Your humble blogger's own golf has been fairly depressing this Spring, though yesterday's match with the great Bobby D. did at least feature one moment, a jarred seven-iron for eagle on our Par-5 thirteenth. With yesterday's front-right pin, one can play safely left and allow the green contours to do the hard work, though it seemed to take forever for the ball to react. Coming from the rough as I was, balls will often hang on the back tier, which would have likely been a six in lieu of that three.
Phil's Time - He's been in the news for other reasons, but it's good to see that Twitter is good for something:
Joel Dahmen poked the bear.
In a friendly Twitter exchange on Wednesday night, Dahmen, a winner of one PGA Tour event,
ended his back and forth with World Golf Hall of Famer Phil Mickelson by writing, “I’m excited to see how my game stacks up against the best of the @ChampionsTour.”
Well, Mickelson, 50, who has won twice on the PGA Tour Champions, flexed his PGA Tour muscles playing alongside Dahmen on Thursday and fired a 7-under-par 64 to take the lead through one round of the Wells Fargo Championship at sunlit Quail Hollow.
Mickelson, a winner of 44 PGA Tour titles, including five major championships, made a lone bogey as he bested his finest round of the season by three shots. It was clearly Mickelson’s best showing in 2021; he’s missed four cuts in nine worldwide starts and his best result was a tie for 21st in the Masters.
Now, what do we think these guys talk about out there? I'd always assumed that they're just scouting hot babes from the galleries.... Why else would they be put off by the absence of fans in the last year? But no, it turns out that it's really quite academic:
“Phil’s awesome. He’s a great guy,” Dahmen said. “He’s just so full of information, would be the way to put it. He’s got great stories. He’s really fun to play with. So I poked him a little bit and he played awesome today. It was incredible.
“We got in some dopamine talk, frontal lobe and dopamine, and then the units of it, which I was actually impressed with. Then he hit a 6‑iron to three feet, so he must have had his dopamine correct on that one.”
Phil is dope, as the kids say. But it's only Thursday, so perhaps we shouldn't get too far out over our skis.
Walker Cup Fever - It's quite the enjoyable event, but quite difficult to find much press coverage thereof. This Golf Digest preview touches on the one-sided nature of the competition:
In the 99-year history of the Walker Cup, there have been 310 golfers who have representedGreat Britain & Ireland in the biennial matches. Of them, 84 have played for a victorious GB&I team (the Old World has won nine times in 47 matches). And of that group, a select 20 were on the winning side while competing in the United States (1989 and 2001).Those numbers give context to the daunting task that GB&I captain Stuart Wilson and his 10-man squad face this weekend when the 48th edition of the two-day competition is held at Seminole Golf Club, the famed Donald Ross gem hard by the Atlantic Ocean. From the sound of it, however, Wilson is trying to turn the data on its head, using it as a rallying cry of sorts.“We know there’s only been two teams that have been successful over here … which shows it’s not impossible,” Wilson said on Thursday. “We’re trying to make that 30 [winners in the U.S.] basically.”
I suppose that the surprising aspect is that they haven't invoked the Jack Rule to expand beyond Great Britain and Ireland, a move that rendered the Ryder Cup almost immediately competitive. It also seems to be an unusually inexperienced lot from GB&I:
That said, the 2021 GB&I team that arrives this week has just one player—Alex Fitzpatrick—back from the 2019 Walker Cup squad that fell to the Americans at Royal Liverpool (a second player, Sandy Scott, made the team but had to bow out because of an injured wrist).
Five team members play college golf in the U.S. (Fitzpatrick and Mark Power at Wake Forest; Angus Flanagan at Minnesota; John Murphy at Louisville; and Barclay Brown at Stanford), so they’ve gotten reps during the spring season. Reigning British Amateur champ Joe Long, spent the winter in South Africa honing his game. He arrived in the U.S. for the first time ever in March, competing at the Masters where he missed the cut but played for two days with World Golf Hall of Famer Bernhard Langer.
Yes, that's Matthew Fitzpatrick's little brother.
