Back In The Saddle

We are home after a most excellent Florida getaway.  Very grateful to out generous hosts for our golf adventures, and I don't blame them a bit for the case of the shanks I developed.  

Of course, the timing was curious, in that Tiger's announcement that he was pegging it at Riviera came too late for me to blog until he'd completed 36 holes.  Fortunately it seems there will be another 36 to blog (although we know how he likes those early Saturday tee times), and even more fortunately he's unlikely to be paired with JT again.... 

There's a ton of LIV news, but let's deal with The Riv first...

Riviera Ruminations - Game story stuff to lede:

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. – Max Homa described his second round in one word: scrappy.

“It was pretty fun to rely on my short game and have it bail me out,” he said. “I’ve been working hard to make a weakness to at least be average. To have it be a strength today was awesome.”

Homa made six birdies en route to shooting 3-under 68 at Riviera Country Club on Friday, his 13th consecutive round at par or better at The Genesis Invitational. He improved to a 36-hole total of 10-under 132 and a one-stroke lead over Keith Mitchell and Jon Rahm.

Should be a fun weekend at our last great venue for a while, especially since the leader seems to feast on home cooking.  This guy has a claim to being the best in the world, though there's no doubt that he's the hottest player on the planet:

Luckiest bounce of Rahm’s life

John Rahm can’t wait to be in the next compilation video of luckiest bounces.

“I will be in it, yeah. I hope it’s in it,” he said. “If anything beats that, I’ll be very surprised.”

Rahm tried to cut a 5-wood from 270 yards up the hill at the par-5 17th hole and ended up flaring it out to the right and into the grandstand that surrounds the green. His ball banked off the railing and skirted on to the green and stopping inside 4 feet from the hole to set up his second eagle of the day.

“I was just hoping it would bounce off into the bunker and give myself a decent chance of an up-and-down for birdie. Obviously I got very fortunate to get that bounce not only to go on the green, but to have basically three feet straight up the hill. That’s arguably the best bounce I’ve seen in person my whole golf career and it would be hard to beat in the future,” he said.

Jean van de Velde could not be reached for comment....

And a couple of rabbits that look like they survived the cut:

Thanks to a bogey-bogey finish on Friday morning, Tiger Woods has been sweating out the

cutline and while his chances look good, he’ll have to wait for 14 players to complete their second rounds when play is scheduled to resume at 7:10 a.m. Saturday.

Woods is currently T-60 with 10 other players. Top 65 and ties will advance to play the final 36 holes.

Xander Schauffele looked to be heading home for the weekend but he holed out from 173 yards for eagle at the par-5 17th and made par at the last to shoot 74 and should be safe, too, projected inside the cutline at 1-over 143.

Guess he had to stay around until Sunday anyway, but how is it starting on No. 10 at zero dark thirty?

Before we get to his newest scandal, a made cut in his first event in six months should be a home run, especially given the venue.  But while Thursday (of which I saw a little) was a home run with a strong finish, Friday was quite the letdown.  The bogey-bogey finish isn't especially significant except to the extent that it reflects fatigue, because this is undoubtedly his only start until April.

But he's the event's host and has assumed the roll of elder statesman, yet shows the maturity level of a pimply high-schooler:

Some of that razzing came on the 9th hole, where Woods had blistered a 323-yard drive past both of his partners. As he walked off the tee, Woods cozied up to Thomas and covertly slipped a

tampon into Thomas’s right hand — just not covertly enough, because the moment was captured by Cliff Hawkins, a senior field photo editor for Getty Images. One of those photos soon made its way to Twitter — that tweet, from golf-betting expert Rick Gehman, now has more than 10 million views — and by Friday morning Woods’ off-color prank was making international headlines.

Many commenters on social media had no problem with what had transpired — LOL, just guys being guys, right? — while others found it unfunny, sexist and offensive. But given Woods’ place in the golf world, it’s hard not to look at the pre-meditated stunt as a head-scratcher. What was he implying? That JT drives it like a girl? That would have been a tone-deaf message in 1923, let alone in 2023. When asked for an explanation of the prank, Woods’ manager, Mark Steinberg, did not immediately respond to an email from GOLF.com. Presumably Woods will be asked about it after his second round Friday at the Genesis. He also might not.

