A Postette

 Can't go too deep, but this one needed a rebuttal:

Phil Was Right…Sort of

 The PGA Tour’s sweeping moves demand a reexamination of Mickelson’s legacy as an agent of change

So Alan, was the Kool-Aid grape or orange?

Of course, Monsieur Mickelson went about things in entirely the wrong way, which is typical of a complex, contradictory character who so often has been his own worst enemy. Now that his former place of business, the PGA Tour, has undergone a sweeping transformation in an effort to thwart the upstart competitor he championed, it is time to reassess Mickelson’s legacy as an agent of change.

This is the perfect compliment to Phil's passive-aggressive apology, it's just a failure to explain the complexity of his worldview.

We do star with a little common ground:

The tumultuous events of the past two weeks have provided some sweet vindication for Phil. As he laid out for me in a freighted phone call in November 2021, Mickelson has long believed that

PGA Tour players need to have more say in how they are governed. That is exactly what has transpired, as Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy have emerged as de facto co-commissioners. Cementing the players’ new muscle is the remaking of the Tour’s all-powerful board of directors, as it has been expanded from nine seats to 10, with the players being given a fifth representative; no longer are they outnumbered by bureaucrats and businessmen.

As Jon Rahm told me this week at the Tour Championship, “As players, we have been told [by Tour leadership] a million and a half times, You are the PGA Tour. And I think recently might be the first time I feel like they actually care about what players think.”

Do you know what organizations lose touch with their original purposes and ultimately serve the interests of their administrators?  Yeah, pretty much all of them...

Eamon Lynch had this on this very subject in a recent piece:

It’s been the mantra of every commissioner—admittedly there have only been four—that the PGA Tour is a member-led organization. That’s been nominally true, but only as much as players care to get involved. Most didn’t because they saw no compelling reason to distract themselves from the grind of competition, where their money was made. But when the game’s stars became a sought-after asset class, decisions had to be made. Some opted to cut and run for Saudi money, others to stay and fight—as much against the structure and complacency of their own Tour as against LIV.

Wednesday showed that the Tour’s biggest names have cemented their position atop the food chain.

What Eamon touches on is an issue that Alan seems to ignore, that the Tour has a wide range of members, and what we're seeing is a bit of a civil war between the elites and the masses.

Perhaps I've been slightly hasty, because Alan does acknowledge this issue briefly:

The mini-uprising led by Woods and McIlroy has forced changes to the schedule in an effort to get the best players competing against each other more often. This has also been a longtime Mickelson talking point: He is an outspoken critic of opposite-field events, believing they water down the Tour’s product, and as Brandel Chamblee told me about being paired with Phil at the B.C. Open in the 1990s, “Knowing that I was on the Player Advisory Council, he spent the whole time in my ear saying the PGA Tour should be reduced to only the top 30 players—nothing but the stars. He was totally oblivious to the fact that would eliminate my job.”

Phil, given that you're not in the top 100, your terms are acceptable.  But Phil might be considered a man of the people by the fans, but he's all about talking care of No. 1 through 30.  How exactly he would imagine young talent arising is not clear, nor does it seem to be a priority.

Mickelson was seduced by LIV Golf’s fantastical money because he has long nursed the grievance that, as the second biggest star of the past quarter-century, he was vastly underpaid. (Whether he was compelled to take the Saudis’ money because of what he has since called a gambling addiction is a question that is explored in detail in my recently published biography.) In our phone conversation, Mickelson noted that his on-course earnings peaked in 2009 at $8.3 million, including the FedEx Cup bonus, a fraction of what top players earn in team sports.

Gee, Alan, I had been reliably informed that you were a journalist, but I stand corrected.  Pay no attention to those two massive elephants in the corner, to wit:

1. The analysis conveniently ignores that team sports athletes are unable to sell their uniforms to the highest bidder, so perhaps that revenue should be included? 
2. Have you, perhaps, looked at golf ratings versus NFL ratings?  

Sportico did an analysis a couple of years ago of the highest paid athletes, all inclusive basis, and by happenstance I was able to capture the top eleven in a screen grab:

When you say that Phil has been obviously underpaid, I think perhaps the Kool-Aid has gone to your head.  Everybody takes the assertion that Tiger and Phil are underpaid as fact, whereas it's just opinion.  I'm open to the argument, but they don't make a case for it, they just make assertions as if they're facts.

What particularly bothered Mickelson was his suspicion that the PGA Tour was not giving the players a fair share of the revenue. He cited the Tour had cash reserves of $800 million, an exaggerated number that hinted at the truth. Faced with the LIV threat, the Tour has suddenly opened the spigot of new TV money. The nebulous Player Impact Program was created out of thin air to funnel money to the top players, and in less than a year the pot has ballooned from paying 10 players $40 million to distributing a whopping $100 million among 20 players. (One of the Tour’s strongest differentiators was as a pure meritocracy versus LIV’s potentially corrupting guaranteed money, but the PIP now offers lavish compensation that is not tied to on-course performance.) Hasty increases in purses and additional bonus programs put another another $95 million in the pockets of PGA Tour players in 2022, and now the Tour has committed to a slate of a dozen mega-tournaments with $20 million purses, more than double what many of these events paid out this year. Asked on Wednesday where all this fresh money would come from, commissioner Jay Monahan said existing tournament sponsors will help defray the costs, but he also cited the primary source of this new largesse: “Reserves.” Phil was right.

How laugh-out-loud funny this bit is....  Phil wanted more money is the gist of it, no?

I don't think either Alan or Phil quite get that this is an admission against interest.  Jay maintain reserves in excess of what Phil thought necessary, that's your run-of-the mill disagreement.   Then Phil led an insurrection against the Tour, and Jay used his reserves to fight off the existential threat.  Sounds to me like the reserves were necessary, point, set, and match to Monahan.

He was also obsessed with how players could better monetize their their name-image-likeness, particularly through NFTs. Voíla, the PGA Tour announced this spring a program to peddle NFTs for its players, though details remain nebulous. (NFTs of LIV golfers are already for sale.) Mickelson railed against the Tour for charging him a $1 million licensing fee to compete in made-for-TV exhibitions, part of what he called a pattern of stifling the players’ ability to market themselves outside of the traditional confines. Now, in the new world order, the Tour is happily supplying its stars for a series of Monday night indoor team exhibitions, in a fledgling enterprise called TGL, which is owned by Woods and McIlroy.

These are new revenue sources that I'm still trying to understand, though I'm pretty sure that NFT's are your basic scam.  But let's also remember that the Tour was being accuse dof obnoxious greed and the like, so I'm sure Phil feels more comfortable with the Wahabis

But Alan actually breaks some news here, and I'm guessing that Phil will not look so great when a full accounting is aired:

It’s impossible to say how many of these changes would have come about without Mickelson’s brinkmanship, but he undoubtedly played a crucial role. Billions of new dollars will flow to the game’s best players in the next few years, but Mickelson is getting, at best, grudging acknowledgement. As McIlroy said this week, “As much as I probably don’t want to give Phil any sort of credit at all, yeah, there were certain points that he was trying to make. Some of these ideas, did they have merit? Of course they did.”

The lingering bitterness toward Mickelson—not just from players but also fans and other stakeholders in the game—is less about what he did than how he did it, particularly the sneakiness. He was conducting stealthy negotiations with Monahan while at the same time secretly helping the Saudis organize LIV. Acting as a double agent inevitably leaves both sides with the gnawing suspicion that the two-timer is only out for himself; in McIlroy’s formulation, it was “a renegade group trying to take some sort of power grab of the PGA Tour.” Rory and Tiger have taken the exact opposite tact of Mickelson’s self-serving approach. These new guardians of the Tour have solicited consensus and fostered solidarity, galvanizing the other players to work together for the greater good. (This approach inevitably benefits the individuals too.) McIlroy and Woods have been hailed for their leadership, and their standing in the game has only been further solidified.

