AUGUSTA, Ga. — At the news conference following the ceremonial tee shots to start the Masters tournament Thursday morning, Jack Nicklaus was asked to gauge three-time green jacket-winner Phil Mickelson’s form entering the week at age 54.

“I don’t know what level Phil is competing at,’’ Nicklaus said. “I guess he’s still playing. He’s playing the LIV tour, is he? I don’t know if he’s playing or not. You never see him anymore.”

That’s the fact, Jack. Because there is mounting evidence that the sound and fury of LIV Golf is increasingly signifying nothing.

This is not to say LIV Golf, the breakaway men’s professional tour created to challenge the hegemony of the PGA Tour and sportswash Saudi Arabia’s reputation (the Saudi’s Public Investment Fund is LIV’s primary benefactor) is irrelevant. Twelve LIV players are in the 95-man field here this week, including six former Masters champions. Two LIV players, Bryson DeChambeau, who won his second U.S. Open this past June, and Tyrrell Hatton, were well in the thick of things after the first round. Both shot 3-under 69s to tie for fifth behind a stellar first-round 65 by Justin Rose. They could win.

But aside from DeChambeau, there was very little chatter about the LIV legion entering the 89th Masters. Not as much as a year ago, when 2023 Masters winner Jon Rahm had just defected to LIV. Nor as much as after the spate of stars like DeChambeau, Mickelson, 2020 Masters champion Dustin Johnson and five-time major winner Brooks Koepka took the Saudi blood money and ran for LIV’s land of three-round shotgun starts and short pants.

LIV has since nixed the short pants, but it has failed to coerce the PGA Tour to make a deal.

You never see Mickelson anymore except in the majors, or the other LIV stars, either. I won’t say no one cares, but apparently few do. This past week, LIV’s tournament in Miami, televised by Fox as part of its new deal, DeChambeau, Mickelson and 2017 Masters winner Sergio Garcia in contention, drew abysmal ratings.

Actually, they aspired to abysmal. Sunday’s final round drew 484,000 viewers.

Are you kidding me? It’s one thing if your tournament is in Singapore on the CW. It’s another thing to be on the East Coast on a major network. There were probably 484,000 people watching the Amen Corner channel Thursday on Masters.com.

Meanwhile, the final round of the PGA Tour’s Valero Texas Open, a tournament lacking star power because so many players were resting/prepping for the Masters, had 1.75 million viewers.

I’m not saying the PGA Tour is perfect or can do no wrong. I do not like these elevated events with smaller fields created to keep stars like Rose and Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler from going to LIV, too. But the PGA Tour is where the history is, the real competition is. It remains the Premier League of men’s golf.

It looked for years like LIV had the PGA Tour by the throat. No longer. LIV’s team concept and three-round events have not caught hold. Walking around Augusta National on Thursday, I saw tons of fans wearing Masters gear (of course) and stuff representing other golf courses and tournaments.

I didn’t see anyone wearing gear for LIV golf teams like Cleeks or Mickelson’s HyFlyers, except for the LIVers themselves. They looked like a bunch of guys who still wear the clothes of their college fraternities no one wanted to join.

This is not to say LIV is about to fold, though even the mega rich like the Saudi royals probably get tired of wasting money. Negotiations between the two sides look stalled, perhaps because the PGA Tour has gained the upper hand with private, non-Saudi investment. Last week, reportedly PIF went to the PGA Tour with an offer of $1.5 billion in return for a guarantee LIV would live on and PIF major domo Yasir Al-Rumayyan would get a seat on the PGA Tour’s policy board.

The PGA Tour apparently took the offer, set it on fire and wrote “Get lost” with the ashes.

The Masters invited the new LIV CEO Scott O’Neil to attend this year’s tournament, but pointedly Masters chairman Fred Ridley said Wednesday he had no formal plans to meet with O’Neil, adding “I know we’ll have some discussions.” That could mean a lot of things, but it doesn’t mean an endorsement of the LIV way. Augusta National has tried to stay above the PGA Tour/LIV fray, but Ridley is making increasingly urgent calls for unification.

At this point, live and let LIV, PGA Tour. Stars like Mickelson and DeChambeau and Rahm and Johnson and Garcia and U-High golfer and 2018 Masters champ Patrick Reed were already successful and insanely rich. They broke golf in half for the proverbial 30 pieces of silver, and all of us who love golf have been paying for it ever since.

They’ve hurt golf.

Now they’re just hurting themselves.

Of course, all the Saudi’s billions will buy a lot of bandages.

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