Monday, October 31, 2022

Weekend Wrap

That sound you hear in the background is the Fairview greens being punched.... Tough time of year for us all so, I think you'll agree, let it snow.

The Bad & The Ugly - One thing on which all right-minded folks can agree is that the PGA Tour wore a short skirt and had it coming, just for the crime of holding events such as the Butterfield Bermuda Whatever...  I'll just say, though, that if the preeminent tour in golf wants to hold events with only one top 50 player in the field, you might as well let that lucky soul win:

The World No. 48 survived rough conditions on the back nine at Port Royal Golf Course to post a final round 70 to capture the Butterfield Bermuda Championship by one stroke for his second PGA Tour win.

“I’m absolutely over the moon,” he said after the round. “The first one was amazing but to be able to win again, it’s fantastic. I get whatever, it’s pretty much a three-year exemption and all the kind of cool things that come with it. It’s just you’re kind of so proud and it’s amazing to be able to do it again.”

He found himself in quite the fortunate spot, grabbing the "W" while we're still pretending that these events are every bit as important as, sat Riviera.... 

It took a characteristic collapse from a young player to allow chalk to prevail:

However, Griffin, who was trying to complete a fairy tale comeback after giving up pro golf for a time last year, collapsed in the strong winds on the back nine Sunday. He birdied 10 and 11 but followed it with bogeys at 12-15 and a double at difficult par-3 16th to give up the lead to Power.

“Not how I wanted to, but it was playing tough out there,” Griffin said. “Those are some of the toughest holes coming down the stretch, especially trying to win a PGA Tour event.”

Ben Griffin is the full name, and he took his learning experience with sufficient grace that we'd be pleased to see him make some noise down the road.

This is the stuff of bloated schedules and product dilution, so Nurse Ratched should take a bow.  Take away the FedEx Cup points (and, more importantly, the ever-present promos) and this could be a respectable event for the journeymen of the Tour to improve their status.  It just falls flat when its status dwarfs the strength of its field, and I suspect the TV ratings will indicate mass indifference.  The only remaining mystery is whether a discernable audience was detected.  Your humble blogger is going with the Under....

But, that miserable field of strength wasn't the most humiliating part of the weekend for Ponte Vedra Beach.  Faced with a miserable field, they asked themselves, what can we do to make this more of a clown show?  Shockingly, they came up with two very strong answers.

The first is captured in this tweet:

The name is Kim Swan and I believe that he's a Bermuda native, but he shot 89-81 and missed the cut by 114 shots.... OK, I might have made up that last number, but you'll take my point.

Even more humiliating was the presence of John Daly in the field.  Daly beat Kim by some 23 strokes, yet didn't so much as as sniff the cut line.  But I'm actually happy to have John Daly in the news, because he's an object lesson for us all, a tired act that simply refuses to go away.  But do we think PReed reads my blog?  Back in the day, Daly made the unforced error of suing a journalist, with the predictable result that his Tour disciplinary file was publicly released.  Talk abut a page-turner

The PGA Tour ordered John Daly to undergo counseling or enter alcohol rehabilitation centers seven times, once disciplined him for hitting golf shots off the top of a beer can during a pro-am and cited him 21 times for "failure to give best efforts," during Tour events.

Daly has also been accused of nearly hitting an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent after failing to stop his car at a security checkpoint at the 2005 U.S. Open in Pinehurst, N.C., and of launching golf balls over the heads of spectators who were sitting in the bleachers during a 1993 golf clinic, according to the PGA Tour's confidential personnel file on Daly.

The Tour's initial disciplinary action against Daly was for an incident on April 17, 1991, in Hattiesburg, Miss., when he cursed a playing partner during a Tour event there. That was four months before Daly burst onto the golf scene by winning the PGA Championship.

Eventually, his personnel file at the PGA Tour swelled to 456 pages, with incidents covering 18 years, through the fall of 2008. Daly was fined nearly $100,000 during that span, suspended from the Tour five times, placed on probation six times, cited 11 times for "conduct unbecoming a professional" and 21 times for "failure to give best efforts."

Begging the question, what exactly does one need to do to be excluded from the PGA Tour?  Rape?  Murder?

So, if I were a sports book, I'd have a prop bet for the over-under on the PReed disciplinary file at, say 456 pages.  So, do we like the over or the under? 

LIVing The Life - The first season of LIV concluded with a rousing coda, as the favored 4Aces hung on for a dramatic victory watched by million s of golf fans..... OK, I made most of that up, although I think the 4Aces actually did win.

I think this headline writer has it about right:

LIV Golf’s season is over, but the question remains: Do you care?