Specifically, those negotiations with Monahan will, I suspect prove duplicitous and self-centered.  Why, because it's Phil.

Care for a dissenting voice?

Two-time winner James Hahn doesn’t claim to be disappointed with the changes coming to the

PGA Tour next season, but that doesn’t mean he is pleased with them either. As one of four player directors on the Tour’s nine-voting member Policy Board, he cast the lone dissenting vote. In a Golfweek exclusive, Hahn tells for the first time why he felt compelled to do so.

“Certain changes were made to combat the LIV Tour, not necessarily make our Tour any better,” he said in a phone interview on Saturday. “To prevent more players from leaving our Tour, we are ending up paying the top players in the world guaranteed money that has increased exponentially. Three years ago, we started implementing this new PIP program, which has grown to $100 million. It seems like the people who have the most influence of how much money is distributed to the top players in the world have a much stronger voice now than they’ve ever had. I understand the reasoning that the money is used to keep top players and without them, we have no Tour. My question to them is when is it enough? We’ve gone from $50 million to $100 million. When $100 million isn’t enough, will they ask for $200 million? How will that impact our business?”

Hahn noted that many of the same players who bashed LIV defectors as employees who no longer had the luxury to pick their schedule and privilege to play when they want to have essentially given up those very rights.

That's very much worth a read, as Hahn seems to understand better than most the battle between the haves and the have nots (what Eamon Lynch amusingly  referred to as the haves and the have yachts) 

Here's Alan's rousing coda:

It was only 15 months ago that Mickelson, at the age of 51, won the PGA Championship in the crowning moment of a legendary career. As he was enveloped in a delirious crush of fans on the final fairway of the Ocean Course, one of golf’s most enduringly popular players had never been more beloved. But behind the scenes, forces were already in motion that would forever cloud his legacy and turn him into a pariah on the tour that made him a star. Mickelson has earned a nine-figure bonanza from LIV and helped reshape the landscape of professional golf. But it is impossible not to wonder if, in his quiet moments, he still believes this fight was worth it.

When in front of a camera, he looks like he's sold his soul to the devil.... which is about as accurate as Phil gets.

My predictions have suffered from the same dispersion pattern as my driver, but the one thing that I got very right was that Phil's insurrection would push the Tour in a lamentable direction.  Contra Alan, that doesn't make Phil right about any of this.

Interestingly, no one, Alan included, wants any part of the larger issue of what does the world look like with the Saudi's running the largest golf tour on the planet?  Setting aside the obvious blood money issue, what happens when the checks stop coming?  It's actually a startlingly nihilistic view of the gold world, because he's more than eager to blow up a century of golf history to cash that check.  But who exactly gave him that authority?

I have to make tracks at this pint, but Alan seems awfully credulous as regards our Phil, perhaps his own financial interest have become intertwined, as that article obviously promotes his recently-issued biography.  

Weekend Wrap - Cam, We Hardly Knew Ye Edition

One of those weeks when the golf is almost an afterthought, yet....

Who Doesn't Like a Happy Ending? - Alternative header, What a difference a month makes:

In Rory McIlroy, the PGA Tour got the perfect winner of the FedEx Cup

True enough as far as it foes, although what's left unsaid seems the bigger issue:

For Rory McIlroy, playing golf has been the easiest part of a truly tumultuous 2022. Being the standard bearer for the PGA Tour in its battle with LIV Golf has been the challenge. That’s why the

Northern Irishman looked content at East Lake Golf Club, where he began the Tour Championship with a triple-bogey 7 on the first hole and ended it with a third career FedEx Cup on the 72nd.

“Golf has been the escape for me over the last few weeks,” McIlroy said on Sunday after overcoming a six-shot final-round deficit to beat Scottie Scheffler and Sungjae Im by a stroke and become the first three-time winner of the tour’s season-long title. “When I get inside the ropes, no one can get to me.”

The PGA Tour was gifted a most appropriate champion ahead of a week in which the Saudi-backed circuit is expected to announce it has poached at least five more tour players as new recruits. McIlroy has been the tour’s most vocal public supporter and a most industrious saviour behind closed doors. If any one of the 29 players in the field at East Lake deserved an $18 million FedEx Cup bonus, it was McIlroy.

Do we think the author (the previously-unknown to me Evin Priest) did a spit-take when he typed "29", as in "Gee, that's an odd number of players in an allegedly significant tourney?  Both because it's small, as opposed to, just to pick a number at random, 48, but also just a weird number, unless Jay has a thing about prime numbers.

Your humble blogger will graciously down a small portion of crow, having been just a wee bit skeptical about Mr. McIlroy's performance at his day job.  Strike that, I remain quite skeptical, but the results are what they are.  Certainly Rory played his ambassadorial role to perfection, both as relates to the vanquished, but also in defense of his tour:

“What a week, what a day. I feel like Scottie deserves at least half of this today,” McIlroy said. “I

feel sort of bad that I pipped him to the post. He’s a hell of a competitor and an even better guy. It was an honor and a privilege to battle with him today. I’m sure there will be many more. I told him we’re 1 all in Georgia. He got the Masters and I got this.”

“Yeah, I’ve been in the thick of things, he said Sunday night. “I guess every chance I get, I’m trying to defend what I feel is the best place to play elite professional golf in the world. It’s in some ways fitting that I was able to get this done today to sort of round off a year that has been very, very challenging and different.”

Of course, if you lay those two Georgia events side-by-side, Rory won the LIVier of the two..... 

The Tour Confidential panel paid homage to the Tour's coda....well, eventually:

6. An actual golf question! The Tour Championship concluded Sunday, and with it, the PGA Tour’s regular season. Rory McIlroy rallied from six shots down to start the final round to edge Scottie Scheffler and bring home the $30 million top prize. What did we learn about McIlroy in victory?

Seriously, guys, you couldn't squeeze a question in before the jump?  That might be the cruelest cut of all, coming from a virtual house publication.

Sens: Nothing we didn’t know already. When he gets it going, he’s got a rarefied gear.

Hirsh: We already knew he was a great chaser. We knew he was resilient. We knew he was the Alpha of the PGA Tour — when Tiger isn’t around. I think this win was a statement of how well McIlroy can let his play do the talking. This was a huge week for him. His last win, at the Canadian Open, was also a huge week for him because it was the week of LIV’s U.S. debut. Maybe these two wins will finally help him get the Masters monkey off his back.

Bastable: Like Tiger’s Tour Championship win in 2018, you couldn’t have scripted this one much better. The Tour’s knight in shining armor in 2022 winning the season-culminating tourney and a boatland of (non-LIV!) dollars to boot. It all felt so right. After his win, Rory also spoke of how much his Open Championship disappointment still haunts him. He’s not over it, he said, but surely $18 mil will help soothe the sting.

OK, were they watching the same telecast as the rest of us?  Full disclosure, I started to watch it on tape, but the bride turned it on live and I caught that Rory and Scottie were tied, so watched only the last 4-5 holes in real time.  

It seemed, first and foremost, mostly about Scottie having one of those days from heck and Rory being the lucky recipient.  I certainly didn't sense any actual energy, nor did the level of play impress me.  At one moment I thought that Sungae Im would provide that bizarro-world worst-case ending,  

Mostly I thought it a soul-sapping exercise, focused exclusively on the size of the winners check, but wrapped up in an opaque algorithm used to create an arbitrary staggered start that seems to be missing only the clown face painted around the hole on the 18th green.  Reminding us, quite unfortunately, that the FedEx Cup was LIV before LIV was cool....

