Friday, September 30, 2022

Blogging, Resumed

We are back from a few days at the beach.  I had actually planned to blog the Prez Cup on Monday morning, but found ourselves with no WiFi.  Are we not supposed to blog on the High Holy Days?  If only someone had said something....

Epic Quail - A pretty entertaining week, I thought, especially since the outcome was never in doubt.  Shall we use the Monday Tour Confidential confab to revisit it?

1. The heavily favored U.S. team took care of business at the Presidents Cup, defeating the International team, 17.5-12.5, at Quail Hollow. While the outcome was forecast by most, did anything surprise you about how the U.S team won?

Zephyr Melton: It surprised me how difficult a time the U.S. had closing out the plucky International bunch. After Saturday morning, it looked like the rout was on — but the Internationals refused to go away. Despite the obvious talent deficit, they never gave up. Kudos to them.

Sean Zak: Jordan Spieth surprised me. He’s got so much experience in team events, but it isn’t exactly bulletproof experience. I figured he might have a tough time this week (he didn’t exactly finish the Tour season on a high note), but the opposite took place. Spieth went 5-0 in the kind of performance every captain wants, but you can never predict who it’ll come from.

Josh Sens: If you’d taken Sam Burns and Scottie Scheffler to go a combined 0-6-3, you would have won a lot of money in Vegas.

Josh Berhow: I’m shocked Scottie Scheffler didn’t win a match, which comes exactly one year after he had somewhat of a coming out party at the 2021 Ryder Cup, where he won 2 1/2 points in three matches and dismantled Jon Rahm in singles. And maybe surprise isn’t the right word, but if the U.S. team can get its two key duos of Spieth/Thomas and Cantlay/Xander to click at the same time like they did this week, the Americans are going to be really hard to beat for several more years.

Surprised that the best player in the world had a rough week in match play?  Given that you're golf writers, you might want to scrutinize the Ryder Cup record of one Eldrick Woods to see how frequently this has happened.  I wasn't shocked by Scheffler's tough week, given that his heater has been over since, checking notes, May.... 

But isn't the biggest surprise that the Yanks lost the weekend to an undermanned International team?

2. One of the big storylines heading into the week was the players who weren’t at Quail Hollow, on account of their deals with LIV Golf. How much do you suppose the absence of the likes of Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann and Abe Ancer hurt the International team, acknowledging, of course, that the U.S. side was also missing at least a couple of its would-be stalwarts?

Melton: I think the absences on the International team were much more pronounced than those
on the American side. The depth of talent internationally is just not as good as that of the Americans. With the likes of Smith, Niemann and Ancer replacing a few of the duds on the International side, this thing could’ve gone down to the wire.

Zak: I think it hurt them to start. There’s some easy hindsight in that thought, but never have we seen so many rookies trotted out from one team. They clearly needed to warm up to the event, which would have been much easier had Smith, Niemann, Ancer and even Louis Oosthuizen been involved.

Sens: Huge difference for the Internationals. The American team was so deep, they weren’t going to be significantly better with any of the LIV guys. They might have been worse. Not so for the other side. A giant dropoff from the likes of Smith and Niemann.

Berhow: For all the talk about the players who wouldn’t be there, I don’t think the U.S. team would have been much different. It’s not like Bryson and Brooks and Pat Reed were playing great golf and no-brainers to make this team anyway. But I think it was a significant loss for the Internationals, not only from a talent standpoint but for confidence and comfortability. If you are a rookie, there’s something settling about a big-name, experienced veteran in your team room or on the tee box with you. I’m not sure if it would have been enough firepower to turn the result around, but we can’t act like guys like Cam Smith and Abe Ancer, to name a few, wouldn’t have made a difference.

Eamon Lynch (amusingly now a defendant, but more on that below) had this offering as the Cup got underway, that speaks to the issue raised by the two Joshs.  Eamon frames his argument by citing all those to be recognized in Davis Love's forthcoming victory speech:

Yet it would be remiss of Love not to single out for faint praise Greg Norman, a one-man
Superfund clean-up crew who has done for the U.S. what successive captains and a task force couldn’t: decontaminate the team room dynamics that have undermined it for decades.

It’s easy to overlook just how long interpersonal toxicity has been an accepted part of the U.S. team room. The chill (and occasional distaste) between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson loomed large during Europe’s Ryder Cup dominance in first dozen years of this century. Mickelson’s role in hobbling U.S. squads came to a head like a pustule in 2014 at Gleneagles, culminating in a press conference during which he piloted a Greyhound over Tom Watson’s back while posturing as a well-intentioned onlooker.

Four years later in Paris, eleven members of the Stars and Stripes found themselves asking ‘Pourquoi, Patrick?’ after Reed publicly blamed the team’s drubbing—and his own losing record—on skipper Jim Furyk and Jordan Spieth. Not content to be a scourge on one team, Reed then put the ’19 Presidents Cup side in the defensive position of having to make light of his highly questionable behavior in a Bahamas bunker days earlier. Cobbling together the appearance of cohesion can be a compromising process.

I love me some Eamon vitriol, but this is far from convincing stuff for a number of reasons.  Most notably because those cited have largely played themselves off the U.S. teams even before signing with LIV.  Though maybe the Brooks-Bryson manspat, cited by Eamon in an unexcepted 'graph, provides the stronger rebuttal.  Eamon decries the team room distraction that provided, but it didn't exactly affect the results, did it?

3. With losses come second-guessing. While International captain Trevor Immelman’s management of his team was roundly praised, is there anything he coulda-shoulda done differently?

Melton: With how Sebastian Muñoz played this week (2-0-1), it certainly seems odd that he only played three sessions. Riding the hot-handed rookie can be a winning strategy in hostile territory (see: Leona Maguire). Alas, hindsight is 20/20.

Zak: I like to call this event (and the Ryder Cup) the Hindsight Olympics. Even the most analytically driven, vibes-savvy captain is going to make decisions that can be second-guessed. And they’ll make moves that work out well that, if a couple putts don’t drop, we would have second-guessed. In other words, Immelman did a fine job. He was led to all those decisions by a deep team of statisticians and golfers. If he could have gotten Hideki Matsuyama and Adam Scott to play better, he would have.

Sens: Any second guessing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. His team was going down either way. But I was surprised he didn’t put Tom Kim out earlier in singles. They needed a big emotional start. Why not give their most demonstrative player a chance to provide it?

Berhow: These guys used more analytics than I could ever wrap my head around and know how players gel with each other, so I won’t act like I have a better solution when it comes to some of the pairings. It comes down to making putts. Captains said it all week and that was the major difference the first two days. But, as Sens says, I did think it would have been a nice kickstarter to get Tom Kim out early and, if he got hot, send some good vibes to the rest of the squad. The Internationals didn’t have a ton of fiery personalities. He was one.

Trevor got the important stuff perfect, and beating that American team over the weekend with his Bad News Bears lineup is pretty sweet.  It was strange, I agree, to see Kim buried in the ten slot in singles, though it did result in that appealing pairing with Max Homa....

4. Team golf and match-play golf have a way of showing off different sides of players, be that their competitiveness or another personality trait. What’s one thing you learned about a player from either side that you didn’t know before this week?

Melton: That Tom Kim is an absolute delight! I know the storyline has been beaten into the ground at this point, but the 20-year-old really is a fun golfer to watch. I imagine this isn’t the last time we’ll see him on the big stage.

Zak: The cocky version of Max Homa is probably my favorite. And cocky might even be too harsh a word, but how stone-cold he looked playing the 18th hole during can’t-lose matches is so different than the goofy, heartfelt Twitter user we see 99 percent of the time. Look hard enough into the future and you can imagine that version of Homa coming out down the stretch of a major championship.

