Midweek Musings - Day Late Edition

OK, so let me explain....  Yesterday was a Met. Golf Writers Meeting (and yes, Meeting is a euphemism) at The Tuxedo Club.  Typically not an issue that affects the blogging schedule, but forecast storms resulted in a last-minute change to our schedule.  Yanno, just like the Masters...

Yeah, not so much, as they needed to move up the schedule by a full day...  We got called off the course twice, and our group played only ten holes.  A pity it was, as we had a friendly group and I was actually enjoying the course.  If that emits a penumbra of snark, it's for a couple of well-grounded reasons:

1. The dreaded Robert Trent Jones architectural citation; and
2. The club's website boast of the number of holes featuring water.

In reality, it proved to be (based upon those ten holes) a very playable track, with a nice mix of holes of varying difficulty, many featuring interesting angles of play.  We only played one of their Par-3's, though that featured an interesting kidney-shaped green that effectively masked its challenges from the tee.  I didn't get a photo of that, but here is their 16th green:

It's actually a short, 90-degree dogleg... You know the type, you have to keep the ball right of that ugly cluster of bunkers off the tee.  The hole is sufficiently short that the conservative route leaves only a hundred yards or so in, yet the outing golfer, strike that, the meeting golfer will inevitably succumb to the biological imperative to take the line directly to the pin.  

Shall we get back to our regularly-scheduled programming?

I Saw It On TV - If you were with us on Tuesday, we featured a discussion of the Tour's aggressive approach to to negotiations of its rights fee, which is just fancy talk for its TV contracts (though it also includes its streaming products as well).

Apparently there was a deeper dive in Sports Business Journal, though one that is behind their paywall, limiting us to Shack's excerpts.  The first of these seeks to explain the acceleration of their process:

If the PGA Tour signs new deals with CBS and NBC, it will be able to add new features two years early. If it moves on from CBS and NBC, the tour believes that it will need

those two years to develop a new channel and digital presence.

Another reason for the tour to move early is to take advantage of an overheated media rights market before the NFL comes in and takes over a sizable piece of that market. The NFL’s deals are up in 2021 and 2022, and all indications are that the $5.5 billion of linear TV rights deals that the league collects annually will see a huge increase.

I guess this makes sense, though the only golf broadcaster that will have product up against the NFL juggernaut is Golf Channel, and they'll still prefer the PGA to reruns of The Squueze.

But this is where the mushrooms seem to kick in:

Anderson said he is looking for one or, potentially, two linear channels. He pointed to the content it has from the PGA Tour, LPGA, PGA Tour Champions and Korn Ferry tours as evidence that the tour has enough content to fill two channels. 

“When you start talking about capturing every player and every shot, the digital platform is where that would come to light,” he said. “We know that our opportunity extends beyond the current business model of cable and a linear channel. We can build a real digital platform that has content that people will pay for and in a different way than any other sport can do.”

I'm a skeptic on the streaming stuff, as I assume the audience to capture every shot of Chez Reavie asymptotically approaches zero.... But the funnier point might be the need for two linear channels.  Have they seen the ratings for the Web.com Cord Fairy Tour?  Stream that and let the audience of twelve watch that way....

Further, the production costs for a golf tournament have to be excessive compared to other sports programming, which combined with small audiences of a demographically less desirable audience seems to be a bad business model. 

Geoff excerpts comments on the possible bidders, which except for Discovery are the usual suspects.  If, like me, the Tour anticipates the bubble bursting on the sports rights fee market, they may be wise to accelerate their process, though you know my thoughts on their desire to control their own network.

But there's also a risk....  Take those rights away from CBS/NBC/GC two years from the end of their contracts, and thos ein booth appearances of Jay Monahan could get delightfully awkward... 

Women's Woes - Has there ever been a worse week in women's golf?  Just a no-good, awful week that spanned two continents....

Shall we start with the Girl's Junior?  You have to teach them young, though the problem could be in what we're teaching....  Not only were they playing a dreadful golf course, but they were taking their sweet time about it:

A few things to consider about the Girls’ Junior finale that make this the perfect storm

for slow-play critics:

• It was a commercial-free broadcast
• This was the only match on the course 

There’s no cutting away during the boring stuff. Plus, the players were never warned about being out of position. Officials checked the time after each hole of the match.