As for Rory, even he can't pretend that this makes up for the one that got away:

Quite likely, McIlroy would trade every one of the $18 million in FedEx Cup earnings for that claret jug, but admitted it did provide consolation.

“St. Andrews was really hard for me,” he said. “It’s still a tough one to get over. This softens the blow a little bit. It doesn’t make it that much easier to get over, but it’s great to end the season on a high note like this. I went up against the best player in the world today and I took him down, and that’s got to mean something.”

It means 18 million things, just not the things you needed most....

Exodus Monday -  We apparently know who's going, and it seems that sound Jay hears are a couple of bullets that missed:

According to multiple reports, those defections are imminent as the PGA Tour’s 2021-22 season comes to a scheduled conclusion Sunday, with as many as seven players expected to be

announced shortly afterward.

Most notable of the bunch is expected to be Cameron Smith, the winner of the Open Championship in July and the Players Championship in March and the No. 2-ranked player in the world. The 29-year-old Australian has offered no comments when ask about previous reports of his potential move over the last month, but Golf Channel reported Saturday afternoon, shortly followed by Sports Illustrated and ESPN, that Smith will be in the field at next week’s LIV Invitational Series event at The International in Bolton, Mass.

Joining him, according to the reports, will be fellow Aussie Marc Leishman, Joaquin Niemann, Cameron Tringale and Harold Varner III. On Sunday morning, Tringale confirmed his decision to join LIV via social media.

No understating the impact of Cam bolting, an actual top ten player.  While we all have our own individual reactions to specific players, the HV Three-sticks one really disappoints this observer.  

But, it had seemed to be heading for a really black Monday, yet at the very last moment:

Report: Hideki Matsuyama to forego LIV Golf, stay with PGA Tour

Now that the PGA Tour’s 2022 Tour Championship is completed, with Rory McIlroy hoisting the trophy for a record third time, news is circulating about players deciding to join the LIV Golf Series while others are planning to stay with the Tour.

Hideki Matsuyama, who was long rumored to be heading to the breakaway series that’s backed by Saudi Arabia and led by Greg Norman, appears to be staying, according to the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson.

For now, we should always add...

But, given LIVs investment in the Asian Tour and the importance of the Japanese market, Hideki always seemed to have an out-sized importance.  And given that the rumors had him gone, it magnifies the importance of keeping him on board.

This one as well, for different reasons:

Report: Cameron Young won't join LIV Golf, has ‘decided to stay’ with the PGA Tour

If, to paraphrase Tom Lehrer, the average golf fan has been dead for three years, the LIV fields are perfectly constructed to appeal to that valuable demographic....  In keeping a young gun in the fold, that's another notch in the belt for Jay.

Here's the TC take on this round of defections:

4. This week, while the PGA Tour is off, LIV will play its fourth event, just outside of Boston, and as many as seven current Tour players will be in the field. On Saturday, several outlets were reporting that Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann and others would leave the Tour and join LIV, following other notable players who have done so already. What do these moves mean to both the LIV and PGA Tour brands?

Sens: A blow to the Tour and a boon for LIV. I don’t know how you cast it any other way.

Hirsh: It’s a blow to the Tour, but it could have been worse. Don’t get me wrong, Niemann and Smith are both young players just entering the primes of their careers; Niemann may even be a few years away from his. But both of these players certainly don’t draw like Rory, Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth or even Adam Scott. It’s definitely a great announcement for LIV as, for the most part, most of the players defecting have been past their primes. If Hideki Matsuyama was going over, that would be a massive blow given his status in Asia. But it looks like he’s staying put for now, thus making this a hit the PGA Tour can weather.

Bastable: Yeah, I’d agree that other than the reigning Claret Jug-holder, there’s no names in the next reported pack of defectors that will send shockwaves beyond the golf world, but it’s still another reminder that LIV isn’t done recruiting. Worth keeping in mind, though, that their format allows only for 48 players (for now, anyway), so there are only so many spots. LIV obviously wants those 48 players to be the biggest stars possible, but there are also only so many big-name players who will say yes. Feels like we might be hitting that threshold soon.

I need to eat another portion of crow here having, like Rory, called the fight over back in February.   Yet, LIV stubbornly lives on, so what to make of the current state of play?

But I do think Alan Bastable is onto something.  Cam and Niemann hurt, as we can no longer state equivocally that they have no top ten players and no young talent.  Now they have one legitimate top ten, and a few guys we can lump in with the young guns, although their talent pool still comes with a bunch of asterisks, at least in my view.

But will the field in Boston be compelling?  This group of players clearly improves it, but they still seem many bricks short of a load, no?  And how exactly do they get there?

And even if we generously call it a tie, doesn't that ultimately go to the incumbent?  

The Empire Strikes Back - Not sure I have these in the most logical order, but the TC gang shared their thoughts on the Tour's restructuring (in fact, they led with that):

1. In a recurring trend, most of the news this week came before play. And the biggest was the multiple changes to the PGA Tour’s schedule and money as part of theTour’s fight against LIV Golf. Among the items, announced Wednesday by Tour commissioner Jay Monahan ahead of the Tour Championship, were: 20 players will be defined as “top players” starting next year; the device in which the Tour defines those players, the Player Impact Program, will receive a purse bump, from $50 million to $100 million, to reward those players; four more tournaments, in addition to eight announced in June, will be tabbed as “elevated events” with $20 million purses; the 20 players will play in those events, the Players Championship, the majors and three other tournaments; all fully exempt players will start the season with a $500,000 stipend; and players will receive a $5,000 travel stipend. We’ll start with this: Will these moves work in the Tour’s fight against LIV Golf?

Josh Sens: They seem like effective moves in keeping young American talent around. The upshot feels like both sides are more solidified in their positions. LIV isn’t going anywhere. But the Tour has shored up crucial core support.

Jack Hirsh: Players are choosing between money and legacy, it seems like. LIV has a seemingly unlimited supply of money. The Tour, on the other hand, has history, and if it can make the dollars at least within shouting distance of LIV, I don’t see many players picking them over the Tour. After all, what does $25 million get you that $20 million doesn’t? The league minimum also helps take care of the journeymen pros who help make up a lot of what the dream of playing on the PGA Tour is.

Alan Bastable: You know when this plan would have been really effective? A year ago. This new model has many cool elements and enticements — and it seems to have helped sway at least one rising star, in Cameron Young, to stay put — but it’s still too little too late. Too many ships have already sailed, creating two diluted golf leagues, one of which you can only watch on YouTube. Yes, we’ll see some of the best players in the world get together regularly at the elevated PGA Tour events but not all of them. That’ll happen only four times a year now, at the majors. It’s a real bummer. The top players on both tours are all getting richer, but golf fans will be poorer for it.

You'd have to concede some temporary success, to wit Hideki and Cam Young, but I'm a bit surprised the writers weren't more curious about secondary effects.  Elevated tourneys sound nice, but is anyone interested in what happens to those events left behind?  Or the process by which Jay uses his wild cards?  It turns out that a couple of the guys are all over that....

2. What change are you most interested in? What change may need some work?

Sens: The $500k stipend. A lot of guys are expendable and just can’t cut it. But you’ve got to do something to keep the farm teams alive. The change I’d still like to see is a greater commitment to cool venues. Great designs go a long way toward creating interesting golf.

Hirsh: I agree with Josh here, but I’ll change it up to bring up another topic. I’m very interested in how the “elevated events” will rotate from season to season. Will we see an elevated John Deere Classic in 2027? You would think every sponsor would want a shot at hosting all of the top pros at their event. On the other hand, not all sponsors are equal, so I guess we’ll see.

