Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Midweek Musings

The Wednesday Game has been moved to the afternoon again, so let's see what pleases your pallet today.

I know our fist subject, but that will consume so much oxygen we might not find a second...

It's On - The next few weeks will be lit, as per these recent headers:

Phil Mickelson requests release for LIV Golf Invitational event, registers for PGA and U.S. Open

I think you'll agree that his participation in a shotgun exhibition is more newsworthy than his attempt to complete the career Grand Slam.  More to the point, that seems consistent with his priorities.

Then there's this:

15 top-100 players signed up for the first LIV Golf event, full field announcement coming in May

Only fourteen of whom are anonymous at this point.

Steve Loy's name came up recently in these pages, given his involvement as agent for both Phil and a Certain portly Spaniard whose fealty has been oft discussed.  Kinda interesting how that Phil news was released, no?

Was there a death in the family?  All black seems a somber voice in which to announce his title defense at Southern Hills, although does anybody know why he's warning us that Phil might not actually play?

That first link above contains no additional information, other than a recitation of Phil's fauxpology.

The second includes this:

Fifteen of the top 100 players in the Official World Golf Ranking have signed up for the inaugural LIV Golf Invitational Series event at Centurion Golf Club outside London, set for June
9-11. The news, first reported by SI.com, has been confirmed by Golf Digest.

The deadline for PGA Tour members to apply for a conflicting-event release, which is necessary to play in any golf tournament held opposite a PGA Tour event, is Monday at 5 p.m. EDT. Only 48 players will compete in the breakaway series’ first event, which will feature a 54-hole no-cut format with shotgun starts and offer $20 million in individual prize money. A LIV Golf spokesman did not reveal any names of players but said the full field list will be released May 27.

The PGA Tour did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

No, I'll bet they didn't.   The ball is back in Jay's court, although it's hard to discern the logical response without some sense of who those fourteen might be.  But Jay has an event to protect, and it's a non-frivolous consideration given the event involved:

LIV Golf's Centurion event takes place the same week as the RBC Canadian Open, which is back on the PGA Tour schedule after COVID-19 issues forced the cancellation of the tournament for the last two years.

A national championship (well, technically) that's in rebound mode, with lots of Tour players sporting those RBC logos.  One assumes none of those guys are in the Fealty-Free Fourteen...

The underlying Telegraph article is behind a paywall, but I'm unclear whay this is presented as mere speculation:

Ya think?  

I'm reminded of that recent Mark Cannizzaro editorial in which he argue that Phil should be allowed to return from purgatory, whereas your humble blogger thought it more likely than not that Phil desired purgatory.  We now have his answer via Mr. Loy.

Circling back to that fauxpology, it was limited to say the least:

...but the bigger issue is that I used words I sincerely regret that do not reflect my true feelings or intentions. It was reckless, I offended people, and I am deeply sorry for my choice of words. I’m beyond disappointed and will make every effort to self-reflect and learn from this.”

The elipsis is that portion in which he half-heartedly accused Alan Shipnuck of using his words out of context, but the bottom line is that Phil might have chosen a wrong word or two.  "Scary MoFo's" pops to mind, but he speaks like a man that doesn't think he's done anything wrong except for a poorly chosen noun or two...

So, color me unsurprised that he hasn't given up the dream of playing for the bonecutters.... And perhaps he'll deign to defend his PGA and make a jet-lagged effort at the career slam, but his mission of growing the game by putting the PGA Tour out of business remains the mission.

Derek Lawrenson has some thoughts:

It is hard to think of anything more depressingly predictable than Phil Mickelson's request for a
release from the PGA Tour to join the inaugural Saudi cash grab at St Albans in June.

Once the organisers made it clear some weeks ago that he would be 'welcome any time' and that he had been forgiven for his unguarded description of the Saudis as 'scary motherf*****s', you knew that he would follow the money trail. He apparently can't help himself.

Mickelson has owned up to being one of the original architects of the proposed Super Golf League, now pushed down the road until 2024 at the earliest.