I do actually care that it's over.... does that count?

Sean Zak sums up their first season thusly:

After eight events in five months, it should be pretty clear what LIV Golf is all about. It is a
league backed entirely by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. It’s a plaintiff and counter-defendant in a major antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour. It has paid huge sums of money to pluck some of the best golfers in the world as well as some of the best young talent on the planet. It does not have Tiger Woods’ support but it has all of Phil Mickelson’s. It has reiterated good intentions for entering the global golf ecosystem, but that hasn’t totally manifested in reality. Its entire first season was streamed on YouTube to disappointing viewership numbers, depending on your analyst for that information. It’s been available on television in other countries around the world — ask your analyst for the value of that, too. It has staunch support in some corners of the internet and even stronger detractors in others. But now it’s even more clear — it is not going away.

We frequently see examples of headlines totally disconnected from the article below, most recently with that WSJ article on the Justice Department antitrust investigation.  But here we have a paragraph in which the conclusion seems equally disconnected from that which comes above, partially caused by the use of imaginative language to distort reality.  Because, Sean's use of the term "some" is the giveaway, no?  It is a sufficiently vague term that is used correctly, but the more accurate reporter might have been tempted to instead use the more specific term "two,", which is precisely how many of both they're acquired.

But the contention that LIV is "not going away" might prove true or untrue, but the only factor identified in that paragraph that supports that contention is  the first bit, its support from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.  I'd like Sean to commit an actual act of journalism and explain what the Saudis are getting for their money and why that leads him to expect continued support, but that's above Sean's pay grade.

Sean does fill in some color, which doesn't seem to help their cause:

What fans found at LIV Miami what exactly what we’ve come to recognize from the breakaway tour. On Day 1, spectators were greeted by a lady on stilts in a hot pink, bedazzled uniform wearing a flamingo hat and blowing bubbles into the air. Twenty yards away a unicyclist wove
through the crowd juggling bowling pins, nearly crashing when one hit the pavement. There’s a reason why some people call LIV Golf a circus. In some ways it is so different than the pro golf we’ve known that you stop to look around and wonder where you really are. But then a pro golfer and his caddie walk by to remind us of the sports event we’re attending.

Rather than a tense weekend filled with smack talk, what played out at Doral was something more akin to golf camp. Many players stayed on-site at the lavish resort on the edge of Miami. If you were too, you’d see Anirban Lahiri and his family walking to breakfast. You’d pass Louis Oosthuizen in his flip-flops or run into Sergio Garcia in the Sam Snead Villa. When four of the 12 teams had first-round byes, they played practice rounds together at the other course on campus. Each opponent selection show was a cozy affair between friends that mostly resulted in laughter. Teams that lost hung around all weekend to watch. Joaquin Niemann’s season ended Friday but he received a haircut from Cam Smith Sunday morning in front of dozens of fans. LIV golfers are by no means rivaling each other, and when asked about how tension between teams could be created, the four remaining captains Saturday night could barely muster up an example.

They've acquired a reputation for hosting exhibitions, which was only enhanced by the golf camp vibe of the week.  Clearly the guys are enjoying themselves, though your humble bloggers remains mystified as to why the Wahabis, a grim lot indeed, think self-satisfied golfers yucking it up  will appeal to the rest of us.  I'm glad Pat Perez has found happiness, but I don't feel any sense that he's earned it, do you?

Many made jokes and quips (this writer included) throughout LIV Golf’s inaugural season, but it was Pat Perez who got the last laugh.

Often the odd-score-out for his loaded 4Aces team that features Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed and Talor Gooch, the 46-year-old veteran couldn’t be happier after a final-round 2-under 70 at Trump National Doral – which tied Johnson and Reed for their team’s low score of the day – at the LIV Golf Team Championship.

How exactly did Pat Perez get that "last laugh"?  In that traditional LIUV way, for sure:

“All the push-back, all the negative comments, everything we’ve gotten, at this point I really don’t care. I mean, I don’t care. I’m paid. I don’t give a damn,” Perez said with a laugh

See, we've found common ground.  Nothing grows the game of golf quite like Pat Perez getting paid... 

So, LIV's not going away, but where exactly is it going?  We've heard about their plans to hold fourteen events, but there's news in this short 'graph:

As LIV executives explained Saturday morning to the press, LIV will begin its 14-event schedule in February, hoping to file in gingerly around the major championships and “heritage events” on the PGA Tour. Its operating purpose for the next three months is to commercialize its teams, even if your Saturday foursome doesn’t know exactly who is playing for the Niblicks. LIV dreams of a day where each team is sponsored, with its own operating budgets and staff. Making a Torque GC Instagram account is one thing. Convincing a Fortune 500 company of team valuations is another.

