Come Sunday, the Tour had its absolute dream scenario. Its two unofficial spokesmen, Thomas and McIlroy, were in the day’s final group alongside fan-favorite and mega-talent Tony Finau. LIV hadwrapped up on Saturday without much fanfare; Mickelson fell outside the top 30 while journeyman (and former Masters champ) Charl Schwartzel emerged the new owner of $4.75 million. The stage was cleared for Canadian chaos.St. George’s proved the perfect site for daytime fireworks. McIlroy birdied the first hole of the day. Thomas and Finau birdied the second. That set the tone for what was to come. Thomas nearly made an ace at the par-3 6th; McIlroy followed with a chip-in and a fist-pump, celebrating a stolen stroke. The two of them went out in five-under 29; Finau shot 31.Up ahead, Justin Rose was on 59 watch. He’d holed out at No. 1 and proceeded two make two more eagles throughout the day. He reached 11 under on the par-70 layout with three holes to play. The top-heavy leaderboard featured other top-tier talent, too: Sam Burns lurked at the edge of the top five, with Shane Lowry and Matthew Fitzpatrick not far behind. Tension built and storylines developed, as happens on the Tour’s best Sundays.
As you've likely heard, Rory dinged The Great White Pilot Fish in his post-round comments, though said ding went over most folks' heads (unless, of course, your humble blogger has lost all feel for the zeitgeist), but is that thumbs-up in the photo above a dig at He Who Cannot Be Named?
I caught the last 4-5 holes yesterday and almost nothing prior in the week, but the Tour will of course trumpet the strong leaderboard, the more impressive because it's the week before the U.S. Open, when many of the alpha dogs stay home. But the bigger contrast might be the crowds, which were deep and enthusiastic, and may have actually paid to watch the action.
Here's the background on his shot at Norman:
“It’s incredible,” McIlroy said. “Playing with Tony and JT, and all of us playing the way we did, Ithink the worst round was 6 under, this is a day I will always remember. My 21st PGA Tour win, one more than somebody else, that gave me a little extra incentive today and I’m happy to get it done.”That somebody else would be Greg Norman, who is the commissioner of LIV Golf, a rival league backed by Saudi Arabia that played its first event this week outside of London. McIlroy has been critical of the league.“I had extra motivation of what’s going on across the pond,” he said. “The guy that’s spearheading that (league) has 20 wins on the PGA Tour and I was tied with him and I wanted to get one ahead of him. And I did. So that was really cool for me, just a little sense of pride on that one.”
The play of that final group certainly helped the cause, though that diss likely just gave Norman more airtime than is wise. Besides, the stronger point would be that you have him 4-2 in majors, although you both have the second Tuesday evening in April free...
The more interesting bits might have come in the CBS booth, and when have you ever heard that from me? On Saturday the broadcast opened with a cri de coeur that was most interesting for its use of the B-word:
Nick Faldo, Jim Nantz and CBS started its intro into its PGA Tour coverage with kind words about its leaderboard and the golf course they were on.They then talked for three minutes, mostly in blunt fashion, about “a story that is also out there.”In CBS’ first televised comments about the upstart, Saudi-backed LIV Invitational Series — which finished its first event on Saturday about an hour before the broadcast of the Canadian Open — Nantz noted the world rank (126th) and lack of recent success of Charl Schwartzel (no wins in six years), the event’s champion, then Faldo took swings at the format and the players, and Nantz said he felt ‘betrayal.” The tone could be considered both surprising, given the network’s previous silence, and anticipated, considering CBS’ long relationship with the Tour, which Nantz did disclose.
I haven't bothered to watch the video, but this gives the appearance that Sir Mumbles was able to get a couple of coherent thoughts out, presumably because it was preescripted:
“No. 1, you saw those faces, you can’t feel good being a major champion to be suspended from the Tour,” Faldo said. “We’ve got two totally different golf tournaments. One, we play for tournaments and national championships over here. And the LIV Tour is what, 54 holes and no cut, shotgun start, you know, sounds crazy.“And the other thing that is very noticeable is the players that have left. Obviously they’re in mid-40s, they’ve been out here on Tour, they’ve been battling away and they probably know they can’t win out here against these youngsters. So they’re taking the easy option to go over and try and win a boatload of cash.”