The first 18 holes took 4 hours and 4 minutes. Officials allowed 4 hours and 12 minutes for the second 18, and they beat that mark.

Get over it, Geoff, they were just taking time to smell the flowers.... Get it?  No, maybe this will help:

Or, you know, figuring out where to drop from the flowers....

Beth Ann Nichols is understandably protective of the young lady, though whether she's convincingly protective is another matter entirely:

Slow play is a problem in golf. Can’t imagine anyone disputing that. But Bourdage is a 17-year-old Ohio State commit in the early stages of her career. She doesn’t deserve the same level of scrutiny as a professional athlete. She’s ranked 838th in the World Amateur Golf Rankings for goodness sake.

We don't need to make her the poster child for slow play, we have JB Holmes for that.  And, of course, we all feel for a young woman in the spotlight for the first time....  But I have no problem with the criticism itself, it should just be in the form of gentle reminders.  Save the vitriol for JB, because he's earned it.

But the Girl's Junior pales in comparison with the hot mess that is The Evian....  And the only hotter mess than The Evian is Lexi Thompson....

Remember Lexi's comments about the venue?  Randall Mell springs to her defense, though nothing therein will make us all feel any better.  First comes his defense to the inevitable chorus of ladies telling Lexi to skip it if she doesn't like the course:

If the Evian Championship weren’t a major, I would agree with the Euros here. As a player, you can schedule around courses at regular tour stops that you don’t like.

But the Evian is a major championship. 

You don’t “stay away” from those. You don’t schedule around them. 

And you don’t ignore issues that you sincerely believe diminish the nature of what major-championship golf means. 

OK, have you stopped laughing yet?  Because it only gets funnier....

When a governing body brings a major championship to a venue, there’s a giant responsibility to make sure the course lives up to the pedigree that is so vital to the traditions that major championships represent. There’s a giant responsibility making sure the test is worthy of being among the royal succession of golf’s greatest tests.

So much so, that you can argue there’s a duty to speak out if a player believes there’s something fundamentally wrong with a setup or design. 

It’s a little like the responsibility that comes with protecting the field when a player sees something amiss with the rules. Except, this is about protecting the legacy of historic venues such as St. Andrews, Shinnecock, Oakmont, Muirfield, Pebble Beach and Royal Birkdale have established with their shotmaking standards.

Those shocked to find gambling in Casablanca, will be crushed to find that Evian doesn't live up to the shotmaking standards of The Old Course.  It's all so disillusioning....

But did Randall actually read Lexi's comments?  He's attributing deep thoughts of shotmaking standards to a woman that was whining about bad bounces....  And then there's this?

While she doesn’t typically take strong stands, she has earned a place as more than a shotmaker in the game. She has earned a platform, one she isn’t all that comfortable using to shape opinions over issues that matter most in the game. That’s her prerogative, but it only makes her words land harder when she is comfortable taking a strong stand.

Really?  And how did she earn this platform?  By going on hiatus when folks are mean on social media?  She strikes me as a delicate flower who runs and hides at the first opportunity, to with taking down her post at the first criticism.  So much for Brave Lady Lexi speaking truth to power...

More unintentional humor comes from this harrowing account of Lexi's caddie's journey to retrieve the lost passport:

It turns out that the Sunday night passport ordeal was even more dramatic than many previously thought.

Dramatic?  Not even mildly interesting to those of us in the real world...  Especially since w eknow how the story ends:

"I was freaking out, honestly, that I was going to be stranded here," Thompson said of

realizing her passport was in her bag. "I didn't realize I was going to cause so much delay with the bags for all the players, and I'm very sorry about that." 

Thompson went on to say that if she was on the reverse end of the situation, she'd be pretty upset, too. Though she knows other players are upset with her, there have not been any direct conversations about it. 

"I haven't talked to many players about it. They haven't come up to me. I can kind of feel it," Thompson said. "But I didn’t mean anything by it, and I think everybody that knows me as a person … I didn’t know that was going to happen. I didn’t mean anything by it. But it happened, and I’m very sorry."

Yes, though you seem prone to such "freak-outs"....  You also seem to think that the rest of the world should react to your freak-outs, which might be the bigger issue.  Oh, and about none those players coming up to you....  that's something you might expect to continue in the near-term.

So, how many years have we set back women's golf?

