Your (Black) Friday Frisson

 Are you ready for some of that Tryptophan-induced blogging?  Gee, where should we start?

The Match LCCVIV - You might be surprised to learn that this is merely the fifth installment, though you'd be right to think it should be measured in dog years.  This would seem to be the logical place to begin:

6 reasons why Bryson DeChambeau vs. Brooks Koepka will top your expectations

It would pretty much have to, no?  Shall we see what Josh Sens has that might suck us in?

There really is some bad blood

No one is suggesting that this is Ali-Frazier, with the prospect of first-tee fisticuffs. But these guys are also a long way from a bromance. There’s some genuine tension in their past that is bound to bubble up in the competition. The Thrilla in Manilla? Not exactly. But with each man’s chest-puffy pride on the line, someone is destined for a wounded ego. For that reason alone, we’re not ready to dismiss it as The Blip on the Strip.

I think Josh is quite right that these two genuinely don't care for each others.  It's a curious marketing initiative, though, in that most red-blooded Americans agree with both of them.

But if you thought that a curious example of marketing leverage, get a load of this:

The shortened format

In their boundless wisdom, the organizers of this Match have shortened it to a 12-hole competition. So, think of it as a televised version of a Thanksgiving visit from your in-laws: even if you don’t thoroughly enjoy it, you won’t have to put up with it for long.

If first prize is twelve holes, I guess second prize would logically be the full eighteen holes.

I'll set the snark aside for a moment to actually agree with this move.  A conventional eighteen feels like the Bataan death March (see the original Tiger v. Phil version), and this has a chance to hit the sweet spot.  The downside, though, is that it's so short that there's no case to be made for it as an authentic test of golf.  

Golf Digest has a more conventional Tale-of-the-Tape:

The Course

Wynn Golf Club on the Las Vegas strip will serve as the host venue. The course is a Tom Fazio design that opened in 2005 on the same land as the old Desert Inn Hotel golf course that regularly hosted PGA Tour, LPGA and PGA Tour Champions events. It re-opened in 2019 after a renovation by Fazio and his son, Logan. It’s open for public pay with a green fee of $550.

I love a family business.... Generation after generation of Fazios have built golf courses I hope to never play.  What's more American than that?

The Format

It’s a match-play competition between the two, but the most unusual part of the original announcement that the two would be facing each other that it would be a 12-hole competition. Really? 12 holes? Why not 18 … or nine?

Well, if you watched The Match IV in July with Bryson, Phil Mickelson, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, you’ll likely remember that 18 holes took, roughly speaking, a bazillion hours, which was, of course, too much for everybody involved. The simple solution: Shorten the match—our TV guide says it is only “scheduled” to run for three hours—to make it a more friendly viewer experience.

That one was merely painful, but that first one at Shadow Creek had to be timed in dog years.

One assumes they stayed up nights thinking of these off-the-wall challenges:

On-Course Challenges

Beyond the 12-hole match between Brooks and Bryson, there once again will be a handful of on-

course challenges.

On three of the four par 3s (third, ninth and 11th holes of the competition) there will be a closest to the hole challenge with $50,000 donated in the player’s name to a charity for the winner. If the winner’s ball is within five feet of the hole, the donation jumps to $150,000. And if a player makes a hole-in-one, the increase goes to $2 million.

On the other par 3 (sixth hole in the competition) the player whose ball is closest to the hole will help donate 500,000 meals to Feeding America. If the ball is within five feet, 1.5 million meals will be donated. A hole-in-one will result in 20 million meals being donated.

There will also be as long drive challenge on the seventh hole of the competition with $200,000 donated in the player’s name for whoever hits the longest drive that lands in the fairway.

Wow!  Closest to the pin and a long drive, that's not something you see at an everyday Member-Guest.... 