Sens: I guess we’d seen Si Woo Kim’s crowd-shushing a few years back at the Presidents Cup. But that was such a beat-down it almost went forgotten. Loved seeing him pull that same move out again this week in a much more pivotal context. That takes a special kind of fire, being the guy willing to make an enemy of the crowd.

Berhow: Besides the obvious Tom Kim answer, I thought it was refreshing to see Max Homa talk so openly about how much qualifying for an event like this would mean to him and then have Max back it up and play out of his mind. He pulled off some big-time shots and putts when he needed to. A clutch gene like that is something not many people have.

It's like the over-interpretation Olympics....  the same would have been said about Scottie Scheffler at last year's Ryder Cup, yet he was in a funk all this week (though didn't he have some success in the interim?).  

Round up the usual suspects: 

5. Who is your MVP from each team?

Melton: I’ll go with co-MVPs from each side. USA: Jordan Spieth (5-0-0) and Justin Thomas (4-1-0). Internationals: Si Woo Kim (3-1-0) and Sebastian Muñoz (2-0-1). Honorable mention for Tom Kim and the energy he injected into the Internationals each day.

Zak: Gotta go with Spieth, but Thomas deserves a ton of credit. I think he pulls something special out of Spieth during these events. It happened at the Ryder Cup in 2018. Thomas is the heartbeat of the team and probably will be for years to come. As for the Internationals, need we look past Tom Kim? Even Si Woo Kim talked about how Tom’s energy livened him up, too.

Sens: If we’re going by pure on-course performance, then it’s Spieth and Si Woo Kim. You can’t argue with 5-0, and Kim was nails pretty much every time he had to be. For all the little stuff that doesn’t show up on the scorecard, I’m with Sean: Tom Kim and Justin Thomas.

Berhow: Jordan Spieth and Tom Kim, the latter especially since he elevated what some might have thought was a sleepy event they didn’t plan to pay much attention to. But how about Trevor Immelman? I think the leader of the International squad gained a lot of fans this week.

Fair enough but, while Jordan rid himself of the awkward questions about his singles record, has anyone noticed that JT likes to go out first but doesn't exactly take care of business?  I guess he's our Rory....

But now we (finally) get to the heart of the matter:

6. The U.S. has now won nine straight Presidents Cups and seven of those by three points or more. Is it time to rethink this event or its format?

Melton: Yes, the Presidents Cup needs some sort of changing or we’ll continue seeing American dominance. While it’s true the Internationals can hold their own, if they don’t put up any numbers in the win column then it’s a moot point. Will the PGA Tour change the event? Not as long as the sponsors keep paying and the fans keep showing up.

Zak: Hell no. Quit it. This event is fine. If LIV Golf doesn’t exist, we may have seen an even greater event. Who knows! This event is just fine. I was entertained; weren’t you?

Sens: Keep it as is. Yeah, the historical record is ridiculously lopsided but there are plenty of entertaining moments, and the Internationals are far from just rolling over in the matches. It actually feels to me a lot like what the Ryder Cup was originally supposed to be. An exhibition of great shot-making, with plenty of patriotic fire but without blowing up into over-the-top nonsense. Plus, who doesn’t like rooting for the underdog?

Berhow: No changes! The Americans — I think? — won’t always dominate like this. And as soon as the Internationals end this skid the victory will be even sweeter.

The reactions to this event are indeed curious, as it's one failing is that it doesn't live up to the intensity of that other event.... But, as these guys note, it's always a fun week with no shortage of surprises.  What exactly is wrong with an exhibition involving twenty-four elite players?  

Dylan Dethier seems of a like mind, with this installment of his Monday Finish feature:

At the Presidents Cup, plenty of little things don’t need any fixing

Team USA lent some legitimacy to those claims by jumping to an 8-2 lead on Friday. But none of
the 40,000 sun-soaked spectators seemed concerned in the slightest; they were there to cheer on their country and get an up-close look at the world’s best golfers in match play, its most exciting format (side note: the alternate-shot version is particularly good).

When the final putt of Friday’s session, an 11-footer from Max Homa, hit the bottom of the cup, the celebration that followed served as a reminder just how much this mattered. The Internationals outpaced the Americans over the weekend, too, winning 10.5 of the 20 points up for grabs on Saturday and Sunday to remind us just how narrow the margins are. There was a moment on Sunday, too, where the away team led in just enough matches to make people start to wonder. Could they do it?! International captain Trevor Immelman took notice.

“When you consider that we were 8-2 down on Friday evening, this team is no joke, and I’m sick and tired of it being spoken of as a joke,” he said on Sunday evening, rejecting the idea that this format needs undoing. U.S. captain Davis Love III agreed. “There wasn’t any talk from either of our teams, Trevor’s or ours, about changing the format,” he said. “I understand the calls for revamping the Presidents Cup; Team USA’s 12-1-1 record speaks for itself. But there’s plenty that’s special about the tournament as it is, too.”

I've never thought there was much wrong with this event, and it serves as a welcome break from the dreary week-to-week events on tour.  The lopsided historical results are an issue, although I think the competitive balance is far less important than it seems, as the Internationals should have won their last two home games (and has anyone looked at the lopsided results in recent Ryder Cups?).

There's two basic ways of considering the question posed above in the TC panel.  If we're considering minor tweaks, then the obvious path forward is to conform the Prez Cup to the Ryder Cup schedule as a way of mitigating the depth advantage of the Americans.  This makes the event lass favorable for the TV audience, so I don't expect anything to happen here.

The other obvious opportunity is to incorporate the women, although that's a little more problematic than folks like your humble blogger explain.  That's the subject for another day, but for now we should just enjoy having seen these elite players go at each other in match play.  Even if the commentariat dismisses the event as a mere exhibition, these guys seemed to take it seriously, no?  Were you not entertained?

Lawyers, Guns and Money - Wow, quite the spasm of legal maneuvering while I was away.... shall we take a gander?

First. America's Litigant announces that he vants to be alone:

But....I don't understand, there's all that obnoxious greed to be exposed....

What is shaping up to be the biggest lawsuit in PGA Tour history has for months been known as ‘Mickelson et al vs. PGA Tour’, a fitting moniker considering Phil Mickelson was the biggest
name of 11 original plaintiffs. That has suddenly changed as Mickelson has officially withdrawn his name from the lawsuit, along with three other LIV golfers Tuesday.

The suit, which was filed on Aug. 3, has progressed through an initial hearing (which the PGA Tour won, keeping LIV golfers from competing in the FedEx Cup Playoffs) and has reached the phase where discovery of information and documents is being dictated. Over the last eight weeks, a handful of LIV pros withdrew their involvement: Carlos Ortiz, Pat Perez, Abe Ancer, and Jason Kokrak. When asked why he departed, Perez told SI.com, “I didn’t really think it through [when joining]. I did it to back our guys.”

Now on Tuesday, four other players have pulled out of the suit, namely Phil Mickelson, the lead plaintiff. Mickelson was working with his own counsel and had hinted at this weeks ago and finally made it a reality this week.

Any thoughts on why he might have done that?  Anyone?  Bueller?

The answer is contained in that excerpt, as Alan Shipnuck notes:

Ya think?  I'm just a little surprised that Alan thinks that, yet wrote a biography that I though let Phil skate on so much of his nonsense.... But Phil and discovery are a bad fit... a delicious fit for us, just not so good for Phil.

