Max Homa did not hold back when discussing the worrying fall in TV viewership on the PGA Tour in recent months, after Rory McIlroy pointed the finger at the fallout with LIV Golf.
The ongoing decline continued at last week's Masters, after the opening major championship of the year saw a whopping 20 percent fall in TV viewing of Sunday's final round on the previous year. And the drop off at Augusta is no anomaly, with the same pattern occurring at some of the PGA Tour's biggest events.
At February's Waste Management Phoenix Open there was a 35 percent drop off for the event at TPC Scottsdale, with the Arnold Palmer Invitational falling by 15 percent, and last month's Players Championship dropping by 10 percent.
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On the back of a career-best performance at Augusta National, Homa addressed the apparent lack of interest among fans, hitting out at the ongoing financial battle at the top of the sport as the main reason. "I've actually been pretty amazed this year with the fatigue I have from all of this garbage going on," he said at the RBC Heritage.
"The Masters was incredible. Bay Hill was awesome. The Players was awesome. All these events I've been to have been great. Today was incredible how many people were out there for a Wednesday, yet on the internet and what I'm seeing with those numbers and all that, it does seem like yeah, I would imagine fans have fatigue.
"They probably should have fatigue. I don't know why they'd want to care about how much money we're making and how much more money we want to make. It's quite nauseating." The American went on: "I think we hit this year-and-a-half- or two-year rut as both golfers and golf leagues that was just about making the players happy.
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"Unfortunately and quite obviously the fans were not benefitted by that. I'm very hopeful that at some point here soon, we've been shown that we are nothing without those watching us, and they can stop watching us whenever they'd like. Hopefully more innovation will go into making their viewing process a lot more engaging and fun because that's why we get to do this."
One man who found himself at the centre of the PGA Tour-LIV dispute was McIlroy, and despite taking a step back from the off-course politics, the Northern Irishman too discussed the fall in recent TV ratings, highlighting the 'fighting' between the two rival tours.
"If you look at the TV ratings of the PGA Tour this year, they're down 20 per cent across the board," McIlroy said earlier this month. " That's a fifth. That's big. I would say the numbers on LIV aren't great either in terms of the people tuning in. I just think with the fighting and everything that's gone on over the past couple of years, people are just getting fatigued
"It's turning people off men's professional golf, and that's not a good thing for anyone. It's going to be really interesting to see how the four major championships do, or even the three, because put Augusta aside, I think that sort of lives in its own world."