Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Tuesday Tidbits

Maybe a couple of other stories before we LIV it up?

Hail Keiser - Interesting doings in the world of high-end daily fee golf, this time of the linksy persuasion:

Just over a decade ago, the Cabot name burst upon the golf scene with its solitary, but widely acclaimed course on the Atlantic Ocean near the town of Inverness, Nova Scotia. Now, it’s only
fitting that perhaps the fastest-growing brand in the game is making its European foray in Inverness, Scotland.

Cabot, which already has high-end golf course projects in development in Canada, Saint Lucia, and Florida, has now added the esteemed Castle Stuart course designed by Gil Hanse to an impressive, and expanding, portfolio.

Just five minutes from the Inverness Airport, 20 minutes from Nairn, and within an hour or so of other famous courses in the Scottish Highlands like Brora, Royal Dornoch, and Skibo Castle, Castle Stuart has been tabbed as one of the Top 100 courses in the world, laid out over a rugged natural landscape with holes framed by the sea and dramatic bluffs. It now becomes the centerpiece of a property that will be known as Cabot Highlands, the latest extension of a brand that boasts Cabot Cape Breton (Nova Scotia), Cabot Revelstoke (British Columbia), Cabot Saint Lucia, and Cabot Citrus Farms (central Florida).

Castle Stuart, along with Kingsbarns in Fife, were developed by the now-deceased Mark Parsinen, with whom your humble blogger played Cypress Point back in the 1980's.  It's a wonderful links of the modern ilk, built to ensure views from virtually every hole of the Moray Forth.  But wait, there's more:

“It’s building on the foundation we started years ago,” says Cabot CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar, who partnered with Bandon Dunes owner Mike Keiser in establishing the Cabot brand. “These things, they take time. But the chance to build in an amazing location and continue to get to work with amazing people is what it’s all about.”

While Castle Stuart checks the Cabot boxes for world class golf and phenomenal surrounds, more is on the way. Cowan-Dewar and the Cabot team have brought in architect Tom Doak to build a second 18-hole championship course on a property that spans almost 500 acres. The new course, which will begin construction later this year and has a planned 2024 opening, will play around Castle Stuart’s 400-year-old castle, weaving through hillsides and expansive open land. There are also several holes dramatically set on the water further southwest of the current course.

That second course has been long rumored, though it always seemed that it would invariably be inland and necessarily less linksy.  But perhaps they were able to acquire some frontage property to sex it up a bit.

Also via Shack, Coul Links seems to have gotten a mulligan, with a planning hearing scheduled for next month.  We met Keiser père on our visit to Cabot, so perhaps we'll run into him yet again in the Highlands, where we'll be in a month (perhaps a look at the Coul Links site might be in order).

That's It, I Quite - Dylan Dethier's Monday Finish column often fills in some B-roll background to the prior week's action, including an interesting common theme from the weekend's winners.  First, the latest Lexi beneficiary:

It’s fitting that In Gee Chun won the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship after opening with
eight-under 64, fully five shots better than anyone else in the field. It’s fitting that she won after a second-round 69 left her six shot clear. It’s strange that she won after shooting 75-75 on the weekend, but that’s the luxury of playing the first two rounds on a different golf course than your competition. You get a little leeway on Sunday.

The victory marked the third major championship of her career. It also allowed Chun, who has spoken openly about struggling with depression, a moment to reflect on the highs and lows of her recent career.

“To be honest last week I talked to my older sister, and then I really cried,” Chun said. “I said, ‘It’s really hard to stay in the U.S., I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t have any goal because I can’t see the goal because I feel really hurt.’

“She said, ‘In Gee, just quit golf. You’re the important thing.'”

The freedom of her sister’s words made her realize she could quit. And for that reason she chose not to. You still want to play golf, she told herself.

We'll have a bit more on the Euro Tour later, but the winner of its weekend events is a name we've not head for some time:

Last year Haotong Li bottomed out at No. 542 in the world. He finished in the top 60 just once in 16 starts. He eventually decided this was it for his golf career.

“No one knows how much I have gone through over the last couple of years,” Li told the DP World Tour. “Ten months ago I nearly decided to not play golf. I thought I couldn’t play golf again.”

He added this: “If someone told me ten months ago I would win again, I wouldn’t believe that.”

