Thursday Thoughts - Dog Days of August Edition

Are you hyped for East Lake?  Let me know when you're finished laughing and I'll go on....

Scenes From East Lake - We'll start with some minor bits that caught my eye.  First, this amusing (and tongue-in-cheek) whine:

The tournament trophies, the season-long awards, and the stats all say the same thing: Scottie Scheffler has been the best golfer on the planet for the past three years. And it's not even close.

But during his Tuesday press conference ahead of this week's Tour Championship, the World No. 1 sounded like every weekend hacker out there. Why? He was just another golfer bitching about how many strokes he has to give his friends on the course.

"Depends on the game, but at home I'm typically playing to a plus 7," Scheffler said. "I used to be a plus 5. They moved me to a plus 7. So now we've got guys in the group that are getting like two strokes a hole."

Ironically, this is being discussed on the one week a year in which Scottie gets strokes, as many as ten, from the best players in the world.  

It's a new, or newish, East Lake:

Architect Andrew Green offers fresh challenge at restored East Lake for Tour Championship

 Really?  Because it's got a Deja Vu feel to it:

PGA Tour adds internal OB at East Lake after Scottie Scheffler discussed shortcu

And that's without Bryson in the field.... Nothing to see here....

And then there's our Jay, winning hearts and minds every time he opens his mouth.  First, on the topic of greatest interest:

But one subject Monahan gave very little clarity on, despite being asked four questions on the

matter, was the status of the negotiations between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

“We’re at the table and actively engaged with the Public Investment Fund,” Monahan said in his opening statement, echoing previous hesitancy to update on the talks directly. “We remain hopeful about that outcome. But at the same time, we’re moving forward at speed and focused on what we can control, because that’s what we owe to our fans.”

“That’s a direct result of dialogue and conversation and really starting to talk about the future, future product vision and where we can take our sport,” he said. “I think when you get into productive conversations, that enhances the likelihood of positive outcomes, and that enhances the spirit of those very conversations.”

As of now, Monahan said there is no deadline to come to an agreement or drop the framework altogether.

Gee, Jay, if we're talking about obligations to fans, I might have been tempted to start with honesty and clarity, not to mention a watchable product.  But, hey, why start now?

Eamon Lynch has thoughts, frames as usual in imaginative fashion:

”I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank piña coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters,” Bill Murray rants about the repetitiveness of his existence in the movie “Groundhog Day.” “That was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over?”

Jay Monahan’s groundhog days also lack lobster, piña coladas and escapades worthy of frisky marine mammals. Instead, his involve press conferences in which he repeatedly declines to answer questions about the one subject folks wish to hear from him on: the state of negotiations with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. Wednesday brought another of those at East Lake Golf Club during the commissioner’s press briefing at the Tour Championship, the transcript of which will show considerable overlap with his last one, at the Players Championship in March, and with his appearance here last year. That Monahan has actually offered more detail on the talks than his PIF counterpart, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, counts for naught since MBS’s bag man doesn’t make himself available for questions and is held to different standards in many matters, not least transparency and accountability.

OK, I have to ask, how exactly do sea otters make love?  To be fair, Yasir hasn't been any less available to the press than a certain Presidential candidate, but I'll move on.

But Eamon has a singular focus, and I agree with this up to a point:

But one comment that passed largely unnoticed in Monahan’s prepared remarks hinted at a shifting reality. “We now have the structure and the resources we need to define the future of professional golf on our terms and the significant support of a world-class group of investors,” he said, referring to Strategic Sports Group, which injected $1.5 billion into the Tour in January.

Humorist Will Rogers once described diplomacy as the art of saying “nice doggie” until you find a rock. In SSG, Monahan found his rock. It provided him something the Tour didn’t have a year ago: $1.5 billion worth of options.

I don't know about those "structures" especially when one looks at the extra-judicial way in which Tiger was added to the Board.  But, yeah, they got a shit-pile of cash, with maybe more on the way.  But, Jay, how's that burn rate looking?

I would have like him to expand on this:

To be sure, there are weeks when the PGA Tour’s product struggles to breathe, but by comparison, LIV’s is in hospice care. It has an audience that could be comfortably accommodated in one of East Lake’s hospitality suites (as long as there’s wifi for online trolling), zero market traction, expensive contract renewals looming, all while being hostage to capricious internal politics in Riyadh. Monahan can be forgiven for thinking his hand is strengthened as time passes.

I might have gone with a Cone of Silence analogy, given that they're not even competitive with pickleball in the ratings... But the larger point is that struggles have been concentrated in their Signature Events, yanno, the ones they tell us are designed specifically for the fans.  But what to conclude when the dogs simply refuse to eat the dogfood?