John Huggan shares memories of the biggest upset in Walker Cup history:
We’re not talking once-in-a-lifetime here. Not quite. But half-a-century ago—May 26-27, 1971 to be precise—10 amateurs drawn from the four nations that comprise Great Britain & Ireland won the Walker Cup over the Old Course at St. Andrews, beating the United States by two points.So what? you may ask, with some legitimacy. That sort of result isn’t exactly unusual these days. The Old World has beaten the New seven times in the last 16 editions of this biennial encounter, one that started in 1922 and continues this weekend when the two sides meet at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla., to decide the 48th Walker Cup. Parity has been achieved, or something close to it.But back in 1971, the notion that America’s finest might relinquish the amateur equivalent of the Ryder Cup was close to unthinkable. Not since 1938 had the U.S. lost (there was one tie in 1965) and it wouldn’t happen again until 1989. The average margin of American victory in all those wins was nearly 5½ points. Summing up the prevailing pre-match mood, future CBS commentator Ben Wright was in no doubt about the outcome. Writing in the Financial Times, Wright called the GB&I side “one of the weakest in living memory” and announced he would jump into the Swilcan Burn should the home team triumph.Disappointingly, Wright lived down to his promise after a startling reality played out over the two-day affair, contested on a Wednesday and Thursday, four foursomes games each morning followed by eight singles in the afternoons.“When we finished, the caddies went looking for Ben,” recalls Michael Bonallack, the GB&I captain. “They were going to throw him into the burn. But he escaped through a hole in the back of the press tent.”
For anyone that has had the pleasure, this bit about the nature of the Old Course will leave you laughing:
Speaking of which, the legendary eccentricities of the Old Course have been cited by some as at least part of the problem, especially for the first-time visitors. Kite recalls sitting in the bus from Edinburgh Airport en route to St. Andrews and asking the experienced Campbell and Hyndman for their impressions of the most famous 18 holes in golf. The response to his double-barrelled query, “Is it hilly or is it flat?” is telling.“The funny thing is they didn’t know how to answer the question,” Kite says. “‘Basically, the terrain is flat,’ they said. ‘Except it’s not.’ Then they laughed.”
It has that same appearance of uniformity when you first scan the breadth of the valley, but any time you focus on a specific section of the course, the furrows and interesting landforms become evident. As I once noted long ago about the Old Course, it’s flat as the proverbial pancake, except inevitably for the specific spot on which your golf ball settles.
One last bit on this event, that being the wacky TV schedule. As Shack notes, to watch the whole thing, NBC will require viewers to flip between Golf Channel and their Peacock streaming service:
Date GOLF Channel Peacock
Saturday 11 a.m.-1 p.m.; 5:30-7:30 p.m. 10-11 a.m.; 4:30-5:30 p.m.
Sunday 11 a.m.-1 p.m.; 5:30-7:30 p.m. 10-11 a.m.; 4:30-5:30 p.m.
Yup, still trying to force Peacock down our throats....
Let's Call The Whole Thing Off - You say Premiere, I say Super.... well, you can fill in the rest. Lots to cover on this and related subjects, beginning with our old friend Alan Shipnuck. Back in the day I'd be freeloading off his Ask Alan mailbag feature, but he left Golf Magazine for a new venture with the evocative moniker The Firepit Collective. He does a deep dive on all things premiere and or super, and breaks actual news, to wit, that those two things are not synonymous:
Recent reports that the Premier Golf League is back from the dead has led to renewed rumblings that professional golf is facing a new world order, fueled by Saudi Arabian money. In fact, thesituation is more nuanced. The PGL is still actively trying to create a viable competitor to the PGA and European Tours but it is not staked by Saudi money, as is widely believed. “They’re not our partners, they’re now our competitors,” says a PGL investor. After the idea for the PGL was born in 2019 there were advanced discussions with Golf Saudi to underwrite the all-star new tour. A deal was never consummated and now Saudi Arabia is making its own play with the Super Golf League. “They 100% stole our idea,” says the PGL investor, who hails from Europe.
There are substantial differences between the two would-be tours. The Super Golf League is conceived as 10-12 tournaments a year based in the Mid East and in particular Saudi Arabia, which has a stated goal of building dozens of new golf courses and introducing a million citizens to the game over the next decade. Golf Saudi’s motivation in creating the SGL is continued reputation-laundering for the brutal regime that supports it. (Yasir Al-Rumayyan is both the chairman of Golf Saudi and the governor of the Public Investment Fund, which was established in 1971 by royal decree to provide financing for projects of strategic significance to the Saudi Arabian government.) Buying hearts and minds doesn’t come cheap; an agent for an American player in the top 10 of the World Ranking calls the Saudi offers “funny money” that could approach a guaranteed $50 million a year to marquee players.
So, they 100% stole the idea that you stole from Greg Norman? Got it...
So, Rory was put initially off by the Premiere Golf League's source of money, which is now apparently the Super League's pay masters, so should he revisit the offer from those nice, non-tainted PGL guys?