Shouldn't He Know This Stuff? - I readily admit that I'm well into the "get off my lawn" stage of life, but this seems a bit silly:

Sports broadcasters do a lot of preparation before calling a game. That frequently includes putting together play-by-play sheets and note cards filled with various factoids and relevant information to reference during the telecast. 

Golf Channel anchor and host Whit Watson has gotten into the habit of posting his broadcast cheat sheet on Twitter every week before calling a tournament, and it’s pretty cool to see. 

“It’s a fun social media conversation and people seem to enjoy it,” said Watson, who just happened to post it once and has continued since. 

Watson uses a variety of markers in order to highlight and represent different things that he might want to mention and discuss on the broadcast. The various colors help the information pop and standout from the sheets. While some broadcasters reference enormous sheets of paper on air, Watson uses small note cards as his well of information during the telecast.

Here's what it looks like:

I do think it's cute that he posts these on social media, but take a closer look at that top-left quadrant.  He can't remember that it's the last event of the regular season or who he's working with?  Apparently, given that WW, he can't even remember on camera that he's in the announcing crew....

Sergio, The Rap Sheet - What to do about our Sergio, the poster child for our Golfers Behaving Badly recurring feature.  Eamon Lynch wants the emotional Spaniard to chill, useless advice but with an amusing lede:

Should Sergio Garcia have received a green onesie instead of a green jacket for his 2017 Masters win? 

That’s the question Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch is asking this week in his latest installment of Eamon’s Corner after the Spaniard’s most recent outburst on the course at the WGC–FedEx St. Jude Invitational in Memphis. Garcia hit a poor tee shot on the 16th hole at TPC Southwind, grabbed his driver with both hands and smashed it into the turf, taking a huge divot. 

As he closes in on his 40th birthday, Garcia seems to be getting more immature with age, and we’re getting close to the point where the problem isn’t Garcia’s actions, but the Tours’ failure to do something about it.

Heh!  I'm sure they sell them in the merchandise tent... Amusingly, I had this photo in my picture folder wih the title, "Sergio Onesie":

Of course, that was for baby Azalea...at least that's what I thought at the time.

Alistair Tait sums up the current state of play:

Calls for Sergio Garcia to be banned from golf after his latest petulant outburst will fall on deaf ears. It’s always that way when the Spaniard acts like a spoiled 5-year-old. 

Add gouging up a tee during the final round of the WGC–FedEx St. Jude Invitational in Memphis last week to previous misdemeanours as long as his arm. The 2017 Masters winner hit a poor drive on the 16thhole at TPC Southwind, grabbed his driver with both hands and smashed it into the turf, taking a huge divot. 

Cue howls of protest. The Daily Telegraph quoted an anonymous player who said, “We are starting to wonder what Sergio has to do to get a couple of involuntarily weeks off.”

Truth is, he can do almost anything he wants and not get a two-week ban. No way the European or PGA Tours are going to take serious action, especially the European Tour. The Euro circuit won’t want to alienate one of its biggest stars. 

He’ll probably face some sort of fine, but we won’t hear about it. The Tours don’t do bad news. Besides, the sum will be derisory to a multi-millionaire like Garcia.

Perhaps he might have a jet-ski mishap?

You know how I feel about the tours not disclosing disciplinary actions, so I'll leave that rant for another time.  But a fine, even a paltry fine, would be sufficient for most of these transgressions, if only it came with the requisite public shaming.

The incident that stands out, however, was the damaging of greens in Saudi Arabia.  That cannot be explained away by his emotional nature, and needed to be dealt with harshly....  Of course, I've been on Sergio's case for many a year, going back to this classic of the genre:

Though, even I have to admit, his "Nothing but net" defense was comedy gold...

Venue Notes - The R&A has announced Royals Troon and Porthcawl as future Women's British Open venues, leading Alistair Tait to over-interpret:

Will Women's British Open pave way for Wales to join men's Open rota?

No, final answer.  Here's the gist of his case:

In fact, the R&A should go out of its way to put Royal Porthcawl in its pool of Open Championship courses. Wales is now the only country in the United Kingdom that does not stage the Open Championship.

OK, framing it as a human rights issue won't help...  Porthcawl is a perfectly fine links, but there are no shortage of those.  I'd rather play there than places like Troon, but it took 68 years for the R&A to go back to Portrush, so shall we pencil Wales in for 2087?

I'll save a few items for tomorrow, and allow you to get on with your day.