Weekend Wrap - 47 of 47 Edition

How are you enjoying your offseason so far?  Better hurry up, because it's over in the blink of an eye...

A heads up to readers that this might be it for blogging this week.  Unless, yanno, something actually happens, and the chances of that are remote.

Call Sign Maverick - A mere 142 starts later, and the can't miss kid gets the dub:

It took 142 starts for the former top-ranked amateur in the world to win on the PGA Tour.

Maverick McNealy might tell you it was worth the wait.

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The 29-year-old pro birdied the 72nd hole to win the RSM Classic at Sea Island Golf Club in St. Simons Island, Ga., on Sunday, a victory that’s been years in the making for someone who several years ago left Stanford for the Tour and immediately became a up-and-coming name to know.

He’s been a full-time Tour player for the past five years, but in that span he’s had just two runner-up finishes and one third. That victory was still elusive, but he started this week’s season-ending RSM Classic with an eight-under 62 and suddenly was right where he needed to be. He was tied for the lead at 14 under heading into Sunday’s final round, still led by one at the turn but momentarily lost the lead on the back nine.

On 18, as the last one still out on the course, he had 5 1/2 feet to win, and he drained it.

Golf seemed to be an afterthought, as Mav was famous first for being Scott McNealy's spawn and secondarily for dating Danielle Kang.... Now perhaps an asterisk is warranted, because despite being home to many touring professionals, that leaderboard was a collection of guys still needing to earn their spot on a milk carton.

The Tour Confidential panel did call out Mav, though not to any benefit:

Maverick McNealy closed the 2024 PGA Tour season with the first victory of his career, beating three others by a shot at the RSM Classic on Sunday. What took the former top-ranked amateur so long to get his first title on Tour, and do you expect it to snowball into a breakout 2025?

Jack Hirsh: That seems like a loaded question. Winning is hard on the PGA Tour. We’ve seen numerous top-ranked amateurs get to the PGA Tour and never win, and we’ve also seen plenty who have gone on to have hall-of-fame careers. While he was dealing with an injury last year, he still played better in 2022 than he did this year, even with the win. I say it’s likely he wins again, but I don’t expect him to suddenly become a top-10 or top-20 player.

Josh Berhow: He’s kind of unique where he’s never been a star but has never really struggled to keep his PGA Tour card. He’s just been… pretty good: solid off the tee, not so great into greens and a very good putter. It was a matter of time. It’s not a fluke he had so much success at the collegiate level. The first one’s always the hardest. He’d definitely be a breakout contender for next year.

Alan Bastable: Golf’s a funny old game. Mav had six top 10s this season but also 13 missed cuts or withdrawals. Forecasting what players are capable of from one week to the next is nearly impossible. What a month for Mav, though! He helped mastermind the Tour’s recently announced revamp of its FedEx Cup points distribution system, and now he has his first Tour title. If only he’d lobbied the Tour to dole out more points for the RSM…

 Loaded?  Stupid?  You make the call....

After those five full-time years it seems pretty clear that Mav, while a really good player, isn't ever gong to set the professional golf world on fire.  Happy the young man got a win, but let's acknowledge this is effectively a Korn Ferry Tour-level win.

I watched a bit of the broadcast (the replay later in the day), flipping back and forth from the Packers game.  The broadcast seemed especially lifeless to me, as they couldn't even make the Darwinesque fight for survival interesting:

On Saturday night, not long after a disastrous double-bogey 7 had essentially derailed his chance of staying a full-time PGA Tour member in 2025, Joel Dahmen said the mood was somber.

“Funeral-effect,” he clarified.

Dahmen — the funny, fun-loving, self-deprecating 37-year-old pro — has turned into one of the most popular players on the PGA Tour over the last handful of years, but on Sunday he was in extreme danger of staying inside the top 125 at the season-ending RSM Classic, which is what he needed to do to hold onto a full membership for 2025.

Dahmen entered the week No. 124 in the FedEx Cup Fall standings, but after his late double on Saturday, in which he shot 70, Dahmen was projected to finish 128th in the standings.

That means he needed to do something special on Sunday — and his run started with one pretty spectacular shot.

Dahmen fired a six-under 64, a round that included no bogeys and a hole-out eagle from 110 yards on the par-4 13th, which was his fourth hole of the day. That ended a string of three straight pars and led to three straight birdies on 15, 16 and 17.

This is what the Fall portion of the schedule should be about, to the extent that it exists at all.  But save the crocodile tears, maybe that broadcast was lifeless for good reason:

6 notable players who lost their PGA Tour card Sunday

Depend hw one defines notable, no?

Francesco Molinari

The 2018 Open Champion has struggled in a major way ever since the final round of the 2019 Masters. He’s seemingly never been the same since dropping multiple balls in the water hazards on the back nine of Augusta National. Molinari played 15 times but never registered a top 10 on the Tour, finishing outside the top 190.

So, the first offering is a guy that hit his last good shot on the 11th hole at Augusta in April 2018.... Not sure they can top that.  What?  Sure, I'll be happy to hold your beer: 

Jimmy Walker

The 2017 PGA Champion hasn’t exactly been in hot pursuit of a PGA Tour card via the FedEx Cup Fall. He’s been spending more time playing in Europe, competing in the Irish Open and Spanish Open, where he finished in the top 15 both times. It’s possible we could see him take that form back to America next year, but he’ll have to luck his way into some tournaments first.

I'm more surprised that he's even still trying....

The TC gang weighed in here as well, and I'll leave that Wesley Bryan story to them::

Last week we found out (officially) that come 2026, only 100 players will earn full-time PGA Tour status. But for 2025, that magic number is still 125, and we learned those players at the season-ending RSM Classic on Sunday. Which player who made it just inside (or outside) that cut line was the most notable to you?

Hirsh: Has to be Joel Dahmen, who put together a Sunday 64 to finish No. 124 in the FedEx Cup. Dahmen has struggled with adjusting to his newfound fame since being a key figure in the

Netflix “Full Swing” docuseries. Having him on Tour makes for a much more entertaining, compelling and relatable product, so having him struggle to get into fields under the past champion category wouldn’t have been much fun. I still think his best years are yet to come.

Berhow: Yeah, hard to argue with Dahmen, since he was the biggest name within a few of that No. 125 spot. Two other young former college standouts, Parker and Pierceson Coody, both landed on the wrong side of that line, too.

Bastable: Must say, I didn’t foresee anyone in the Creator Classic field making a run at a Tour card, but that’s what Wes Bryan did, narrowly missing out by three spots. When Bryan took heat for playing in that hit-and-giggle event for influencers earlier this year, he tweeted, “Are there actually ppl mad that I’m playing in this event? I have filmed 100+ long form youtube videos over the last two years…missed almost every cut on the pga tour…and hardly ever practice.” Not exactly a recipe for Tour success. But Bryan still found a way to stay relevant until an MC this week doomed his card hopes.

