Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Tuesday Trifles

Just a few notes from our little golf bubble, and then I'll let you attack your day.

Divest This - As teased yesterday, Shack has expressed his disappointment with many individuals in the golf ecosystem, this time in an open letter to Brian Roberts:

Mr. Brian Roberts
One Comcast Center 1701 JFK Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19103 USA

Dear Mr. Roberts,

From a golf fan to another—albeit one with way fewer club memberships—I write out of concern for the sport we both love.

Would you please consider selling Golf Channel? Please hear me out.

Your passion for golf is admirable. We’ve chatted and I know your golfing soul is in the right place and you take Masters committee assignments very seriously. But like any great CEO, you are even more devoted to the delivery of shareholder value. This latter trait, while part of the job, is destroying an important entity in the sport. An entity you helped grow since 2003 as full owner and one that your company is now making a hot mess of even as the sport enjoys a renaissance.

While we all acknowledge and thank your company for building the channel and preparing for the day blue chip advertisers flee, the channel is blatantly returning to its pre-Comcast roots as a scrappy newcomer. I can point to ads for Mike Stone albums and Sqairz as evidence.

As I understand it, Squairz shoes can add 2.2 mph of club speed and 8.8 yards of carry, so those are really like PSAs that they run in order to give back.

Geoff pokes his fun at many of the obvious fails in the Roberts portfolio, including this one still fresh in our minds:

Coming off an Olympics presentation deemed “televisual vomit” by one critic after abandoning the immersive storytelling that NBC pioneered, Comcast has forced the same weird scheduling mindset and budget-forward approach to golf. The vision seems to go like this: show a lot of shots and commercials, spread the coverage out all over the place depending on what more important partner has something to air, hope people wager at PointsBet, and maybe some day 50 million people will pay you $20 a month for Peacock.

Or maybe you’re winding the channel down and handing it off to the PGA Tour? Which, technically, would be a less cruel act compared to this fall’s planned shuttering of NBC Sports Network.

Be careful what you wish for, Geoff.  A PGA Tour Network could make Comcast a walk in the park...

Geoff's major underlying point is that, while the rest of the world embraces streaming, golf's audience isn't there yet and likely won't be for some time, skewing just slightly older than the X-Games audience.  Though it's a bit of a muddle, because even there he accuses them of not being all-in on streaming:

So last week the U.S. Amateur came to your home state. And they were playing at storied Oakmont featuring the next stars of golf. Youth! Athletes! The coveted demo!

What did your company do?

During the week when most match play action was underway, you put an hour on Peacock and two hours on Golf Channel. We all get that you have obligations to the PGA Tour made long before taking back the USGA deal. And we get this is the big week of the $10 million Comcast Business Solutions chase wrapping up. So exciting that ZERO of the top ten showed up. Even more reason to use the U.S. Amateur to put lots of coverage on Peacock where the next generation will (supposedly) watch sports.

So even with expenses for the week already covered and low rights fees, viewers got the bare minimum. Since Comcast lost $914 million last year on Peacock and will surpass that in 2021, what’s another $50k in wages for some bonus Peacock coverage of the U.S. Amateur? A lot, apparently. But people noticed and they’re fed up.

It was pretty dreadful for sure, though Geoff seems to be avoiding the uncomfortable reality that the golf audience, despite golf's pandemic-inspired sugar high, is microscopic.  For the last two weeks, which featured both USGA flagship amateur events, plus the Women's Scottish (co-sanctioned with the LPGA), more golf than can actually be crammed into the Golf Channel programming guide.  Yet, the audiences are measured in the thousands, and probably the low thousands when these events are competing on the dial.  You'd almost have to acknowledge that the USGA has a point when they brought in Fox...  Almost.

As much as we hate the channel-hopping, the one thing they fortunately never do to us is to move the conclusion of an event to another channel.  What?

Sunday’s finale rolled around and the morning session was not shown. Then the Golf Channel handoff to NBC was delayed by auto-racing. Eventually the move to the planned network window happened. The golf was compelling and at the 34th hole, we were abruptly told it’s a big night on NBC with America’s Got Talent, so we must move the golf again. This time to NBCSN. I repeat: the 34th hole of the U.S. Amateur final and a dandy of a match.