Of course using an extremely loose definition of "coherent." For instance, that last sentence is quite the doozy, given that the LIV purses, as super-sized as it is, would seem less important than the nine-figure guarantees reportedly being paid to DJ and Bryson.
On Sunday, Jay Monahan spent a few moments with Jim Nantz and made an important point, though that doesn't mean he made it especially well:
When asked by CBS’ Jim Nantz why players can’t play both, Monahan responded quickly anddecisively.“Why do they need us so badly? Because those players have chosen to sign multi-year lucrative contracts to play in a series of exhibition matches against the same players over and over again,” Monahan said. “You look at that versus what we see here today, and that’s why they need us so badly. You’ve got true, pure competition. The best players in the world are here at the RBC Canadian Open, with millions of fans watching, and in this game, it’s true and pure competition that creates the profile in the presence of the world’s greatest players.“And that’s why they need us. That’s what we do. But we’re not going to allow players to freeride off of our loyal members, the best players in the world.”
Again, no mention of the guaranteed money. He's not wrong to call it an exhibition, but wouldn't it be stronger to emphasize that the guys have been paid before they peg it...
Here I think he makes weak contact as well:
“It’s been an unfortunate week that was created by some unfortunate decisions, those decisions being players choosing to violate our tournament regulations,” Monahan said. “It’s my job to protect, defend, and celebrate our loyal PGA Tour members, our partners and our fans. And that’s exactly what I did. And I don’t think it was a surprise to anybody. Given how clear I had been about how we were going to handle this situation.“We made a decision last week to suspend those players, and they’re no longer eligible for tournament play. And that at this point is all we’re prepared to talk to. We’ll see how things continue to develop as we go down the road here.”
They're at the Canadian Open, which is obviously sponsored by RBC, which also sponsors a large stable of players individually. DJ and Graeme McDowell have quite obviously violated the terms of their sponsorship contracts, and I'm curious as to why no one seems to have a problem with that. This seems to me the clearest impact of those defections, which is the easy answer to the ubiquitous, "You can't blame them for taking the money" reactions. I do think you can blame them, because they're enriching themselves to the detriment of the remaining universe of players. Which is an odd way to grow the game, no?
And on the source of that funding:
“It’s not an issue for me, because I don’t work for the Saudi Arabian government,” Monahan said, a veiled dig at the notion of being a free agent. “But it probably is an issue for players who chose to go and take that money. I think you have to ask yourself a question: Why.“Why is this group spending so much money — billions of dollars — recruiting players and chasing a concept with no possibility of a return?” he said. “At the same time, there’s been a lot of questions, a lot of comments, about the growth of the game. And I ask, ‘How is this good for the game?’”
Here Jay is partially hoisted on his own petard, because he's as likely as anyone to fall into that trap of assuming that professional golf is the game of golf. But, more importantly, do you also wonder what a petard is?
pe·tard/pəˈtärd/nounHISTORICALa small bomb made of a metal or wooden box filled with powder, used to blast down a door or to make a hole in a wall.a kind of firework that explodes with a sharp report.
Come for the trenchant golf insights, stay for the vocabulary lesson...
The Tour seemingly put on a good show in Canada, yet probably ends the week in a less favorable position than that in which they started the week. The coming week can't be a good one for Jay, as that plane from Heathrow has arrived at Logan with Phil, DJ and the other turncoats.
As we've covered over the years, U.S. Open pairings have a rich history. Notwithstanding the organization's stodginess, they have actually amused with their groupings. For years, the parlor game was to discern the a*****e group, until Rory Sabbatini retired that Championship Belt. Then there was that epic fat boy group at Pinehurst, putting new meaning into the concept of anchor sites.