That bit about avoiding the PGA Tour's "heritage events is new to your humble blogger, but also add in this bit from elsewhere:

But next year, LIV will be renamed the LIV Golf League and will have 12 teams contesting a 14-event global schedule—nine in the U.S. and five overseas. It is set to run from late February to September.

It all perhaps depends upon your definition of "heritage events", but finding those fourteen weeks won't be the easiest exercise, though the most important word in the 'graph might be September.  Because, while Greg Norman blathers on about creating a global tour and growing the game, not even the Saudis are stupid enough to take on the NFL.  Combined with the surprise success of the CJ Cup (caused by being forced to hold it in the U.S.), seems to indicate that the death match will be played as a home game for Jay Monahan.

I simply can't have a conversation with anyone on the topic of LIV without the suggestion that they "have to do a deal".  To which I typically respond, "Sure, but tell me what that deal looks like", because I sure don't see it.  Jay doesn't know what to do with the Fall, so it's up for grabs, but Greg and his Saudi paymasters want it all, which they might get but only by continuing to overpay in perpetuity.

There's lots of happy talk about monetizing their teams and the like:

“Our goals are to transition to the league, have 12 teams established and get them off the ground,
and clearly build on the on-course and fan experience we are seeing and the engagement we are seeing," Khosla said. “We have to start commercializing the product. Get on TV. [We] need to find corporate partners. Those are milestones we need to hit going into next year."

The league will also grow to 60 players, given that each of the 12 teams will add a substitute player who can only be used if one of the teammates becomes injured or can’t play in a certain week. Teams will be made up of a “principal” player—the captain—selected by LIV’s board, as well as two seeded players determined by the top 24 on the points standings from this inaugural season. The fourth member of the team will be a wildcard chosen by the captain, and the team will be rounded out by the substitute.

LIV also has future plans for a 60-day transfer window similar to that in English soccer. Officials said Saturday that was already happening in an informal manner and that several players would be on new teams before the 2023 season begins in late February.

I for one have acquired a deep supply of popcorn, and eagerly await those milestones falling fast.

Shall we see what our Tour Confidential panel thought of it all?  I think so, then I'll need to wrap our wrappage:

1. LIV Golf ended its inaugural year on Sunday with the finale of its $50 team championship event at Trump Doral. Days earlier, Phil Mickelson said “it’s pretty remarkable how far LIV Golf has come in the last six, seven months” and that it’s “a force in the game that’s not going away.” Now that we can put a bow on the controversial league’s inaugural season, how would you assess it? How have your feelings about it changed over the past year? What worked? Or didn’t? What surprised you?

Josh Sens: A year ago, most of us on this forum would have said LIV had little chance of taking shape at all. And even less chance after Mickelson’s ‘scary mofos’ comment in February. That it not only exists but has drawn a bunch of green jackets, a former world No. 1, the reigning Open/Players champ, etc., counts as a surprising success. What LIV has failed to do is offer a compelling product — though I’m not sure that’s so much a flaw in LIV as it is a feature of modern professional golf. Many of us started saying this long before Rory brought it up. But what the world needs isn’t more pro golf on TV but less of it. The game should pack it in for a while each year. Let people miss it. LIV came into being partly by exploiting a weakness in the PGA Tour — too many snooze-fest events that too few fans care about. But what LIV is offering as an alternative are snooze-fest events that too few fans care about. LIV’s problem is the Tour’s problem, writ large: Enriching players is not the same as rewarding fans. Sure, the lack of a TV deal doesn’t help. But even my 83-year-old luddite mother knows how to click on YouTube. If tons of people were interested, they’d be watching. And they’re not.

Josh hits at one of my recurring points, which is that golf is a really bad fit for sportswashing.  It's just so damn boring and no one cares, which we might have reinforced by the coming World Cup.

We had the point made recently that the LIV effort should best be understood in the context of the cold (well, Jamal Kashoggi wouldn't consider it cold)  in the Sunni Arab world.  But my guess is that the Qataris will get much better value from their World Cup, so we'll see how that plays in the Kingdom.

Sean Zak: I wanted LIV to exist for strict chaos purposes. I saw the potential it could inject into the ecosystem for change on the PGA Tour. Unfortunately, I think it all has gone a bit too far. Who is to blame? A lot of folks. How much time do you have? Greg Norman did not work as a frontman. At least not as a speaking frontman. The team championship worked, which was good because it had been hyped up constantly. But the team formation didn’t work. The only brand I can really think of is the 4 Aces, mainly because they were the best players and they solidified from the second event. At this point, I’m sad that there wasn’t a bit of cooperation between the two sides, but I don’t actually care to blame Jay Monahan. If you give LIV an inch, it’ll want to take a mile. So perhaps we were always going to end up right here. I look forward to breaking down the lawsuit. Or rather, lawsuits.