A golf version of Heidi.

Wouldn't you have thought such a thing would be precluded by the terms of the contract?  Glad I wasn't watching...

This Twitterer hit on something that I had noticed on Wednesday:

I had turned on GC midday Wednesday for that very reason.  The weather delays pushed the conclusion of the stroke play portion until noonish, and I figured Golf Now would cut away to Oakmont for any playoff.  But no, they were in Wyndham hype mode and you would have though that, like any other Wednesday, there wasn't anything more interesting to show.

Geoff also helpfully compiles the list of buyers for Mr. Roberts, and he sees a competitive auction.  I suspect he's overstating the case, though there's no shortage of examples of overpaying for media properties.  It's just that, as invaluable as GC is in our little world, they don't have much of a ratings story to tell.  Golf ratings are minuscule across the board, and GC has that portion of the schedule, Thursday/Friday and early weekend before the leaders tee off, that are the weakest of the weak.

But these thoughts seem unlikely to be tested, as there's no hint that Comcast is looking for the exit. But we can dream, can't we?

Exit Stage Left - Mark Russell has been manning a roofless golf cart for some forty years, and is now headed off for a well-deserved retirement.  But on his way out he gives Eamon Lynch an exit interview that's well worth your time, though you'd think he's have something even crazier in answer to this question:

Q: What’s the craziest ruling you’ve been involved in?

MR: It’s hard to classify crazy. At the 2011 Players, we got word that K.J. Choi’s caddie is getting something out of his golf bag and throwing it up to see which way the wind blows. You can’t have an outside device. By the 16th hole, it was panic city. I got to go into scoring (before a playoff with David Toms) and ask him what he did. If he has used something illegally to test the wind, it’s going to be a disqualification.

It turned out his caddie, Andy Prodger, was using a handkerchief. That was OK. I said, “Let’s go play off, sign your scorecard. Let’s get this done.” That was stressful because if we had to disqualify K.J., can you imagine the reaction in the media center? It would’ve rocked the golf world.

You'd think he'd have something far crazier...

 But this is the part one hopes folks are listening to:

Q: Do you think there will be a shot clock on the PGA Tour in your lifetime?

MR: No chance. The big thing is, like this week, we play 156 players. Why do you want to play fast? You’ve got eight more groups each wave than you’ve got holes to start on. Where are you going to go?

Q: Don’t you want to give out one last slow play penalty (during the final round of the Wyndham Championship) for old time’s sake?

MR: (Chuckles) Not really. Again, we’ve got 156 players, we should never do that in 2021. This Tour should be 120 players maximum. You know, when they came up with (fields of 156), there was no place to play. Now we’ve got the Korn Ferry Tour. We’ve got PGA Tour Champions, tours in Canada and Latin America, too. You know, if you’re good enough, you’re going to be right back here. But I mean, 156 guys, there’s groups waiting 10, 12 minutes at the turn to play. That all goes away if you did that, like at Bay Hill, 120 players and we give them 12-minute intervals and they can’t catch each other. I mean, the slow players have no place to hide.

Most of the slow players play so much better if they go ahead and play. You know, I said, we oughta make them play like that on the range. You can only hit one ball a minute, and then they’d realize. But for the most part, like I say on Thursday and Friday, we breed slow play. There’s no place to go.

I think that first Q&A concisely sums up where we are on pace-of-play.  My only quibble is with that second answer and his sanguinity at the available playing slots, because I'm pretty sure any up-and-coming player would strongly disagree.  He's certainly correct that those opportunities have been increased in absolute terms, but there are thousands vying for the slots.   

My argument would be that we need to decrease the field sizes because of its effect on the viewing experience, despite the adverse effect on playing opportunities.  In a perfect world, the Tour would find a mechanism to replenish those opportunities elsewhere.

One question I'd have asked is how often is he greeted with his actual name vs. how often he's called "Slugger".  