Geoff takes his shots at the Commish, and it's quite a bit of fun:

The Creator Classic was not even close to the most embarrassing thing Wednesday at the PGA Tour’s second most important tournament. Jay Monahan held a laborious press conference and the re-re-re-remodeled East Lake already required last minute internal out-of-bounds to protect humans from monster drives which, you guessed it, Jay Jay really wants to keep happening for his friends in Fairhaven. Or, whatever shallow reason.

Thankfully, we are all still basking in an amazing major championship year to keep spirits up while recalling how some organizations get it, and, well, then there’s the PGA Tour.

The lavishly-compensated leader of two PGA Tour operations wheeled out some gobbledygook, vanilla corporatespeak, earnings call elusiveness and authentic frontier gibberish to pay homage to his predecessor. In many ways, you can’t blame him. An $18 million comp package (as of the last 990) and free jet rides to Steamboat would have most of us obfuscating during one of two annual Q&A sessions.

Furthermore, the Commissionership is now about pandering to a few egomaniacal players who approve his job status. So that means you get LOL stuff like the Commish breathlessly saying how all of the Tour’s Boards displayed devotion to country and cash by showing to a meeting in Memphis. Then again, no one in their right mind willingly goes to Memphis in August. So he does have a point.

So Patrick was there?  Nice, although not sure he's on board with the country thing....Yanno, unless he gest paid to wear a cap with USA on it.

But for the few who sat through the inane press conference had to feel dirtier and insulted since everyone was sold on a coming merger with LIV that’s not close to happening. Yet players had their biggest and best moments in majors featuring full fields, 36-hole cuts, and when non-PGA Tour organizations did their best to put on a competition of integrity. These events were contested over venues featuring elaborate preparation work by setup and agronomy teams as thousands of volunteers put in hours of thankless work to make these weeks go.

So instead of learning valuable lessons from what still works, the PGA Tour keeps chipping away at their brilliant model by continuing the response to Saudi Arabia’s disruptive golf league by embracing what LIV does. It’s a shame.

Yeah, it's a bit difficult to understand, but only on the surface.  You'd think the demise of the WGCs combined with the unwatchability of the LIV events would serve as a cautionary tale, but only if you take Jay's pontification about the fans seriously.  As Eamon Lynch once said, the problem was never the source of the Saudi money, rather it was always about the recipients.  Now that Patrick is getting his, it's all good (at least until; they burn through that $1.r billion large).

But here's where Geoff strikes gold (and sounds very much like your humble blogger);

What was the one substantial thing Monahan said Wednesday?

“Fridays are one of the most important days on the PGA Tour,” he said in answer to a question about experimenting with telecasts this fall. “We’ve got more than half the players that don’t make it to the weekend.”

Eh, em. Aren’t you the organization that began reducing field sizes and eliminating Friday night cuts? Or instituting meaningless cuts at meaningful events to appease those pesky troublemakers Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus and their 33 majors?

This year showed us how the traditional way of doing things still works and grabs huge audiences. Fans, sponsors and players are still drawn to the weeks when the competition is pure, difficult and featuring a satisfying culmination where many elements come together in honor of the past while creating new legends.

Maybe the Friday comment was a slip by Monahan? More likely it’s just a sign the organization is confused these days and not to be trusted with the keys to the sport.

The absence of a cut removes any reason for a sentient human being to watch the tournament on Thursday and Friday.  They keep demonstrating their contempt for golf fans, and then are shocked when those fans make other arrangements.... Go figure.

But wait, it gets worse:

Monahan and lieutenant Tyler Dennis delivered more evidence on that front by continuing to signal contempt for the Rules of Golf. They also magically forgot basic facts in answer to a question about distance. The irony of their stance was also missed.

Within minutes of the Tour putting out a statement about adding last-minute out-of-bounds at East Lake after a few players signaled intent to play down other fairways with their juiced drivers, the Tour brass indicated a lack of willingness to accept updated testing rules in 2028.

This comes even after a five-year “Distance Insights” process led to a watered-down final decision. One abandoning the driver as a target for restoring the skill of solid strikes while getting the start date pushed back two more years. Yet the PGA Tour is still sifting through the distance data they supplied for the various studies even after the designated and agreed-upon comment period has long ended. Dennis was involved in the process throughout, yet they are still not sure the Tour can go along with the decision.

Geoff has the receipts, posting a transcript of the back and forth with Tyler Dennis.  It's all interesting and could involve a civil war amongst the golf organizations, although that assumes any of us would still be watching professional golf in 2028.  I recommend taking the under on that, as they seem hell bent on ruining it all, perhaps with the exception of the majors.