This lawsuit itself is left in an awkward spot:

Ian Poulter, Hudson Swafford and Talor Gooch have also withdrawn from the proceedings, leaving just Bryson DeChambeau, Matt Jones, Peter Uihlein and LIV Golf itself as the remaining plaintiffs in the case. Will the suit maintain its name of Mickelson et al vs. PGA Tour? Probably not. It is just further indication that the suit, which LIV Golf joined after it had initially been filed, was always trending toward LIV Golf vs. PGA Tour.

Wally must be so proud that his kid is suing a Tour that he's not good enough to maintain status on.... 

We'll have more opportunities to sort through this bizarro-world anti-trust lawsuit, though we probably should get to this item first:

PGA Tour countersues LIV Golf over anticompetitive behavior, alleges Mickelson and DeChambeau recruited for Saudi-backed circuit

Hmmm:

The PGA Tour has fired back against LIV Golf’s antitrust lawsuit, countersuing the Saudi-backed circuit in a U.S. District Court.

In a Wednesday night filing, the tour asserts that the case is not about unfair competition—“if anyone is competing unfairly, it is LIV, not the tour”—and accuses the LIV-backed lawsuit as a “cynical effort to avoid competition and to freeride off of the tour’s investment in the development of professional golf.”

In the tour’s 72-page filing in the Northern District of California San Jose division, it charges that its counterclaim arises out of LIV Golf’s “tortious inducement of numerous, repeated breaches of contract” by former PGA Tour members, including Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, and that LIV Golf is nothing more than a sportswashing effort by Saudi Arabia to further the cause of the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s Vision 2030 initiatives.

The tour also accuses LIV of inducing Mickelson and DeChambeau to recruit fellow tour members to join the fledgling league.

Can you say tortious interference?  I thought you could...

I would also think that certain sponsors, RBC most notably, could have a similar claim, should they choose to participate.  The important thing, I think we can all agree, is that Phil is required to put his hand on a bible and have his rather transactional relationship with the truth subjected to just a dollop of diligence.  Good times!

Who else needs their hand on a bible?  Yup, you knew this one was coming:

Patrick Reed has refiled his $750 million lawsuit against Brandel Chamblee while adding more defendants to his defamation claim.

The lawsuit, originally filed in August in a Texas court, was withdrawn on Wednesday, only for
Reed’s attorney, Larry Klayman, to move the case to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Jacksonville, Fla., a district that covers Ponte Vedra Beach, home of PGA Tour’s headquarters. Along with Chamblee, Reed now is also targeting Golf Channel broadcasters Shane Bacon, Damon Hack and Eamon Lynch, as well as their media companies Golfweek and Gannett.

In similar verbiage to the original suit against Chamblee, the new lawsuit claims the defendants have “conspired as joint tortfeasors for and with the PGA Tour, its executives, and [tour commissioner Jay] Monahan to engage in a pattern and practice of defaming Mr. Reed, misreporting information with actual knowledge of falsity and/or reckless disregard of the truth, that is with actual and constitutional malice, purposely omitting pertinent key material facts to mislead the public, and actively targeting Mr. Reed since he was 23 years old, to destroy his reputation, create hate, and a hostile work environment for him, with the intention to discredit his name and accomplishments as a young, elite, world-class golfer, and the good and caring person, husband and father of two children that he is.”

The court filing goes on to claim: “It is well-known on tour that Mr. Reed has been abused and endured more than any other golfer from fans or spectators who have been allowed to scream obscenities only to be glorified by Defendant Golf Channel for doing so, because it gets the Defendants ‘clicks,’ viewership, ratings and increased revenue.”

Tortfeasors of the world, unite!   

Eamon, sure, but Damon Hack?  At last, sir, have you no decency?  has Damon ever said a mean word about anybody?

This to me is just the perfect lawsuit, a perfect example of their outsized sense of entitlement.  I am going to lay in a year's supply of popcorn and can only hope that Reed's deposition is live-streamed.  It's gonna take a week, and I can only hope that we cover the full gamut of Reed's good and caring life, beginning with the University of Georgia golf team.

But where does Patrick think this lawsuit goes?  the first place is discovery and the defendants get first crack, so I look forward to Eamon Lynch's deposition of Patrick.

That will have to sate you for now.  There's more LIV follies, but they'll have to keep until Monday.  Have a great weekend.

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Friday, September 23, 2022

Your Friday Frisson - Prez Cup Edition

Just a few weeks ago your humble blogger wasn't even sure the event would be played.... 

OK, it's not exactly Ali-Frazier, but this is still quite the schizophrenic header:

The 2022 Presidents Cup is off to a nightmare start. Still, it’s far from over

Well, three days I'm guessing....

There’s no question that the star-spangled spectators who streamed through the Quail Hollow Club’s gates on Thursday morning were looking for a win for the red, white and blue.

But even they didn’t want things to start like this.

The Presidents Cup is not the Ryder Cup. In the Ryder Cup, Team Europe has proven itself such a formidable opponent that even in last year’s 19-9 rout at Whistling Straits, there was no thought of feeling mercy. That was payback for previous lost Cups. It was Team USA defending its home turf. Team Europe still leads the modern Ryder Cup’s history, after all, they’re 11-9-1 since 1979, when the team added continental Europe.

The Presidents Cup has a decidedly different history. Since the first competition in 1994, Team USA is 11-1-1. This rivalry is not a rivalry. For the Presidents Cup to keep its juice, the
Internationals need to prove themselves worthy opponents. Even if the Internationals are this Cup’s little brothers, every little brother would rather get beat up than ignored, deemed unable to handle the punishment.

That doesn’t mean the Internationals need to actually win this week. But it sure would be nice if they kept it close. The 2019 edition of the event was spectacular, after all; the U.S. staged a final-round comeback to win 16-14. Those of us watching relished the competition and never once questioned whether it was a fair fight.

Dylan Dethier is using an especially narrow definition of "start", focusing on the Adam-Scott - Hideki Matsuyama pairing, of which I first heard on Golf Channel's Tuesday night coverage.  My reaction was skepticism, unaware of any connective tissue between Trevor Immelman and Hal Suttton.  The comparison to that famous Wood-Mickelson pairing might seem a stretch, but Trevor seemed to be trying to make the same kind of statement, but with two guys well past their sell-by dates.

And this also where the different format plays into the strategy, because putting your two horses (or alleged horses) together makes your other pairings weaker.  I like it a lot more in a four-match setting as opposed to five, not that you're going to look good when your can't lose team are closed out on the, checking notes, 13th green

But is it far from over?  I don't know about the far bit....But while Trevor's first group played like the D-flight, those other four matches were another matter:

As the day wore on, the other four matches began to tighten. No U.S. squad could pull away. Sungjae Im and Corey Conners held steady at 1 down to Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth. Tom Kim and K.H. Lee went from 2 down to 1 down to tied with Cameron Young and Collin Morikawa. When Sam Burns and Scottie Scheffler double-bogeyed No. 15, the Internationals seized advantage, then poured it on with birdies at 16 and 17. Suddenly there was a black-and-yellow flag on the board. Taylor Pendrith and Mito Pereira made birdie at 13 to tie up their match, too. Suddenly what had looked like a 5-0 start could flip. For a moment, fans began to do the math — could the Internationals finish the session with the lead?