So, how would you like to be responsible for the pairings this week? A group of former PGA Championship winners seems logical, say Rory, JT and Phil? Or perhaps this is the moment for the long-anticipated Brooksie-Bryson pairing? There are likely to be some testy first-tee handshakes, no?
LIV Long And Prosper - Quite the week, the golf being the least of it. But let's start with that actual tournament exhibition, first from the Tour Confidential panel:
2. OK, let’s talk LIV. The controversial, Saudi-backed league began play last week at the Centurion Club in London; there were bells and whistles with a team draft, shotgun starts and gigantic purses, and golf was played, with Charl Schwartzel claiming the crown. We’ll ask a few questions here. First, your biggest takeaway from the week?Piastowski: The golf was lifeless. I’ll just leave it at that.Sens: That whatever you think about the league, it has gained far greater traction that any of us predicted in this space. Also, as I said last week: the divided opinions over it are mirror of our own deeply split politics. The anger and accusations in both directions are a depressing reminder of problems far more important than golf.Rogers: A LOT of people are involved. And I’m not just talking about the golfers. Jessie J performed, trumpets were played on the first tee and Dennis Quaid narrated a hype video. The whole thing felt kind of like Coachella … with a golf tournament. It was a huge production that was clearly well-planned, so I’m curious to see what else they have in store.Dethier: It’s definitely not going away! And — as with everything — opinions on the matter are getting increasingly polarized and political. That will continue. I think the PGA Tour needs a response that includes upgrading its own product to make sure that the Tour’s biggest events are the envy of the golfing world. Thus far they’ve mostly stuck to the status quo.
Dylan packs a punch into his answer, so let's spend a little time here. That "not going away" I think requires some clarification. No question they were able to fill a couple of news cycles with new names jumping on board so they're not going away soon might be the better way to put it. We all understand that the Saudi's have the scratch to fund this in perpetuity if they want to, but we have little understanding of how long that commitment might last.
This to me hints at the killer response to Phil's "grow the game" nonsense. The business model is to build a new golf ecosystem entirely dependent on a noxious regime over-paying by orders of magnitude to distract folks from those bonecutters in the back room. Phil, you used to know some folks at KPMG.... would they sign off on that business plan? And the other guys were reasonably honest about this, making it clear that they're simply taking the money and not worrying about the consequences that ensure later.
But perhaps the more interesting aspect of Dylan's comments are to consider how the Tour got here, which brings us back to the reign of Nurse Ratched. The biggest impediment to that which Dylan craves is none other than FedEx, whose season-long points race has calcified the Tour into an endless succession of mind-numbing, interchangeable events. This is probably worth a deeper dive, but today is not the time for it. But ironies abound, because the dreadful FedEx Cup is a direct result of the Tour not controlling those four events that do actually matter, but their commitments to Memphis make any changes that much more difficult to enact.
Alan Shipnuck survived his encounter with those two goons without necks and filed a couple of reports from on site, which Jay will not find pleasant reading:
HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, England — On Saturday evening, along the rolling countryside outsideLondon, at a private club that is a bastion for the Anglo elite, former Masters champion Charl Schwartzel tapped in for a final par to win $4.75 million at the inaugural LIV Golf tournament, ushering in golf’s age of cognitive dissonance. For Schwartzel, 37, this was his first worldwide “victory” since 2016 — he was also part of the winning four-man squad in LIV’s concurrent team competition — but his potential reemergence as a big-time player was relegated to a minor footnote amid the preceding days’ political brinkmanship that is threatening golf’s world order. Pressing flesh at the glitzy trophy ceremony was Yasir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan, a top official from the Saudi Arabian government. It is the Saudis and their vast reserves of oil money that launched LIV. Al-Rumayyan’s preppy Western clothes and impeccable manners did not hint at the atrocities his government repeatedly has committed. Acting as emcee at the ceremony was LIV frontman Greg Norman, who has taken to spouting empty cliches about modernism and inclusivity but only two days earlier looked on impassively as tournament security goons strong-armed a reporter out of a press conference without cause. All this messiness lurked beneath the surface, like a turgid shark, as the feeling at the trophy ceremony was celebratory. Fueled by excellent food and beer offered at reasonable prices in the spectator village, the fans were loud and rowdy. (The final round was billed as a sellout, though free tickets had been available before the tournament.)In a cute touch, Liv gave out trophies to the top three finishers in both the individual and team competitions, and the assembled players radiated Christmas morning giddiness and exchanged incredulous looks that could be interpreted as holy shit—this actually worked! Taking it all in was disorienting, a reminder that in this complicated moment for professional golf many things can true at once: It is impressive what LIV has built from scratch in a short period of time; the Saudi money and palpable player greed is distasteful in the extreme; a 54-hole tournament with a shotgun start feels weird, but it is still a pleasure to watch accomplished golfers tussle with a challenging course with something at stake; in the space of a week, LIV has seized most of the leverage in the battle for golf’s future, some three decades after Norman first floated the idea of an independent world tour; the monolithic and monopolistic PGA Tour is somehow now the underdog.