There's no shortage of backgrounders on The Feud, so I'll just excerpt this bit of back and forth that actually demonstrated trace elements of wit:

1. The abs jab

Believe it or not, Brooks and Bryson actually handled their initial dustup fairly uneventfully. After a bit of public venting, they met face to face, talked it out, reconciled, and even appeared on a podcast together to trumpet their settlement of the beef. Unfortunately, the cease-fire didn’t last long, because in an unguarded moment during a Fortnite Twitch stream, DeChambeau criticized Koepka’s photos in the ESPN Body Issue.

“I don’t think his genetics even make him look good,” DeChambeau said. “Did you see the Body Issue? He didn’t have any abs. I have abs.”

Uh-oh.

2. Koepka’s macho response

With his physique thus slighted, Koepka reverted to a defense that was difficult to top: Nah-nah, I have more majors than you!

— Brooks Koepka (@BKoepka) January 16, 2020

My takeaway?  The last clever thing either of these guys said predates the pandemic.... 

It is my intention to watch, as who doesn't love a good train wreck?  It would seem to me the producers have no shortage of issues ramming this down our throats, which is mostly what intrigues me.  Among their second tier problems are the fact that neither guy has played particularly well recently.  Correct that, the guy who has played has been dreadful:

Will going head-to-head with Bryson DeChambeau wake Brooks Koepka from his slump?

"I've been playing bad for so long, so I'm just trying to play my way out of this thing and figure it out,'' Koepka said. "Hopefully we come out on the other side soon.''

Koepka said that at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba, where he missed the cut by 4 shots. A week later in Houston, he again missed the cut, this time by 3 strokes.

Which is likely only the silver medalist on Brooksie's worry list, this being increasingly worrying:

He followed that with a tie for second at the WGC-Workday Championship and seemed to be trending for a strong Masters when he suffered a freak accident at his home in March, injuring his right knee -- he dealt with left knee problems throughout 2019 and 2020 -- leading to a procedure.

He had surgery March 16 to deal with knee cap dislocation and ligament damage. The injury occurred, he said, while with family in Florida. Koepka said he slipped and it required his knee be put back into place.

The other guy simply hasn't played, though he was seen in public the once:

Bryson DeChambeau went to Topgolf. Yes, of course the results were spectacular

I'm sorry, make that twice:

Watch Bryson DeChambeau hit a 520-yard (!) bomb off the top of a casino

We can't quite make it out, but that target isn't your off-the-rack-bullseye:

On Thursday afternoon, DeChambeau dialed the volume up just a little bit louder. The shift could be heard at 2 p.m. ET, when Bleacher Report posted a video showing the big man swinging his driver from the roof of a skyscraper in Las Vegas, ostensibly attempting to hit a giant, printed version of Brooks Koepka’s smiling face.

Big deal, they've been painting clown faces around holes since I was in knee-socks....

To get serious for a moment, it does seem to me that this version of the franchise is not without peril for Phil and Tiger.  To me, they actually learned from that disaster and improved the product, the key insight being that watching the best in the world play can, irony alert, be incredibly boring.  The interest in the later matches came from the interaction of the greats with the less great, most notably Phil and Charles Barkley.

The good news, I suppose, is that those two interesting characters will be on hand.... The bad news?  Neither brought their sticks.  The grudge will likely prove sufficient to induce some of us to turn on TNT....  But watching them ignore each other doesn't sound like Must-See TV?  The real question is are either of these guys engaging enough to carry a broadcast?  I haven't seen much evidence for that premise, and I think it's far more likely that we'll see a series of pre-scripted barbs that land as flat as the desert terrain.

There's also a chance that I'd blog it on Saturday morning, though likely only if it's memorably bad (or, yanno, epically great, but that seems quite the longshot).  Of course, I've evolved into quite the lazy blogger, so no promises here.

The Rich Get Richer - Eamon Lynch has an interesting piece that riffs off of comments of Billy Horchel, one that I'm still struggling to absorb and react to.  I think we can all agree that, if you misdiagnose the problem, the solution might be problematic:

Billy Horschel was asked this week how the PGA Tour can adapt to face a threat posed by the

Saudi-backed Super Golf League, which has promised guaranteed riches to top-tier players. He suggested reducing the number of fully-exempt players each season from 125 to 100 and scaling back the graduates from the Korn Ferry Tour. The result, Horschel believes, would be a more competitive circuit.