Bastable: Yeah, the rotating elevated events most grabbed my attention. Clever idea — but will it work? With the top players’ schedules filling up with the permanent elevated events, majors and — coming soon! — Monday night golf, how much appetite and energy will they have for smaller-ticket tourneys? The John Deeres, the Hondas, the Rocket Mortgages, etc., all seem to be in a precarious spot. The wave of household names who departed for LIV doesn’t help matters.

The $500K costs the Tour almost nothing, and those travel stipends are chump change as well.

But Alan lists three sponsors, to which you can add AT&T, Farmers Insurance, Waste Management, AMEX, RBC, and that's just names off the top of my head, yet he has only three slots to spread around.

What's In It For Us? - Intriguingly, there's a bit of concern for you, the golf fan.  First, from the TC journalistos:

3. Max Homa offered up some of the better thoughts on the changes after his Tour Championship second round, and when he was asked about his field size, he also said this: “I don’t care how good I am at golf; if people aren’t watching, we’re just telling people in a bar we’re really good at golf.” That raises a good point. All of the changes by the PGA Tour, along with the large, guaranteed money, seemingly have the player in mind. But where does the fan fit in to all of this?

Sens: As a fan, I’m partly put off by the insanity of the money. But there are trickle-down perks in the preservation of talent. More than fans, I see more pluses for bettors. I guess some of them are fans.

Only partly?  You must have an unusually high tolerance for pain.... 

Hirsh: What the fan gets are defined events of when the “top players” are all going to be in the field. This fixes a huge problem for the casual fan, who didn’t really know when they were supposed to be watching a Tour event. I knew the top players weren’t at the Wyndham Championship, but was the Travelers worth watching? Wells Fargo? Bay Hill has the prestige of being Arnold Palmer’s event, but the field had been weakening with the new schedule shifts. Was it still worth watching? Now fans will know exactly when the best weeks to watch golf are.

Bastable: Mentioned this above, but, yeah, it’s hard to see how any of this upheaval benefits the fans. Sports fans want to watch the best players, period, competing against the best players, period. In golf, that’s no longer possible, other than four times a year. Don’t get me wrong: The drama around pro golf in recent months has had golf fans and non-golf fans alike riveted. But what happens when that all passes?

Alan Bastable has had the best of it in this weeks roundtable, but I think he's a bit off base here, for the simple reason that, if you want to see the best go head-to-head, those guys are still largely in one place.

But no one seems able or willing to think as far as secondary events.  There's a bigger question as to how many events the big tour should actually hold, because those lesser events are the lifeblood for the process by which young talent emerges.  This move by Jay is likely necessary to hold off LIV in this moment, but the long-term effects will be profound.

Eamon Lynch focuses his eye on the fans, though it's something of a shotgun (pun intended) approach:

Presenting Monahan with a wish list for the future feels like asking Santa for a gift when he just emptied his sleigh with the rich kid next door, but there are issues that demand his attention. Safeguarding the talent pipeline, for one. Seeing two college stars—U.S. Amateur champion James Piot and Eugenio Chacarra—sign with LIV should have triggered alarm bells in Ponte Vedra. Offering the best and brightest access only to developmental tours won’t cut it. The world’s best amateurs must be fast tracked onto the PGA Tour. (Talent being groomed on the Korn Ferry Tour would benefit from even a small subsidy to offset the cost of competing on a circuit where the average prize money this season is less than $70,000.)

But those fifteen guys demanding guaranteed money and smaller fields makes this a bigger ask....  That's always been one of the profound weaknesses in the LIV vision for the game, but we're straying further and further away from the meritocracy that Tiger and others have trumpeted.

But good luck with this one, Eamon:

The PGA Tour must also eschew insularity. The alliance with the DP World Tour can’t be neglected. On Wednesday, Monahan said the PGA Tour events being accorded “elevated” status are domestic. Tally up those weeks along with majors and it leaves precious little time for top players to compete outside the U.S. Conceding the global stage to LIV would be poor strategy, and the PGA Tour needs to boost key stops on the DP World calendar too.

But trying to span the globe with events is also a partial explanation of how the Tour's product got so diluted.  Should the PGA Tour be holding events outside the U.S., or should those be left to others?  Nurse Ratched and Jay have basically destroyed what used to be a wonderful season of events in Australia, so haven't we suffered enough?

But here's the fence Jay needs to straddle:

Perhaps most importantly, Monahan must prevent the PGA Tour from becoming LIV-lite, cushioning elite players with an extensive roster of no-cut events. It’s clear that good performances will earn lavish rewards—heck, even middling play pays well—but the Tour can’t lose the penalty for poor showings. The highs and lows of meaningful competition ought to be preserved. There is sufficient guaranteed money in what has already been announced, and fans deserve to see their favorites stress-tested for a pay check. Someone needs to slam their trunk on Friday. The $120,000 LIV pays for DFL is a subject of mockery and disgust. The same perception can’t be permitted to take root on the PGA Tour with an over-reliance on no-cut formats in those elevated tournaments for stars.

I've gotten quite a few things wrong as this story has developed, but one thing on which I remain steadfastly confident is that LIV is terrible model for our game.  perhaps you'll think I'm painting with an overly broad brush, but it seems that capture the zeitgeist of contemporary society, where everyone gets a participation ribbon.  Admittedly, it's quite a twist that, in lieu of that participation ribbon, everyone gest $100 million.

There's just a wee little problem.   Without the Darwinian, survival of the fittest, eat what you kill mentality of the Tour, why should we watch?  It's that life or death nature of sports that draws us in, and you sweep it away at your peril, along with most of your fans.  

Will I \See You In September? - In a perfect synechdoche of the moment, I decided to check on the International Team's qualification status for the Prez Cup, and got this quite appropriate error message:

Sounds about right.... Poor Trevor, it seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Aussie Rod Morri suggests something I've been long surprised hasn't happened:

For all the hand wringing and public proclamations on both sides, neither LIV Golf nor the PGA Tour/DP World Tour have brought anything genuinely interesting or new to the game these past few months.

There’s no doubt players at the top of the sport have done very nicely out of the spat but the game itself – and fans in particular – are yet to see anything of value.

With the latest reported exodus from the PGA Tour – one that especially impacts the International Team for the upcoming Presidents Cup – comes an opportunity for the establishment to do something genuinely interesting.

It is, of course, something they should have done long ago (like so many other things they should have done but didn’t which is how we ended up here).

But ‘better late than never’ is a cliché for a reason so let’s just get on with switching the Presidents Cup from its current tired format to something genuinely innovative by inviting the game’s top women to be part of it.

Funny because it would solve two problems, both the Prez Cup ( which hasn't been competitive, though we should note that the Ryder Cup took many decades to evolve) and the Solheim Cup, which excludes the best women players in the world.

I think Jay missed quite the opportunity.  When the first defections happened, including all those South Africans, this event was clearly compromised.  The LPGA would be so over the moon to be included, that I'll bet he could have pulled it off on short notice (and I say that without even checking the LPGA's schedule.

I've got more, but the clock is yelling at me.  Not sure about the next few days, some golf but also some other issue demanding morning attention.  

The New World Order

I've had some bad predications, most notably in thinking that it was pretty much over the week of Riviera.  But one predication is proving out, to wit, that the steps that Jay would take to hold the Tour together would make it a less meritocratic and, therefore, less interesting place.   It's even worse than I imagined...

But first, this victory lap form....well, Alan Shipnuck:

Tiger and Rory Save The Day…For Now

Like Arnie and Jack a half-century ago, the two most influential names in the game have joined forces to reshape the PGA Tour

Which the author seems to think is a good thing.....

In this tense, fraught moment for the sport, the wee lad from Northern Ireland has become a towering figure. But McIlroy has not been going at it alone. In fairness to Monahan, he displayed

an impressive nimbleness in remaking the Tour just eight days after a closed-door, players-only meeting gave him the mandate for change, and he brought the right resolute tone to his presser. However, his rightful title should now be co-commissioner, alongside McIlroy and another figure who loomed large in absentia: Tiger Woods.