Maybe Derek didn't parse the apology with the same obsessiveness as your humble blogger, but this was the only actual apology contained therein:

“My experience with LIV Golf Investments has been very positive. I apologize for anything I said that was taken out of context. The specific people I have worked with are visionaries and have only been supportive. More importantly they passionately love golf and share my drive to make the game better. They have a clear plan to create an updated and positive experience for everyone including players, sponsors, networks, and fans.

They're bonecutters and golf visionaries, quite the well-rounded athletes.

Derek seems to know (or, more likely, thinks he knows) how this will play out in the short-term:

It won't cost him anything in terms of burning bridges back in America. The PGA Tour will grant him a release because the event is not taking place on US soil. When the LIV Series moves to America in July is when Mickelson will have a decision to make.

He will be banned from the PGA Tour if he plays in one of those, but it looks as if he's committed lock, stock and oil barrel to the Saudis.

Is that right?  I think the practice has been to approve waivers for overseas events on other associated tours, but I'm not sure anyone has had the temerity to hold a competitive event on U.S. Soil.  But this event is with a group that has announced dates for such events, so seems like there's no precedent upon which we can rely.

 Jay, on the other hand, has been clear that anyone "signing up" with these folks will be banned from the PGA Tour, a line that seems to this observer to be very, well, red.  Jay orchestrated quite the show of support the week of Riviera, teaching Jon Rahm new vocabulary and all.  But one assumes he's getting an earful from the folks at RBC, and myths of invulnerability can be punctured awfully quickly.

Derek's rousing coda seems a bit overwrought:

As for the Saudi event at the Centurion in St Albans, get ready for something far from gladiatorial.

There's a war going on, people are struggling everywhere to pay their bills, and yet 48 golfers, half of whom will be journeymen at best, will play a glorified exhibition 54-hole tournament for a $4million first prize, with even last place getting $120,000.

Is it possible to conceive a worse optic for golf than that?

Professional golfers have been raking it in for decades now, and this is just the WGC model on steroids.  I doubt the increased purses moves the needle, though the Saudi backing and opposition of most of Phil's peers does.    

But where this does hit hardest is in Europe D.P. Land:

All told, 15 of the world's top 100 have supposedly requested releases for the LIV opener, with the usual names bandied around. Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia, Martin Kaymer — if there's a European Ryder Cup hero coming to the end of his career, it seems, he will be down to play.

The interesting thing will be if the DP World Tour follow through with their threat to prevent anyone who signs up for a Saudi event from becoming a Ryder Cup captain in the future.

It looks as if Westwood, Poulter and Garcia — three shoo-ins for the job under normal circumstances — are ready to call their bluff and see who blinks first. It would certainly damage the credibility of the Ryder Cup if all three were overlooked for the post.

Irony alert:  Our great Ryder Cup Task Force, led by...checking notes...Phil, has modelled itself on that European model.

However else this plays out, the future of the Euro Tour seems plenty dismal.  They are nothing more than a feeder tour for the Korn Ferry at this point, with only the allure of Ryder Cup participation motivating players to absorb the extra travel and inconvenience to maintain membership.  If you're a young player of European lineage, watching your Ryder Heroes opt out of captaincies for a mess of pottage might be more than a little troubling....

Related Items - Given his treatment by the Tour and others, you knew he's be all in:

Meanwhile, the LIV Golf Invitational Series is set to announce Monday that the final event of its eight-tournament schedule will be played at Trump National Doral in Miami in October.

The correlation goes back six years, when the PGA Tour decided to leave Doral after a history of tournaments at the venue that dated to 1962.

Then a WGC event, it was moved to Mexico City for a four-year run that was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic last year and moved to Florida for a one-off event one by Collin Morikawa, with the WGC distinction being dropped this year.

There's some relevant context to the move from Doral, which is perfectly fair.  But amusingly left unsaid is that one of the earlier events is at Trump Bedminster, ironically where the PGA Championship was supposed to be.

Buried deep in this story is that LIV has apparently abandoned the team concept for the first seven events, but this final event at Doral is exclusively a team competition, though with no details on format.