Why this Fall was so much drearier than prior installments is hard to discern.  No doubt it's partially the result of the general zeitgeist.  These are the specific guys we've come to loathe, but the reduced field sizes pretty much ensure these guys have little chance of getting into those money grabs, so why invest the time in watching them?

Let me just throw in this last bit of fluff from the TC guys:

We’ll spend more time next month unpacking the year that was on the PGA Tour, but off the top of your head, what’s the one big thing you learned or will remember about the 2024 PGA Tour season?

Hirsh: Honestly, that a Tiger-like run is still possible. I think I had started thinking that the generation of kids who got into golf because of Tiger Woods had made the sport too deep for anyone to really go on a run of victories like he did nearly two decades ago. Scottie Scheffler disproved that theory this year. No, he didn’t win multiple majors like Woods did do so often, but until Scheffler’s 2024 no one had won seven times in a Tour season since Woods in 2007. And it’s not like Scheffler’s competition was weak, either. Sure, LIV Golf has taken away Jon Rahm, Cam Smith, Jaco Neimann and others, but Scheffler was winning against Xander Schauffele, who won two majors himself, week in and week out. Let’s not forget about that gold medal win, too.

Berhow: Scottie Scheffler will never go back to Louisville.

Bastable: Yeah, the Scheffler PGA fiasco will go down as the one of the wildest sports stories of all time, but still, this year might be remembered more for what happened off the course. Or, more the point, what didn’t happen. And that will continue to be the case until the PGA Tour and PIF finally strike a deal. The drawn-out negotiations have sucked so much oxygen out of the room. Total bummer.

Just a reminder that Scottie, as good as he is, won exactly one full-field event in 2024.   I know Tiger made bank with the WGCs, not to mention the five green jackets, but his big seasons were against more appropriate fields.

Introducing Jeeno - it was a great event with quite the dramatic denouement, but it will have exactly zero impact:

Jeeno Thitikul shocks Angel Yin for CME Group Tour Championship title, $4 million prize

The ladies just can't get arrested, perhaps they need to schedule an event in, checking notes, Louisville:

Angel Yin had a grip on the LPGA’s season-ending CME Group Tour Championship since Friday

afternoon, but finishing off a win for the largest prize in women’s golf isn’t supposed to be easy.

Especially when a former World No. 1 like Jeeno Thitikul is chasing you down.

Yin, one of the best putters on the LPGA Tour all season and had been even better this week in Naples, looked like she had locked up the massive $4 million payday when she took a two-shot lead to the 17th tee and knocked her third shot at the par-5 within five feet.

But, in an instant, the momentum that had been in Yin’s favor seemingly all weekend swung back toward Thitikul. The 21-year-old knocked it on the 17th in two and drained the eagle putt from about 15 feet before Yin pushed her birdie effort.

Then on 18, Thitikul threw a dart for an approach shot, landing her ball short of the hole and rolling it out to about five feet which she converted for birdie and a one-shot win at 22 under. She went eagle-birdie on the final two holes at Tiburon Golf Club for the second day in a row.

Angel made everything for almost four days, then made that one hinky stroke on No. 17....

Jeeno isn't exactly a household name, so another lost opportunity for the ladies.  She's such a strong presence that the TC gang only wanted to talk about that other girl:

Also complete is the 2024 LPGA season, with Jeeno Thitikul winning the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship. Nelly Korda tied for fifth to put a bow on a spectacular seven-win campaign. Quick: Will Korda match or surpass that season-win total again in her career?

Hirsh: I’ll go ahead and say it: yes! For as incredible as Korda’s season was, it was also kind of weird. She missed three cuts randomly in the middle of the season that included two majors, she took two months off between her first and second wins, she let chances to win the Open and Olympics slip away and she also dealt with some injury. As long as her mechanics stay intact, I could see her winning in bunches like this for a few more years.

Berhow: Yes. And boy, that sounds crazy to say, but I came to that conclusion in my head pretty quickly. I think she can keep getting better — as Jack mentioned, she had some weird things happen this year too — and I would not be a bit surprised to see her do this again.

Bastable: ​​Buzzkill Bastable says no. Seven wins is staggering, and the tour is only getting deeper, meaning victories will become increasingly harder to come by. As Jack notes, Nelly’s also been prone to injuries; winning in bunches requires staying healthy.

Nelly seems prone to all of the historic plagues, and a few she's made up on her own.  I have not the slightest clue what to expect from her going forward, but it might have been nice to demonstrate an awareness of more than just the one woman.

This lady offered one more example of her signature move:

Lexi Thompson has taken to social media to complain about not being able to finish out her LPGA career on the 18th hole at the CME Group Tour Championship on Sunday.

Thompson, 29, brought the curtain down on an 11-win LPGA career at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Florida.

'Pretty sad when you're at -4 in the season ending event, which could easily be the last CME of your career and you won't even finish on 18 because they decide to double tee on the final day due to TV coverage window,' wrote Thompson.

'Bummed I won't be able to embrace all the incredible fans on 18 tomorrow as I finish. Hopefully some will be out there on 9.

'But just know I'm grateful for you all.'

Let's see, what is it the3 cool kids say at times like these?  Oh yeah, play better!  Of course, that really goes for her entire career, so I'll not miss the mewling.  For the record, Joel Dahmen was also forced to play the nines reversed, but he just got on with things.... Lexi was always too delicate a flower for such a Darwinian world as professional sports.

We need an item to make us laugh, and this seems purpose suited to that task:

CME Group CEO grades LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan job performance A++

Hmmm, we wouldn't be grading on a curve now, would we?  Because there's some history here....

Because their relationship got off to quite the rocky start two years ago:

Former U.S. presidents, secretaries of state and business tycoons have presented at CME’s

conference, and for Tuesday night’s dinner, the firm typically invites a select number of players to attend. Earlier this week, when Duffy asked for the houselights to be turned on so that he could applaud the players in the room, the only people standing were those serving the tables.

Not a single player showed up.

“It’s an embarrassment to a company of my size and an embarrassment to me personally,” said Duffy, two days after the event.

Duffy’s beef isn’t with the players, though — it’s with who’s at the helm.

“I am exceptionally disappointed with the leadership of the LPGA,” he continued. “They better get their act together because they’re going to lose people like me over stuff like this.”

Not sounding so A++ to me.....

And even earlier this week:

Should anyone, though, be interested in watching Saturday’s third round of the CME Group Tour Championship on live television, they can’t. Coverage will be shown only on tape delay, from 4-7

p.m. ET on Golf Channel — and when the decision was brought up by a reporter, Duffy’s first thought was both unsurprising and four words long.