The off-course stuff seemed more interesting than the actual comp, but reinforcements are on the way. Here's Alan's take on that:
As was the case throughout tournament week, the on-course action was overshadowed by larger developments. Schwartzel had a commanding five-stroke lead at the turn of the final round,making it easier to focus on the breaking news that Patrick Reed and Pat Perez are the latest players to leave the PGA Tour to join LIV. This followed Bryson DeChambeau’s similar announcement from the day before. LIV has now acquired a critical mass of Hall of Famers (Phil Mickelson and, someday, Dustin Johnson), major championship winners (Schwartzel, DeChambeau, Reed, Sergio Garcia, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell and Louis Oosthuizen) and spiky personalities who generate conversation (Perez, Ian Poulter, Kevin Na and Lee Westwood). Rumors are flying that Harold Varner III and Jason Kokrak are next; they’re not stars but this kind of established veteran is important for filling out the 48-man fields and bumping some of the unknowns who dented LIV’s credibility in its opening event. The Pat Perezes of the world also bring respectable World Ranking positions, making it increasingly difficult for the OWGR folks to continue to deny points to LIV events. (This is a key point, as World Ranking is the key metric for players earning access into the major championships.) More players are sure to jump as good word-of-mouth spreads among their peers.
The OWGR will be a critical front in this war, one that the existing powers seemingly control. Then again, the Maginot Line was a seemingly effective perimeter defense...
I've been a LIV sceptic, but a couple of those signings have me agape. Pat Perez has outsized impact to me because he was one of the harshest critics of Phil as this story started unfolding. But the one that has me agape is HVIII, a man who was considered the conscience of the Tour back in 2020. It's never pretty when our heroes expose themselves, but I will never care what he has to say again.
Back to the TC gang:
3. Considering all elements of the event — the play, the format, the players, the promotion — what most surprised you?Piastowski: I actually didn’t mind the team concept. If the players invest in it. Our Sean Zak reported that the winning team — don’t ask me the team name because good lord — was rigged to get certain players on it, so there’s that. But I like the idea. If there were actual franchises, and players huddling around the last player on the last green and such, there could maybe be something there.Sens: I wasn’t expecting a conventional event or broadcast. But the busy-ness of the graphics and carnival aspect of the promotional stuff around it—that was all more intense than I expectedRogers: There was so much money and talent involved in the event, yet the team names and logos reminded me of a local little league baseball tournament. I was expecting more in that department.Dethier: I was thinking “Backyard Baseball,” Claire — I don’t think your local Rotary Club could afford to sponsor the Fireballs. What most surprised me is how quickly they seemed to pull off some of these last-minute signings. There is cash available and it is available now. DeChambeau was out and then, poof, he was in. Ditto with Patrick Reed and Pat Perez. More will follow. Who will they be?
Who wants to break it to Nick that the teams will change every week?