There were plenty of opportunities for Li not to win on Sunday. He began the final round of the BMW International Open with a three-shot lead and birdied three of his first five holes to extend that lead to five. But he lost that lead with a string of bogeys midway through the round and needed birdies at 16 and 17 just to force a playoff against Thomas Pieters. That first playoff hole was hardly perfect either; Li’s eagle pitch skittered 40 feet past the hole. But then he canned it coming back and unleashed a celebration that showed exactly how much it all meant.

Here's that celebration of which Dylan speaks:

 

Last year Haotong Li bottomed out at No. 542 in the world. He finished in the top 60 just once in 16 starts. He eventually decided this was it for his golf career.

 Think we'll see this kind of emotion in Portland this week?  

LIV Nation - It's the calm before the storm in Portland, though it remains unclear whether the progressive Portlanders will take time out from producing Molotov cocktails to take in a little golf.

Sports Business Journal seems to indicate that Portlanders will remain on their default settings:

LIV Golf plays its first U.S. event starting Thursday at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in Portland, and law enforcement and government officials are bracing for “significant” protests during the tournament, according to Joe Freeman of the Portland OREGONIAN. The visit has "sparked both curiosity and outrage from area golfers, spurred outcry from local politicians and stimulated threats of protests, thrusting Portland into the crosshairs of controversy." Under normal circumstances, the event’s arrival "would be hailed as a coup for the local sports scene, as the LIV series will bring to town a smattering of the most high-profile golfers in the world, boost the local economy and cast an international spotlight on Portland." But the LIV series is "anything but normal." Eleven mayors from Washington Country, in a letter sent to Pumpkin Ridge owner Escalante Golf, "publicly denounced the event on moral grounds." Multiple Pumpkin Ridge members "left the club in protest." And Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden has "decried LIV Golf as nothing more than a vehicle for Saudi 'sportswashing.'” The event has "not only sparked a moral dilemma for club members, but also for people who live in towns scattered across Washington County." On the one hand, the event will "bring tourists and golf enthusiasts to Washington County, providing a boon to the local economy. On the other hand, those ties to the Saudi government taint any potential positives" (Portland OREGONIAN, 6/27).

But the name Fallon Smart will be remembered, and appropriately so:

I don’t fault Dustin Johnson the $125 million. I don’t blame Brooks Koepka for cashing in. I don’t know Phil Mickelson well enough to pass judgment on his ethics, and I could care less about the future of the PGA Tour.

If the Saudis bought Augusta National, I wouldn’t lose much sleep. But an LIV Golf tournament, backed by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, at Pumpkin Ridge?

In Fallon Smart’s backyard?

That’s beyond the pale.

Oh, Phil's ethics are beyond the pale as well...but do tell:

In August 2016, Fallon was struck and killed on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard by a 21-year-old driving his gold Lexus at nearly 60 mph. She was 15, a rising sophomore at Franklin High.

Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah, a Saudi national, swerved around the cars that had stopped so Fallon could cross the street at its intersection with 43rd Avenue.

Noorah had already racked up 17 parking tickets and a suspended drivers’ license in his two years at Portland Community College. Near graduation, he didn’t think the bills would ever come due.

The Saudis proved him right, spiriting him out of the country before he could stand trial on charges of manslaughter, felony hit-and-run and reckless driving.

He hopped into a black GMC Yukon XL two weeks before his June 2017 trial. He cut off his tracking monitor at a sand-and-gravel yard, then vanished. Inside a week, he was back in the kingdom, the Saudis would quietly inform Homeland Security … 13 months later.

I'll forward  to Greg and Phil's thoughtful commentary on this case, as I know they condemn any and all human rights violations.  

Before moving on, I'll just briefly revisit an issue I raised yesterday as to whether there's such a thing as bad publicity.  It seems to this observer that their attempt to buy the professional golf has merely resulted in an increased air play for their human rights greatest hits album.  As for Portland, well I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time...

Let's now turn our gaze to the formerly great continent of Europe, which will seemingly be the next front in the golf world war.  This browser tab was open when we left for our trip, indicating that your humble blogger has been a little slow to address it:


The battle for golf’s future has featured two main characters: the PGA Tour, fronted by
commissioner Jay Monahan, and LIV Golf, headed by CEO Greg Norman. Both men have portrayed confidence in their organizations and their respective paths forward. Their posturing has come in stark contrast to their counterpart at the DP World Tour, CEO Keith Pelley, who has stayed silent—conspicuously so given the DP World Tour’s “strategic alliance” with Ponte Vedra.