I think the chaos only seemed appealing, mostly because the Tour's product has become so dreadfully boring.  Problem is that the reactions  to LIV will make the Tour less attractive going forward.

Dylan Dethier: I think the biggest story of LIV this season is that its future is … to be continued. LIV has signed enough players and built a successful enough infrastructure that it’s guaranteed to be around next year. That means next year will really serve as its first full season. A league with less determined backers than LIV might have waffled after its mixed bag of results and muted popularity. But these fellas have a long runway, which means they will have every chance to succeed.

Sure, as long as the Saudis want to continue to be duped....

2. The team of Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Talor Gooch and Pat Perez won LIV’s team championship, which used a unique format of stroke play, match play and alternate shot (not to mention picking your opponent) to decide its winner. Now that we got to see it all unfold, what did you think of the format for the season-ending event?

Sens: The format was fresh but — for reasons mentioned above — it was still a snooze of an event. When it comes down to it, I just don’t know that there’s an answer to be found in the format. We’ve seen it over and over. You can throw as much money — and wrinkles — at the problem as you want. Meaningless events are still meaningless events, whether it’s on the Tour or on the LIV circuit. Most people would rather watch guinea pig TikToks. At least they take up less time.

Zak: Match play worked well, and with a full season perhaps there will be a sense of rivalry built up. But you won’t get any rivalry until you get certain teams taking food off of other teams’ plates. That didn’t happen once during the regular season, but it did Friday, and Harold Varner was annoyed. His season ended early, just as he beat the brakes off Brooks Koepka. Some strife is really good. I’d love LIV to create a bit more strife next season.

Dethier: A lot of the format stuff LIV is trying is fun — especially when taken in a vacuum. But I think what LIV lacks is context. Wins on its tour are worth a boatload of money, but thus far none of this means anything, and sports fans crave context and meaning. For LIV, establishing that meaning might just take time or it might an un-clearable hurdle. I don’t think there’s any way to know. But thus far LIV garnered its attention through curiosity, disruption, politicization and money rather than the format itself.

A series of golf exhibitions were boring?  geez, you'd have to be Nostradamus to see that one coming....But, if you're going to have a team event and not use a team match play format, you kind of get what you deserve.

Bt this is a strange question:

3. Rory McIlroy told the Guardian he felt betrayed by his European Ryder Cup teammates who left for LIV Golf, although Ian Poulter countered by saying as far as he’s aware they can still qualify for the team. Recently Jon Rahm said LIV players should be allowed, while Shane Lowry was among those who said they should not be. In truth, we don’t know the official answer yet for the European squad, so we have two questions: Will LIV players be allowed on Team Europe? And should they be?

Sens: I don’t think they’ll be playing, but I wouldn’t mind seeing them in the mix. The Ryder Cup is already shot through with partisan divides. What’s a little more tension in the exhibition? It would be only fitting. The teams could even serve as an example, so badly needed these days, that you can disagree with someone’s politics and actions without having to treat them as mortal enemies. As a practical matter, though, it almost seems like a moot point. Aside from Sergio, the now-LIV golfers who played for Europe in the last Cup at Whistling Straits were non-factors. If you really want to win, are you taking any of them at this point? Time for new blood on the team, anyway.

Zak: I think they’ll be allowed AND banned. Shadow-banned, that is. I think they’ll be able to qualify automatically, but will only really be able to do so via majors and DP World Tour events, which they’ll need to work around their LIV schedule. And with half the team decided by captain’s picks, they’ll have to plead to captain Luke Donald and shadow captain Rory McIlroy. It ain’t happening.

Dethier: I’ll endorse Zak’s shadow-banned prediction. These guys may not be outright banned, but it’ll take some strong play in the majors to get them there. The more relevant conversation, to me, isn’t actually who can play on Team Europe but instead who could serve as future captains. LIV swiped the entire lot of ‘em!

The more I game play the situation, the more Europe figures prominently.  But these guys stop short of the ultimate nightmare scenario, to wit, that there might not be a Ryder Cup.  I'm not predicting it, but I can see two obvious scenarios under which Jay will have little choice but to not send his boys (he could do that because it's Seth Waugh's event).

I'm out of time, so let's hold that upbeat thought for tomorrow. 

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