“That’s bulls**t, isn’t it?”

Talking to a small group on Wednesday, a day before the start of the tournament, Duffy then continued for about five minutes. He said he voiced his frustration to the LPGA’s commissioner, Mollie Marcoux Samaan, and hoped that she would “make that not be the case.” He also said he understood deals long in place (in 2020, the PGA Tour and LPGA agreed to let the men’s tour negotiate their domestic TV contracts jointly) and admitted he’s not “overly exercised” about the move and — but “I would hope that people would recognize that if you’re going to continue to build women’s sports, you have to give them the same billing as men and stop — stop — the nonsense of saying that, well, we have to show a men’s tournament because they’re the men.”

Who would be in charge of that kind of thing?  

Obviously the ladies are being graded on quite the curve.  

Golden Slumbers - i hate to give up that bit, but the man is retiring after all.  But he firs a shot across the bow of the professional game with this:

Billy Horschel wants to know how you view the current talks between the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and LIV Golf’s financiers, the PIF?

We’re not at the table. The current position of the professional game is very bad. We have created

a game that is immensely divisive. I’ve talked about the financial unsustainability of the professional game. I will stand by that and keep saying it. That has caused significant problems. The constant dialogue of money has damaged the reputation of the sport, which is one of the reasons why the public is not watching as much golf as they can. I truly hope that peace and stability is reached soon.

I have no problem with one tour or two tours. I grew up watching a game in which the European Tour was very strong. But there was stability, and the best played each other more than four times a year. I am more frustrated by the lack of progress there than in the other issues we have just discussed.

Yeah, we noticed as well.  Of course, perhaps he didn't get the memo explaining that the game can't grow unless Patrick Cantlay gets paid...

Although, in fact, this might be the more significant response:

This next question comes from Rory McIlroy: “Who are the people standing in the way of the changes you would like to make to the distance issue?”

(laughs) Thanks Rory. The decision has already been made.

I said you would never answer that question.

(laughs) I’ll be texting him later. The decision has already been made on the ball. The change is coming in 2028.

Is it enough?

[USGA CEO] Mike Whan was asked that question a couple of weeks ago, and he said he would like to have done more. I agree with him. We did propose a model local rule for elite golf, which would have gone further. But that was roundly rejected by the industry. That led us back to changing the ball for everybody and dialing back what we wanted to do. I’m not delusional enough to think what is coming in 2028 is a significant rollback. It will hold things where we are today. But that decision is made.

It's a done deal, though it's obviously not much of a deal.... If you dislike the tour pros because of the money issue, I'd suggest keeping some powder dry for their reaction on the distance issue, as well.

I'll discharge you here, and wish everyone a joyous Thanksgiving surrounded by family and friends.  See you down the road.

Thursday Themes - Ski-Season Edition

Perusing the near-term weather forecast yields one obvious conclusion, to wit, that yesterday's installment of the Wednesday Game™ is like the 2024 golf season's coda, all thirteen holes of it.  If golf has gone dormant, that means it's ski season...  My mountain opens Friday and I'll be on skis in less than three weeks.

So, what shall we talk about?  Good news, Shack has a rant up that will amuse.....

LIVification Proceeding As Ordained by St. Patrick - Our entitles touring professions don't do introspection or nuance, so they'll be rolling their eyes at Geoff's framing, if not his header troll:

PGA Tour Makes The Majors Even Better

News of reduced field sizes gives the impression of an insular enclave getting away from pure competition. Plus, Comcast is set to announce a spinoff of its major championship-hosting cable channels.

Shall we do the Community Notes thing?  To be clear, the PGA has done nothing to actually make the majors better, though they certainly have made them look and seem better by comparison.

But while PGA Tour events are a shell of their former selves that existed a mere three years ago, Geoff fires up the Wayback machine:

The peculiar-but-beautiful sport of professional golf kicked off 162 years ago with a mission to present an “open” competition.

At a time of outhouses, monthly baths, salt in lieu of ice and courtesy cars for no one, those wily Scotch-infused visionaries were more concerned with integrity than comfort.

“It was unanimously resolved that the Challenge Belt held tomorrow and on all future occasions,” said the closest thing pro golf has to scripture, “until it be otherwise resolved, shall be open to all the world.”

Until it be otherwise resolved, has arrived in 2024.

Shockingly, the game has grown since the above (the photo is of notes of a Prestwick meeting about the Open Championship from 1861, without the benefit of a cap or tam for Patrick Cantlay.  Hard to see how that could have happened....

On the surface, the reduction in PGA Tour field sizes and cardholders from 125 to 100 makes sense. But dig deeper and the moves appears to reduce competition all so a few players can continue taking their sweet time AimPoint’ing a two-footer.

Sorry, Geoff, there is no such surface.... It looks like an outrageous money grab from any vista I've found.

For a host of reasons once unimaginable to the golf world prior to LIV coming along, the PGA Tour is doubling down on something inching ever closer to exhibition golf. Since the all-exempt Tour started in 1983 with 125 cards, the organization has used the same general format and approach as the major championships: a field composed of stalwarts, journeymen, invites and qualifiers playing 72-holes with a cut.

While Tuesday’s announced changes remain far from emulating LIV’s 54-hole shotgun and advance money approach, the PGA Tour Policy Board’s approval inched the org farther away from something chock full of competitive sizzle. Reducing fields, eliminating Monday qualifiers, and keeping those pesky cuts away from “signature” events move the organization even farther away from the egalitarian nature of full-field golf tournaments. Tournaments where the occasional Cinderella story or a local upstart takes on a star, gives a global event something rich in character that no other sport can offer.

Continuing to chip away at the fundamentals may give fans the same sense they get watching the equivalent of best-of-three sets pro tennis. Just four times a year, (men’s) professional tennis plays best-of-five sets. Those two-week extravaganzas are seen as history-making tests. Not coincidentally, those are the only times large audiences still pay attention to tennis.

Our fishbowl is slightly different, in that ratings for our majors, while better than week-to-week events, are still pretty dreadful....  But the point remains that those four weeks (maybe with the Players Championship thrown in for good measure) represent the only remaining tests of golf.

The announced PGA Tour reductions were sold as a necessity due to offset slow play and competitions compromised by the inability to finish rounds before sunset or even to start them in the sunlight. But the idea that a smaller field will make things better for all lost credibility when Billy Horschel explained on the Monday Q podcast how increasingly longer days cut into stars doing proper post-round ice baths, massages and physio sessions.

Smaller fields should get around courses faster. But as Lucas Glover, Matt Fitzpatrick, Charley Hull and Nelly Korda have all vented in recent days, fundamental changes to tournament golf are coming without attempts being made at tougher pace-of-play enforcement. Perhaps the players who drove this shift are correct that a more leisurely tournament day will stave off additional LIV defections. And maybe the players—Woods, Scott, Cantlay, Simpson, etc. even feel bad shedding access to dreamers and upstarts. But how would we know? No one from the PGA Tour feels a need to speak publicly about the moves besides Horschel. And he often makes things worse.