Well, the only folks thinking that the yellow and black could take a lead had likely been overserved at the concession stand, but still.... Shane Ryan captures seven critical moments, including the final match that I didn't see play the 18th hole:

1. Mito Pereira's errant drive/Taylor Pendrith's missed putt

The lingering memory here will be Pendrith missing a 10-footer to halve his match against Tony Finau and Max Homa, but the truth is that Pendrith was the better player in his anchor pairing with Pereira. Just two holes later, he buried what felt like a do-or-die 24-footer to halve the 16th hole and keep the match all square, and it was Pereira whose errant driver on 16 and 18 made things tough on the Internationals in a very winnable match. The final drive was the real killer; Pereira hooked his tee shot on the last, and it was all Pendrith could do to blast from the rough 205 yards into the greenside bunker. As Homa and Finau made a standard par, Pereira scrambled to 10 feet, but Pendrith couldn't make the putt. It was the difference between a 3½-1½ margin and the more dire 4-1. Pendrith didn't speak to the media, but Finau praised his partner Homa for two clutch drives on 16 and 18.

"Whoever hits the fairway is going to have the big advantage," Finau said. "Homa stepped up after Mito missed the fairway and hit the middle of the fairway. So he set us up for me to be able to aim at the middle of the green and force them to putt to have the match. And Taylor, you know, hit a good putt and it just missed."

That was a dagger.   They had a chance to get of there down 3 1/2 - 1 1/2 (or even 3-2), and just coughed up that full point.  

Did someone mention daggers?

3. Cameron Young's gut-punch bomb

As the day wound to a close, an optimistic fan could still talk himself into a 2½-2½ tie for the Internationals; that's how tight the final three matches were. In the third match, Collin Morikawa hit one of his extremely rare mediocre approach shots to 25 feet on the par-4 17th, it seemed at the very least that the Internationals would be able to extend the match to the 18th hole. Instead, Young hit one of his most aggressive putts of the day ... ​​right into the bottom of the cup.

"I definitely hit it a little bit too hard," Young said. "It is a really fast one, and it's obvious that it's really fast. But the greens are so, so quick. And there's so much slope that it's very easy, I think, to hit something hard enough to go four, five, or six feet by. It doesn't necessarily really have to be a bad putt. But fortunately it didn't do that."

The Americans by then had the match pretty well under control, but still...

5. The Spieth/Thomas ham & egg act flips the 15th hole

Time and again, golf's two most famous friends managed to rescue one another from incredibly tight squeezes, starting on the par-3 fourth when Thomas hit his tee shot on the 168-yard hole
about 125 yards, and Spieth bailed him out with a pitch to inside three feet. The most important moment, though, came when Thomas returned the favor on the 15th. Spieth faced an incredibly long putt and ran it 26 feet past the hole. Clinging to a 1-up lead, Thomas did this:

Conners, who had a seven-footer for par that he thought could win the hole, suddenly needed it to halve the hole. When he missed, suddenly the Americans were 2 up with three to play, rather than all square.

I might have used "dagger" a bit early, because the JT putt was the moment of the day, to this observer, mostly because of how poorly the Spieth-Thomas team was playing, against Trevor's second team.

JT himself put it like this:

“Oh, it was a big grind,” Thomas said afterward. “I mean, you know, we played a really, really good team, a team that hits a lot of fairways, a lot of quality shots. I hit some unbelievably questionable shots, and I think that’s why we make such a great team. We can salvage when we don’t have our best stuff on a day like today.”

 Most notably this one:

How questionable were a few? So odd was one that Golf Channel analyst Paul Azinger labeled it “one of the worst shots you’ll ever see a good player hit.” We’ll just let the stats tell our story. On the 168-yard, par-3 4th, Thomas teed off, caught as much turf behind the ball as ball itself, and hit it 126 yards.

Doing the math, that left Spieth with a 44-yard pitch.

“I’m just laying you up to a good yardage,” Thomas joked to Spieth, according to the broadcast.

He beat me to that line....

Here's the bit that has to trouble Trevor, though.  Except for the Cantlay-X-Man team, which wasn't tested, and Collin Morikawa, how do we think the Americans played?   I though they scraped it around pretty poorly, none more so than the glam Scottie-Sam Burns pairing at the finish.  Don't we think they'll raise their game as the week goes on?

Shane had this NLU Tweet on Collin Morikawa's iron game, which did look pretty sharp:

As someone once said, these guys are good.

So, what does Trevor need today?  the match is pretty simple, beginning with the blindingly obvious observation that they can't fall any further behind.  They need to won this session to keep the weekend interesting, and here are your pairings:

Match 6, 11:35 a.m. — Jordan Spieth/Justin Thomas (USA) vs. Adam Scott/Cam Davis (INT)

Match 7, 11:50 a.m. — Scottie Scheffler/Sam Burns (USA) vs. Sungjae Im/Sebastian Munoz (INT)

Match 8, 12:05 p.m. — Kevin Kisner/Cameron Young (USA) vs. Mito Pereira/Christiaan Bezuidenhout (INT)

Match 9, 12:20 p.m. — Xander Schauffele/Patrick Cantlay (USA) vs. Hideki Matsuyama/Tom Kim (INT)

Match 10, 12:35 p.m. — Billy Horschel/Max Homa (USA) vs. Corey Conners/Taylor Pendrith (INT)

Do we see 3 - 3 1/2 points there for the Internationals?  

This has a couple of surprises:

Sitting USA: Tony Finau, Collin Morikawa

Sitting INT: Si Woo Kim, K.H. Lee

Surprised to see Si Woo on the bench,  given that he was on the only International team to notch a point.  Same goes for Morikawa, who seemed awfully dialed in.  Obviously he's a perfect fit for foursomes and we'll likely see him in that on Saturday, but I take this to mean that Tony and he will go both Saturday sessions.

I also find it interesting that he moved the team that played best yesterday out of the lead-off slot, and is now leading with two teams that didn't play their best yesterday.  It's a different task today, just go out and make birdies, and you'd have to expect that Scheffler-Burns team to play much better today, no?

One last thought in previewing today's matches is to note how problematic the fourball format is.  You'll have noticed the earlier tee times and TV window, as fourballs takes an eternity these days.  They make passingly few bogeys, especially with the course specifically set up to produce a birdie-fest, so the format has ventured dangerously close to unwatchable.  See if you agree when watching today's action.

Golf Digest has a couple of thoughtful pieces on this event that we'll sort through, beginning with this Shane Ryan musing:

Is the Presidents Cup method of setting matches better than the Ryder Cup?

Before listening to Shane, I'll just say that I think it's better for this event, which has a greater need for marquee pairings, but wouldn't want it for the Ryder Cup.

Shane frames his argument by stepping into Ernie's shoes in 2019, specifically his Sunday singles lineup, which is criticized by Paul McGinley for it's weakness in the early matches (a critique I don't find entirely convincing):

If you ask Paul McGinley, the biggest mistake Ernie Els made in an otherwise stellar captaincy at
the 2019 Presidents Cup in Melbourne came on Saturday night as he prepared to set his next day’s singles lineup. Holding a 10-8 lead that could have been even bigger, the International team captain opted to hold some of his best and most experienced players for the end of the lineup, apparently reasoning that if the match was close overall, he would have his stalwarts ready for the tense closing moments. Els kept some strength up top, but threw some of his more inexperienced, less successful charges into the fray in early positions.

This surprised McGinley because he had been impressed by the way Els opted for early strength in his lineups during the first four sessions. Why deviate come Sunday?

Ummm, because you have to play all twelve guys, and that inevitably exposes the International team's lack of depth?  Here's that Sunday line-up:

Who exactly does McGinley think should have gone earlier??  The problem, at least to me, isn't that he played Li Haotong and C.T. Pan, too early, it's that he had to play them at all.  Anyway, here's his take:

Here's where things get tricky: If the Presidents Cup used the same system as the Ryder Cup for setting pairings—which is to say, a blind draw in which both captains set their order without knowing what the other is doing—Els may have done exactly that. The fact that the Presidents Cup is different, with captains utilizing an alternating snake draft method in which one captain puts out a team or player, the other captain responds then puts out his next player/team, and so forth, creates a very different dynamic.