Boys Will be Boys - Eamon Lynch seems to be everywhere these days, including using the first playoff event to review the Brooks v. Bryson cage match.  Is there anything left to say?  I'm not entirely sure, but did you realize that this week we're at Ground Zero?

The PGA Tour returns this week to the birthplace of its most engaging tussle in recent memory,
even if the most attentive fan would struggle to recall a single shot ever struck at Liberty National Golf Club.

On the morning of the final round of the Northern Trust two years ago—August 11, 2019 — I was standing by the practice putting green with Ricky Elliott and Claude Harmon III, respectively the caddie and (now former) coach of Brooks Koepka, when a clearly vexed Bryson DeChambeau approached and instructed Elliott to tell his boss to make any comments about slow play “to my face.”

The irony of directing such a request to an intermediary was lost on DeChambeau. Upon being told of the message, Koepka went over to speak with his flat-capped rival. After the round, both insisted that online onlookers should disperse.

Asked recently about the ongoing feud, Koepka traced it to that day at Liberty National, claiming the two agreed not to chide each other publicly. Then DeChambeau made a sassy comment about Koepka’s abs (or lack thereof). Bets off, beef on. Thus we find ourselves in the midst of a bro brouhaha that is alternately amusing and unsettling.

 Amusing?  For sure... Unsettling?  

Eamon does a reasonable job at reviewing the ebb and flow, and offers this action-oriented mitigation strategy:

First: Koepka needs to stop jabbing and understand that hecklers use his antipathy to justify the unsporting harassment of a fellow professional. Second: DeChambeau has to quit the whiny overreactions in difficult situations and learn to ignore feeble taunts from the peanut gallery. Third: the PGA Tour must group them together Thursday and Friday, thereby lowering the temperature for the inevitable day when they play their way into a weekend pairing with considerably more at stake.

The first part reminds me of Lou Grant's famous wedding day advice to Ted Baxter, along the lines of, "Ted, you know how you are?  Stop being that way".  Or perhaps the scorpion and the frog would be the better analogy.

But do we think the Tour should pair them?  I don't actually think the Tour should get involved in this kind of nonsense, though that's the weaker of my arguments.  The more substantive point is that the delicious awkwardness of this relationship should be embraced, whether it's a late-week pairing or the team room at Whistling Straits.  We don't know these guys all that well, but this a chance to see how they react and handle the matter, along with Captain Stricker and the rest of the team.

On a related note, I've had this browser tab open for some time:

Opinion: Bryson DeChambeau may be golf's villain, but he's the star the PGA Tour needs

Hmmm, because I had bene reliably informed that PReed is our game's villain....But this local Memphis scribe saw something different in that crowd:

Heath McGee, 26, had no plans to drive three hours from his home in Cabot, Arkansas, to
Memphis this week until DeChambeau made a last-minute commitment. He’s strictly here to follow around the most polarizing golfer on the PGA Tour, and he’s not alone. Nobody in Memphis is drawing a bigger crowd right now than him.

“The media is saying everybody hates him,” McGee said. “That’s not what it looks like out here.”

“It’s crazy how he can be the most loved and the most hated at the same time,” said Greg Keown, who came to Memphis from Bowling Green, Kentucky, just to watch DeChambeau play. “Even the people who don’t like him want to watch him.”

We had a similar report from an earlier Tour stop in which Bryson was taking the taunts graciously and engaging with his gallery, although we also had reports in which he was obviously worn down by it.

This story just seems like something to pencil in for late September, though of course it'll be in the back of our minds as we watch the conclusion of qualification and the captain's picks unfold.  To me the bigger issue is the pairing for these two protagonists, and how that affects Stricker's choices, most notably in the context of the PReed conundrum.  Does he talk himself into a Captain America pick because he needs someone to pair with Bryson?  And, as an exit thought, who does Brooks play with?  I'm guessing not DJ at this point, but it's all a bit of a mess that will be good fun to see play out.

Amateur Leftovers - Just a couple of loose ends from an entertaining week, including this only-in-golf story:

Is there a comparable in other sports?  

Zephyr Melton has some data from the two days of stroke play demonstrating the difficulty of Oakmont:

-77.16: The stroke average in the first round.