To some extent this latest news is a red herring.  Don't get me wrong, that you would limit field sizes and Tour membership because these guys (and gals) can't get around a Florida golf course in much less than six hours is shake our fist at the heavens maddening, but the true evil is in those eight signature events.  That's where Patrick said "This is all mine", and seems to be getting what he wants.

Most fans may not initially sense the competitive erosion of reduced-field/no-cut events. (Even though we have the generally unsatisfying WGC model to remind us what happens with smaller fields and no cuts). With multiple metrics already hinting at a dwindling fan base caused by a wide array of factors—some out of the PGA Tour’s control—anything that chips away at a competitive edge in the name of comfort and cash seems shortsighted. Having their “product” seen as competitive and legitimate should be essential in the business of pro sports. Major League Baseball’s uptick in 2024 can be tied to speeding up, fine-tuning, and restoring lost elements of the game.

That’s the best news for PGA Tour fans who might be dismayed by a few players appearing ignorant of what inspired the idea of professionals gathering to play for money. It would not take much of a change in board structure or profound thinkers to realize a certain brand of golf ball is not the Hope Diamond. With a few tweaks and cattle prods for slow players, the PGA Tour could quickly restore tension, charm, and character in a fashion reminiscent of MLB’s renaissance.

This (former) fan does.... We can also dive a little deeper and note that the absence of a cut makes Thursday/Friday viewing relevant only for the players' immediate families.... 

As Geoff notes in his rousing coda, we'll always have Paris:

For now, fans can expect four weeks a year to deliver a worldwide gathering. One featuring a full field* of players who earned their way into the proceedings playing for history. There will be a cut. Stars. Dreamers. Surprises. Tension. Gratifying storylines. Four intense rounds to glory. More than ever, those weeks are called majors for good reason.

*And yes, I know the Masters field is not as large as the other three majors. Thank you.

Hey, at least they have a cut.  Unless you're a fan of watching direct deposits hit checking accounts, what is there to watch?

Media Upheaval - This had been hinted at, but apparently it's on:

Golf Channel to be spun off into new company

Golf Channel is getting a new home.

Comcast announced Wednesday that it is creating a new publicly traded company comprising a portfolio of NBCUniversal cable networks, which include USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, E!, SYFY and the Golf Channel. Several other digital platforms—which includes the tee-time aggregation site, GolfNow—will also be lumped into the venture.

The news isn’t a total surprise, as Comcast leadership had signaled to investors this was a potential move, although industry leaders remained surprised that the move came to fruition so quickly.

Although still profitable, cable networks have seen a sharp financial decline since the advent of streaming services like Netflix. According to the Wall Street Journal (which first broke the story), breaking off the cable channels into their own organization allows for future growth of the NBCUniversal brand.

The story is more about the reordering of the media landscape, the spots properties being an afterthought.  Amusingly, MSNBC (and NBC being in their name will likely become embarrassing, as they seem to have misplaced half their viewers since Nov. 5th) is more the issue, but here's a precis of the golf rights held by Golf Channel:

What this means for Golf Channel’s immediate outlook is unclear. Golf Channel and NBC (which is not moving to the new company) have PGA and LPGA media rights until 2030. The networks also have U.S. rights to the R&A’s Open Championship until 2039. In 2020, NBC also acquired the U.S. Open and other USGA championship rights from FOX that run until 2026.

However, Golf Channel has undergone serious cuts on production over the past several years. Additionally, the PGA Tour—which just opened its studio department this past season—has taken control of some of the broadcast for tour events. Under the newly-created for-profit PGA Tour Enterprises, the tour and its private-equity partners, the Strategic Sports Group, are looking to gather other golf-related properties. The tour purchasing Golf Channel has long been discussed, and this move will likely reopen those rumors. Two industry sources tell Golf Digest another media conglomerate could attempt to partner with or purchase the Golf Channel brand.

In 2020, Golf Channel moved from its Orlando, Florida headquarters to Stamford, Connecticut, sharing space with other NBC Sports properties. It will be marking its 30th anniversary next year.

Seems like Rachel Maddow is likely to be calling golf next year, no?

I haven't put much thought into this, but isn't the bigger issue where this leaves NBC?  Their contract also runs through 2030, and they have the two Opens as well.  But without Golf Channel to help amortize the cost structure, not to mention a place to throw the broadcast when it runs late, will they want to renew?   Jay did well to renew those contracts early, but they might want to focus on drawing an actual audience between now and then.

State of the Tour, Distaff Edition - How are the ladies doing?  Well, they've always been the3 gang that couldn't shoot straight, but there's pushback:

Did LPGA capitalize on women’s sports boom? Or did it fall short?

Is there a women's sports boom?  I mean that seems more assumed than proven by this:

Women’s sports is perhaps in its biggest boom. Clark has brought millions of eyes to the WNBA,

along with millions of dollars, and maybe most important, she’s had extended staying power, with her name being talked about for the better part of two years now. There were also the ever-popular Olympics this year. In golf, Korda has ascended into rare air. There are the wins — seven now, the most by an LPGA player since 2011, and the most by an American woman since 1990. But there’s her celebrity, too. Korda was at the Met Gala. She’ll be in the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. She’s potentially reaching the point where your non-golf friend has at least heard of her, and your golf pals could call her by just one word: Nelly.

Question is, then, did her tour capitalize on that moment, as Clark’s league did? Maybe you saw a WNBA game, maybe you didn’t. But at the very least you heard about Caitlin Clark, somewhere, somehow, along with some of the league’s other stars and teams.

The Caitlin Clark boom I see, it just seems limited to the one girl....

Our girls themselves give a more muted response:

Lydia Ko

This year, there’s been a good rise in interest in women’s sports, with Caitlin Clark, with your success, with Nelly Korda’s success, a lot more broadcasts. My question is, do you think the LPGA tour did a good job of capturing that moment?

“I think it’s going to be an answer that’s different for everyone, to be honest,” Lydia Ko said during a one-on-one interview after her press conference. “I don’t turn on and watch the coverage when I’m not playing, but I’m always looking at highlights. I obviously follow the LPGA social media so I see it with that, but I do believe that we’re getting better, and obviously within our tour, there’s just been so many great stories that have been shown. Yeah, I think with anything, nothing is perfect. We can always get better and improve. But I would never say that they did a bad job.”

I'll take that as a "no"....