I think we all have the same mixed reaction, it is boys being boys at a certain level, but it's also simply crude and juvenile and, perhaps most importantly, just not all that funny.

Most of you will know that your humble blogger has never much loved the man, even before the events of Thanksgiving 2009.  Kind of a dick in my humble opinion, though we've been reliably informed that currently on display is the kinder, gentler Tiger, making this all the more noxious.

There was a fuaxpology of the kind that isn't much better than his BFF Phil's from exactly a year ago:

Yeah, it was supposed to be all fun and games and obviously it hasn't turned out that way. If I offended anybody, it was not the case, it was just friends having fun. As I said, if I offended anybody in any way, shape or form, I'm sorry. It was not intended to be that way. It was just we play pranks on one another all the time and virally I think this did not come across that way, but between us it was -- it's different.

How hard was it to see how this would be taken?  You just have to be completely clueless or not give a rats ass to willfully ignore the obvious reaction.  Fortunately, it's not like women hold a grudge against Tiger or anything....

The excerpt above uses the P-word, which I quite agree makes this far worse than the tampon recipient's spontaneous outburst that cost him his Polo contract.  This is spot on, alas:

No, he employed basic misogyny to insult his good friend Thomas, a knee-slapper of a dig against female athletes: You hit the ball like a girl!

I’m curious. Do all male golfers carry tampons onto the course, or is it just Woods? We know women golfers do, but maybe it’s a male golfer thing now, too. Who knew? Tiger, that trendsetter.

In all fairness, there are a group of science-deniers trying to convince us that men can menstruate, so he can hide behind that....

It's not a scandal of any note and we can let it go quite readily, but what it tells us about Tiger, in a moment of some importance for the game and his chosen tour, is quite unflattering.

I actually thought the best commentary came from Employee No. 2.  In watching the Round 2 highlights, we saw Tiger miss a short putt badly, fanning it to the right.  Quite appropriately, the bride noted that that putt was as tampon-worthy as anything that happened on Thursday

LIV Nation - There is an abundance of news from the fledgling tour, though I am going to begin with the least newsy but perhaps most significant item, the team rosters:

Second day of LIV Golf roster reveals feature four more teams with zero new players

 It's edge-of-your seat stuff:

LIV Golf’s second day of roster reveals featured three new teams, with two teams returning all

four players from last year’s team championship.

Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs GC remain unchanged with Abraham Ancer, Carlos Ortiz and Eugenio Chacarra filling out the roster. Same with Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers GC, featuring Paul Casey, Charles Howell III and Anirban Lahiri.

Bernd Weisberger, formerly on Phil Mickelson’s HyFlyers GC, replaces Laurie Canter on Martin Kaymer’s Cleeks GC, with Graeme McDowell and Richard Bland returning for season two.

Cam Smith and his newly-named Ripper GC will return Marc Leishman and Matt Jones, with Jediah Morgan replacing Wade Ormsby to break up the all-Australian side.

On Wednesday the team rosters for Joaquin Niemann’s Torque GC, Brooks Koepka’s Smash GC, the Majesticks GC and 4 Aces GC were announced. All 12 team rosters will be official on Friday with the reveal of the HyFlyers GC (Mickelson), Iron Heads GC (Kevin Na), RangeGoats GC (Bubba Watson) and Stinger GC (Louis Oosthuizen).

Clearly this changes everything.... I don't what's funnier, that we're sweating that Laurie Canter doesn't have a team or that Martin Kaymer, who hasn't done a thing in the game since 2014, is important enough to be a captain.

The reason I'm leading with this is that last bit in the header above, that LIV's new player acquisitions begins and ends with Mito Pereira and Sebastian Munoz.  Now this had me suspicious that perhaps there was something in the works on that score:

The announcement of the four undecided teams in the LIV Golf League has been delayed till next week. The four final teams were scheduled to be announced on Friday. However, the announcement was pushed to Monday, a mere four days before the tournament commences in Mexico.

But no, it's presumed to be a matter of oxygen availability:

Tiger Woods' is believed to be instrumental in this delay. He has seemingly redirected the spotlight from the newfound league's upcoming season onto himself with his departure. His admission into the Genesis Invitational this past week seems to have grabbed a great deal of attention.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of bonecutters....