May have?  

This is just one of those truisms that has lost all connection to reality.  Since at least 1999, it's become conventional wisdom for the losing team to put their strongest players out first, which I guess makes some sense, although I think far less than most people assume.  Now McGinley is suggesting that teams in the lead always put their best players out first, but I've been reliably informed that each match awards the same number of points.

But what's really weird about Shane's piece is that it completely ignores the obvious purpose of the Prez Cup pairing process, which is to allow the captains to conspire to create marquee matches.  Everyone remembers Tiger and Ernie in the gloaming in South Africa, but most don't remember that the two paired off earlier (strangely, Tiger recounted this in his Hall of a acceptance speech, strangely feeling compelled to remind us all that he had already beaten Ernie that day).  Similarly, when they went to Canada, Tiger played Mike Weir in singles.

I'm totally OK with it for this event, which quite frankly can used the added buzz from those kind of staged match-ups.  But for the Ryder Cup, which is serious business, I prefer the blind draw and the mayhem and uncertainty that creates.

Is Shane Ryan getting any sleep?  Because he also has this encouraging piece up:

Soon?  That's a strong opinion given the current installment, but he predictably reminds us that the Ryder Cup took sixty years to become what is is today:

The Ryder Cup wasn't played from 1939 through 1945 due to World War II, and the truth is, there was absolutely no reason for it to come back. There was nothing wrong with event, per se, but it
had only begun in 1927, and the nascent enterprise didn't have a ton of traction in the world of professional golf through its first six matches. Miraculously it was resuscitated by a grocery executive from Oregon, Robert Hudson, who learned that the British PGA and most of Great Britain was broke after a long, devastating war, and paid for everything, from travel to food to lodging, to have them come to Portland in 1947. He even met the British team in New York to throw a party for them at the Waldorf Astoria and travel with them by train to the west coast. If not for him, the Ryder Cup might have simply been forgotten.

Fast forward 30 years. Between Hudson's Ryder Cup in Portland and the '77 event at Royal Lytham & St. Anne's, the Americans won or retained the Cup an astounding 15 of 16 times. "Lopsided" doesn't begin to describe it. Tom Weiskopf opted out of the '77 Cup because he wanted to hunt bighorn sheep, which sounds like a funny historical footnote except for what it said about the stature of the event. It took Jack Nicklaus and British PGA president Lord Derby to insist on expanding the British and Irish team to all of Europe, and even so, after two more blowouts, it was one lost sponsor away from going under in 1982. Then Tony Jacklin took over as captain, the Europeans rose from the dead, and almost overnight this match-play exhibition, which had limped along for more than half a century, always seemingly about to collapse without much sound or fury, became one of the greatest institutions in golf.

If you'll pardon the extended history lesson, there's a point here: It took 60 years for the Ryder Cup to become transcendent, and the Presidents Cup, which is not yet 30 years old, is also going to be great. We just need to stop worrying and put our faith in father time.

It's a great story of how the event was saved, although I always thought it cruel that he staged it in Portland, which is quite the unnecessarily long journey for the GB&I team.  Of course, the good news is that in 1947 Portland was likely still barely habitable....

Again, though, it seems to me that Shane is missing so many obvious points that his plea seems silly, although here I mostly agree:

The Ryder Cup should have died several times, and it took the extraordinary energy and vision of certain individuals to ensure that it staggered on until the point at which it became unstoppable. Sure, LIV Golf has at least temporarily gutted the International team, but so what? It may not last very long, and even if it does, match-play team events are no stranger to huge upsets. It's not very likely that anything will trouble the Americans this year in Charlotte, but imagine if the Internationals make a run? What a great upset story that would be. That kind of narrative is in play every single year, and will be until parity is established. In other words, it's fun even when we think we know the outcome.

It is fun because team match play rocks.  Let me allow Shane to finish:

So why are so many people so insistent on giving it the Julius Caesar knives-out treatment? It's
not detracting from anything else even now—would we really prefer whatever late-September filler event would replace it on the various world tour calendars?. And if we can just chill out and take some comfort from history, the day will come when we look forward to the Presidents Cup with the same anticipation we feel on Thursday night of Ryder Cup week.

If that sounds too crazy to believe, just imagine what a British player in 1947 might have thought if, while riding by train through the American prairies to play in a forgotten exhibition resurrected by an Oregon grocer after a crushing global war, he could have seen the spectacle of a modern Ryder Cup. Compared to that, what does a bit of patience cost us?


The biggest problem this event has is that it isn't the Ryder Cup, therefore comparing it to that other event is going to leave folks unsatisfied.  Where Shane errs, I think, is in not appreciating the role of the Euro Tour in the Ryder Cup, and the lack of similar coherence to the International team.  Playing for GB&I or Europe is quite a different thing than playing for the rest of the world.

The best thing we could possibly do is just chill and enjoy the event for what it is, team match play among elite players.  That's not to minimize the lopsided results, although the other guys have been very competitive the last two overseas installments.  

But I don't see any scenario in which this event becomes as competitive or as intense as the Ryder Cup, and therein lies the opportunity.  The LPGA has almost begged the Saudis to do a distaff LIV, and Jay has this event here that's problematic.  So, riddle me this Batman, why wouldn't you include the women in the future?  It's a lay-up, no?

But we're using the Ryder Cup as the benchmark for the Prez Cup, which to me begs the issue of whether the Ryder Cup itself is still the Ryder Cup.  The weakness of the Euro Tour, the seemingly increasing competitive balance, the perverse motivation of Euro stalwarts spitting on captaincy for 30 pieces of silver all lead me to think Marco Simone could be problematic.  And that doesn't even include the nightmare scenarios of what a judge might order each tour to do with the LIVsters....  Buckle in, it's gonna be a wild ride.

Schedule Update - I have no clue.  The bride and I are heading out to Montauk on Sunday to celebrate our 20th anniversary, and I haven't even considered whether the laptop is coming with us.  I might blog, but I also might not.  But let's hope Trevor's boys keep things from getting out of hand.  

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Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Tuesday Trifles

I checked my Magic 8-ball about Wednesday/Thursday blogging, and it responded that the outlook is cloudy.  So, we better cover everything now....
 
Prez Cup Perorations - Geoff has a couple of longer-form Quad items we'll use today, as his blog has devolved into mostly a place to post his Quad Links.  In honor of this week's festivities, he does a deep dive into the obvious solution for this weak-sister of an event:

Adding The World's Best Women Would Jump-Start The Presidents Cup

Gee, where might you have heard that idea previously?

This week’s Presidents Cup was hobbling into overused Quail Hollow long before Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf siphoned off top International players.

With Team USA winning 11 of 13 editions and a format borrowing too heavily from the Ryder Cup, the Presidents has long needed a rethink. There may be no better time to incorporate the best American and international women to create golf’s premier mixed-team event and, potentially, the most compelling Cup event of them all.

The Presidents Cup was the PGA Tour’s answer to the lucrative Ryder Cup, surviving on the thrills provided by team match play along with moments of grand sportsmanship and two dreamy trips to Royal Melbourne. But its format only deviates from the Ryder Cup with a Thursday start and holding captain’s selections on live TV. Couple that lack of differentiation with American dominance, and the Presidents Cup promise has all but cratered.

I find much of the reaction to this event a bit hard to understand, as its major failing seems to be that it doesn't have Seve.  I think you'll agree, it's a hard problem to fix, although I could see the Weekend at Seve's posters  for sure.