No one writes more about the LPGA than Beth Ann Nichols, who has this about the Commish:

Nichols: At what feels like a tipping point for the LPGA, a closer look at the rocky tenure of commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan

 I'll skip the Caitlin hoodie misfire, but this is the case for MMS:

Yes, purses on the LPGA are at an all-time high. Major championship prize funds alone have

more than doubled since 2021 to nearly $48 million. Total prize money in 2024 topped $125 million, up more than 80 percent since 2021.

It might be tempting to underline those numbers and deem LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan’s tenure thus far a success. The sport, after all, seems to center around money these days.

Except that’s not the whole story. Far from it, in fact.

Do tell, Beth Ann, first revisiting that Solheim cock-up:

Coming off the dreadfully public transportation disaster at the Solheim Cup, which quickly escalated into a crisis-management catastrophe, it’s appropriate on the eve of the LPGA’s season-ender to dig a little deeper and attempt to answer a simple question: After more than three years at the helm, how is she doing?

First, it was always going to be hard to replace Mike Whan, a master communicator. The current USGA CEO, Whan announced his decision to step down as LPGA commissioner in January 2021 after a successful 11-year stint. Hired in May 2021 as the tour’s ninth commissioner, Marcoux Samaan didn’t actually get to work in her new role until August, and the first thing on her 100-day agenda was to listen and learn.

She'll segue to the bigger-picture issues, but the LPGA is ill-served demonstrating the same contempt for their fans we see from the4 PGA Tour.  When you have one job, you might want to focus on that one job...

Those bigger picture issues are far harder to assess:

Failure to breakthrough to the mainstream

At the 2023 CME Group Tour Championship, Marcoux Samaan called this a period of transformational growth for women’s golf. And yet, there’s little evidence that the LPGA has broken through into the mainstream at a time when female athletes are experiencing an unprecedented amount of exposure.

Even when World No. 1 Nelly Korda got off to an historic start to the 2024 season, her fame didn’t exactly explode. Domestically, the tour still lacks a bona fide household name.

Sure, but they never have broken through to the mainstream, and it's quite the hard sell.  I think they sometimes are so desperate for the trappings of mainstream success, that they often ignore the actual fans they have.

Then there's the issue of over-promising to get the job:

Promise of growth not being achieved

It’s not that the LPGA is struggling to stay afloat – which has been the case in the past – it’s that the tour’s not experiencing the transformational growth Marcoux Samaan preached.

The departure of Cognizant, a Fortune 100 company that was bullish on the LPGA from the start – signaled a red flag. The hope was that Cognizant’s leadership would sing the LPGA’s praises to other blue-chip companies and lead to organic growth.

Instead, they’re out after title-sponsoring four editions of the event, leaving the tour scrambling to back its own Founders Cup as the LPGA celebrates 75 years.

Always going to be a tough sell in a jammed sports calendar, but perhaps you might want to have actual busses for those actual fans that actually showed up at the Solheim Cup.  See what I did there  All the grandiose plans are great, but take care of business.

But here Beth Ann approaches the actual issue:

Players appreciate the focus on missed-cut money, free hotels and an increased health insurance stipend. But there’s a common refrain among many in and around the tour that they can’t articulate Marcoux Samaan’s overall vision. And when it comes to big-picture issues – such as the tour’s Gender Policy or its dealings with Golf Saudi and the potential of an LET merger – the tour lacks transparency and is slow to act.

Beth Ann wants the best for the ladies', and perhaps is pulling her punches here, because what she's describing is clear in this from presser:

Gender policy

Hailey Davidson, a transgender golfer from Florida, went through the second stage of LPGA qualifying this year, but missed the cut by six shots at Plantation Golf and Country Club in Venice, Fla. Forty-three advanced to the final stage next month.

Davidson, however, does have limited status on the Epson Tour for 2025. She’s the second transgender golfer to earn status on that tour, after Bobbi Lancaster did so 11 years ago. Lancaster never competed in an event.

The LPGA voted to drop its “female at birth” requirement in 2010. Marcoux Samaan has said that if there were updates to the policy they would come by the end of the year.

“I think we've made that clear that we've been using sports medicine experts, legal experts to analyze our policy over the course of the year and review our policy,” Marcoux Samaan said. “We're completing that review, and we'll make any updates for the policy by the end of the year, which is what we've told our players, and we've told them throughout the course of the year. We told them in the player meeting. We will make any updates to our policy by the end of the year.”

She's a leader for the current zeitgeist, in that she would rather be dead than rude.  That bit about allowing biological males into women's sports is an existential threat, but she'd rather ensure her welcome at all the fashionable cocktail parties.  Do her members see the train coming at them?  But she's hiding behind "medical experts", so is quite obvious not the leader that the ladies need.

Today In Global Warming - Since very hurricane and storm is used to support the spurious notion of anthropomorphic warming, I assume that this will be accorded the same treatment:

The Championship Course has been turned into a spectacular winter wonderland! Sadly, the first snowfall of winter has ruled out golf for the next few days but anyone taking to the links for some fresh air and exercise is being rewarded with stunning vistas, as these fabulous… pic.twitter.com/riiKM9wO46

— Royal Dornoch (@RoyalDornochGC) November 20, 2024

Glad to have solved global warming for y'all....

Dornoch is blessed with a famous microclimate in which golf can be played year-round.  And while I'm old enough to remember when we were sufficiently mature to treat weather as miserly weather,  those are no longer the rules.  

That's it for this week.  See you down the road.

Weekend Wrap - Time-Lapsed Edition

OK, my bad! I should have warned you that my Monday appointments would impinge upon the blogging schedule.... But we're all together now, which is the important thing.

The Week That Was - In light of my getting here on a delayed basis, I'll just utilize the action summary from Dylan Dethier's Monday Finish column, first from the Middle East:

–Rory McIlroy won the DP World Tour Championship, finishing his rollercoaster 2024 season with an exclamation point. “I’ve been through a lot this year professionally, personally,” he said. “It feels

like the fitting end to 2024.” While McIlroy acknowledged that even he will look back at this season with mixed feelings — the near-miss at the U.S. Open may never really leave him — this was a meaningful way to finish.

“I think I would have been miserable for a few weeks if I hadn’t won today,” McIlroy admitted. “It would have just added to the list of ones that I felt I let get away, and for one to not get away and to get over the line and be the final event of the year, it feels nice.”

He offered a fair appraisal of his year, too, in the context of the best players in the world.

“I know how people are going to view my year and I view my year similarly but at the same time, I still have to remember I won four times and I won a [sixth career] Race to Dubai. I accumulated a lot of big finishes and big performances, and the two guys that had better years than me have had career years. Xander [Schauffele] won two majors, and Scottie [Scheffler] won a Players and a Masters and an Olympic gold medal. They are the only two guys this year that I think that have had better years than me.”

This win was a testament to McIlroy’s longevity. It was also a reminder of what we have to look forward to next year.