If it is the case that they have enticed no additional top-level talent to their exhibition series, they would seem to be in a world of hurt.  There is simply no way to characterize that gaggle of has-been and never was players as a top-flight tour.  More importantly, what would compel someone to actually tune in?  

Remember when McKinsey advised them to sign the top twenty players in the world?  They have exactly one.... There are two further items of a most discouraging note for LIV, but each would be manageable if they were building something viable.... 

First, a litigation setback:

The latest development in the LIV-PGA Tour courtroom battle could spell trouble for the Saudi-backed upstarts.

On Thursday night, a federal judge ruled that PGA Tour lawyers could depose the Saudi Public Investment Fund, including PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, for documents related to the fund

and its involvement as LIV Golf’s principal financier. Al-Rumayyan and the PIF had sought protection from the Tour’s legal probes — which threaten to unearth information about the highly secretive fund — on the grounds of “sovereign immunity,” a premise rejected by judge Susan Van Keulen’s ruling.

Al-Rumayyan and the PIF had sought exemption under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a 1976 law that defines the role of the U.S. judicial system in lawsuits against foreign nations and foreign citizens. Under the FSIA, foreign agents are immune from the jurisdiction of U.S. Courts spare for a few exceptions, one of them being when conducting commercial activity within the U.S. In the months preceding Thursday’s ruling, lawyers for LIV, Al-Rumayyan and the PIF argued that the fund was merely an investor in LIV — not a business partner — meaning the PIF was not conducting commercial activity within the United States. The ruling, which was handed down in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, rejected those arguments and asserted that Al-Rumayyan and the PIF were the “moving force behind the founding, funding, oversight and operation of LIV” and therefore not exempt from the Tour’s depositions.

Their act hasn't played to rave reviews in court, has it?  Here's their first feint:

Per an ESPN report, lawyers for LIV and PIF have indicated they will ask a different federal judge, Beth Labson Freeman, to review Van Keulen’s ruling. Golf fans might remember Labson Freeman’s name. Last summer, she dealt LIV another courtroom loss when she ruled that three LIV golfers — Talor Gooch, Hudson Swafford and Matt Jones — were ineligible to compete in the FedEx Cup Playoffs.

She ruled no such thing.  What she ruled was that the players did not qualify for injunctive relief.  More importantly, she opined as a side note that she couldn't even seer where the players were damaged, because they had what they were demanding (the right to play in the4 FedEx Cup), and merely chose something they thought was better.  That thought is devastating to the Saudi's case, although I'm glad to know that they're just passive investors....

This isn't a whole lot better as far as legal analysis is concerned:

The ruling could mark a watershed moment in the ongoing legal battle between LIV and the Tour over the Tour’s purported monopoly status. Should Al-Rumayyan and the PIF agree to the depositions, Tour lawyers could compel truckloads of documents from the PIF and Al-Rumayyan, lifting the curtain on the actions and motivations of the secretive government-owned fund in golf and more broadly. Should the two parties fail to cooperate with the deposition, they could be held in contempt of court, a decision that could have grave consequences for LIV’s standing with the court in this case. A third option, of course, would be for LIV to withdraw the lawsuit altogether, ending litigation and any hope of the kind of legal discovery that could shift LIV’s standing with the Tour, which has suspended its players indefinitely.

One assumes that the Saudis will skirt the need to provide the invoices for the bonecutting machinery in the Istanbul consulate, but that will involve long, drawn-out fights over discovery, which is why these kind of cases take decades to resolve.  As we tick the years off,   Mito Pereira will be drawing viewers measured in the dozens to the CW.

But wait, it gest worse for the Wahabis.  Alan Shipnuck has a new mailbag up, and this wee little Q&A is sending up shockwaves through our wee little golf fishbowl:

Who’s the first LIV golfer to come back to the PGA Tour? And how would that work, etc.? Feel like this is inevitable at this point. @HighFades

I’m hearing a lot of rumblings that Brooks Koepka has buyer’s remorse. He took the money when his brittle body was still being put back together, and in private he has confided to folks he wasn’t sure if he would ever get fully healthy again. But now Koepka is feeling frisky and supposedly rethinking his career choice. The guy has one of the biggest egos in golf, and as the PGA Tour creates ever-increasing buzz with its elevated events and even the state-sanctioned TGL, Koepka has to feel like he’s on the outside looking in. As for the mechanics of returning to his old place of business, a lot hinges on the European Tour lawsuit that is being reviewed by arbitrators in the UK. If the players prevail, that opens the door for the LIV guys to have unfettered access to the Euro Tour, which will be a boon to a struggling circuit. It would also position LIVers to play for Europe in the Ryder Cup, all of which would put intense pressure on the PGA Tour to forge a truce with LIV. Secretly, Monahan would love for some big-name LIV guys to come home because it would be a p.r. bonanza for the PGA Tour.

