Midweek Musings - Wednesday Start Edition

It's game day, kids.  Boy did the week go quickly....

The Science Is Settled - Are you perhaps puzzled by the Wednesday-Saturday schedule at Torrey Pines this week?  Sure, I hear you say, it's tough competing with the NFL, but is that sufficient enough to disrupt your routine?

Your mileage may have varied, but Geoff has the ratings (the plural noun seems, well, optimistic) from the AMEX:

Here's Geoff's snark on said ratings: 

The former PGA Tour Commissioner once predicted golf would compete with the NFL in the popularity department. Maybe he meant NFL Network Gameday Final? Eh, the PGA Tour was thumped by that cable post game show, too. And by Sunday’s LPGA coverage on both NBC and Golf Channel.

But as long as AmEx is willing to sponsor, more power to them through 2028.

Yes, like Geoff, I can't imagine why American Express picked this among all the gin joints in the world, making their decision to extend through 2028 that much more perplexing...  Can you say shareholder class action lawsuit?  I thought you could...

But perhaps the more curious bit is that LPGA entry buried in the detritus.  Because the NFL has actually left a window for golf, having pushed their games deeper and deeper into the day.   Your humble blogger is old enough to remember when conference championship games started punctually at 1:00 p.m., but now they're moved back to late afternoon.  However, with the big-boy Tour in California, that late morning-early afternoon window was left to the ladies, and they put respectable numbers on the table.  Leaving us with the amusing thought that as many people tuned in to watch Mardy Fish as did to watch Patrick Cantlay.

Torrey, Torrey, Torrey - Just a few quick notes as some actual PIP-worthy names arrive in SoCal, but have you wondered about the schedule?

It makes for a quick turnaround for the 56 players who finished off last week by playing in Sunday’s final round of the American Express. The Wednesday start will come quickly, and prep time and recovery time will be reduced.

“It’s interesting for all of us,” Day said of the early start.

Day, who finished in a tie for 49th on Sunday, won the Farmers in 2015 and 2018. He had little experience playing the three courses used last week but has plenty of experience playing Torrey Pines and the three tracks in Pebble Beach.

“The veteran guys definitely have an advantage,” Day said. “But it’s not easy. Last week, there were 5½-, 6-hour rounds. It’s a mental grind, stopping and starting. It will be like that next week. And eight courses in three weeks? That’s tricky.”

And the rounds next week will be six hours as well, so why are you playing there?  

But I'm actually shocked that there are 56 guys making the drive from La Quinta to La Jolla, because there didn't seem that many in last week's field that had actual status.

Of course the one factoid not included is whether there was a Tuesday Pro-Am.  Because these guys aren't spending enough time with double-digit handicappers, are they?

You don't need your humble blogger to confirm that Jon Rahm is in this week's field.  Yeah, Tiger's the leader in the clubhouse in aggregate wins at Torrey Pines, but Rahmbo is chipping away at that lead.  Interestingly, the Spaniard has doubled-down on last week's hot mic:

“My reaction? I mean, the video’s pretty self-explanatory,” Rahm said on Tuesday, addressing

reporters ahead of the Farmers Insurance Open.

“I mean, we’re the PGA Tour, we’re the best golfers on the planet and we’re playing a golf course where missing the fairway means absolutely nothing. There was times where missing the fairway by an inch was worse than missing the fairway by 20 yards, that to me is a mistake. I don’t know what else to say.”

Asked if he’d like to take back the colorful language, Rahm seemed reluctant to take any sort of mulligan.

“I mean, if I knew somebody was recording, I wouldn’t say it the way I did, but I was just thinking out loud and letting some frustration out because that’s what I felt, right? No matter where you hit it, you’re going to be able to hit it on the green and it becomes a putting contest, who can make the putts. That’s about it; there’s no premium for anything else.”

Ummm, Jon, I have a follow-up.  Given that your accurate description of the event has been the case since the days of Bob Hope, what the f**k were you doing there?  He makes all the right arguments, but seems to ignore some fairly significant aspects of reality.  To wit, he's arguing for a tougher set-up for one of the weeks the Tour can't actually comply, due to the presence of amateurs and those 5 1/2-6 hour rounds noted above.  But Mr. Rahm's presence at this event is voluntary....  he could have been playing that delightful 18th at Yas Links with Tyrell Hatton.

Alas, this guy is back as well, necessarily reminding us that we have 155 other guys for whom to root:

“It should be remembered as a victory,” Reed said Tuesday ahead of his title defense beginning Wednesday. “At the end of the day the rules officials said we did nothing wrong. When you have
rules officials that come out and say that, as well, as you sit there and they’re able to go by the book and go by the rules and you don’t do anything wrong with that and there’s no real discussion about it, you go out there and play the best I can and do everything I’m supposed to and win the golf tournament.”

And I've been reliably informed that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia...