We'll have a comment or two on the format, but there's nothing especially wrong with it.  Team match play rocks, but folks seem to forget that the last two matches held outside the U.S. were highly competitive and exciting, marred only by the zero-dark-thirty airing times.

A little historical perspective might help as well:

The Ryder Cup survived much longer with a similar lop-sided scenario only to be boosted in 1979 by expanding the GB&I team to include all of Europe. But the matches were less visible then compared to the current Presidents Cup, which has a network television partner and audiences around the planet. The event is positioned to succeed if only there was a genuine reason for the “rest of the world” to care.

And, irony alert, why was the Prez Cup conceived in the first place?  The Tour had quite obviously effed-up in leaving the Ryder Cup with the PGA of America when those organizations split up in the 1960's, but it was just a sleepy exhibition of no import.  But there was another reason, one specific player that was not eligible to participate, yet was threatening to start some some sort of World Golf Tour....  Anyone remember who that was?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Here Geoff breaks a little news:

Ensuring the event’s future has also been a topic in the hallways of PGA Tour headquarters. According to two sources who have knowledge of informal pre-pandemic discussions held with the LPGA Tour, consideration was given to expanding the Presidents Cup to include the world’s best women. Those sources tell The Quadrilateral that exploratory conversations did not go very far because the LPGA’s biennial USA vs. Europe Solheim Cup was played in the same odd-numbered years as the Presidents.

The COVID-19 global pandemic pushed the Ryder and Presidents Cup back a year, thereby ending the date conflict. The Presidents Cup is now scheduled for even years, while the Solheim remains an odd-numbered year event.

Naysayers—a.k.a. LIV Golf’s robust army of bots and lonely online bored basement dwellers—will claim that upending the current Presidents Cup format would be demeaning to the world’s best women and a sure sign LIV has once again forced the PGA Tour to get better. Nonsense.

Demeaning?  Partnering with Justin Thomas is somehow demeaning to Nellie Korda?  I suspect that Nellie would crawl across broken glass to do so...

Geoff spares nu bullets in his listing of the beenfits:

The mixed-Cup concept is even more sensible in 2022 than it was a few years ago. Consider:
  • A mixed Presidents Cup would fulfill a promise of the PGA Tour/LPGA Tour “alliance” that has not produced anything of fan interest.
  • There would be no damage to the Solheim’s USA vs. Europe event. A mixed Presidents Cup might even increase interest in other LPGA team events.
  • The LPGA’s UL International Crown has been on hold since 2020 and this would help offset its potential demise. That biennial women's professional team event was played in even-numbered years and featured eight national teams of four players each
  • The women are more famous than the men in several Asian markets.
  • Adding the International women would level the Presidents Cup playing field and create more potential for excitement. (And there’s some bulletin board material America’s world No. 2 Nelly Korda did not need!)
  • The International men would be boasted this week by the play of Korea’s Jin Young Ko and Australia’s Minjee Lee, while the American squad would be more compelling to watch with the Korda sisters or recent major winner Jennifer Kupcho instead Billy Horschel and Kevin Kisner.
  • The format possibilities would depend on the size of teams. But there is the potential for every session to be different, from traditional foursomes and four-ball, to expanded singles, modified foursomes (with both players hitting tee shots) or even scramble on the table. A mix of disciplines would only add intrigue and also begin laying the groundwork for a long overdue Olympic golf format reboot incorporating mixed teams. 
  • The IOC’s addition of mixed gender events gave the pandemic-diminished Tokyo and Beijing Games a boost with more events planned.
  • Mixed formats have roots in the every day game, which continues to thrive thanks to a healthy increase in female participation.
  • A remastered Presidents Cup incorporating the world’s best women is likely to become the most watched mixed-competition in the world of sports.

This is so obvious a move, that we could consider it malpractice to not have implemented it yet.  In fact, when the LIV story hit I thought Jay still had an opportunity to make a change for this year's event, having seen the entire South African contingent immediately jump.

I wouldn't be so quick to conclude that there would be no diminishment of the Solheim Cup, though any lack of sustainability there is quite clearly a pre-existing condition.  That event has been sustained by a seemingly genuine strain of bad blood between the two teams, but that only helps so much when the balance of power in women's golf lies elsewhere.

Geoff goes so far as to lay out the rosters:

Had the 2022 Presidents Cup teams included six men and six women, the squads would have looked like this based on points earned (men) and Rolex rankings (women).

USA: Patrick Cantlay, Sam Burns, Justin Thomas, Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Tony Finau, Nelly Korda (2), Lexi Thompson (7), Jennifer Kupcho (11), Jessica Korda (13), Danielle Kang (20), Meghan Khang (27).

International: Hideki Matsuyama, Sungjae Im, Tom Kim, Adam Scott, Mito Pereira, Corey Conners, Jin Young Ko (No. 1, Korea), Minjee Lee (3rd, Australia), Lydia Ko (4th, New Zealand), Brooke Henderson (5th, Canada), Atthaya Thitikul (6th, Thailand) and In Gee Chun (8th, Korea).

But no room for Billy Ho?  Win-win, baby!  Given that Jay was sitting there unsure about Hdeki, that would have seemed an obvious risk mitigation strategy (although I haven't so much as checked the LPGA schedule).  The ironies are quite profound, for instance, the two players with the prototypically Asian surname of Kang/Khang would play for the American team....

Of course, there are some obvious complications that present.  I would expect that the Prez Cup opportunity for a guy like Cameron Young was a big factor in his staying on the PGA Tour, though that's just speculation.

Australian Rod Morri argued for the same here (the important thing being that I can now close that browser tab).

Shane Ryan has thoughts on how to "spice up the match", some of which is worth thinking through, especially this on format:

1. Have fewer matches overall, and per session

Prior to the 1987 Ryder Cup, officials with the PGA of America proposed a format change—they wanted it to be held over four days and to include a second singles round. This was partly for TV
revenue and ticket sales and all that—the public was finally starting to come around on this team competition—but it was also partly strategic. America had the best players, and more matches (particularly in singles) meant they'd have a better chance to win. Coming on the heels of 1985, Team Europe's first win, it would have been devastating to the psyche of a group gaining momentum and for the event overall. Luckily, Tony Jacklin was a visionary who saw exactly how bad this would be for everyone, and he used the greatest weapon at his disposal—he threatened to resign. His influence and leverage was just enough to get the European Tour fighting on his behalf, and eventually the PGA of America dropped the idea.

The point here is that, statistically speak, fewer matches overall benefit an underdog, and the fact that the Ryder Cup has just 28 points at stake, with less than half of them held as singles matches, has allowed Europe to compete toe to toe with a nation that has remained superior in terms of raw talent throughout the years.

Now turn to the Presidents Cup, which started with 32 points at stake, moved up to 34 at one point, and now has come down to 30. That might not sound like a whole lot more than 28, but every point counts in a tight match, and there's another big difference, too: the first two days, there are five matches per session, meaning that each team can only sit out two players instead of the usual four. This, again, benefits the stronger American team, because it prevents the weaker International Team from “hiding” two of its weaker players. It also diminishes strategy, which is always bad, and decreases variability, which is bad in match-play exhibitions.

If you want to make the Internationals more competitive, this is an easy way to start. You don't even need to get rid of Thursday golf; just make the first two days four matches only, and you've reduced the total matches to 28 and taken a big step toward preventing Americans depth from overwhelming the competition.

(Note: For what it's worth, they should also get rid of Thursday golf. It's more fun when it's all stacked in close proximity and the captains have to make immediate tough choices.)