More than a dozen sources from across the DP World Tour and PGA Tour landscape have told Golf Digest that Pelley is mulling a rather impactful decision: a partnership of sorts between his tour and LIV Golf Investments, or a further integration with the PGA Tour. A spokesman for LIV declined to comment for this story, but a source intimately familiar with discussions between the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour says both sides see potential value in aligning more closely.

The author elides what seems an important fact, which is that Pelley is facing this dilemma for the second time.  At the height of the pandemic , as the Euros hit the wall, he faced a similar Sophie's Choice, opting at that time to take Jay's money.  As you might recall, I've speculated as to how that decision might look in the rearview mirror, and there's little doubt that his members are posing similar questions:

And yet, there is nothing resembling a consensus among DP World Tour players as to which path to take.

“[Pelley’s] getting serious pressure from his rank-and-file members to consider the Saudis,” says one high-profile player.

I'm sure he has.

A partnership with LIV Golf for the former European Tour could present benefits to both sides. According to sources closely connected to the tour, the DP World Tour could provide a safety net
to the start-up circuit, whose core vision involves only 48 players teeing it up on a weekly basis. Meanwhile, LIV would pump money into the DPWT to increase purses, and there would be some mechanism for players to move between tours. Any such partnership would surely face a number of legal and logistical hurdles given the PGA Tour’s investment into the DP World Tour as part of the alliance, first announced in November 2020 and widely seen as a pre-emptive response to LIV’s challenge.

“I heard on Sunday that Pelley might be thinking of a U-turn,” says one multiple-time DP World Tour winner. “I think that is very disappointing. But I’m not surprised. Pelley has never been very truthful in what he has told the players. I understand you have to make some decisions that are best kept behind closed doors. But I think this is something that went too far down that path. We should have been told what was going on right from the start. The motivation for this I think is coming from the pressure Pelley is feeling from tournament sponsors. They won’t be liking the fact that they are losing some of their star players. … Pelley is not coming out of this too well. I think it will be the end of his reign. How can you go into a strategic alliance with the PGA Tour then six months later—after they found sponsors for the Irish Open and the Scottish Open—backstab them like this? From a PR and image point of view, that is a s*** move.”

When you choices in life devolve down to a binary decision as to whether to be Jay Monahan's or Mohammed bin Dalman's bitch, you might want to have your C.V. up to date.

Then again, he might be using the Saudis for a once-in-a-lifetime leverage to cut a better deal with Jay, because I'm pretty sure I heard that strategy somewhere...

When last we visited with the Euro trash, Pelley was mulling his response to his defectors, and while I was on the road he dropped the hammer:

There was no mention of the DP World Tour’s on-going relationship with the PGA Tour, but chief executive Keith Pelley has come down hard on those members of the Old World circuit who participated at the inaugural LIV Golf Invitational event at the Centurion Club just north of London earlier this month.

In a statement released to media on Friday, Pelley revealed that the likes of Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, Richard Bland, Martin Kaymer, Ian Poulter, Bernd Wiesberger, Sam Horsfield, Adrian Otaegui, Oliver Fisher, Graeme McDowell, Wade Ormsby and Pablo Larrazabal will all be fined £100,000 ($125,000) and suspended from participating in three DP World Tour events next month: the Genesis Scottish Open, the Barbasol Championship and the Barracuda Championship (all co-sanctioned with the PGA Tour). Participation in further conflicting tournaments without the required releases “may incur further sanctions.”

Excuse me, you think that's hard?  Ummm, then what were they doing here?

Those players who competed in the first LIV event and are currently in Munich for the BMW International Open were informed of their fate on Thursday in what a source told Golf Digest was a “sometimes heated” meeting. Wiesberger, the 2019 Scottish Open champion, is known to have been especially upset, according to the source.

That's because Bernd played poorly in London, where is winnings were a wash with that fine.  But notice that the only suspensions are for the co-sanctioned vents, so sounds like kid gloves to this observer.