Having parted ways with the Saudis, the PGL is now staked by three dozen investors described by the insider as “guys who own existing sports franchises, high net-worth individuals who love golf and multinational corporations.” It is a mix of mostly American and European interests. The schedule would be comprised of 18 tournaments running January-October. The Tour would begin in Florida, migrate to Australia and Asia before returning the Southeastern U.S. ahead of the Masters. Ensuing tournaments would be played Stateside through the U.S. Open, followed by a long swing through Europe and then a return to Asia, with the grand finale contested back in America. Each tournament would have 48 players vying for a purse of $20 million. (Winner’s checks would approach $4 million while last place would pay out $250K; there is no cut.) Each event would crown an individual stroke play champion but there would be a concurrent, season-long 4-man team competition that would be decided in the season finale.
Sounds completely respectable...
Alan does a deep dive into the noxious Saudi regime. While he makes the same category error as most about the Kashoggi assassination, he does a better job with the larger issues. By which I mean that no one's opinion of the Saudi's should have changed by the Kashoggi revelations, because we should have known everything previously. He also goes deep into the ongoing litigation against Saudi Arabia by the families of 9/11 victims, an interesting tale but of questionable relevance to the golf world.
But Rory and others have raised the issue of golf's involvement with the Saudi's, and it's hard to avoid tripping over the obvious inconsistencies, as Alistair Tait does:
Surely it’s not just me who sees the utter hypocrisy coming out of Rory’s mouth. If he doesn’t want to play the new circuit fine, but why should others not be able to do so?For decades the European Tour has freely allowed members to play all over the world. So many hold dual membership with the PGA Tour that it’s hard to count. Not one word of criticism from successive European Tour bosses, just a constant line about increasing playing opportunities for tour members.Quite right too. They should be free to play wherever they want provided they fulfil their European Tour membership requirements.Yet Pelley has joined forces with Monahan in condemning the proposed new league:
“We are aligned with the PGA Tour in opposing, in the strongest possible terms, any proposal for an alternative golf league,” Pelley said in a statement.
This from a man who has quite happily taken Saudi money to stage tournaments in Saudi Arabia for the last three years.
And not just Mr. Pelley:
As a close friend told me this morning while discussing this issue, it looks like the PGA Tour has suddenly turned into a trade union, shutting up shop and threatening to hang “scab” labels on members if they dare step out of line.For year the PGA Tour has been quite happy to allow its members to travel the world and play other circuits to make themselves richer on fat appearance fees. Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, and Patrick Reed all travelled to Saudi Arabia this year and each collected reported appearance fees of between $1-2 million.
Yes, but that wasn't a threat to his feedlot....
The rationalizations are equally compromised. For instance, here's Rory defending the double-secret PIP program:
“It’s not as if it’s just the top-10 players or the top-10 names in the game get this money and,
‘Thank you for your loyalty,”” McIlroy said on Wednesday during his pre-tournament press conference at the Wells Fargo Championship. “There’s a bit more to it. I think that Justin Rose made a good point. He said a rising tide lifts all ships. I think with the top players being more engaged in the Tour and the goings on, it will help the rest of the membership.”
So it's for the children? It's a great thing for the game, but we need to keep it a closely-guarded secret....
How about this from Phil:
"I think the fans would love it because they would see the best players play exponentially more times," Mickelson said after playing in the pro-am for the Wells Fargo Championship. "Instead of four or five times, it would be 20 times ... I don't know what the final number is.
"But that's a big deal to give up control of your schedule. I don't know if the players would be selfless enough to do that. But every other sport, the entity or teams or leagues control the schedule. The players kind of play where they are told to play. Whereas here, we're able to control it."
Sure, Phil. I certainly can see where cashing that $100 million check is absolutely the most selfless thing you can do....
But I'm confused by your reference to the best players in the world, because I thought I had heard that you were going to be involved.
Like a Colossus - If the PIP program hasn't soured you on PGA Tour leadership, perhaps the Hank Haney lawsuit will. Daniel Kaplan of The Athletic has obtained deposition transcripts from Haney's lawsuit over his firing from SiriusXM Radio's PGA Tour channel, and there's good fun to be had.
Kaplan's piece is behind a paywall, though the header indicates its focus:
PGA Tour acknowledges that it keeps more than 90% of revenue in joint TV deals with LPGA
In his blogging of the piece, Geoff seems to hint at a more complicated reality:
Unable to settle, the sides moved to a deposition phase and in the excerpts obtained by The Athletic, their story focus locked in on the LPGA’s percentage of the new PGA Tour TV deal. We don’t know enough about the structure to evaluate the percentages seized-on in the story to evaluate exactly what this means for LPGA revenues. But Monahan testified to the LPGA receiving “several million dollars of additional media rights revenue in 2020 than they did in 2019.”
