Lots to discuss and, with rain likely to preclude the Wednesday Game, shall we dive in?
The League That Wouldn't Die - What ungrateful wretches! Kubla Jay finds an extra $40 million large in the couch cushions, yet they still listen to offers:
Many of golf’s biggest names including world No 1 Dustin Johnson and England’s Justin Rose have received contracts worth up to $100m to take part in a breakaway ‘World Tour’ that has forced themto choose between Saudi money and the PGA Tour and perhaps even The Masters and Ryder Cup.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monagan on Tuesday night warned the would-be rebels that they face an instant suspension and a lifetime ban. The mandatory players meeting here at Quail Hollow fell silent as the audience took in the seismic consequences.
While the majority considered the Premier Golf League to be dead in the water after significant Tour efforts to kill the idea, Telegraph Sport can reveal that formal offers worth $30m to $50m up front are being mulled over by 11 players, including - alongside Johnson and Rose - Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Henrik Stenson, Adam Scott and Rickie Fowler.
Phil Mickelson has purportedly been offered $100m as the de facto head of the rebels.
Last I checked, it was still 2021... Am I the only one that sees building a golf league around a bunch of has-beens as a curious business model? For $30 million I'm pretty sure you can get Henrik Stenson, I'm just not sure how that investment pays off.
Monahan dealt briefly with the players on this issue at Quail Hollow:
The timing of the report dripped in irony, dropping just a few hours before the PGA Tour’s first mandatory player meeting of the year. The gathering had been on the schedule since at least last week, and there are typically at least one per year. One usually happens at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, but COVID-19 restrictions have made any such meeting impossible until now.
According to a player in attendance, the meeting lasted just 30 minutes or so and was more a State of the Tour than anything else: Budget talks, financial breakdowns, that sort of thing. No players spoke. The PGL news was acknowledged only briefly, with Monahan saying that the PGA Tour and the European Tour, which joined together in a strategic alliance last November, were united in their position on the league, and reiterating that any players who signed with the PGL would lose their PGA Tour membership. The legality of such a threat remains unclear, as does the position of the four major championships, none of which are owned or operated by the PGA Tour.
Yeah, that last sentence continues to rankle the Commish, who for unexplained reasons doesn't seem to appreciate the opportunity to turn the PGA Tour into a developmental tour for the Saudis...
Then there's this threat as well:
That means this affair could even affect the Ryder Cup in September and, if that was the case, the Kingdom, in its ever increasing mission to ‘sportswash' its reputation, could see the plan badly backfire.
“This will all kick off in the next few weeks, starting with this meeting tonight,” a source told Telegraph Sport. “It will be fascinating to hear how aggressive Monahan was with his language to the big names. The Saudis believe the Tour can’t expel members and it could end up in a big legal fight.”
Yeah, that could get awfully messy, though I'm still of the opinion that this goes nowhere.
To some extent, the upstart's focus on the geriatric set makes some sense, those are the least susceptible to the threat of permanent suspension from the PGA Tour.
Also facing an existential threat is our Shack, whose major-based Quadrilateral might need to open a Riyadh field office. Geoff offers the thought that the majors might want to come to the tours' defense:
I was caught off guard by Tuesday’s news of the Premier Golf League returning as a Golf Saudi offering.
And not by the newly-labeled Super Golf League’s persistence or its ties to an increasingly-desperate Mohammed bin Salman. No, the surprise was in learning the other Families have not joined in opposition out of kindness to their partners in Ponte Vedra.
Golf’s Tataglia’s and Corleone’s founded and guide the Official World Golf Ranking: starting with the R&A but joined by Augusta National Golf Club, USGA, PGA Tour, PGA of America and European Tour. The Families meet a lot, share secrets and compete to see who can spend more money on PSA’s.
The major championship partners have to know what the tour’s could use in the way of back-up. And there are any number of ways the Families could have rejigged the OWGR to kill the superstar league’s pitch.
- The rankings could specify field size minimums
- They could demand an event play 72-holes, since the league concept involves smaller fields and 54-holes (at least, in the PGL version).
- Something else. Anything!
Has not happened. Otherwise we would have already read a carefully-leaked story on a state media site. Or we would have heard about some crafty OWGR fine print that saved the Global Home from becoming a fancy Rite Aid.
With the Premiere Super League targeting Phil, Rickie and Henrik, we can conclude with great certainty that THEY don't care about world rankings. But as Shack notes, the original Premiere League concept showed deference to the majors, though you'd not go wrong by accepting that assurance with a humongous grain of salt. More amusingly, Shack hints at dark belly of Golf's Kumbaya moment, specifically that Jay doesn't always play well with others:
Then there is the PGA Tour.
They’ve scared broadcast partners from mentioning a Masters invitation as a big win perk (it is the biggest for most) and have tried to make the Players a major in ways that have undermined the event.