This kind of jumped out at me, though:

So, back to the South Course in the third round last year. Reed had taken his golf ball out of the embedded lie in the rough left of the fairway on the 10th hole before calling for an official to get relief. Video of the incident was not kind, and social media lit up and afterward, Xander Schauffele said of the matter, “The talk amongst the boys isn’t great, I guess.”

We have exactly one witness who testifies that the ball was embedded, a witness with no shortage of baggage... Of course, who could blame the man for taking matters into his own hands, since by not bearing the name of Jordan Spieth he clearly can't expect fair rulings... 

Your Saudi Frisson - We might have to go to flood the zone coverage next week, as the best players in the world head for the Monterrey Arabian Peninsula.  The good folks at AT&T have issued a press release highlighting the field of world class players in next week's Clambake.  What?  Yeah, they mentioned both of them...

MONTEREY, Calif., Jan. 25, 2022 – The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is poised to welcome

back its unique vibe at this year’s tournament as spectators return to line the courses to watch the world’s top players join with celebrities, several making their debuts, in the popular pro-am format. The four-day tournament tees off Thursday, Feb. 3 with play on Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill Golf Course and Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore course.

United States Ryder Cup teammates Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth and Daniel Berger, set to defend his AT&T title from a year ago, headline the professional field. Cantlay and Spieth finished tied for third place behind Berger who dramatically eagled the 72nd hole on Sunday to punctuate his victory. Other top professionals appearing are Matt Fitzpatrick, Kevin Kisner, Justin Rose and Maverick McNealy, the Stanford graduate who was runner-up to Berger in 2021.

Wow, Maverick McNealy!  Quite the get, guys...Are he and Danielle Kang still a thing?

The list of new talent is also spit-take worthy.  Oh, nothing wrong with the first two names, but after that it seems mostly a gathering of the lucky sperm club:

Mia Hamm – two-time Olympic gold medalist, and two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion;

Mookie Betts – Dodgers’ outfielder and first player in MLB history to win MVP Awards and World Series titles with different teams before age 30;

Lukas Nelson – country rock musician and son of Willie Nelson;

Canelo Álvarez – professional boxer who has won multiple world championships in four weight classes from light middleweight to light heavyweight;

ScHool Boy Q – American rapper and songwriter from South Central Los Angeles; and

Scott Eastwood – actor and producer.

Though ScHool Boy Q seems a good fit for a golf audience....

Before moving on, let's just note what a horrible missed opportunity this is for Jay and the boys.  We saw above the effect of the NFL playoffs on ratings and this week they're "forced" to finish on a Saturday.  But next week the NFL is basically dark, so the PGA Tour will obviously make sure to have a blue-chip field to seize the opportunity, right?  

So, score that week as a win for the bonecutters....

So, what's up with the Shark, I hear you asking....  Well, you might have noticed the absence of a single player signing to date.  But who needs top-line talent when that C-Suite is full:

David Hill sounds like a hurricane, and perhaps that’s because he is one.

The legendary television producer and former founding chairman of Fox Sports is a whirlwind of creative energy. When he speaks, he crashes from point to point, his volume oscillating between shout and whisper. He’s impossible to follow and even harder to predict; his methodically chaotic approach to conversation demands your attention.

In the eye of this hurricane, you’ll find Hill’s new day job. As of last week, Hill, 75, is the newest broadcast consultant for LIV Golf Investments, his friend Greg Norman’s Saudi-backed golf startup. Norman is not-so-quietly forming a rival league to the PGA Tour, and while details remain scant, his company is stocking the cupboard with C-suite bonafides, from ex-ESPN execs to former PGA Tour rules official Slugger White.

 But, I found this caption on the accompanying photo curious:

David Hill in 2001

 Hmmm, that's rather an old photo, no?

The mandate is big for sure:

One way to go about doing that, in Hill and Norman’s estimation, is to create an entertainment product so captivating that fans can’t not watch.

“We’ve talked about golf over the years, obviously, and the way it’s covered,” Hill said. “What Greg wants to do is to create what we see as the most exciting golf television ever.”

“What Greg has done is taken all that energy that he’s renowned for and pushed it into making golf for today,” Hill said. “His main hope is to take the excitement of golf to areas where it’s not represented, especially in the Asia area and China.

“The reason he’s so adamant about this is because the average age of people who watch a golf telecast is 65. That’s the average age. And that tells you that the golf audience is on a downward ski slope. What Greg wants to do — because he’s so passionate about the sport — he wants to reverse that trend and hopefully produce golf that appeals, for the first time many decades, to a much younger demographic than watches now.”

Since this story broke I've amused myself with the thought that Greg Norman, a man who recently thought the future of golf was tied to a pimped-out buggy, was the salvation of our game.  Now we find that golf telecasts (as dreadful as they can be) will be reconstructed to appeal to a younger audience by a 77-year old producer.  hey, what could go wrong?