Sorry for the long excerpt, but that Ryder Cup bit is quite interesting to your humble blogger.  I do agree with Shane that cramming those 28 matches into three days make sit a more interesting competition, bringing fatigue into play.  Ironically, in a world in which athletic competitions are routinely compromised to conform to TV schedules, this one has gone the other direction entirely.  On the one hand, I love that fact and encourage more of the same.  Yet, to be honest, it's more golf than any one human being can watch (at least on Friday and Saturday), and I hate those parts I miss...

Problem is that, after that instructive bit about the number of matches, the rest of Shane's suggestions range between silly and insignificant.  To wit:

2. Pay the players

While the four-day schedule mentioned above is one in which the Presidents Cup has tried—and failed—to distinguish itself positively from the Ryder Cup, there are other differences that are hugely successful. The snake draft method of determining match-ups, for one, produces wonderful drama that is totally unique in the sport and a great change from the Ryder Cup. Allowing both captains to go to six captain's picks, while no longer dissimilar from the Ryder Cup, was also a strong move. Here's an idea for another:

Pay the players.

By raising the idea of a financial incentive to play in the event, we’re not looking at it as a form of persuasion to keep players loyal to the PGA Tour; paying someone like Cameron Smith $500,000 for a President Cup appearance wasn’t going to keep him from jumping to LIV Golf. However, it's practically criminal from a business standpoint that these team events, which stand on the shoulders of the players, offer those players no profit! A stipend and a donation to charity won't cut it; these guys should be making millions.

Millions, Shane?  Do you actually think that the Prez Cup is worth millions?  David Duval was unavailable for comment, but seems a strange time to be throwing more money at players (and I've an ace in my pocket on that subject).

Now, this is a serious point, though at this point it's not about to happen.  It is, however, the basis of a Ryder Cup nightmare scenario:

3. Give each team complete control over its own destiny

Here was Ernie Els, the International team's best ever captain, after his near-upset in Melbourne in 2019:

“I know it’s a PGA Tour-sanctioned event, but to really be able to do what you need to do, you need to be almost a separate … you need to be away from the PGA Tour. I love these guys, they work for the tour and all that, but to make our own rules, to get our own choices, to do our own thing, it’s hard to explain. But we need to be separate. That’s a long, long process. I don’t think it will happen very soon … the Ryder Cup works because the Europeans do their own thing, and the U.S. do their own thing … we’re trying to do it under one umbrella, so under the tour’s office, under their roof, you know, and there’s a lot of things that clash.”

It's unlikely PGA Tour officials are going to give free license to anyone else to run the event, nor should they. (Total autonomy might lead to a nightmare scenario in which the International roster is full of LIV golfers, for instance.) That said, there has to be a compromise solution that allows the International team a degree of strategic independence. Now that you have guys like Els and Immelman who are taking their leadership roles very seriously—as opposed to the more laid-back ceremonial approach of previous three-time captains like Gary Player, Greg Norman and Nick Price—you need to encourage that as much as possible. Not that it's simple, of course.

On the one hand, it's easy to deride an event where one team picks the other team's captain.  On the other hand, there's no logical authority to run the International team's operations, but we're talking about an event that's held biannually, the implication being that you're going to stand up some kind of organization that will be responsible to run an event every four years.  

But can you see the Ryder Cup nightmare ahead?  The Euro Tour is currently allowing the LIV guys to play under a court order.  Fast forward to 2023 and think through the implications is such an order remains in place.  Setting aside the many complications of the Euro's bifurcated qualification process and whether a court order would be binding on captain's picks, but just imagine the scenario where Europe's team (or captains/vice captains) include LIV defectors.  Does Jay send a team, or does he shut down the PGA of America's gravy train (to be clear, the gravy comes to Seth Waugh in 2025, not 2023), but it gets very complicated, no?  

This week In LIVitation - There's just so much nonsense out there, I'm going to need a far bigger blog.  Forgive me for not taking the time to sequence what follows, but I'm just going to start throwing stuff at the wall.  Let's lede with this rather odd Sean Zak piece that doesn't much deliver on this header:

They held an event in Chicago?  Who knew?

To me, I come away with the following images from Sean's piece, each of which triggers the reaction, Good Riddance, beginning with Bryson waxing sentimental about the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits:

Lost in the haze of the past year has been the fact that DeChambeau began that Ryder Cup on edge. He arrived having avoided media for two months, the kind of decision that only garners more attention, agreeing to break his silence only because it seemed like the best move for the team. But 12 months later — this was now on Sunday evening at Rich Harvest Harms — a different DeChambeau approached reporters, proactively asking them if they needed anything from him. (His update: He hurt his eye when he was clothes-lined by a rope during the final round, a “freak accident,” but he would be fine, and his game was “trending” even if he’s frustrated.)

Why exactly was he allowed to stiff the media for two months?  How's that coddling working out for you, Jay?  But, Bryson, thanks for asking, but nobody needs anything from you anymore.

And this on you know who:

Alas, here we are. Wherever that is. “A long way” from 12 months ago.

Despite carding the best round of his 2022 year, Mickelson declined to speak with the media — even LIV Golf’s own website editor — as he packed up and left. Before long he exited the clubhouse with a black and red duffel over his right shoulder, talking through various shots with his coach Andrew Getson. A security guard walked in front of them and another trailed behind as Mickelson got into the driver’s seat of a white Yukon Denali, started up the engine and peeled away. Over the next two hours, a string of private jets took off from the nearby Aurora Regional airport, many of them flying right past Charlotte, on a beeline for West Palm Beach, Fla.

Phil, just keep walking....Of course, I can't tell Bryson to keep walking, because that seems to be an issue (but you can thank me later for this angle on ropegate):

But these LIVsters need to work on their messaging.  For instance, Phil took time ut from avoiding the media to offer this bit of wisdom:

“The best solution is for us to come together,” Phil told reporters on Friday at LIV Golf Chicago, the upstart tour’s fourth event. “I think that the world of professional golf has a need for the old, historical history of the game product that the PGA Tour provides, and I think that LIV provides a really cool, updated feel that is attracting a lot younger crowd, and that’s being proven in the people that are watching and the age of the people that are watching.”

 Which opinion I would totally take seriously, except for certain niggling details:

It should be noted that one of the largest obstacles to peace in our time has been created, in large part, by Phil. The six-time major champ was the leader of the group of 11 LIV players who sued the PGA Tour last month for antitrust violations. The first scene in that court battle resulted in a loss for the upstarts, and a handful of defections from the suit, but it is expected that the legal proceedings will continue well into 2023. And that would only seem to be the tip of the iceberg legally for the warring tours, as more lawsuits are expected in the coming months.

But, but, obnoxious greed!  

Among all the lies being spun, this might just be the most noxious:

"This notion we're trying to destroy tours is not true. The PGA Tour is trying to destroy us, it's as simple as that. But the PGA Tour has not sat down and had a conversation with myself or any of my investors," Norman said.

How do you know the Shark is lying?  Exactly....

The bonecutters developed a business plan that included predicated on cherry-picking the top 48 golfers in the world and compelling them to play fifteen events, and want us to believe that that's not an existential threat to the PGA Tour?  back here on Planet Earth we're gullible, but quite that clueless.

But Dylan Dethier sees this as a threshold change in rhetoric and strategy:

This week, that rhetoric changed. That means LIV’s public strategy is changing, too.

Greg Norman signaled the shift in an interview with The Australian. After a year of what he claims were attempts to find common ground with the Tour and with its commissioner, Jay Monahan, Norman said the dynamic has now flipped. He no longer wants a meeting.

“We have no interest in sitting down with them, to be honest with you, because our product is working,” Norman said.