Of course he did, because winning the season-long competition on a feeder tour is one of Rory's signature moves, along with his Masters back-door top tens.  But I'll focus you on that photo, first just to note that it's nice to see Rory pictured with his beautiful family, which we can only hope is as happy as they appear here.

What most folks will see as indescribably cute, Poppy holding up six fingers to celebrate his sixth such title, conveys to your humble blogger an age-group defying burn.  Of course, you can here me saying, "That's so great, Poppy, now show me how many Masters Daddy has won."  It's really Dylan that I'm speaking to, because he somehow takes Rory doing what he always does, and sees therein evidence that Rory will be a different guy in 2025.  Dylan, shall we agree to revisit that thought after the second week in April?

The Tour Confidential gang had similar thoughts:

Speaking of McIlroy, he beat Rasmus Hojgaard by two to win the season-ending DP World Tour Championship and clinch his sixth Race to Dubai title. Given his close calls over the past year — U.S. Open, Irish Open — how big was this victory to end the year and how important was it for his mojo heading into 2025: very little, somewhat, or a lot?

Sens: In the grand scheme, very little. McIlroy has won plenty of events during his 10-year major

drought. What he hasn’t won are the individual events he says mean the most to him. Maybe the swing changes he says he’s working on will get him over the hump this coming season. But I don’t expect another Race to Dubai title to get him past the mental-game issues that have pretty clearly been getting in his way in majors.

Colgan: Psychologically, I think it was a pretty big deal. I think his surprisingly emotional interview after the tournament proved as much to be true. But the bigger question — can he defeat the demons that cost him the U.S. Open and nearly cost him the title on Sunday? — remains unanswered heading into ‘25. I think that’s the bigger piece of it.

Melton: I don’t think it does a whole heck of a lot for his psyche considering winning these sorts of titles has never been the issue — it’s been winning in the four big ones. Another shiny trophy to add to the collection, but not the one he wants most. I don’t think this winning experience is gonna be make or break when it comes crunch time in the majors.

Rory has long been the psychological leader in the clubhouse, it's on green grass where he appears so suspect.  Hate to ask, but is Augusta National one of the courses on the TGL simulator?  Can I short the Boston Commons on DraftKings?   

Back to Dylan:

-With her win, Nelly Korda became the first player since 2011 to win seven times in an LPGA season and the first American since 1990. She’ll have one more chance to add to her total at the CME Group Tour Championship next week.

Just the most bizarre season I can recall from a professional golfer, covering the entire gamut of human experience, from dominance to ineptitude, as Dylan sums up here:

And with that, as we neared the conclusion of a year that had already included a half-dozen wins, a major, a horrifying 10, a series of shocking missed cuts, a Solheim Cup signature moment, a neck injury and even a literal dog bite, we saw a side of Korda we hadn’t.

But Charley Hull is here to solve our pace-of play issues:

Charley Hull ripped the LPGA’s woeful pace of play after Saturday’s round had her finishing in the darkness despite no significant delays.

“It was crazy,” Hull said of the third round, which she said took five hours, 40 minutes to complete. “I’m quite ruthless but I said listen, if you get three bad timings, every time it’s a two-shot penalty [and] if you have three of them you lose your tour card instantly. I’m sure that would hurry a lot of people up and they won’t want to lose their tour card.

“That would kill the slow play, but they would never do that.”

Almost six hours on a Florida golf course?  Shameful.

Lastly, despite the Euros and ladies putting up their alpha dogs, this result should be the more significant:

–Rafael Campos won his first PGA Tour event in fairytale fashion. He entered the week a new father; his wife Stephanie gave birth to their daughter Paola on Monday. But he also entered the week at No. 147 in the FedEx Cup and on the brink of losing his card; only the top 125 after next week’s RSM Classic receive full status for 2025.

OK, Rafa, enjoy your moment in the low winter sun, but Tiger and Rory now require you to crawl back under your rock.  It's for the good of the game, but we can't allow new talent to emerge, can we?

The State of Play -  It seems pretty obvious that a deal is coming, as per this from Dylan:

ONE MERGER UPDATE

Trump, Yasir and Jay.

On Friday, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan accepted an invitation to play golf with President-Elect Donald Trump at Trump International in West Palm Beach, Fla.

On Saturday night, Trump was spotted ringside at Madison Square Garden, where he was flanked by…Yasir Al-Rumayyan! The PIF governor and LIV chairman sat directly next to Trump throughout the evening.

What do these meetings, which were first reported by the Washington Post, actually mean? That remains to be seen, and perhaps not a whole lot. But it is a reminder that the next U.S. president is at the center of several Venn Diagrams involving professional golf, Saudi Arabia and U.S. politics.

But does anyone care?  Or have they sucked the joy out of it?

They're so far downstream in turning the PGA Tour into LIV that it may be too late:

Smaller fields, fewer tour cards are among sweeping changes approved by PGA Tour Policy Board

In late October, the PGA Tour Players Advisory Council officially proposed an eye-opening series of changes to the competitive structure of the tour that would shrink tournament field sizes, squeeze the number available tour cards, and diminish paths to the tour membership and participation everywhere from the Korn Ferry Tour to Monday qualifying.

On Monday afternoon, at the official session of the full Policy Board, those changes were approved. There was no indication in the tour's press release of vote totals.

Do women know about shrinkage?

While this guy has much to say of import, it's also a misdiagnosis:

Lucas Glover slams changes being voted on by PGA Tour Policy Board: 'They think we're stupid'

Oh, Lucas, it's so much worse than that.  They don't care whether you're smart or stupid, they've come to the conclusion that you're irrelevant.  So, good luck with that....

“I think it’s terrible,” he said. “And then hiding behind pace of play, I think challenges our intelligence. They think we’re stupid.”

Glover contends that 20 years ago when he was starting out on the Tour, there were no more than a handful of slow players. Now? “We have 50,” he said. “So don’t cut fields because it’s a pace of play issue. Tell us to play faster, or just say you’re trying to appease six guys and make them happy so they don’t go somewhere else and play golf.”

This is a sore subject with Glover, who notes he has been part of the “cool kid meetings and not in the cool kid meetings,” and points out the Tour’s job is to do what’s right for the full membership. “There’s 200 guys that this is their life and their job,” he said.

Gee, can we think of anyone that's driving this process and also plays at a pace slower than paint drying?  Yeah, him.

Eamon Lynch owed the folks at Golfweek an article, it's just a shame he didn't bother to think through his position on the current state of play:

Lynch: The PGA Tour’s board meeting will bring changes, but not yet to player entitlement or fans being shortchanged

 I do, however, like his lede:

Just days after the birth of his first child and on the brink of losing his status, career journeyman

Rafael Campos came up with a ‘Hail Mary’ moment on Sunday, winning the Butterfield Bermuda Championship to safeguard his job and punch his ticket to the Masters. Meanwhile, a yacht spin away at a boardroom in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, decisions were made Monday that ensure people like him will have fewer pathways to the Tour, less opportunity to use any card they earn, and dim prospects of keeping it.

