lore, perhaps we can tempt you to become a fan with their logo, a surly and seemingly quite damaged golf ball playing the role of a skull over two tees, rendered as cross-bones.

Scary stuff, but not as frightening as the team’s blurb which outlines some core brand values. “This is a team that isn’t just thinking outside the box. It’s crushing the box, then building a better one.” Thank goodness for that, I was getting worried about the box. Oh, there’s more: “Because while there’s no such thing as perfection, the quest for greatness never ends.” Great work ChatGPT, take the rest of the day off.

Such greatness-questing and their utter disregard for thinking within the box led the Crushers to victory over the tournament’s other teams. Most sound like they should not be competing for Saudi millions in the foursomes, but instead for the approval of Lord Sugar on The Apprentice. Among the vanquished teams were Torque, HyFlyers and Rippers, but not to worry, they all still have a chance in the shopping list task.

So to the climatic moment in Florida, Crushers captain Bryson DeChambeau making the decisive putt to win the trophy and about £11 million for his team. You would expect wild celebrations, but instead it was polite applause from a moderate crowd, the sort which might accompany a medal ceremony for an under-9s swimming gala. DeChambeau clenched his fist and was greeted by sprayed LIV-branded Champagneseque liquid.

There was an attempt at the sort of pogoing elation familiar from most moments of sporting glory. DeChambeau managed three jumps then opted instead for some hand-slapping and “love you, brother,” to his team. He said “let’s go!” because that is what American sportspeople shout when something good happens, but it sounded less like a celebration and more like a quiet word to his partner that it was time to leave a disappointing party.

“I tried, sincerely, I just tried to watch this and feel something genuine,” said non-LIV golfer Eddie Pepperell. “Joy, inspiration, something. And I just cringed. It’s just all cringe, the whole show, the teams, the individuals.”

Perhaps in time such moments will feel more stirring. The Ryder Cup has 96 years of history, LIV golf has one and a good website, so the two cannot really be compared. Cut Paul Casey and he does not bleed the navy and white polkadots of his Crushers polo shirt.

But here is the issue with the no-stakes rich-getting-richer facsimile of competitiveness which LIV has offered up. Look again at those distinctly sheepish celebrations. Certainly DeChambeau and co would have enjoyed winning, because all athletes do. But you cannot escape the idea that, aside from the incredible money, this is all quite meaningless. You are going to struggle to convince the rest of us to care about LIV when even its players look embarrassed about it.