All too often the PGA Tour seems to think they do most things better than everyone else, including the majors. So we might be seeing a teaching moment from the Augusta National’s and R&A’s of the world. While they’ll ultimately throw the Tours some ranking technicalities and other lifelines, they may be enjoying the Tour’s suffering.
The majors don’t want Golf Saudi running the game. But it’s still fun to wonder what reassurances have been slow-walked down the corridors of St Andrews, Far Hills, Palm Beach and Augusta.
I don't find much appeal in the PGL concept, as it seems to promise all the glamour and athletic integrity of The Match. Sadly, not the Hogan-Nelson-Venturi-Ward version, but the Tiger-Phil epic fail. That said, our game certainly could use some shaking up, as we don't seem to Live Under Par quite the way we used to... But, as in all areas of life, if the Saudis are the answer, you're asking the wrong question.
Olympic Dreams - Did someone mention the increasingly close relationship of Golf's Five Famiies? Well, yes, Geoff did:
The various Families all say relations have never been better and other than inconsistent stances on equipment regulation, this appears to be the case. But once again the PGA Tour and European Tour have to fend off an upstart armed with access to cash, no overhead, and a ruthless backer. The Tours are vulnerable.
He says it as if the Five Families working together is a good thing. Well, one of the good things...errr, strike that, the best thing to come out of this closer cooperation among the leading golf organizations is support for Olympic Golf. Except for the niggling detail that none of them are willing to sacrifice their own feedlots for the cause:
New Zealand golfer Danny Lee has decided to skip the rescheduled Tokyo Olympics this year tofocus on retaining his PGA Tour card for next season, Golf New Zealand said on Monday.
Lee, who finished 27th at the 2016 Rio Olympics, is currently 192nd in the PGA Tour rankings and needs to finish within the top 125 by the end of August to retain his playing rights for next season.
Let me see if I have this right. We can't have a world-class field in Olympic Golf because we need to allow small countries like New Zealand to send anyone that can walk and chew gum. But that designated patsy can't attend because of the demands of the PGA Tour, whose commissioner is allegedly a supporter of Olympic Golf. And Danny Lee will be replaced by.... Collin Morikawa (the 5th ranked American)? No, that wouldn't be prudent. Mr. Lee will be replaced by an unknow player from Cameroon or Senegal because, diversity is our strength.
Think I'm overstating the PGA Tour's responsibility here? John Hawkins had this Morning Read feature a few days back:
As top stars beg out of Tokyo Games, golf struggles with simple truth: Olympic gold matters little, certainly not like in other sports
Oh, it's like some other sports, such as tennis, basketball, hockey and baseball.
In a sports extravaganza originally designed to showcase the world’s finest amateur athletes in a wide variety of non-commercial events, the Summer Olympics is no place for professional golf.This was a PGA Tour project from start to finish, launched in the mid-2000s under the premise that IOC certification would greatly increase the game’s international presence. As if Tiger Woods himself weren’t already handling such a formidable task.
Former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem appointed Ty Votaw, who had served as LPGA boss from 1999 through 2005, to oversee the campaign. Votaw worked tirelessly to establish the proper connections and assuage the political obligations required of the process, and in October 2009, the IOC voted to reinstate golf as an Olympic sport for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.
They'll do everything necessary to promote Olympic Golf, as long as any scarifices come from other parties.
I think Hawkins elides one rather large elephant here, but his solution is far too sensible for anyone to consider:
Golfers are different. The world’s best haul in more dough by the end of February than any pommel horse champion makes all year. They appear on television every time they contend on the weekend, which amounts to dozens of hours of exposure for the companies that also pay them handsomely, whereas a master of the breaststroke might get five minutes of national airtime if he or she wins a race of national significance.
Add the lack of history that connects the little white ball to the five multi-colored rings, and it’s very easy to understand why pro golf and the Olympics are shrouded in a cloak of empathy. For all intents and purposes, the British Open is a longstanding and more appropriate version of the Summer Games. Why not make the Olympic golf tournament an amateur affair? Before the Dream Team came along in 1992 and trampled every opponent on its path to the gold medal in men’s basketball, the United States insisted on sending non-compensated athletes in every sport to represent our country.
The whole thing is comically inept, including hitching golf to the floundering, utterly corrupt Olympic brand. The Olympics themselves are damaged goods, as without that Cold War, Good vs. Evil frisson, there really isn't any good reason to tune in.
As for that elephant referenced above, our golf leadership consented to the creation of little more than a silly-season event, a glorified Hero World Challenge. If your event can't find a spot for the sixth-ranked player in the world, perhaps it's not so world class?