The past 24 hours could hardly have produced a more jarring juxtaposition between the marketing romanticism of the PGA Tour and its modern, miserly reality.

Miserly seems entirely the wrong word, given that last few years have been about directing boatloads of money to certain players.  But guys like Campos have no place in the game according to the cool kids.

Eamon is best at the diagnosis:

Changes in the administration of the Tour — the addition of private investors and the rise of players who fancy themselves such — mean the boardroom is now more likely to revere Warren Buffett than, say, Arnie or Jack. Buffett has often said that price is what you pay and value is what you get, and much of what was being deliberated today focused on whether there’s sufficient value in what they’re paying for. Even if not every constituency is being subjected to the same metrics.

Rank-and-file members didn’t emerge well from this meeting. Beginning in 2026, field sizes will be reduced, the ranks of exempt players will be cut, and the number of Korn Ferry Tour grads and Monday qualifiers will be slashed. The dominant (and wholly defensible) sentiment is that too many guys are paid too much for too scant a contribution to the business, so the herd must be culled. And to be fair, some of the player-directors who made these calls are almost certainly going to find themselves on the wrong side of the cull soon enough.

But here's where Eamon seems to have checked his cynicism.  Because he seems to be calling out Webb Simpson and Peter Malnati, ignoring that those votes were bought with sponsors' exemption, protecting the voters from market realities.  Not a corrupt bargain at all....

And here his ire seems misdirected:

Also on the agenda was tens of millions of dollars of budget cuts, what private equity likes to call “efficiencies.” Addressing bloat and waste is a long overdue exercise in this organization, but many of those who work at the GloHo deserve more defenders than they’ll see when the axe starts swinging. The operations and culture of the Tour — a mix of competence, complacency and conceit, depending on who you’re dealing with — is overdue a shake-up, but people who’ve done a good job will still be hurt. Cuts ought to be with a scalpel to safeguard talent, growth and revenue, but those decisions are now heavily influenced by folks accustomed to using chainsaws, and who have a great deal of experience in sports but none in golf.

I personally am completely prepared to have them take a chainsaw to the layers and layers of suits at the amusingly-named GloHo.....  If this isn't a candidate for "Bild Back Better", then I can't think of one.

Although Eamon might want to see someone about his TDS:

Another cost-versus-value analysis will focus on the Tour’s potential deal with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Are player-directors willing to accept things like team golf and no reparations from LIV defectors in return for a smoother pathway to reunifying the game? They must surely grasp that an opportunity now presents itself in the form of a stubby Cheeto thumb eager to tilt the scales of the Department of Justice in favor of whoever is most flattering, though it’s a pity the Tour lacked PIF’s foresight to lob a couple billion bucks into Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners hedge fund.

Eamon, thank you for sharing your unctuous virtue signaling with us, though it's really kind of juvenile.  Yes, a Trump Justice Department will be different from the Biden version thereof, but notice how Eamon skirt the issue of whether there are actual antitrust issues?  He doesn't even know how he would have them react, he just desperately needs to signal that Orange Man Bad!

I'm guessing Eamon will have a tough four years, but it's quite the stretch to see any valid anti-trust issues here.

His cri de cœur is great and will have us all nodding along:

For all the changes approved today, this final Tour board meeting of 2024 won’t address two painful necessities. At some point, the board needs to face down the entitlement of top players, whose compensation seems only to rise even while the stock of their enterprise craters. And they’ll have to get real about serving the constituency that actually gives (fans) rather than just the one that takes.

If they’re confident that their decisions will produce an enhanced product for long-suffering fans, then it’s about time one of them peeked around the boardroom door and began explaining how.

The problem is there isn't the slightest clue from Eamon as to how to achieve wither of his two laudatory objectives.  And those most entitles have been handed the keys, so good luck with it all.

That will have to due for today.  I've got some open browser tabs to blog, so we'll catch up later in the week.

Thursday Threads - Patrick's Revenge Edition

I'm sure you remember the rules.  When they tell you it's about the money, it's about the money.  On the flip side, when they tell you it isn't about the money, that's when it's ALL about the money.

Thanksgiving Comes Early - Perhaps a Christmas reference might have been more apt, yanno a certain hatless wonder apparently being, to my surprise, not on the Naughty list:

Patrick Cantlay gets his way – US Ryder Cup players are going to be paid

Lest you assume that it's just your humble blogger flailing at his favorite piñata, that's from the Telegraph, specifically the curmudgeonly James Corrigan.

America’s Ryder Cup players are on course to be paid for the first time, in a break from a near 100-year tradition.

Team USA are in line to receive almost £4 million collectively for next year’s showdown in New York.

The organising body of the American team has drawn up proposals that would see its golfers paid directly for the first time in the match’s 97-year history. It is understood that a figure of $400,000 (£315,000) for each player has been put forward and insiders say it is likely to be ratified at board level.

Certainly, the United States officials will not want any repeat of the unseemly episode in which Patrick Cantlay was accused of not wearing a USA cap in protest at the lack of financial rewards – a mini-mutiny that Cantlay vehemently denied waging – and the European galleries responded to the story by waving their own hats and ridiculing the inscrutable Californian.

I for one am quite excited, because I've been reliably informed that the game of golf can only grow if Patrick gest paid.  And the last few years have been about little else...

Of course, it's not just the one guy:

But this time around, it seems that unless there is an about-turn, the increased handouts will go

straight to the individuals on Keegan Bradley’s home team. Of course, sound PR dictates that the players would pledge to divert the funds to good causes, but the crucial difference is that it would be solely up to them and their accountants and that all these years later, Woods would finally be getting his wish.

“I would like to see us receive whatever the amount is – 200, 300, 400, 500,000 dollars, whatever it is – and I think we should be able to keep the money and do whatever we see fit,” Woods said towards the end of the last century.

“Personally, I would donate all of it to charity. But I think it’s up to the other person’s discretion what they would do with it. With all the money that’s being made, I think that we should have a say in where it goes.”

To be fair (Ed.: Why start now?), the context for Tiger was a lot different, predating the sell-out of the Tour's rank and file, not to mention the egregious PIP Program.

Shockingly, Geoff Shackelford has thoughts on this, including that killer bit I've kept under wraps for a few 'graphs:

While we’ve known pay-for-play was inevitable after 2023’s dust-up involving hatless Patrick Cantlay, demands of Netflix back end points, blah, blah, and blah, two key details from the latest reporting could dramatically change the match atmosphere.