“Guys aren’t sort of just happy finishing 90th on the PGA Tour every year and collecting a million-plus dollars, and that they’re actually striving to be the best players on the PGA Tour,” he offered. “If we would change the way the money pays out where the top 30, 40 guys get paid a lot of money and then you don’t get paid as much down below, so it really pushes guys to really do everything they can to be the best player that they can be.”

Horschel stressed his opposition to what he termed “handouts.”

“We reward for top play, for playing great golf, not for mediocrity,” he said.

There may be a case to be made for changing the allocation of purses, though this is hardly that case.  It seems to me he's arguing that the PGA Tour should be an even more closed shop, increasing the impediments to new talent making their way onto the PGA Tour, which through some sort of alchemy will increase the competitiveness of the events.  I fail to see any evidence that the current system provides insufficient motivation, as opposed to evidence that Phil wants more, of which there is no shortage.

But Eamon does see the bigger picture, if not perfectly:

Leaving aside Horschel’s allegory for the nation—those who want the top to get richer reflexively look at what might be snatched from those at the bottom—his comments point to a fundamental hurdle the PGA Tour faces as it fends off the Saudis: a member-led organization is constitutionally disinclined to put the squeeze on its own.

The Tour has two basic responsibilities: create playing opportunities for its members and deliver the best fields possible for its sponsors. It has more leeway to engineer the former than to guarantee the latter. Any reduction in exempt membership directly impacts the quality of the 40-odd fields it must deliver annually. Especially when stars stay home and the result is a glorified member-guest, as we witnessed in Bermuda last month. So the Tour understands what Horschel misses, that any strategy to better compensate top performers can’t come at the expense of the rank and file. The PGA Tour doesn’t do trickle-up economics.

It seems to me that both miss the need to allow new young talent to find playing opportunities, both mistaking the allure of famous names (can you say Phil?) with actual talent.   

The dilemma facing the Tour is not how to reduce the ranks or earnings of lesser mortals, but how to ensure greater rewards for those who move the needle—a fluid group, but not so fluid as to include Horschel, which inoculates him against any charge of self-interest in his public stance. Other than awarding bonuses that are not dictated by scores, there are only two actions open to the PGA Tour: create guaranteed money tournaments for elite fields, and boost the purses in the existing events that draw the stars. Rewarding the needle-movers does not have to mean sticking it to the rank and file.

I do encourage you to read the whole thing, because there's much of interest that I'm not able to get to, such as the fact that the Tour players on the advisory committee does include rabbits such as Peter Malnati.

My big concern, which Eamon notes above but doesn't really consider, is that bit about awarding money not based on scores, as I seem to be the only one that can see the path that inevitably puts the Tour on.  Jay will be dispensing large sums of money based upon arbitrary metrics (admit it, you'd never heard of a Meltwater Mention before the PIP program), which will no doubt make some bold-faced names happy.  But equally inevitable is the fact that others will be disappointed with Jay's decision, so now the tried and true "Play better" will be of no use....  Here's a pro tip for the Saudis, those malcontents are your target market.

What better time than the now, as we argue about the rewards of mediocrity, than to inform you that mediocrity now pays far better:

— No Laying Up (@NoLayingUp) November 22, 2021

I Saw It On TV - Just a couple of TV-related notes, including the release of next year's TV schedule, the first under the new media rights contracts:

On Tuesday the PGA Tour announced its network and cable schedule for the year, with CBS Sports set to broadcast 20 events and begin network coverage with the Farmers Insurance Open at

the end of January, an event which will feature the first scheduled Saturday finish on the PGA Tour since 1996.

NBC Sports remains the Tour’s cable partner, and Golf Channel will carry early-round and lead-in weekend coverage of every FedEx Cup event. In 2022, NBC will carry the entire FedExCup Playoffs. CBS will do the same in 2023.

ESPN+ will debut as the distributor of PGA Tour Live at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, Jan. 6-9, and will carry 35 PGA Tour tournaments.