Today In Golf Ratings - Also from Geoff, a factoid on the dogs and their food:

Last year’s AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath was not exactly a ratings killer, so the 42% increase in average audience size for the 2024 edition only had room to grow. Still, even with NBC’s diminished marketing muscle and minimalist broadcast, a strong leaderboard and close finish drew a solid 950,000k average for Sunday’s final round according to SportsMediaWatch.com. Saturday’s third round averaged 547,000.

The increase is also revealing given how the PGA Tour once again delivered a big decline for the BMW Championship. Get ready for plenty of 228i Gran Coupe spots in the coming months.

According to SMW, the BMW final round averaged 2.45 million viewers on NBC even after the strong Women’s Open lead-in. That’s down 19% from last year (3.03 million) and the smallest audience for the event since 2017.

BMW third round action was down 14%.

There is absolutely no truth to rumors that going from historic, awe-inspiring St Andrews to a suburban Denver flower nursery cost the broadcast 500,000 sensible viewers.

Heh!  Yanno, I could give them pointers on effortless segues....

Am Golf Venue Bliss - I actually feel a little bad about the inadvertent trashing of Castle Pines above.  It's not a bad place for a regular Tour event.  In fact, they used to have a perfectly fine event there, but Nurse Ratched sacrificed it to the Gods of FedEx.

But venues matter so not this:

Originally named “The Women’s International Cup” and dating to informal matches starting in 1905, the Curtis Cup Match between USA and Great Britain came into the competitive golf world in 1927. The matches became a biennial competition in 1932 thanks to sisters and U.S. Women’s Amateur champions Harriot and Margaret Curtis. They subsidized the Paul Revere silver bowl held by the winning team and inscribed it, “To stimulate friendly rivalry among the women golfers of many lands.”

The Americans own a 31-8-3 leading record in the competition turning up at historic Sunningdale Golf Club’s Old Course this week. The Willie Park Jr. design opened in 1901 and will be set up at 6,488 yards and par 72.

Willie Park, Jr. designed, but Harry S. Colt tweaked, quite the daily double.  There is some Golf Channel coverage:

Sunningdale Old is no East Lake, thankfully.

Then this:

Royal Dornoch has been announced as site of the 45th Curtis Cup in 2028. The brilliant Scottish Highlands links will be hosting its first team event after recently hosting the 2022 Women’s and Men’s Senior Amateurs won by Terrill Samuel and Mike McCoy. The esteemed course designed primarily by Old Tom Morris, John Sutherland and George Duncan, and is where Donald Ross served in many roles before emigrating to America has also hosted the 1985 Amateur Championship and 2023 Scottish Men’s Amateur.

“As a Club, we want to support the highest level of amateur golf and believe our Championship Course will provide a fitting platform for the players,” said Neil Hampton, General Manager at Royal Dornoch. “The Curtis Cup is also going to be a tremendous occasion for the local area. With the Championship Course consistently ranked highly in global standings and the investment in our infrastructure as we build a new clubhouse, a match of this standing and stature will only enhance the reputation of Royal Dornoch, the town and the local area.”

Played out and back with a brief sojourn up a gorse-covered hill to recently updated holes, the great links rose to international prominence after Herbert Warren Wind penned a New Yorker feature that inspired Sandy Tatum and Tom Watson to pay a visit. Lorne Rubenstein subsequently documented his time there in the recently re-released A Season in Dornoch.

This was that New Yorker feature, sadly now behind a paywall, which was exactly how I became aware of Dornoch.  It's far too remote to host any events with a big footprint, but this is perfect.  And the future venues are pretty boss as well:

The 2026 Curtis Cup will be contested at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles.

In June, 2030, The National Golf Links of America will host. In 2034, Pine Valley Golf Club will welcome the teams.

Quotable - Caught this from Geoff.  Wouldn't you think that if you're putting all your eggs in eight baskets, that the scheduling of those eight would be, well logical?  Not only were the guys forced to go to Hartford after the last two U.S. Opens (no short journey from LACC in 2023), but they just had to force the Memorial into the week before the U.S. Open:

Scottie Scheffler on the year and scheduling. “I played Memorial the week before the U.S. Open, and Memorial is basically as close to a U.S. Open test as we see on Tour, and I think it kind of wore me down going into that major championship.”

If they were trying to destroy the PGA Tour, what would they do differently?   I think Jack should have told Jay where to stick it, but he's more polite than your humble blogger.  

That's it for today.  Not sure whether I'll blog tomorrow, but do check in just to be safe.