The Book - To review the state of play, the PGA Championships begins on May 19th, whereas Alan Shipnuck's tome drops on May 17th.  Alan has previously noted that it's all in there, Phil in Phull, if you will.  Caught this in my Twitter feed:

Very similar to my own take, in which I bifurcate the world into Good Phil and Bad Phil, though I'm not sure where that first guy has been lately.

You Wouldn't Loy To Us, Would You? - Shockingly, there's a reason that I made sure to include that reference to Steve Loy above.  As agent for both Phil, who pheels no phealty, and Jon Rahm, he's at the epicenter for sure.  And now Jon puts in a good word for his buddy:

“That guy has given his life to golf,” Rahm said about Mickelson. “A lot of what we have, a lot of
people don’t know, a lot of what we have and what we are competing for right now is because of [Phil]. A lot of people focus on Tiger, but [Mickelson] is easily one of the top 10 best players of all time. He is a Hall of Famer, and we should recognize him as that. He has given his life to the public. No one has signed more autographs, no one has done more for the fans.

“I know he’s in a bit of a slump for whatever it may be. I don’t think his whole career or whole legacy should change because of a couple comments.”

As with the "fealty" comment, I'd need to see if he was blinking his eyelids to send us a message in Morse code.  But note how his comments mirror the Mickelson fauxpolgy, attempting to limit the crime to a couple of poorly chose words. 

Rahm’s ties to Mickelson run deep; Rahm played for Phil’s brother Tim at Arizona State with Phil serving as a mentor for Rahm when the Spaniard arrived on tour. Rahm is also represented by the aforementioned Loy. Moreover, Rahm is not the first to defend Mickelson, as Rory McIlroy asserted back in March that the players “want to see [Phil] back.”

Nevertheless, Rahm preached forgiveness for Mickelson while contending that the road to forgiveness starts with Phil.

“Everyone makes mistakes and everything can be rectified. I believe that can happen,” Rahm said, “but it has to come from him as well.”

Yes, out-of-work caddie Tim Mickelson was his college coach as well as his agent, until taking Phil's bag.

After The Fall - Or Phil gets results:

A future in which the main PGA Tour season runs from January to August is coming into focus. GOLF has learned that the Tour’s Player Advisory Council recently discussed a schedule shift for the second time this year, a change that could open the door for a new fall competition series.

As has become customary, the Player Advisory Council — made up of 16 players — met shortly after the Masters, at last week’s RBC Heritage. In the April 12 meeting, the PAC discussed a proposed new schedule format that will focus on the “core” FedEx Cup season and leave room in the fall months for top players to take leave — if they so wish — without losing out on FedEx Cup points and creating a deficit before the meat of the season. During those fall months, the top performers from the FedEx Cup season would be allowed to compete “in a series of newly created international events.”

The PGA Tour’s typical fall event schedule, which in 2021 included nine events, would exist on its own and would serve to “finalize eligibility” for players who didn’t finish as high in the FedEx Cup the previous season.

The difference between this and the LIV schedule?  That's simple, Jay controls it....

Quite the hot mess.  The PGA Tour is quite the hot mess, though Phil's diagnosis differs substantially from my own.  Mine starts with the dreary, life-sapping boredom of week-to-week events, the indifferent venues and the forced, suck the oxygen out of the room Fall schedule whose only purpose seems to be to not leave space for any other golf events around the world.

Phil, in contrast, seems to believe that all of golf's problems can be solved by giving Phillip Mickelson more power and money.  It's a credible position, and it's hard to understand why his peers left him holding the bag.  

The real problem is that Phil's antics will result in reactions that make positive change even harder.  I've unloaded her eon my thoughts about the PIP program, and this latest announcement is just another brick in the wall.  How crazy is this?  This new Fall series is not in lieu of the current calendar, but rather in competition with their own sponsors.  Sheesh, if I were the kind of guy to call people names, I might accuse Jay of obnoxious greed.

Gonna leave this sordid mess here, and we'll see how the near future plays out.  Catch you down the road.

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