Weekend Wrap - Peace In Our Time Edition

Always a sad time on the golf calendar as we segue into ski season.  This weekend was our last with pristine greens, as the crews are descending upon Greenwich, CT and the punching will commence at daybreak.  

I spare you most details of my own games, though yesterdays round, played in cold, blustery conditions, began in amusing fashion.  I walked off our sixth green realizing that my card included five bogeys and an eagle....  Yeah, it's a funny game.  But there was a pure 8-iron to 3 1/2 feet whose memory will keep me warm all winter.

Shall we get to business.  I awoke thinking this would be a cobbled-together post with items of marginal interest.  On the contrary, it seems that our world is about to be rocked, but you wouldn't know it from any of three major golf websites/magazines.  Seriously, the lede is a photo of Charlie Hull and a camel:

I believe that's Charlie in the blue top....

Golf Digest has an item on using the rules to lower your scores, and Golf.com uses their Tour Confidential feature as the lede, but their writers are amusingly out of the loop these days.

You've seen the HE-Jay pairing (don't know what that "HE" means?  Stay tuned) at the Dunhill.  There apparently was another such pairing in Saudi Arabia, and this as well:

Another meeting between the PGA Tour and PIF leaders? Both just attended the same conference in Saudi Arabia

I shan't leave you in suspense any longer, per The Sun our long national nightmare is apparently about to end:

ON PAR: Golf’s civil war OVER as Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods help negotiate £1BILLION peace deal between PGA Tour and LIV Golf

LIV put on 14 events this year but their tournaments will now come under the PGA umbrella

Phil hardest hit?  If only....

Rebel tour LIV’s Saudi Arabian backers are poised to cough up the staggering fee to become part of the PGA Tour circuit.

The money will give Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, who bankroll the breakaway LIV Golf, an 11 per cent share in the Tour.

In return they will get two places on the PGA Tour board — including the post of chairman.

Superstars Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy have played key roles in the peace talks.

The deal still has to be approved by PGA players but they are expected to agree.

Only $1 billion?  Kind of a distressed deal, no?

But, lest you be worried about how this will affect Patrick, no need to fret:

The sweetener for golfers who stayed loyal to the PGA Tour is likely to be another massive cash injection into the £1.2bn fund created this year to reward those players.

The DP World Tour will also benefit, as their ‘strategic alliance’ with the PGA Tour will be reinforced, with extra cash diverted for prize money.

Yeah, I'm guessing they'll get Patrick's vote.

This is as good a time as any to allow the stenographers at Golf Magazine to show how out of the loop they are, from this week's Tour Confidential panel:

Amid golf’s continued divide, there was another reported meeting last week between PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF boss Yasir Al-Rumayyan. How significant is this news in the interest of a deal being completed? A little? Or a lot?

Berhow: I’m bored with this. They have jets and can meet whenever they want.

Sens: Word is they were just trading casserole recipes. I read that on social media, so it must be true. Come to think of it, maybe they should try sharing a potluck meal. None of these other meetings seem to be leading anywhere

Bastable: Right. I think we’re all at or well past the point at which only an official announcement about the PGA Tour and PIF’s path forward together will get our attention. Fans are frustrated, jaded, disenchanted. Even when a deal is hammered out and presented, it’s going to take a long time to re-engage those fans who have walked over the past couple of years. I, for one, remain hopeful, though. There are too many smart people in the room — and the stakes are far too high — to screw this up.

So much for shoe-leather journalism....

To this observer, the $1 billion large is a yawn, but the most interesting bit is the one about turning LIV over to the PGA Tour, which would seem to invite Justice Department scrutiny, although they can't force HE to continue to fund LIV.  At least, I don't think they can, though after tomorrow all bets are off.

The only U.S.-based golf writer that has this story is our Geoff Shackelford, and he comes at it from a weird angle.  Geoff has always liked the ponies, but see how you take to this take:

The Pro Golf Horse Race 

With a deal close between the PGA Tour and PIF, can the two sides learn from the decline of another sport that put off-course business above the competition?

Happy Melbourne Cup to all QuadrilateralDownUnderians!

Last Saturday, America’s horse racing Super Bowl wrapped up two-days of races at Del Mar. Those who watched saw Kentucky Derby runner-up Sierra Leone capturing the $7 million Breeders Cup Classic. This traditionally well-run November gathering is played out in ever-more anonymity despite bringing together the best on a beautiful stage. And the once-wildly popular American version of horse racing continues to toil in anonymity on all but Kentucky Derby day.

The list of self-induced problems starts with an inability to jettison cheaters who maniacally sent out unsound horses, only to see some die while their jockeys broke collar bones (if they were lucky). The year-round sport also races too many days compared to other parts of the world. Beyond the bizarre inability to weed out twisted trainers and low-level claiming races where stuff happens, the sport revolves around the wildly lucrative breeding business over the actual racing.

This unhealthy prioritization of what happens off the track started when Middle Eastern interests took an interest in the sport a few decades ago. Since gambling is forbidden in places like Dubai and Saudi Arabia, the push into horse racing was primarily designed to westernize images. And now, to profit off the breeding business. But silly money on the breeding side has made the sport less relatable or competitive. American stakes races now seem to exist only to build a resume for peak stud fees or eye-popping auction sales of unproven horses.