A Walker Cup Preview - Alistair Tait bemoans the lack of buzz for this venerable event:
Yes, it’s Walker Cup week. A 10-man Great Britain & Ireland team will take on 10 of the best American amateurs at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Florida for the chance to win the cup George Herbert Walker bequeathed to golf.Amateur golf might get its 15 minutes of fame this week before shrinking back into the shadows. How many mainstream publications will carry reports on the match?There was a time when all British and Irish newspapers covered the Walker Cup. These days? Not so many. Thankfully we still have a cadre of excellent golf writers pushing for coverage of amateur golf, but it’s an uphill struggle. Many mainstream sports editors gave up on amateur golf a long, long time ago.
He's not completely correct here. It's certainly true that the U.S. Amateur has diminished in importance, though part of that is due to increased attention paid to the NCAA Championships.
Some of those players competing at Seminole will one day grace the upper echelons of the Official World Golf Ranking They’ll win major trophies. Nine of the top 20 players in the current world ranking appeared in the Walker Cup. Of those, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Collin Morikawa, Webb Simpson, and Rory McIlroy have won major trophies.Scroll down the world order and you’ll find other major winners and top stars who’ve competed in the biennial match – Jordan Spieth, Justin Rose, Padraig Harrington….You’d have thought with such a strong pedigree the Walker Cup wouldn’t struggle for publicity. How to alter this dynamic?
No Tiger? Not often we see a golf writer seemingly go out of his way to not gratuitously name drop the Striped One...
Here's his big idea:
Green Jr and Global Golf Post colleague John Hopkins propose an idea former R&A Chief Executive Peter Dawson made yonks ago: draft in top professionals to captain the respective sides. Dawson made the suggestion at a time when GB & I was running out of candidates to lead GB & I teams. Captains have traditionally played in the match and remained amateurs. However, very few current Walker Cup players stay in the unpaid game given the immense riches on offer in professional golf.
That's actually not half bad.... though it would likely have to be retired players.
Shack has a mini-preview as well, including links to this USGA photo gallery of Seminole, as well as these course overviews:
And props to the USGA for its venue choices. Seminole is a great call, and in four years they're taking the event to Cypress Point. I will certainly prioritize Seminole over Quail Hollow in my own televised golf consumption.
When It Rains... - They're holding a Women's U.S. Open qualifier this week in Atlanta.... and it seems it might take all of this week:
Amelia Lewis rented a car for the drive up from Jacksonville, Florida, to Atlanta for her U.S. Women’s Open sectional qualifier. Little did she know that she’d spend more time in that Mustang watching Netflix and taking naps than she would be hitting golf shots.
For a second consecutive day play was suspended for most of the day at Druid Hills Golf Club, where four inches of rain and a nearby tornado wreaked havoc on the course on Monday.
Tuesday wasn’t much better, with play resuming at 1 p.m. and stopping at 1:48 p.m.
And this from an on-site official:
Yes by all means. First pic is how we got it back in shape for today, second pic is flooding yesterday and third is how that area should look. pic.twitter.com/KUDO67T8i2
— Joe Hollis (@Turf_Joe32) May 5, 2021
Lots of withdrawals, but let's hope they can finish.
Hands up if you thought we’d reach this day and Rory McIlroy would still be looking for his fifth major championship victory?
Thought so.Today is McIlroy’s 32nd birthday. It’s been nearly seven years, 2,824 days to be precise, since McIlroy won the 2014 PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club, his second major win that year following the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool. Here’s what Rory said after collecting his fourth major:
“I thought winning the Open Championship a few weeks ago had sort of put me on a higher level in this game. But then to win a fourth major here, to be one behind Phil (Mickelson), one behind Seve (Ballesteros), level with Ernie (Els), level with Raymond Floyd; I mean, I never thought I'd get this far at 25 years of age.
“I was happy being a two‑time major champion coming into this year, and suddenly I'm a four‑time major champion and going for the career Grand Slam at Augusta in 292 days, 291 days or whatever it is; not that I'm counting.”
That's a funny rhetorical question. Of course he's correct that, at the time of Rory's win at Valhalla, he was on quite the roll and figured to keep adding notches to his belt. But as I look at modern day Rory, the reaction is more akin to wondering how he ever won even the one...
But it's this other quote, also from that long ago time, that'll have folks shaking their heads:
“If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's my motto. I've always been that way. I feel like the work that I've put into my golf swing from sort of the age of 15 to 20 is going to see me sort of throughout my career.”
Which is hard to square with his recent confession to having been sucked into the Bryson vortex chasing speed and distance.... Which reminds your humble blogger of another old quote, though this one came originally out of the mouth of Kathleen Turner:
You're not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.
Fun With Course Rankings - Shack has long been a vocal critic of the Golf Digest course rankings, and has a field day with the latest version thereof. In prior years, his main beef has seemed to be their use of "Resistance to Scoring" as a ranking metric.