As we noted at the time, the LPGA allowing the PGA to handle its rights fees negotiations was highly suspect, though not necessarily the worst of its alternatives.
But the fun in the depositions comes from this statement from the Tour:
“The PGA TOUR is committed to and proud of the increasingly diverse makeup of our fan base, not to mention the power and accomplishments of the game’s world-class, global players -- both on the PGA TOUR and LPGA, whom we are working with more closely than ever before.
“SiriusXM proudly covers and supports both women’s and men’s golf and the athletes that make them great. At the PGA TOUR’s instruction Mr. Haney has been suspended from the SiriusXM PGA TOUR Radio channel. SiriusXM is reviewing his status on SiriusXM going forward.”
So, Haney's attorney asked about their affinity for those world-class athletes with indoor plumbing, and comedy ensued:
To hammer home the charge that the PGA Tour isn’t concerned about the LPGA, counsel for Haney quizzed Monahan on his knowledge of women’s golf. Monahan could not name the top golfers and said he had not attended an LPGA tournament as commissioner. (He had before his tenure.)
“Can you give me the top five ranked players playing in that tournament this week?” Haney’s lawyer asked. (The LPGA played the U.S. Women’s Open in Houston that week.) “I can’t specifically give you the top five players ranked in that tournament,” Monahan replied. Haney’s lawyer then asked, “Who is the top-ranked woman playing in the tournament?”
Monahan: “I’m not sure what the latest iteration of the world ranking is.”
Haney’s lawyer: “Who are the top several players playing?”
Monahan: “I’m focused on the business of the PGA Tour, PGA Tour Champions, Korn Ferry, PGA Tour Latino America, PGA Tour China, PGA Tour Canada, our relationship with the European Tour and our industry relationships. The person who is in a position to tell you the top players in the world would be Mike Whan. He runs the LPGA Tour.”
There's really no reason he should be, except for those pompous and demonstrably insincere statements of solidarity. Then again, Mike Whan wasn't the guy that got Hank Haney fired...
The PGA Tour’s SVP of Communications, Laura Neal, had an embarrassing performance given that her past job at the LPGA Tour from 1997 to 2006 under then-Commissioner Ty Votaw. Kaplan writes:
His lawyer asked Neal, the PGA Tour’s senior vice president of communications, in a Dec. 15, 2020, deposition about her own knowledge of top women golfers. When she couldn’t name them, he asked her, “Do you think it’s disrespectful for a senior member of the PGA not to know who the leaders of the LPGA are?”
She replied, “No, I don’t think it’s disrespectful.”
This is admittedly just an amusing side-show. But Haney is alleging interference from the Tour in other business opportunities, and the name that remains missing from these accounts is Eldrick Woods. After all, were Haney still a Tiger-insider, do we think Kubla Jay would care what Hank thought about the U.S. Women's Open?
Shack v. Golf Digest - The hits keep on coming. Geoff links to this Jason Jones post at Golf Club Atlas about numerical inconsistencies in their course ratings:
So, what is interesting about this list is that if you take the methodology described, and the data that is provided, their math is wrong.For example, their described methodology is to take (2x Shot Options) plus (the other 6 categories).
For Pine Valley, their published total score using this methodology is: 72.1554
However, if you take the published categories and enter them into their formula, Pine Valley's total score is: 71.8386.
Given that most of these scores are within tenths (or less) of each other, some rankings are different mathematically than their published ranking.
Jones later posts an update with the discrepancies for all of the top 100 courses
And this from one of Golf Digest's paying customers:
Pat Craig posted on GolfClubAtlas of his dismay at dreary Butler National landing above the magical Shoreacres, hardly a controversial sentiment. Craig also posted an emoji after writing simply: “Spring Hill at #100….sure………….”Craig said he received a note from panel leaders Duncan and Stephen Hennessey with “a screenshot of my comment above which they understandably not happy with.”
Craig then posted he had resigned from the Golf Digest panel and questioned its direction after the installation of a $1300 entry fee that seems to allow anyone to join.
I'm old enough to remember when whistleblowers were revered members of society....
It's fun to scan the rankings and look at the pretty pictures, but I'd recommend not taking them too seriously.
Enjoy the Walker Cup and Wells Fargo, and we'll wrap it all for you on Monday morning.
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