-74.94: The stroke average in the second round — after Oakmont was soaked by afternoon storms.

-527: Total number of birdies at Oakmont.

-1,1715: Total number of bogeys at Oakmont.

-329: Total number of doubles or worse at Oakmont.

-10: Number of players who broke par in their round at Oakmont.

-24: Number of players who shot over 80 in their round at Oakmont.

-1: Number of players who shot over 90 in their round at Oakmont.

I'd love to see a comparison with the first two rounds of the 2016 U.S. Open as a comparison because, while these guys are obviously good, they're not quite at that level.

But Oakmont is to many the hardest golf course on the planet so, to the extent we're picking spots for mid-century majors, this is as good a guess as any.  Merion, on the other hand, is a curious bet that far out...

It's An Honor Just To Be Nominated - Daniel Rappaport gives out his season-ending rewards, which only depresses your humble blogger by highlighting how long we have to wait for meaningful golf.  You can scan them at your convenience, as my interest is in the secondary categories.  Though this was quite the mic drop:

Shot of the year

Phil Mickelson’s bunker hole-out at the PGA

Order seemed to be restoring itself. A 50-year-old man couldn’t possibly win a major championship—not in the erratic form he’d been in, on a course as punishing as Kiawah, against the sport’s best major-championship player. Playing alongside Brooks Koepka, Mickelson got off to a shaky start on Sunday at the PGA Championship, bogeying two of his first three holes and pushing his tee shot on the par-3 third into a short-sided bunker. He then summoned a pinch of the short-game magic that’s defined his career: Lefty holed the bunker shot, hoisted his wand in the air and sent a clear message to his competitors, the fans and himself: Yeah, this might actually happen. His two-shot victory at the Ocean Course made him the oldest major champion in history and wrote another chapter in an all-time career.

He's got the video if you're inclined to revisit it.

He's all in on that PGA:

Tournament of the year

PGA Championship

A man past the half-century mark won a major championship, and he happened to be an all-time great who might be the most popular player of his generation. It wasn’t just the best tournament of the year, it was of the most unforgettable days in golf history. And Phil’s extremely pedestrian play since—he has zero top-15s and one finish better than T-61 in six starts since—only adds to the legend of that performance. Lefty began the week a complete afterthought but opened with a rock-solid 70. Surely, though, he’d blow up on Friday ... only he followed it up with a 69 to enter the weekend tied for the lead. Surely, though, he’d blow up on Saturday ... only his lead swelled to four after 10 perfect holes, and he led by one heading into Sunday. Surely, though, he couldn’t pull it off ... only he did, providing an indelible scene when he walked through a mob of adoring (and overly zealous) fans on the 18th fairway to polish off a most unlikely victory—and his sixth major championship.

Other nominees: U.S. Open, Open Championship, The Memorial, Travelers Championship, Wyndham Championship.

No real argument here, it just reminds me that it wasn't a banner year at the majors.  The Masters was historic but not exciting, though I'd actually put Rahm's finish at Torrey above this one (especially with the Covid backstory).

Of course, there was this:

Rules kerfuffle of the year

Patrick Reed’s embedded imbroglio at Torrey Pines

Oh, Patrick. The man can’t seem to stay out of his own way when it comes to that pesky rule book. Roughly a year after his sandy adventures in the Bahamas, Reed put himself at the center of another messy situation when he took relief from an embedded ball that cameras appeared to show it had did not embed. Unlike at the Hero, when he was penalized for his actions, the tour said no rules were broken, and he would eventually win the tournament by five. It was, however, an awful look that shattered whatever progress he’d made in repairing his reputation as someone who can be fast and loose with the rules.

Other nominees: Viktor Hovland’s mom alert him of a violation at the Players; Robert Gamez’s strategic withdrawal at Bay Hill; Kevin Na scolds Dustin Johnson at the WGC-Dell Match Play; slow-mo camera dooms Abraham Ancer at the Masters.

Year? If ever a man was deserving of a lifetime achievement award, Mr. Reed's body of work demands recognition.

That's it for today.  I'll see y'all later in the week, though likely not tomorrow.

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