In these eight days that have shook professional golf, Rory and Tiger have further emerged as the faces and voices of the Tour, evoking the activism of Jack and Arnie when the Tour was born of rebellion in 1968 as the players broke away from the rigid bureaucracy of the PGA of America. There is more than a passing resemblance between these linked pairs of legends. Nicklaus and Palmer were born a decade apart, while Woods is 13 years McIlroy’s senior. On the golf course, Jack was tactical and Arnie daring, just as Tiger is a plodding strategist compared to the freewheeling Rory. The personable Palmer connected intensely with the fans in the same way McIlroy does, while Nicklaus and Woods have always been more remote figures. But this battle for the soul of golf has stirred something deep within Tiger.

A week ago he jetted to the first FedEx Cup playoff event, in which he wasn’t competing, to convene a meeting with 22 of the biggest names on Tour. Trudging onto the tarmac in Wilmington, Del., Woods had the air of a disappointed dad cutting short lunch with friends to return home and scold his quarreling children. Once he was in the room, the other players felt the weight of his presence. “Any time I see Tiger I feel a little electricity,” Max Homa says. “It’s always weird to be in a room with Tiger Woods. I don’t think I’ll get over that one.”

The hero worshiping is fine I suppose, but what have they wrought?  Not sure I instinctively know the implications of this, though the usual question presents, should it have taken a crisis to investigate:

The mind-melding of Woods and McIlroy went to another level in recent weeks as they held a series of exploratory conversations with the Raine Group, a venue capitalist firm that has had a hand in various blockbuster sports deals, including the $4 billion sale of the Ultimate Fighting Championship league. Tiger and Rory have been investigating the benefits of the Tour renouncing its non-profit status and privatizing, which would lead to an eight-figure tax bill but allow for billions of dollars in outside investment. It is the kind of big, bold thinking that may be required to fend off the continued encroachment of LIV Golf. The Tour is paying for its newly announced slate of mega-tournaments with cash reserves—Phil was right!—and by squeezing existing sponsors for extra millions. Neither source is inexhaustible. On Wednesday, Monahan affirmed that he wants the Tour to maintain its 501(c)6 status but signaled an openness to creative work-arounds, saying, “Can you create for-profit subsidiaries? Are there other things you can do to create value as you go forward for the members? Yes.”

The Raine Group?  Really, though they're the only ones more pissed at the Saudis than Kubla Jay, because they started this whole mess and had their concept stolen by the Saudis.

But in what might they be investing?  Because I've seen the ratings and they don't exactly scream, "cash cow".

Alan's piece works as hagiography, but he never actually gest around to the Tour structure being created.   Shall we peak under the covers?

I'm old enough to remember when every Tour event was created equal, but the Sponsor Wars, they have begun:

The 12 “Elevated Events” are official.

The PGA Tour has always had bigger events and smaller events. Now they’re more clearly defined. Here are the 12 “Elevated Events” which will have average purses of at least $20 million and feature the top 20 players in the PIP, as long as they’re qualified for the event:

1-3. Three FedEx Cup Playoffs events

4. The Genesis Invitational

5. Arnold Palmer Invitational

6. Memorial Tournament

7. WGC-Dell Match Play

8. Sentry Tournament of Champions

9-12. Four additional Elevated Events with at least $20 million purses

I lean instinctively towards full disclosure, though that moment when lies are revealed can be a bit awkward, as that sound you hear is chickens coming home to roost.  The Tour has created this problem by holding far too many events and thereby watering down its product, and in the bargain has been quite the dreadful partner to its sponsors.  Ironic, that, since they will now be asking them to dig deeper...

No love there for traditional Tour sponsors such as AT&T, Farmers, RBC and Travelers.  Yeah, Jay's got some at-large bids in his back pocket, but nowhere near enough to go around.  And what of those events that will remain unelevated?

The independent contractors must play 16 events, 13 of which are pre-determined. And if the players are exempt into the major championships, that’s a commitment of 20 starts. But there is a big but! You need to be likable…

I may be mixing issues, that twenty event minimum, which includes the four majors (but surely not the two Cups) is a lot of golf, especially since we thought that number would down in order to compete with LIV (although that less golf thing was always a fiction).

But if you're running the Old Bob Hope, Wyndham or anything on the Fall schedule, your field will be indistinguishable from a Korn Ferry event.  Those were not the facts on the ground when you signed your sponsorship contract, but good luck getting Jay to return a phone call.  You will be collateral damage, added to the list that includes the International, the Western Open and other decaying corpses buried where once viable tourneys were held.

But wait, it gest worse:

The Player Impact Program is getting jacked up.

There will now be 20 players instead of 10 who get PIP money. The announced $50 million PIP money has been doubled to $100 million, effective immediately — so the 2022 list will pay out $100 million and the 2023 list will, too.

There are some changes to PIP scores: Q-Score and social media will be removed and “awareness criteria” will be expanded. It’s not completely clear what that scoring system means but Monahan referenced the speed with which the social media landscape changes as one reason for the shift.

To receive their PIP bonus, players must compete in the Elevated Events plus three non-elevated events. 

Remember, this is the program that we golf fans weren't even supposed to know existed....yeah, sounds totally legit to me.  A $100 million slush fund for Jay to buy loyalty, which sound sgood until you review the videotape.

Half the guys Jay tried to pay off in secret didn't stay bought, so by all means let's double it.

Here are your updated 2023 criteria:

And Geoff's inevitable but thoughtful snark:

I did not cut off a part where they list FedExCup points, major championship finishes or Official World Golf Ranking points to produce this magical 20.

To recap, a tour that used to lean on Monday qualifying to fill half a field while hosting an annual Q-School open to all dreamers, is now rewarding how players fare in awareness surveys and focus groups?

Monahan conceded that a scenario exists where a player otherwise not eligible for some events will get starts off his PIP standing, a painful admission when the prior stance had been to brag about your merit-based Tour.

Then there is what this does to tournaments, the world rankings and other ways players get into major championships. It’s a sensitive subject made even more fragile by new questions about PGA Tour field make-up (pending the fine print reveals when they figure them out at the Global Home).

 This is the answer to a question that no doubt has troubled you, why hasn't Rickie Fowler jumped yet?

I have no real objection to these efforts, although it does seem to increasingly resemble the welfare state:

All fully-exempt Tour members will get $500,000.

The new “Earnings Assurance Program” guarantees that every fully exempt member of the PGA Tour will get $500,000, credited against their on-course earnings. Those who weren’t on Tour the previous season — rookies and returning members — will get the money upfront, helping with expenses. Other pros would get paid at the end of the year, minus their earnings. For instance, if a pro earns $450,000 in prize money, the Tour would fill that gap and give him $50,000 at year’s end. Pros must play 15 events to earn the minimum, effectively replacing the previous “Play15” program which also required 15 events.

“We believe it meets the challenging dynamic of how players manage and invest in their careers, and it’s comparable to how other leagues approach their athlete compensation,” Monahan said.

This is perhaps the more important part:

There will be stipends for all other Tour members.

Those who aren’t fully exempt but still have some PGA Tour status will receive a $5,000 stipend every time they play an event and miss the cut, which won’t affect tournament purses but will subsidize “travel and tournament-related expenses.” In other words, the Tour doesn’t want its fringe members losing money when they attend events.

I asked Martin Trainer, who finished No. 138 in this year’s FedEx Cup, what he thought of the changes.

“Sounds like the rich getting richer and the little folk getting some perks as well,” he said via text. Well said.

