Past as prologue

 The  big news out of golf right now -- it's January, so any news out of golf qualifies as big -- is that Brooks Koepka is coming back to the PGA fold, though with less folding money. Under the PGA's Returning Member Program, he'll be allowed back inside the ropes, but only after paying a hefty fine.

Koepka, who defected to the LIV golf "tour" in 2022, ponied up. And now he'll re-defect back to the PGA, having met the RMP's provisions -- that he'd been away from the PGA Tour for at least two years, and that he'd won the Players Championship or one of the four majors since he left.

So what does this mean?

I'll tell you what it means.

It means you can't spell "LIV" without "WHA."

It means the past is often prologue, and thus LIV golf is just the old World Hockey Association, which 50 years ago was the LIV golf of hockey. Like LIV, it was a breakaway league, only from the NHL instead of the PGA. Like LIV, it threw fistfuls of money at established stars to jump ship. And, like LIV, it turned out to be something less than the defectors expected.

In the WHA's case, it turned out to be an under-capitalized mess that thrived for a bit in some places, and never caught hold in others. The league made a big splash at the outset when it lured established stars such as Bobby Hull, Derek Sanderson, Gerry Cheevers and Bernie Parent, and it put "major league" hockey in places that had never before seen it:  Miami, Calgary, Dayton, O., and San Francisco, and later Indianapolis, Hartford, Conn., and Edmonton, Alberta. 

Alas, not all of those teams survived for long. Dayton and San Francisco, for instance, never made to the ice; before the inaugural season even began, Dayton became the Houston Aeros and San Francisco the Quebec Nordiques. The Calgary Broncos and Miami Screaming Eagles, on the other hand, wound up folding outright.

Eventually, after seven seasons, the league folded in 1979 with four teams -- Winnipeg, Quebec, the Edmonton Oilers and the Hartford Whalers -- being absorbed into the NHL. Of those four, only Winnipeg and Edmonton survive in their original form. The Whalers are now the Carolina Hurricanes, and the Quebec Nordiques became the Colorado Avalanche.

LIV golf hasn't gone that way yet. But the pattern does seem unnervingly familiar.

Like the WHA, it's not all it was cracked up to be; it's turned out to be a gussied-up exhibition tour, with 54-hole tournaments, no cut and guaranteed paychecks even if you play like Weekend Wilbur and snap-hook every ball you address.  Primarily an overseas tour -- Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. -- its TV presence is negligible, and its American venues do not exactly wake up any echoes.

Chatham Hills in Westfield, In., for instance. The Cardinal at St. John's in Plymouth, Mich. Bayou Oaks in New Orleans' City Park.

All very nice venues, I'm sure. But close your eyes and it's 1972 Dayton, Calgary and Winnipeg all over again.

Now, admittedly, this is a lot to extrapolate from one guy coming back to the PGA Tour. But three other LIV golfers -- Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith and Jon Rahm -- also meet the Returning Member Program requirements. So it's reasonable to think Brooks Koepka could be less an outrider than a groundbreaker.

In other words: Stay tuned.