4. Soon after the event began, the PGA Tour suspended its members who were playing in London and said it would do the same to players who might follow. Two questions: What do you make of this move? And with one week of LIV in the books, what the Tour’s next best move, in terms of protecting its turf?Piastowski: The Tour had to do the move, but without buy-in from the majors, it’s kind of meaningless. It sounds like some of the LIVers are upset over it all, but a few mil should tide them over. As for the Tour’s next best move, sit down your stars, listen and act upon what they want, receive some sort of commitment and invest and promote them heavily. Do they want fewer tournaments? Cool. Do they want alternative events? Cool. Whatever it is, do it. LIV won’t win with the 45-and-older set, but they could if they continue to gobble up players like Bryson DeChambeau and Talor Gooch.Sens: I’m not sure what other response the Tour could make to the players at this point. In terms of protecting its turf, it’s all about the majors and the other four of the Five Families of golf that run them. The Tour will need their backing if it wants to stave off more defections.Rogers: I think the Tour had no choice but to suspend players. They were kind of cornered into the decision, but I do wonder if they’re going to have to compromise at some point down the road. They lost a lot of players to LIV this week. I think the Tour’s next best move is a) adjusting their schedule to give players more of an off-season and b) working with the best amateurs in the game to ensure the Tour remains the place that they have always dreamed of playing. That means highlighting legacy and tradition more than money.Dethier: I mentioned this above, but the Tour needs some sort of super-series so that fans know when they need to pay attention and when they’ll see all the top dogs. That means 12-18 events (including the majors and the Players) with elevated purses, creative format tweaks, franchises, team aspects and all the best players going head to head. The best move for the Tour to protect its own turf is to flex its existing rights deals and give people the best golf TV product they’ve ever seen.
So, Dylan, you mean a super-series like the FedEx Cup and WGCs? How'd those work out?
Obviously, as Nick notes, Jay will have to placate his alpha dogs, but that's not going to be pretty. We've already seen it with the PIP program, where he didn't get much of a return from the big check paid to Phil (although one assumes Phil didn't get the second installment).
More importantly, what do the big guys want? To the extent that there's any coherence, it's pretty clear that they primarily want more zeroes on their checks. The only other consistent theme is that they want to play less, which is understandable (especially for those Euros maintaining membership on two tours). Jay certainly has some flexibility there, but we shouldn't ignore that that's a pretty important structural support for the ecosystem. Sponsors and the networks have made commitments based upon the top players appearing regularly, and any relaxation of these requirements has significant ramifications.
Joel Beall seems one of the first to make a point that I've been emphasizing, that this is a horrible vision for our game:
LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman has said he does not want a schism; he envisions LIV to be additiveto the sport. Norman is also rolling out a field in London this week that, with a few notable exceptions, is composed of has-beens and never-wases competing for ungodly sums of money under the misguided notion that it will somehow help a maligned government sportswash its image. How that is additive to the sport, how that is interesting to golf fans, remains unclear. In a related note, tickets remain widely available.If that’s all that LIV Golf could be this wouldn’t be a discussion. Theoretically it could help the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, cleansing them of those stuck in the purgatory between relevance and the Champions circuit and making way for fledgling stars. But for all that it hasn’t been, LIV has shown just enough of what it could be—and the chaos it could impel—and that’s the problem.
As if siphoning off the top 48 players from the PGA Tour for 10-15 years could ever be "additive"! But the issue cuts deeper:
There’s the problem of the disruptor in question, the series being funded by the Saudi Arabian government, for it is driving this discussion and its direction seems aimless. Perhaps the issue begins with the vehicle itself. There is a fundamental fault with the competition that LIV Golf is creating, and for a second put aside the problematic strings to this venture and focus on that competition. At its heart, golf is appreciated for being the purest rendition of meritocracy, where spots aren’t given and you only make what you earn. LIV Golf is the antithesis of this spirit. It offers signing bonuses and no-cut guaranteed paydays to players most fans would not pay to see. Aside from the general curiosity surrounding its Thursday debut and a better-than-expected production, the LIV Golf presentation had no appeal. There was nothing on the line, no reason for these guys to be playing aside from the chance to line their pockets no matter how they finish. It is a glorified exhibition, a televised member-guest, and nothing more.