Working?  Yowzer. that's a truckload of crazy, but let's let Dylan go on.

But if you’re more receptive to the new league you could also argue that Norman and LIV have leapt over so many early hurdles that they’re taking a victory lap. Skeptics wondered if the circuit would be able to attract top talent and if it would be able to pull off events. While the PGA Tour has retained the large majority of its top-ranked pros, LIV’s promises of big-time paydays have won over a significant contingent from the top 100 in the world. Both the events and the accompanying broadcasts have gone off successfully, too, putting on a show for thousands of fans per day. And objections to the league’s Saudi funding have, over time, gotten increasingly buried in the daily churn of news. LIV’s launch hasn’t all been smooth, but given the tight time frame and lack of existing infrastructure, it has certainly been competent. Money helps with that, of course. Money will continue to be an asset.

As the fields have gotten stronger, LIV’s stars have showed out, too. Two of the league’s most precious signings, Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith, have won its two most recent events. Norman crowed about their success on Instagram on Sunday, suggesting they were the “real” World Nos. 1 and 2. Top stars showing top form is good for LIV.

Wow, they actually prevailed over David Puig and James Piot?  That's some serious firepower....

Is anyone paying attention?

That’s not to say LIV’s success is inevitable. Thus far, its broadcasts have only run on YouTube and its website, commercial-free. And despite a strong in-person showing, over the weekend LIV struggled to maintain the audience. One accounting of viewership numbers showed peaks of 50,000, 63,000 and 95,000 for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, significantly down from the Massachusetts event, which peaked at 75,000 viewers on Friday, 75,000 viewers on Saturday and 182,000 viewers on Sunday.

Inevitable?  Dylan, I don't know what you're smoking, but I hope you've brought enough to share.

But apparently Phil had this to say in conjunction with that bit above:

“The PGA Tour, for the last 20 or 30 years, have had all the best players in the world. That will never be the case again. LIV Golf is here to stay, and this type of divisive talk is doing nobody good,” he said. That last clause hinted at Mickelson’s moderating message. In contrast to Norman, Mickelson (who, it’s worth noting, is part of the lawsuit against the PGA Tour) hopes the two leagues can find compromise.

But maybe I'm wrong.  Because apparently LIV owns this major market:

The most compelling testimony of the week came from Anirban Lahiri and Joaquin Niemann, the best golfers from India and Chile, respectively. They said LIV has allowed their countrymen to see more of their golf on a big-time stage. After some initial blowback, Niemann said he feels Chileans have gotten on board with LIV.

“Everybody in Chile is loving it, and now they’re able to watch me more during the round instead of how they were used to before,” he said.

My track record of predictions is mixed, although I do think I've gotten some important aspects of the dynamic correct.  But rather than dueling predictions, perhaps we'd be better served talking about the current state of play.  Because, with no disrespect to the critical Chilean market, to me LIV has a big bag of nothing right now.

We don't need to be disrespectful to Cam Smith or Joaquin Niemann (whereas I can't summon any actual respect for DJ), but scan their fields from top to bottom, and one obvious conclusion is irrefutable.  They have a couple of names, but it's basically a pro-am field beyond that.  They have nothing that sustainable, because no one will tune in for Cam Smith.

Now, this is obviously fraught with peril, and those Jon Rahm rumors last week were quite the wake-up call.  I'm not saying it couldn't change in hurry, the scary scenario being what economists call a preference cascade, the defection of a couple of big names making it OK for others to follow.  Heading that off has been sub-contacted to Tiger, a smart move for sure, but that's where things stand right now.

Yes, they've stood up events quicker than expected, but right now they plan on holding fourteen such events with the current field, and who is interested in that?  Sure, you've got their immediate families and Chilean market, but they have nothing as we sit here right now.  There's an old adage about lawyers that goes like this:

If your facts are good for your case, pound the facts.

If the law is good for your case, pound the law.

If neither the law nor facts are good for your case, pound the table.

To this observer, Mr. Norman is pounding the table.

Just a couple of LIV bits to amuse:

Well, just add that to the list....

And this:

I think we know the answer.

What I find fairly strange is that they just blindly assume that the Saudis will continue to throw good money after bad.  Network contract or not, there is simply no way that the golf ecosystem can support their financial commitments, so when does somebody ask Norman for his Plan B?

I almost forget to deliver on this reference above, a radical rethinking from Geoff for the majors:

Stating what the Four Families cannot say about the unsustainable pay wars. 

In a Graham Bensinger interview released last week, Will Zalatoris discussed the state of pro
golf. The 2022 PGA Championship and U.S. Open runner-up said majors motivate him more than money.

“If the U.S. Open had a $100,000 purse, I’d still show up to the U.S. Open,” he told Bensinger. “I’m in this to go win a major – that’s my career goal. There’s no amount of money that I would give to trade that for a trophy.”

Already having experienced years of behind-the-scenes gripes from PGA Tour players, The Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open and The Open substantially increased purses. But the Four Families also put some of their television rights money back into improving the events while funding causes for the betterment of the greater good. Which is why, after a summer of absurd millions funneled to players, it’s time for the next Five Families meeting to send Jay Monahan off to the Citation for a Four Family pow-wow. And once Tour Air 1 is cleared for takeoff to Steamboat, the remaining family heads should agree on a five-year major championship purse-freeze.

For the good of the game.

I think he's very much on to something there, that Jay's attempt to compete with LIV by increasing purses reeks of desperation, but this would help rebut some of the "grow the game" posturing.

I actually hadn't heard this, but Geoff had this behind his paywall:

The irony, she burns!  If there was one man responsible for Fox's disastrous involvement with golf, it's none other than Greg Norman, so what could go wrong this time?  Well, DJ played his own role in that FOX Fiasco, if I remember correctly....

Udder Stuff - Not a ton going on, though this has certainly gotten lost in the shuffle:

5. After much speculation and years of wondering, new photos show the addition of a new teeing ground on Augusta National’s famous par-5 13th. What are your thoughts on a lengthened 13th and how does that change the tournament?

Bastable: The change will have traditionalists wincing but c’est la vie. This is where we are with the professional game. I think in a perfect world the lengthening would make the hole 10-15 percent harder. Any more than that and 13 will lose its eagle-ability that makes it so much fun to watch. I do like that the new pushed-back tee appears to create a knee-knocking chute, a la the tee shot at 18. Good luck threading that corridor of pines with a one-shot lead on Sunday.

Dethier: I think it’s going to be awesome. Pros hitting big-time drives and then trying to flight high, soft fades off of hook lies onto that green? Yes please. I’ve watched enough Masters from the 70s, 80s and 90s to crave watching the pros take on that challenge. But that’s in a vacuum. If you zoom out, it’s problematic that golf’s most famous arena just keeps stretching, and stretching, and stretching; the distance debate can feel like golf’s version of climate change. A new-and-improved 13th hole is like a warm, sunny winter in New England. Sure, it represents an existential threat to humanity’s existence. But hey, how ‘bout that March golf?

LKD: I love it, and can’t wait to see it. From the sky, the hole is giving me Harbour Town golf. Target golf at its very finest. Pull a driver and hit a tight draw round the corner. Hit the shot or go home.

Perhaps this will wake some folks up.

More details here, but what I haven't seen is how far they need to drive it clear the dogleg, which has always been my concern.  Like those writers, I'd much prefer that they hit 6-irons into the green, but I worry that we'll end up with players unable to even see the green, and there's nothing more boring than lay-ups.  My stated preference was to play it as a Par-4, but we'll know better in April.

I'll likely see you next on Friday. 

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