In private, Alan?  As I understand things, that's basically the entirety of Netflix's Full Swing Episode 2 (which I've not sampled at all yet).   

This will take some time to process because, as much as Jay would like that PR bonanza, there's a lot of guys that will insist that no path home be available for the defectors.  It's also true that Jay might be able to milk those PR rewards from the mere rumor, without having to actually act on a request.

But I'm just not buying Alan's thoughts on that Euro Tour arbitration action, unless he thinks Brooksie will be jiggy with working his way back to relevance on a Tour with weaker fields than the Korn Ferry.  he also continues to assume that Jay will roll over and play dead should the LIVsters be allowed to play those Euro events, whereas I look at the forces arrayed and expect Jay to go for the jugular, and a road-game Ryder Cup might be a small price to pay.

Stay tuned, as the plot will likely thicken further.

Netflix And Swill - Geoff has a fun posting on our game's moment in the sun, though he went with a different rhyme:

Netflix And Shill

"Full Swing" is a visual triumph with moments of fascinating insider access. But the 8-episode series is undermined by Netflix's cynically formulaic approach.

Given that they've been rolling this formula out in every sport short of cornhole, that was certainly my expectation....

Exactly one year since filming began at Riviera, Wednesday’s 12 a.m. PT official “drop” delivers

all of Full Swing. (Episode 1 was released early after a Super Bowl mention and Scottsdale premiere.)

The result?

Full Swing is a visually-stunning storytelling hodgepodge cobbled together by some seriously talented editors.

The goal of becoming must-queue TV was a lofty one for a much more nuanced and slower sport than F1 and after viewing the show, there are glimpses of how the dream might have come true. But it’s hard to imagine most sports fans making it to the last episode or wanting more without Netflix freeing up producers to treat the audience with respect.

 In trying to appeal to everybody, they seem to have dumbed it down to repel the core audience:

The producers of Full Swing appear to have been saddled with a demand to make the show accessible to people who know nothing about…anything. The show repeatedly announces loudly, proudly and cynically that Netflix no longer trusts itself.

Yes, I’m well aware, I’m not the audience. As I’ve been told a jillion times since the show was announced. Nor is any other golfer, apparently. Even though there are 70 million of us globally and a few hundred million sports fans who subscribe and also know there are 18 holes in a round.

What would be so terrible about playing to those global numbers?

Throughout the early episodes, peculiar introductions to pro golf land randomly in between genuine inside-the-ropes treats. It’s not long before it’s obvious the Full Swing format is nearly identical to Netflix’s new pro tennis show. Eventually there is a sense that a lot of smarter and edgier stuff was left on the cutting room floor in favor of painfully scripted explanations geared toward people too clueless to even know how to sign up for Netflix.

Kinda what I expected....

I expect that I will watch it, though I have not broached the subject with the aforementioned Employee No. 2.   It may be that I don't start it until I return to Utah a week from today, but I'll blog it if it seems interesting.  The best part of Shack's piece is that he concludes with this mini-review from Alan Tyers of The Telegraph:

In that spirit, and as a golf agnostic, let me say this: Netflix’s new series Full Swing aims to do for golf what Drive To Survive did for Formula One... but shanks it horribly off the tee, into a pond, tries to roll its trousers up and hit the ball out of the pond, falls over in the pond, gets into difficulty, needs rescuing by a frogman, eventually catches Weil’s disease and suffers massive organ failure and dies, horribly, propped up on an uncomfortable chintz banquette in a clubhouse being yelled at by a double-glazing salesman about how many miles to a gallon he gets in the Audi.

 I'm guessing he didn't like it, but it's hard t tell.

On that note I shall leave you until Monday.