Golf has always had a bifurcated compensation structure, where the big names have guaranteed money in the form of endorsements. But the Tour itself, at least until the PIP, was a rigid meritocracy with nothing given and everything earned. Which I would argue is the nature of our game...
Graeme McDowell, in comments I keep returning to, said it best, LIV is golf without the grind. Which is quite nice for Graeme, but not all that interesting to the rest of us.
Joel gets in some cheap shots, which are fun but transitory:
Norman and the LIV Golf team also seem incapable of taking a step forward without stepping on their own foot. LIV Golf’s entire existence has been marked by incompetence and parody, a sentiment encapsulated by this week’s London event. There was the drama of a reporter tossed out of a press conference; schadenfreude at the series’ logos that appeared lifted from a kindergarten classroom; bewilderment at the appearance of Phil Mickelson, who ended his months-long sabbatical, showing up to a draft party in stubble and an all-leather ensemble that can only be described as mid-life crisis mixed with Top Gun cosplay. James Piot, who is a professional, is listed as an amateur while Hudson Swafford was listed as Swafford Hudson on the LIV website. The drawing party accidentally revealed “Patrick Reed” on the board a day before reports of Reed joining LIV trickled out. Comical as these missteps can be, they are less comical when understanding these knuckleheads can alter the fate of the sport.
Norman's a boob, but a boob with a couple of billion to spread around. And how's that PIp working out?
This should serve as an intervention for the tour. It bet hard on legacy and lost. By its own popularity rankings, the No. 2, No. 5 and No. 7 players in its Player Impact Program have left. Or, framed in another light, the tour gifted Mickelson, DeChambeau and Johnson a collective $12.5 million to incentivize them to stay … and were trumped by roughly $400 million from LIV Golf. That’s not including Bubba Watson, who finished 10th in the PIP and was accidentally featured in a LIV promotional video Thursday morning amid rumors he, too, is leaving. There are bigger purses, bigger bonus pools, bigger FedEx Cup bonanzas coming to the tour, but they don’t have the resources to engage in an arms race, and legacy won’t be enough.
That Bubba bit goes both ways. There was a promo hyping the event's work with kids on yesterday's CBS broadcast, featuring HVIII. Yeah, he'll be scrubbed out, but who is safe to Photoshop in?
We'll finish with Joel's rousing coda:
And a product that now raises a question of morality. Fans tune into sports to forget about the real world. Instead, LIV Golf brings the real world issues front and center, funded by a government accused of human-rights atrocities. Worse, fans are watching a considerable amount of stars they follow willing to barter their goodwill to be a puppet for a regime that couldn't care less about the sport they allegedly love.That sounds mawkish, and professional sports has long revealed its dark sides. Conversely, sports remain one of the few forums with the ability to bring this ever-divided culture together. In our neck of the woods, that is golf. One of the things that holds our attention are the players in the arena, and when you invest as much time and emotion as being a fan requires it’s understandable to develop certain feelings towards them. To see that love means nothing can breach even the most hardened of hearts.So, yes, this is all a trainwreck. Sorry, we meant reality show. Whatever it is, it is no good.
Irony alert: For years the Tour has kept disciplinary actins under wraps, assuring us that these guys are all gentlemen. The most egregious example of this was to allow one player to concoct a fake jet-ski accident to cover up for a failed drug test. Can anyone name that player? Yup, none other than DJ, who turns out to be a self-centered jerk. But Nurse Ratched assured me that he's a gentleman who would never do anything to harm the game.
So, the Tour has it coming to it... but unfortunately we're going along for the ride.
I am out of time, and you'll notice we've barely mentioned that it's US. Open week. It'
s even worse than that, because Employee No. 2 and I are off on a trip Thursday. I'll make sure to fill you in further before we leave, and even hopefully preview the events in Boston. No promises about blogging the Open while away, as it'll be a game time decision as to whether or not the laptop makes the trip.
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