Race purses are comically low, disincentivizing longer racing careers that would let fans get to know the sometimes-wild, often-heartwarming backstories of horses and their connections. As a result of the misplaced priorities, general sports fans have largely abandoned the sport and left it to bettors and the breeding industry. The average American sports nut could not give two, three, four, or five hoots if Into Mischief sired a winner. Or that he now commands $250,000 every time he hooks up with a chosen mare. 

Those prioritizing the breeding business think it’s all wildly fascinating. Even as the sport is dying after prioritizing commerce over safety and while waiting too long to reassure fans that integrity mattered.

Readers under forty will be sending me a TL:DR on that, and justifiably so.  But I think he's trying to hint that certain folks in the golf ecosystem might be overly focused on commerce....  Any thoughts, Patrick?

Here's where he ties it together:

I point this out because professional golf is veering toward the same lack of popularity as horse racing. The men’s pro game is struggling to uphold the integrity of its competitions after years of not enforcing slow play policies. The PGA Tour continues to resist regulations to keep golf's footprint from growing to unsustainable sizes. And now, tournament fields are shrinking to accommodate the bloat.

The pro game is solidifying a Middle East partnership with a government looking to replenish a sordid reputation. Saudi Arabia wants to use golf to open up new communication lines with business leaders and sell stakes in golf team franchises.

For the love of the game, this is not.

Fair enough, although horse racing at least was once popular..... I know the appeal of professional golf is becoming, in the immortal words of Ian Faith, increasingly selective, but perhaps we might also acknowledge that, at its peak, no one was watching.

Since Geoff is mostly sole source at this juncture, I'm going to spit at the fair use doctrine and pretty much excerpt the whole damn thing:

The Sun’s David Facey reported Saturday that “Golf’s civil war is on the brink of a £1 billion peace deal,” with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund finally ready to hand over the lightly-watched, rarely-taken-seriously LIV Golf to the PGA Tour. This should not come as a surprise since it’s been well over a year since the “events of June 6th” rollout of a “framework agreement.” Comments from well-connected players in recent weeks predicted an impending deal between the adversaries—with the usual caveats about possible detours caused by the Department of Justice, Lina Khan, the Presidential election outcome, or if Mercury is in retrograde. We also know from reports by Bunkered and Golf Digest that PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan was in resplendent Riyadh last week and joined by select minions. All of this comes just weeks after October’s olive branch pro-am round at the Alfred Dunhill Links featuring Andrew Waterman Yasir Al-Rumayyan His Excellency H.E. and Monahan.

I know. You’re getting emotional thinking about those two hacking it around Carnoustie and brainstorming how to bring some Steamboat to the future slopes of Neom.

H.E. His Ownself confirmed last week that PIF was cutting back on international investments to focus on domestic stuff like the disastrously expensive and deadly Neom. But before cutting back, PIF is still going to cut a large check to the PGA Tour and, according to The Sun, let them figure out what to do with LIV Golf while having cash to possibly buy some stuff. Who knows what? But they can now afford the Ryder Cup or Pebble Beach.

For the headache and agony of figuring out how to assimilate the two tours, PIF will reportedly take an 11% share in the Tour. According to Facey, H.E. will get a “Chairman” title entitling him to tedious conference calls about slow play. The Tour will reportedly throw in an additional board seat since they do this a lot these days and have two bloated boards to prove it. But it’s not clear from Facey’s report if the Saudi seats will be on the for-profit or non-profit boards.

Who cares?

Yes, but what's also unclear is whether the for-profit entity can actually make a profit, rather a non-trivial query given that we'll now be at $2.5 billion of invested capital theoretically interested in a return above and beyond the pleasure of smelling Tiger's jockstrap.

Eventually the non-profit model will get swallowed up by the money maker. Arthur Blank already said the quiet part out loud back in February.

So it’s only a matter of time before the still-non-profit PGA Tour is touting its multi-billion valuation and sending more checks to players for (still) being in the right place at the right time. Emboldened golfers armed with a Tour card will continue to insist on TIO relief from every wire, imaginary fishing line, leaf, branch or plume of gassy air interfering with a direct line at the flagstick. But at least the rule-bending in golf is not nearly as grim as what happens when horse racing looks the other way. People and animals get hurt. Fans can’t flee fast enough.

Golf’s flaunting of the rules goes over almost as poorly with core fans who still value displays of sportsmanship and integrity. Casual fans are not turned on by much of anything other than major championship weeks.

I think we can agree on some core principals, most importantly that the game of golf is unable to grow until Patrick Cantlay gets paid.  That is the essence of the Brave New Golf World, and we've seen golf fans voting with their eyeballs.  Cornhole is drawing larger viewership, but nothing to see here....

I will leave you on that depressing note.  I just ask that everyone remember the involvement of Tiger and Rory in creating this effed up world, and their abandonment of the larger Tour membership.  At least that's my primary takeaway from the last three years.

I'll catch you later in the week as the story develops.