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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