• Corrigan’s Telegraph report says, “There are no plans for European players to be paid to appear.”

• The PGA of America is charging a record-price for general admission tickets which have now reportedly sold out (more below).

But Geoff might be underplaying the distinctions, because not only are the Euros apparently to not be paid, they actually don't WANT to be paid:

“They can do whatever they want,” one Europe player told Telegraph Sport. “But we don’t want payments in our bank accounts, as it’ll be the thin end of the wedge and is not what the Ryder Cup is about.

Wow, wish we had a name, because we may have identified the anti-Cantlay.  In case the idiom is new to you:

"The thin edge of the wedge" is an idiom that refers to the beginning of a minor change that could lead to a more serious or unpleasant development. For example, you might say "The bank's decision to raise rates could be the thin end of the wedge if other banks follow along".

So, a player is actually wondering whether an action beneficial to himself might actually be destructive of the larger enterprise.  Sheesh, this is professional golf, there's no room for that around here.

I do acknowledge that the event is massive, and the PGA of America has certainly brought on the scrutiny with its ticket pricing, but this still seems profoundly counter-productive.  Geoff does a deepish dive on those ticket prices, and for sure it's a s**tpile of filthy lucre:

With a purported sell out of the Ryder Cup’s Friday, Saturday and Sunday match days, this would mean the PGA of America sold around 120,000 tickets at $750 a piece despite the backlash. Pretty impressive.

That $90,000,000 must look swell in the depleted accounts.

I know, that's buy Patrick a lot of hats.  

They seethe with anger as their alleged financial mistreatment, but is the PR hit worth it for an additional $350,000 in the pockets of each of the top twelve American golfers?  Shack analogized it to change in the sofa cushions, but it's clearly an amount of money for which they would refuse to get out of bed.

Geoff hints at a potential outcome that mirrors my experience at recent cups:

Pay for (American) players was inevitable. But in the current environment, where eight times as many people will watch a rerun of Die Hard than a round of PGA Tour golf, their timing could not be worse. The two PGA organizations and assorted hanger-on types apparently couldn’t convince the players to put this scheme on ice to help rebuild their images as athletes. Meaning: the pay-for-play demand could deliver an unprecedented wrinkle to 2025’s matches. As the visionaries who pushed for this think they’re now Goldman-partner material for negotiating pay out of the PGA of America—even as they had all the leverage—the potential backlash could play a factor in the matches.

Even if you fall into the camp of wanting to see players compensated for putting themselves on the line during the intense biennial matches, the contrast of one side playing for money and the other playing for the love of competition might have an unimaginable impact on fan partisanship. It’s not as if the folks attending will be there after paying bargain basement prices…

At the last two away Ryder Cups I found myself rooting for the Euros by Friday afternoon, just because the U.S. guys were such asshats.  At Bethpage it appears I might not even hold out that long...

Geoff also amuses himself about ticket sales, posting this from the PGA of America:

Don't hold back, Geoff, tell us what you really think:

Social media rage unfolded Wednesday when fans were emailed their turn in line for expensive Ryder Cup tickets—only to be redirected to inflated resale options on official site Seatgeek—the PGA of America announced the event was sold out.

The statement above, which exudes as much joy as a ransom note, claims more than 500,000 people from 47 countries registered interest in tickets to next year’s matches.

But there is a dreaded but. Anyone who waited the 20-30 minutes (as I did for the opportunity), may have noticed:

• Tickets are still widely available for the practice days at face value.

• There are few resale options on the Seatgeek but there are some pricey official packages that were there since the beginning of the ticket sales process.

• Resale prices on a competing resale, Stubhub, are lower and more plentiful despite not being an official partner of the Ryder Cup.

As you can imagine, fans who waited “in line” for their chance were not pleased with a redirect to prices in the $1300-before-fees range. They let the PGA know it on the above post and also subsequently took to Twitter.

And a helpful reminder of what that $1,300 actually buys:

It remains shocking to see these prices for what is essentially a standing-room-only ticket with there is no guarantee of seeing a shot.

I'm pretty excited.  How about you?

Will Work For Food -  I didn't see this one coming, but I guess he needs to get out of the house:

Paul Azinger is returning to the broadcast booth in 2025.

Golfweek has learned that the 64-year-old former 12-time PGA Tour champion and winner of the 1993 PGA Championship will replace Lanny Wadkins, who announced his retirement on Friday,

as the lead analyst on Golf Channel’s coverage of PGA Tour Champions for 10-12 tournaments next season as part of a one-year deal.

“It’s not like a full-time gig or anything, which I don’t want, but to be able to go in there and part-time some golf, some really great golf, it’ll be kind of fun,” Azinger told Golfweek in a phone interview on Monday. “I’ll just be as candid as I can and enjoy it.”

Peter Jacobsen and John Cook will split time in the analyst chair when Azinger is off. [Cook will serve as on-site walking reporter when he’s not an analyst.

It probably makes sense for all concerned, but it's quite the demotion from the big chair he once occupied.  But the audience is measured at the low three figures, so we can move on.

Synergy, Baby! - It's all good fun and a welcome bit of PR juice for the LPGA, though you know there's a "but" coming....

Caitlin Clark mania in full force on LPGA as WNBA star plays alongside Nelly Korda, Annika Sorenstam

Caitlin Clark mania descended upon the LPGA Wednesday, transforming what’s normally a

sleepy pro-am day into a must-see event. After splitting her 18-hole round alongside World No. 1 Nelly Korda and Annika Sorenstam, Clark made her way to the rope line behind the 18th green at Pelican Golf Club to sign autographs. The frenzied crowd swarmed to get to her, holding out posters, jerseys and basketballs.

Security officials encouraged everyone to relax amidst the crushing support. The crowd following Clark’s foursome on Wednesday was larger than what many final-round groups attract on the LPGA.

From the moment Clark stepped on the first tee just before 7 a.m., fans lined the fairway for a rare close-up view of the WNBA superstar.

It was all good, or at least mostly good:

Caitlin Clark shanks tee shot, nearly hits fans at LPGA's The Annika pro-am

Can one actually shank a driver?   

Golfweek has pictures of the two girls that we apparently need to see:

I actually wasn't sure which of the two was taller, but I'm thinking that these pictures will get more hits:

The Debbie Downer note is this from Shack, though Beth Ann Nichols does her best to elide this thought:

🏌️‍♀️Beth Ann Nichols on Caitlyn Clark’s pro-am appearance drawing a larger crowd than many LPGA final groups.

Given the apathy for men's professional golf, we have to stay realistic about prospects for the ladies.  But Clark has certainly blown through expectations for women's basketball, but golf is the Come of Silence of the sports universe.

That'll have to do for today.  We'll catch up again next week, assuming there's something to discuss.  Have a great weekend.