The piece includes much history and discussion of potential broadcast partners, and Hill does have some accomplishments in television sports, though it seems that his primary qualification for the current gig is an unusually high tolerance for Shark guano.  But while they speak promiscuously about excitement, conspicuously absent is any actual concrete plans to provide said excitement.  This is about as close as they get:

“I think there’s a couple of things that do that,” he said. “The three-day event, the 54 holes — anything you can compress makes things better, because right now the audience has got more alternatives than any time in the history of man. With the shotgun start, everything happens between 2-6 p.m. It’s there — it doesn’t start at 6 in the morning and go on and on and on. So you have this concentrated drama in front of you with storylines left, right and center. So it’s not a slow, linear progression — ‘and here we are in the Waikiki and it’s late Saturday’ — it’s what’s happening now! Boom!”

Boom! just has to be exciting, right?  I can just feel it...

Today In NIL - Joel Beal does a deep dive on college golfers monetizing their NILs, which almost sounds a little dirty.  It's as if Joel wrote two separate pieces, there's the upbeat, isn't this great part:

Deals were struck as of midnight on July 1. Football players have been the biggest beneficiaries; according to Opendorse, a digital platform for connecting athletes and brands, football has accounted for 45.7 percent of NIL compensation and 33.8 percent of NIL activity. University of Alabama quarterback Bryce Young is believed to have racked up millions this past fall in a Heisman Trophy winning season while highly touted QB Quinn Ewers signed a $1.4 million deal with GT Sports Marketing when enrolling at Ohio State … and didn’t play a down for the Buckeyes in 2021 (Ewers has since transferred to the University of Texas). Last week a booster for the University of Miami announced $10 million was being set aside for the football team’s NIL payment.

Excuse me, but I thought this was a golf website....  We all know there's money in college football.

In spite of those limitations there are collegiate golfers profiting off their name, image and

likeness. The two biggest deals thus far—at least in the traditional sense—belong to Rachel Heck and Cole Hammer. Heck, who won the 2021 NCAA individual championship as a freshman at Stanford, signed with Excel Sports to help handle her NIL representation, with Hammer, a two-time Walker Cupper in his senior year at the University of Texas, choosing WME Sports.

“My NIL experience so far has been really smooth,” Heck told Golf Digest. “Once the legislation was approved, my parents and I took some time to learn about the NIL landscape and see if this was an area that made sense for me to explore.”

Heck has already locked commitments with Ping, Stifel Financial, Six Star Pro Nutrition and Whistle Sports. Hammer’s first NIL deal, with Optimum Nutrition, was announced last week. (Financials for the deals have not been released.)

Sorry to be the voice of negativity but, as you might have noticed, there isn't a lot of interest in golf:

There are just shy of 300 NCAA Division I men’s golf programs across the country; only basketball and cross country boast more men’s D-I teams. Opportunities for women aren’t too far behind at 250 programs. However, according to Opendorse data, both men and women’s golf account for 0.1 percent of NIL compensation through the end of 2021. The percentage of activity is only slightly better at 1.8 percent. The percentages seem low, and they are. They are also relatively easy to explain.

While golf has enjoyed a rejuvenation in participation and interest during the pandemic, it remains a tier below football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer in terms of popularity for general sports fans in the U.S. This sentiment is especially amplified at the amateur level. The Golf Channel shows a handful of regular-season college events, but the game lacks a cadence on the weekly schedule, and Golf Channel’s viewership is small compared to the reach of commercial networks and cable networks like ESPN and FOX Sports 1, which air college sporting events daily. Without a sustained television presence, the degree of influence is limited.

Also limited is real estate. Specifically, on the golfers themselves. When it comes to endorsement deals and dollars, the hat is one of the biggest revenue generators for professional golfers. Same goes for the shirt and golf bag. Yet when college golfers are playing for their universities, these potential billboards don’t exist, the spaces instead serving as their team uniform.

Did you see those ratings above?  That's the golf economy....  There's a reason financial terms haven't been announced, as in many cases there aren't any:

Of course, we said “traditional sense,” and there’s little about NIL policy that is traditional. Many collegiate golfers have eschewed formal representation and have taken it upon themselves to garner sponsorships, most of which are negotiated and signed solely through email or social-media messaging. As Rascher previously noted, not all deals are for thousands of dollars; multiple athletes said they’ve been paid as little as $10 for an endorsement. Some of these deals don’t necessarily involve up-front payment. Instead, student-athletes are paid through commission, if money is involved at all.

Sometimes a sponsorship means an athlete gets free product in exchange for promoting a company in a social-media post or in their social bio.

To me, this story very much belongs beside the Saudi initiative, because in both cases there's a rather large disconnect between expectations and the underlying economics of the game.  It's certainly fair game to discuss how the spoils get shared, but it seems unsustainable when the expectations for the amount to be shared exceed the aggregate spoils.   As with all such things, we'll stay tuned.

Enjoy the Wednesday golf from Torrey and we'll convene down the road.