 Hey, stifle that yawn!  I'm sure you'll be all over those four ESPN+ streams...

What could be a better segue for our discussion above of the allocation of golf's riches than this little reminder from Geoff:

The 2019 RSM Classic did not draw a rating of any kind, “surged” in 2020 with a barely discernible audience and reverted to anonymous status in 2021, failing to draw a rating for any day. Whether this is concerning to anyone at the Tours or ponying up the cash, I have no idea. But next time someone is moaning about Ray Romano getting too much air time at the Crosby, or just a golf pro who thinks he’s reinvented the game, just remember that IFC’s reruns of Everyone Loves Raymond are trouncing live PGA Tour golf. The show ended production in 2005.

Yeah, if he were listening, I'd suggest that Jay Monahan take some of his time spent allocating the spoils and reallocate it to improving the actual product....  Yeah, not holding my breath.

 Though I do have one TV note of actual interest, as this legend will be leaving the scene soon:

The newly named head of the LPGA Tour, Mollie Marcoux Samaan, presented her first

Commissioner's Award at the Rolex Awards Dinner Thursday night to longtime golf broadcaster Judy Rankin. The longevity and passion Rankin continues to display as she closes on her 59th year connected to the LPGA Tour—from playing to broadcasting—made her a natural selection for Marcoux Samaan's first time handing out the honor. Yet as Rankin commanded the room during her 10-minute acceptance speech, the veteran commentator shared for the first time publicly that she'll be phasing out of broadcasting in 2022.

"I'm coming to the end of my time," said Rankin, who turns 77 next February. "I'm not going to do a Brett Favre and retire about four times. I am seriously slowing down. I don't know how much their will be after this, at some point I will see you next year."

The LPGA has shown little reluctance to cut their ties with history recently, but I do hope they celebrate Rankin appropriately.  She's an important link back to the founders and to Dinah, though of course Father Time is unrelenting.  I'm guessing that this orphan version of the Dinah, the last before the event decamps to Houston, will be quite bittersweet.

Seriously? - You'll not be surprised at my reaction to this tribute:

Jack Nicklaus explains why, after 44 years, course design still inspires him

If only, yanno, any of his designs inspired us....

Full disclosure: Jack is my golfing God, as my early interest in the game coincided with the late stages of his career.  But his architectural career?  We did have cause to mention train wrecks above....

The funny bit is that he at least pays lip service to that which inspired the true architectural greats:

One of the things that has allowed the Old Course at St. Andrews to stand the test of time is that while it is challenging, any golfer can shoot a good score on it — a good score for that golfer, that is. For one thing, you can run the ball up on almost every green there, and the run-up is a preferred approach shot for the average golfer. When I designed and built The Bear’s Club, our family’s home course in South Florida, I wanted to do the same thing. My goal was to give golfers a chance to bounce their ball onto every green — and you can. That makes golf more enjoyable for most players.

I'm glad to hear that that message got through, though it seems to have taken most of those 44 years...I was lucky enough to play Jack's Ferry Point design before it opened to the public.  Built on a windy site on the water, each and every one of those green complexes was above the level of the fairway, eliminating the ground game as an option.  

To me, the best way of capturing Jack's overwrought approach to course design is from an anecdote from his co-design of Sebonack with Tom Doak.  years later I'm still laughing at the pairing of these two, and to me the course (admittedly from all of one loop) reflected the inevitable mismatch in their design philosophies.

When the met on site, they apparently stayed next door at The National Golf Links of America, the Charles Blair Macdonald masterpiece that is, actually, a partial homage to the Old Course.  Reportedly, in walking the museum, Nicklaus turns to Doak and says words to the effect of, "I really don't understand why you revere this course the way you do."

Jack, that you don't get it comes as no surprise to those that have seen and played your designs.  It's true that The National is no Dove Mountain.... We love our Jack, we just wish folks wouldn't let him touch golf courses.  At least not ones your humble blogger might play.

I shall leave you hear and we'll speak soon.