Jay will not and cannot be in the mercy business:

LIV pros won’t be coming back anytime soon.

Monahan was pretty clear when asked if LIV pros with buyer’s remorse could come back to the PGA Tour.

“No,” he said.

Why not?

“They’ve joined the LIV Golf Series and they’ve made that commitment. For most of them, they’ve made multiyear commitments,” he said. “As I’ve been clear throughout, every player has a choice, and I respect their choice, but they’ve made it. We’ve made ours. We’re going to continue to focus on the things that we control and get stronger and stronger. I think they understand that.” (Those suing the Tour for exactly that right may not understand it, but I see what Monahan was getting at.)

Hey, on the bright side, they'll be getting their student loans forgiven.... Actions have consequences, though one can only hope that they didn't jump thinking they could relying on Greg Norman's assurances.

By Monday I've typically watched enough golf, although these changes I would expect to free up a bit of your humble bloggers' time.  The real problem is that it sounds incredibly lame:

We’re getting Monday Night Golf.

This is worth its own exploration, but there’s an add-on competition coming to professional golf: The TGL! That stands for TMRW Golf League. (TMRW stands for Tomorrow and it also stands for TW and RM, which stand for Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who own TMRW.)

The TGL will kick off in January 2024 and is a stadium-style team golf event. What does that mean? Hard to say exactly. But there will be 18 players in the league split into six teams who will go head-to-head over the course of 15 Monday nights throughout the season. It’s intended as a supplement to the PGA Tour and a way to bolster the profiles and pockets of top pros.

Really, just shoot me now.

Guess who also hates it?  That sound you hear is axes being ground, but first the relevant bit:

Westwood is similarly less than impressed by the path the PGA Tour is following in response to

all that LIV is doing.

“I laugh at what the PGA Tour players have come up with,” he says. “It’s just a copy of what LIV is doing. There are a lot of hypocrites out there. They all say LIV is ‘not competitive.’ They all point at the no-cut aspect of LIV and the short fields. Now, funnily enough, they are proposing 20 events that look a lot like LIV. Hopefully, at some point they will all choke on their words. And hopefully, they will be held to account as we were in the early days.”

It certainly moves things in that direction, which is quite regrettable in the opinion of your humble blogger.  Of course, Lee, it's not an exact copy, for this rather important distinction:

Speaking of which, the elephant in the LIV room has always been the controversial source of the tournament’s funding, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. As has already been obvious at the first three LIV events, the players—Westwood included—struggle to answer questions on what many see as the appalling lack of human rights that prevail in the Middle East state. And nothing has changed on that front.

“The questions on the Saudi government and their policies are unanswerable,” Westwood says. “My response is just to try and not answer them. I’m not a politician; I’m a golfer. But I do know that sport can be used as change for good.

It's really just an inconvenient answer for you, but the question seems unlikely to go away. 

I'd encourage you to read the entire piece, which reveals much about Westy's mindset.  For sure, he's got some valid gripes about the Global Home:

“I’m not convinced by the strategic alliance because I’ve seen how the PGA Tour has behaved over the years,” he says. “There’s not been much ‘give.’ They have always been bullies and now they are getting their comeuppance. All the PGA Tour has done since Tiger came on tour is up the prize purses. In turn, that has taken all the best players from Europe away from the European Tour. They’ve had to play in the States, taking all their world rranking points with them. That was their strategy: ‘Put up the money. Get all the players. Hog all the world ranking points.’ Which becomes self-perpetuating. What we have seen over the last few months is just LIV doing what the PGA Tour has done for the last 25 years.”

So, if I understand Lee, those Euro playes (himself included) that gravitated to the U.S. Tour are evil, but he and Poults taking Saudi money is growing the game...Interesting, if true!.

But at the end of his dissertation, you're left with a conclusion that you had intuited yourself.  As a competitively irrelevant player in his late 40's, Westy was offered and accepted a large check with no questions asked.  I for one find it entirely appropriate that the game of golf should ne hijacked by a group players that are no longer competitive.

I'll leave you with this meme from Sharkie, one that brings this post full circle:

Just to be clear, shirtless one.  You're accusing Jay of stealing the format that you stole from the Raine Group?  Glad we were able to sort that out...

Have a great weekend and I'll see you on Monday.  Although Monday is D-Day, so that Tuesday morning post will be the more interesting, methinks.

LIVing Under Par - A Catch-Up Post

Having caught up on sleep and bills, shall we revisit that which occurred while I was off on our walkabout?  

Bring Lawyers, Guns and Money - We flooded the zone on antitrust analyses, though admittedly a bit early, though the delay in filing this lawsuit seems to this observer a head-scratcher.  But it hit just as your humble blogger was wheels down in Inverness:

Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and nine other LIV Golf players filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour on Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the matter.

In a 105-page complaint, the players are challenging their suspensions by the tour for defecting to the Saudi-backed circuit. Three of those in the lawsuit—Talor Gooch, Hudson Swafford and Matt Jones—are attempting to receive a temporary restraining order that would allow them to play the FedEx Cup Playoffs, which begin next week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis. All three would have qualified for the tour’s postseason had they not been suspended.

“The purpose of this action is to strike down the PGA Tour’s anticompetitive rules and practices that prevent these independent-contractor golfers from playing when and where they choose,” the complaint alleges.

I do hope that that's the ensemble that Phil has chosen for his deposition....

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, an example of the art form known as venue shopping.  While their choice of venue is logical, that ninth circuit is also home to the leader in the clubhouse in decisions being overturned, adding to an already lengthy process.  

Regardless of how one views the merits of such claims, and it feels highly dubious to this observer, the overriding factor is that this will play out over a period of years, if not decades.  It has a strong whiff of USFL v. NFL, methinks, ironic because of the involvement of a certain NYC real estate developer.

If you'll recall, I posed the relevant question back when we first focused on the antitrust implications, is there a case for injunctive relief?

The complaint from the LIV players alleges that being denied access to the FedEx Cup Playoffs not only would prevent Gooch, Swafford and Jones from playing in those events but “also cripples their chances of qualifying for both the Majors and the Tour’s premier invitationals in future seasons. The punishment that would accrue to these players from not being able to play in the FedEx Cup Playoffs is substantial and irreparable, and a temporary restraining order is needed to prevent the irreparable harm that would ensue were they not to be able to participate.”

Hold those crocodile tears, kids.  The TRO was limited to the three players because the other plaintiffs either wouldn't have qualified or had resigned their PGA Tour memberships, a twist I most certainly did not see coming.

I think we can all agree that playing in the FedEx Cup is what's known as a natural right, endowed by our creator.  Certainly the ninth circuit would agree, right?  Not so quick, Goochie:

The federal judge who denied temporary restraining orders to three LIV Golf players who wanted to come back to the PGA Tour to compete in the FedEx Cup playoffs said the plaintiffs failed to "even show that they have been harmed -- let alone irreparably."

United States District Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman, of the Northern District of California, made that assessment in her written ruling that was released on Thursday. Freeman ruled on Tuesday that the PGA Tour could ban Talor Gooch, Matt Jones and Hudson Swafford from competing in the FedEx Cup playoffs while they were suspended for appearing in LIV Golf tournaments without conflicting-event releases.

"Based on this evidence, [temporary restraining order] Plaintiffs have not even shown that they have been harmed -- let alone irreparably," Freeman wrote in her ruling. "It is clear that the LIV Golf contracts negotiated by the TRO Plaintiffs and consummated between the parties were based on the players' calculation of what they would be leaving behind and the amount of money they would need to compensate for those losses.

It's quite the entitled view of the world, no?  Having been told with great clarity by Jay Monahan what would happen if they jumped, they when ahead and jumped anyway, which would seem to have to be for one of two reasons (which aren't, strictly speaking mutually exclusive:

1. They believed Greg Norman's assertions that the PGA Tour could not legally bar them; or
2. The check was large enough to be worth it, even if the TRO/Antitrust lottery ticket did not pay off.