This year he's got seemingly too much material, beginning with the revue opportunities:
I got several fine laughs reading Golf Digest’s “2021-2022 ranking of America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses”, which was touted as being “ready for its close-up” by authors Derek Duncan and Stephen Hennessey.
A close look shows not much has changed except that it’s a for-profit model now, where you can try to sign up and pay the $1300 to join here and you better like your courses exclusive and difficult.
Though not everyone pays that 4-figure sum:
Tom Fazio remains a panelist favorite the way Michael Bay is big with teenage moviegoers and not many others, delivering thirteen top 100 courses to Donald Ross’s ten, followed by Tillinghast’s eight, Pete Dye’es eight, Tom Doak’s five, Alister MacKenzie’s five, Seth Raynor’s five, Coore and Crenshaw’s four, William’s Flynn’s three and Gil Hanse’s single inclusion on the list.
The best laugh may be Muirfield Village landing 15th even as Jack Nicklaus has taken a bulldozer to it. Pinehurst No. 2 at 29th would suggest maybe it’s time for the resort to realize Digest panelists won’t ever get that whole strategy/nuance thing.
But the real fun comes from an e-mail Golf Digest sent to its shock troop course rankers, in which they're told that they're doing it wrong. No, seriously:
As always, this is an exciting time and an important institution for Golf Digest. I’m very proud of the effort everyone puts into creating the America’s 100 Greatest Courses list, and you should be, too—your hard work and keen eyes and analyses make it happen.I will, however, take this opportunity to make a comment on our scoring:I did an exercise while compiling the final rankings to list, along with the total score, the highest individual category score each course received. I thought it would be interesting to see in what category each of the 100 courses was strongest—for instance, Winged Foot West’s highest score, 8.62, came in the Character category. About 20 courses in, I realized I couldn’t send the results out for publication.
If only. Of course, no one should take course rankings as anything but an amusement, but they actually put this in writing for us (well, not for us, but there was seemingly little chance of it staying private):
The highest score for almost every course came in either Character or Aesthetics. Here’s the breakdown:CHARACTER: 42AESTHETICS: 19CONDITIONING: 15CHALLENGE: 14DISTINCTIVENESS: 6LAYOUT VARIETY: 4SHOT OPTIONS: 0In other words, according to the majority of the panel, the greatest strength of two-thirds of the 100 Greatest courses in the U.S. has to do with aspects other than how the course actually plays.
Yeah, we knew. And they just keep shooting themselves in the foot:
That not a single course in our top 100 distinguished itself above all other measures in Shot Options is stunning—this is the most fundamental aspect to architecture and thus our rankings. It’s why we afford it double points.We are placing too much emphasis on intangibles like character and aesthetics and not enough on architecture, strategy and layout.Yes, ambiance, history and sense of place are all important to the golf experience—they are major reasons why we all play. But your job as course-ranking panelists is to study the golf holes and the architecture and not be overwhelmed by beauty and reputation.We can all appreciate the totality of a golf experience—it’s unrealistic to think that won’t have an impact on your impressions—but golf is about hitting the ball across a landscape that presents a variety of obstacles and enticements, trying to get it into the hole in as few as strokes possible. We are there to analyze how effectively and with what amount of entertainment a course achieves that.Please consider how much you are weighing the importance of different categories. Please re-read the category definitions. And make efforts to distinguish each category from each other—our best panelists earn high marks for doing so.Lastly, I’ve had several private email exchanges with individual panelists about their scoring habits and techniques. We do not intend to tell you how to score courses and categories, as long as you can rationally justify your evaluations. But we do want you all to be discerning and understand what your scores and numbers mean. This ties back to the predominance of high Character scores: a sizable portion of the panel might consider approaching their evaluations with a more discriminating eye.In some of the cases I reviewed, panelists were overscoring courses, awarding points that would have placed a course barely making the Best in State list in the top 15 of America’s 100 Greatest Courses ranking.
At the link above, Shack has a righteous, line-by-line Fisking of the Golf Digest e-mail, though I'll excerpt just this little nugget of snark:
Maybe not flood the panel for profit? I’m wrecklessly brainstorming here, I know, so continue…
It's really quite the con job from top to bottom. One gets the sense that they're cashing the $1,300 checks and ignoring the panelists' scoring and just ranking the course as they always have, Fazio first.
On a related note, Shack offers this as a "palette cleanser":
Come one, come all: here are GOLF'S Top 100 courses you can play, 2021-22
Better because:
The list is put together by a small panel not squeezed for dues that appears to genuinely focus on golf architecture. The list has been expanded to include Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean. I’m not sure that was necessary nor am I buying that this helps you “find courses in prime condition at any time of year.”
But the bigger takeaway should be the focus on rewarding the elements that should be emphasized if you want to see courses rewarded for fun, nuance and day-to-day enjoyment.
I'd rather those places cash my check as opposed to Golf Digest.
I shall leave you here and catch up probably on Friday.
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