Pelley has been conspicuous in his absence in recent weeks, but in a video message to his members went on a bit of an unhinged rant:

"There's been a lot of speculation, a lot of rumours swirling," Pelley said. "There’s been very
little fact and lots of fiction. Factually, I can tell you we're partners with the PGA Tour in our strategic alliance that has been very beneficial since we signed that back in November 2020.

"There is a tremendous amount of fiction and you have to be careful with what is transpiring right now across all media platforms and I encourage everyone to again deal with the fact.

"The one fact is that we will always concentrate on doing the best for our membership, our sponsors, and our stakeholders, and for our players and our members that is prize fund and playing opportunities."

Let's see, the last guy to blame the media for this mess was....wait for it, Brooks Koepka, so nothing to see here.

The question of the day would seem to be, does Jay have Keith's testicles in a jar?  Because it'll be close to lights out should the Euros support LIV's application for OWGR points?

I haven't read it all, but this is an interesting deep dive on the Euro Tour's declining fortunes.  I'll include just this one graphic that's quite the tell:


Yup, their measured strength of field just dipped below that of the Japanese Tour.  

One last amusing bit, then we'll get on with our days.  While away, the estimable Eamon Lynch took on the Koepka defection, the amusing bit jumping out from the header:

Lynch: The Saudis put a horse’s head in Brooks Koepka’s bed. He couldn’t refuse their offer

Eamon takes us through the about face to good effect:

Somewhere over the last few days — since back when he was telling friends that he was emphatically out on the LIV Golf series — Brooks Koepka found a metaphorical horse’s head in
his bed, an offer he couldn’t refuse from the Saudi dismemberment enthusiasts behind the breakaway circuit. Since Koepka does not suffer fools gladly and has been vocally contemptuous of LIV Golf’s leading figures — Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson and Golf Saudi CEO Majed Al Sorour — we must assume the offer was sufficiently high for him to sleep soundly.

For those who know Koepka well, one brief moment at last week’s U.S. Open offered early and irrefutable evidence that he had cast his lot with LIV Golf. He walked up to Mickelson on the range to offer him a fist bump and exchange a few words. That will not be the only time he finds himself doing something that would until very recently have been found unpalatable. The Saudis expect loyalty among team members, whether golfers or murder squads in faraway consulates.

Yes.  And I'd also remind folks that after his clarion dismissal of the LIV competitive model, Jon Rahm played a practice round with Phil.  Jay should have ankle monitors on all these guys...

But here's where Eamon strikes paydirt:

Beyond now having to labor at the beck and call of people he dislikes (with good reason, to be fair), the decision to join LIV Golf represents a humiliation for Koepka, though he will be loath to admit it. He has always fancied himself more an athlete than a golfer, but this is an admission that he’s neither, that he’s just an entertainer doomed to play exhibitions against the washed-up veterans and no-name youngsters that he’s long considered unfit to sniff his jockstrap.

There’s a reason behind the tacit acknowledgment: Koepka’s body has been degrading for years and a nagging injury has him perilously close to surgery and a lengthy layoff. He might have committed to the Saudis, but they will be lucky to see him fulfill it.

The amusing bit being that he can compare notes with his equally competitively-impaired BFF Bryson.

And we've noticed this, but still good to remind us all:

The buying of critical voices, for example. It goes back to Paul Casey. As a UNICEF ambassador, he sat out the first Saudi International tournament in 2019 as an act of conscience. By the following year, Casey had been compensated enough to explain his presence as an act of engagement. It continues today. Pat Perez publicly stiff-armed LIV Golf months ago — not least because of his well-known dislike of Mickelson — but he too was bought off.

And finally, Koepka, who had several terse exchanges with Saudi representatives when rejecting their advances in 2021. Eventually, they found his price too.

You might think there's no personality disorder that the Saids won't take on, but Eamon has found that one outlier:

Another obvious trend is the heat map of player management agencies. Take GSE Worldwide, which has creamed off millions of dollars in fees for funneling its clients into the Saudi rat trap — DeChambeau, Abraham Ancer, Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen, Branden Grace, with plenty more of their assets among the rumored and imminent. And if you want evidence that Jay Monahan can’t catch a break: one GSE client who has not been offloaded to the Saudis is Grayson Murray.

Hard to blame them, but I was dreaming of that Grayson Murray - Kevin Na feature group.

Developing, as the kids like to say.  I'll be back later in the week, though most likely not until Friday.


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