I have no sense of Talor Gooch's IQ or naivete, but it's hard for me to believe that any sentient human being believes anything that comes out of Sharkie's pit hole, so No. 2 is my default assumption.  Which, alas, is the more depressing alternative because, as we've discussed earlier with the majors, the money to them is sufficient for them to burn our golf ecosystem to the ground, an especially nihilist worldview for those lecturing us about how they're growing the game.

The hearing itself was a comedy of errors, with the prestigious firm of Gibson Dunn beclowning itself repeatedly.  There was this misdirection as to winnings at LIV events, whether or not they're offset against cash advances, as well as the unintentionally ironic reference to the FedEx Cup as the Super Bowl of Golf, about which one can only hope that Nurse Ratched is deposed.

But this is seemingly fatal to their cause, no?

What happened?

To obtain a TRO, the players had to prove that they suffered irreparable harm from failing to appear in the FedEx Cup. “Irreparable harm” means that they suffer some incalculable damage. If you can put a dollar figure on the damage, you don’t get a restraining order. This is mandatory. If you can be made whole by award money, you lose.

So it’s a terrible, terrible problem for Gooch, Swafford, and Jones that the following paragraph was included in their expert Dr. Jeffrey Leitzinger’s[7] report: 

“The costs would also include a loss of opportunities to earn ranking points, to earn entry into the Majors, and to earn retirement benefits. Given these added costs, many Tour members understandably would be very reluctant or altogether unwilling to participate in LIV golf events. It is no surprise then that many elite golfers that agreed to participate in LIV golf events required large upfront payments.”

Judge Freeman seized on Leitzinger’s report from the get-go. She asserted that this admission meant that the players themselves had already extracted large compensation from the risk of missing majors, retirement benefits, and world-ranking points. This is why LIV players are getting huge upfront money. If you have followed any moment of the LIV golf saga, you intuitively know this.

In short, the Court concluded that there is no risk of irreparable harm. If the players were able to figure out that they needed massive payments beforehand (and actually received them!), then a court would figure out damages later on, too.

They want their cake and eat it too.... What a good look, no? 

While the decision is limited to the requested TRO, this absence of actual damage overhangs the entire case.  This seems a rather common reaction:

What are the players chances in winning the rest of this lawsuit?

We asked a few attorneys what they thought the TRO denial meant. In the words of one other lawyer we spoke with:

“This case is going nowhere. It’s deader than a doornail. It’s clear the judge sees LIV as a viable competitor to the PGA Tour. The Leitzinger report says that players have voluntarily foregone the certainty associated with the PGA Tour, the FedEx Cup, and the coveted majors spots in exchange for upfront payments. That is evidence of a functioning marketplace—not monopolistic behavior.”

“The Plaintiffs kept referring to a letter Jay Monahan wrote as the ‘Monopoly Manifesto.’ Right at the end of the hearing, Judge Freeman said she really didn’t think it was an appropriate title and said the letter was standard corporate-speak. She might have tipped her hand a bit there. I would not be surprised if the LIV players withdrew their lawsuit to avoid more damaging rulings.”

The defects in the case don't end here, as antitrust law was designed as a remedy for lost profits due to monopolistic behavior.  One quite obvious problem for LIV is that, if you've offered a 51-year old golfer $200 million, I think we can safely rule out profitability as an objective.

So, was there any good news for the LIVers?

Man, did anything go right for the LIV players?

Well, Judge Freeman did say she was concerned about the PGA Tour’s efforts to pressure vendors. And she also said that some of the LIV players’ facts sounded as though they could plausibly make claims. But there weren’t a whole lot of positives the Plaintiffs could draw from the hearing.

 And the next front?

If this case gets dismissed or withdrawn, is that the end of LIV lawsuits

Possibly not. One lawyer we spoke with felt that the better case from LIV’s perspective was against the entities that make up the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR). In some sense, the agreements between the PGA Tour and the OWGR members look like horizontal agreements to exclude new competitors and entrants in the professional-golf market. Maybe, we are told, it would be easier to legally attack those structures. But many of the same problems would still persist in that hypothetical lawsuit.

We've been all over this, as the Board of the OWGR rankings includes the head honchos at all of golf's Five Families.  But other than spilling Norman's characteristic bile, what was the purpose of calling out Fred Ridley in their lawsuit against the Tour?

“Augusta National, the promoter of The Masters, has taken multiple actions to indicate its

alignment with the PGA Tour, thus seeding doubt among top professional golfers whether they would be banned from future Masters Tournaments,” according to an antitrust lawsuit filed by 11 LIV golfers on Wednesday against the PGA Tour. “As an initial matter, the links between the PGA Tour and Augusta National run deep. The actions by Augusta National indicate that the PGA Tour has used these channels to pressure Augusta National to do its bidding. For example, in February, 2022 Augusta National representatives threatened to disinvite players from The Masters if they joined LIV Golf.”

It notes, among other things, that the Tour asked Augusta National officials to attend “an emergency meeting” of the player advisory council meeting in May, ahead of LIV Golf’s maiden tournament once the field was announced, “to discuss ramifications for players participating in LIV Golf.”

Only to admit that they didn't attend said meeting in the next sentence....  And this is for sure a crime against humanity:

It adds that Ridley declined a request for a meeting with LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman.

Because taking meetings with those doing the bidding of genocidal strongmen is now required by which controlling legal authority?

So, we still have those eleven players suing the Tour for its predatory business practices.... Say what?

Carlos Ortiz was one of the 11 LIV Golf players who filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour at the start of the month, until he withdrew his name from the papers.

"At the end of the day, I don't want to have any problems with the PGA Tour,” he explained.

“I'm happy where I am. I don't want to go back to the PGA Tour now. And that's why I withdrew from the lawsuit. I'm not against the PGA Tour. I wanted to play the playoffs, if possible.

“When I realised that to play the tournaments they put me in a lawsuit, and with all the controversy that is going on, I got off, because I don’t want to sue the PGA Tour,” the 31-year-old explained.

And then there were ten.... Oh, really?

Pat Perez, one of the original 11 players from the Saudi-backed circuit to bring the suit against

the tour, has dropped out, Sports Illustrated reported on Friday.

Perez, 46, is a three-time winner on the PGA Tour and bolted for LIV in June. He made his debut in the circuit’s second tournament, outside Portland, Ore., and told SI on Friday that he joined the lawsuit out of loyalty to the other players, all of whom, including Perez, have been suspended by the tour since joining LIV.

“I didn’t really think it through,’’ Perez told SI of joining the lawsuit. “I did it to back our guys.”

“I have no ill feelings toward the PGA Tour or any of the players. I’m a LIV guy 100 percent. I’m going to play for them. But I don’t feel any need to go after the PGA Tour. They gave me a wonderful opportunity for 21 years. I’ve got nothing against them, no hard feelings toward anybody. I earned everything I got out there, don’t get me wrong.

“I chose to leave and I’m not looking to come back. I’d like to maybe play the Champions Tour one day if that can work out and that’s why I have not given up my membership. But there is no benefit to doing this. I have an unbelievable deal with LIV and I’m behind them 100 percent.’’

Most important because it provides the rationale for using that photo once more.  Hey, clicks, baby!

Who's Next -  Because, yanno, We Won't Get Fooled Again.... So, in a Saturday conversation, one of my golf buddies noted that every player about whom rumors have swirled has, in fact, defected.  That's not completely true (though close enough, for sure), but I did forget to note this best example to the contrary:

Will Rickie Fowler Be the Next PGA Tour Star to Defect to LIV Golf Series?

The 33-year-old has not won on the PGA Tour since 2019 and has fallen to No. 173 in the Official World Golf Ranking

He seems too young and too competitively relevant  for LIV, no?  I'm shocked that he hasn't jumped, but I also understand that he flew to Delaware with Tiger for that meeting with the players, so perhaps he values that more highly.

Alan Shipnuck has been at the eye of the storm for months, and has this granular forecast for next Monday:

On Aug. 29, the day after the FedEx Cup concludes, LIV will announce seven new signees, including one long-rumored superstar. This is not a collection of old-timers playing out the string or unknowns plucked from second-tier international tours—all seven players are PGA Tour members who competed in last week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship, the first playoff event in the Tour’s flagship product, the FedEx Cup. All seven are expected to tee it up at the LIV event in Boston that begins on Sept. 2, triggering their ban from the PGA Tour. This will deeply impact another of the Tour’s marquee events, the Presidents Cup, which will begin three weeks later minus a heckuva lot of star power.

Gee, a long rumored superstar?  Sounds like Cam Smith to this set of ears, but this raises an issue I've been pondering in these pages for some time now.  It so happens that the eight automatic qualifiers for the International Team at the September Presidents Cup were just finalized:

Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann, Hideki Matsuyama, Mito Pereira, Joohyung Kim, Sungjae Im, Adam Scott and Corey Conners are the first eight players to make it into the International team.

Hideki is going as well, and could also be the LRS noted above, but that event seems about to be marginalized, even before we mention the rumors about Adam Scott.  Most accounts have Cam leaving after the Prez Cup, though that's never made much sense to me, as it would keep him from playing in two events with small fields and $25 million purses, which is the whole point, right?

Picking Up The Pieces - So, that Tiger meeting?  One point I've made repeatedly is that the steps the Tour would take to fend off the Saudi threat, beginning with the PIP program, would inevitably make the Tour a less interesting and more intractably elitist entity:

According to a source with direct knowledge of the meeting, Woods and the 20 top players he assembled discussed the formation of a tour-within-the-Tour: up to 18 no-cut tournaments featuring the top 60 players competing for $20 million purses. This basically would be two WGCs per month in the newly condensed January-August schedule. Such a structure would codify the schism between the Tour’s haves and have-mores, with lesser players consigned to lower-wattage tournaments for far less money. (One consolation that was floated at the recent Player Advisory Council meeting is fronting each of the 200 or so Tour members $500,000 per year, taken against their winnings.)

I've been trying to convince folks since Day One that this is a God-awful vision for our game:

Of course, this proposed slate of super-events sounds very much like what LIV has already created, with its 48-man, no-cut fields vying for $25 million purses. As word has leaked out among the players from both tours about what was discussed at Woods’s confab at the Hotel du Pont, there has been a certain amount of gloating among LIV loyalists that the Tour is stealing its blueprint. Says one LIV golfer, “The best part is the lower-tier guys [on Tour] don’t even know what is coming.” As for the lower-tier guys on LIV, some will now be bumped to the Asian Tour (which has been revitalized by a $400 million commitment of Saudi money), but there is a mechanism for some to play their way back onto LIV through the Asian Tour’s International Series.

Of course, they stole the model from the Brits, not that it's anything more profound than WGCs on steroids.... It's also inevitably less noxious under the Tour's umbrella, mostly because the Tour has in place the feeder system to allow new talent to ascend.   

Though it quite obviously pierces the fiction that all Tour events are created equal, and is another in a long history of the Tour selling out its sponsors, at least those foolish enough to think their events would be attended by the cool kids.

But the stench of greed and entitlement is quite pervasive, and it's hard to see who will emerge unscathed from this mess.

But did someone mention entitlement?

Mean Girls - The mind of Patrick Reed must be a fascinating place, a malleable vortex in which the realities of the world are conveniently rearranged to award victimhood status to a man most of consider among the luckiest few.

Not content with cashing eight-figure checks, he seems to believe he inhabits a world in which scrutiny and criticism is proscribed:

The quickest way to make unsavory allegations disappear is probably not to file frivolous litigation. And yet, that is the hole into which Patrick Reed has dug himself.

On August 16, Reed sued Golf Channel commentator Brandel Chamblee (and Golf Channel’s parent company) in a Texas federal court for what Reed alleges is defamation. (The Complaint is here.) Also embedded in the Complaint is Reed’s allegation that Chamblee, Golf Channel, and the PGA Tour conspired to eliminate LIV Golf from competition by smearing LIV, Reed, and his fellow Saudi-bankrolled game-growers.

Thin-skinned seems inadequate to the circumstances, though the irony is that this seems entirely consistent with the LIV Tour effort as well.  While allegedly the effort is designed to make Saudi Arabia appear to be a "normal country",  to this observer all it's accomplished is to provide a logic for revisiting the Kashoggi murder and providing a platform for the 9-11 families.  Good work, Sharkie!

But Geoff has provided excerpts from the actual complaint, and it makes a pitiful human being seem even more despicable, which I never remotely considered possible.  Shall we sample some?

First, were you making the case for Patrick's position in the game, could you do worse job of it than this:

I'd have gone with the Masters and that Captain America bit, but what do I know?

You might want to strap your eyes in place, otherwise the involuntary rolling might induce nausea:

OK, I hadn't previously seen the word "tortfeasor", though it's merely a person who commits a tort.

Though I had fortunately already finished my morning coffee, otherwise that "good and caring person" was a guaranteed spit take. I do look forward to extensive discovery on that specific point, which I hope will include certain former University of Georgia and Augusta State collegiate golfers.

This is the funniest bit, just because:

They're just Living Under Par,™ do you have a problem with that, buddy?

So, what are the prospects for Reed's suit?  This is only one man's opinion, but it conforms to my understanding of the law, and I'll dare you to find a contrary opinion from anyone that's actually passed a bar exam:

Well, OK. Uh, where does that leave us?

Alright, look. To begin with, it’s nearly impossible for a public figure to win a defamation case — and that’s even when that public figure’s lawyer doesn’t live in Banana Land. The reason that it’s so hard for public figures to win defamation cases is because the Supreme Court requires public figures (unlike regular old people) to prove that a defendant committed defamation with “actual malice.” This is extremely difficult to prove — as it should be! The justification for this difficult standard is that free speech would be chilled if speakers could be sued for accidentally (but in good faith) saying something that turns out to be incorrect. Requiring proof of actual malice is good for public discussion. It also makes proving defamation tough for a public figure like Patrick Reed. Sorry.

Of course, here he's just playing with my emotions:

Theoretically — and we’re talking crazy here — let’s assume the defendants’ Motion to Dismiss is denied. What then?

Pop the popcorn! Because then we get discovery, and everyone in this whole hilarious story is gonna be deposed. Can you imagine Patrick Reed in a deposition? Justine Reed in a deposition? Can you imagine bananas Larry Klayman deposing Brandel? It would be insane. The case probably won’t get to that point. But as a country badly divided and in need of healing, these are the depositions that America needs.

Yes it is, and I also look forward to resolving those control issues relating to the UseGolfFacts Twitter account....

So, he has no prospect of success, in fact he's got little chance to survive the inevitable Motion to Dismiss, and his complaint has re-aired dirty laundry such as his estrangement from his parents and his litany of cheating allegations, so the purpose in filing this complaint is?   Anyone?  Bueller?

What occurs to this observer is that the coddling of the players, the failure to disclose disciplinary actions and the burying of his varying malfeasances, has led Mr. Reed to the logical conclusion that he is entitled to a life without cognitive dissonance.  I'm guessing there's a disciplinary file of some heft at the Global Home, and where is that whistle blower when America needs him/her/them most?

Monday should be very interesting....