Monday, October 31, 2022

Weekend Wrap

That sound you hear in the background is the Fairview greens being punched.... Tough time of year for us all so, I think you'll agree, let it snow.

The Bad & The Ugly - One thing on which all right-minded folks can agree is that the PGA Tour wore a short skirt and had it coming, just for the crime of holding events such as the Butterfield Bermuda Whatever...  I'll just say, though, that if the preeminent tour in golf wants to hold events with only one top 50 player in the field, you might as well let that lucky soul win:

The World No. 48 survived rough conditions on the back nine at Port Royal Golf Course to post a final round 70 to capture the Butterfield Bermuda Championship by one stroke for his second PGA Tour win.

“I’m absolutely over the moon,” he said after the round. “The first one was amazing but to be able to win again, it’s fantastic. I get whatever, it’s pretty much a three-year exemption and all the kind of cool things that come with it. It’s just you’re kind of so proud and it’s amazing to be able to do it again.”

He found himself in quite the fortunate spot, grabbing the "W" while we're still pretending that these events are every bit as important as, sat Riviera.... 

It took a characteristic collapse from a young player to allow chalk to prevail:

However, Griffin, who was trying to complete a fairy tale comeback after giving up pro golf for a time last year, collapsed in the strong winds on the back nine Sunday. He birdied 10 and 11 but followed it with bogeys at 12-15 and a double at difficult par-3 16th to give up the lead to Power.

“Not how I wanted to, but it was playing tough out there,” Griffin said. “Those are some of the toughest holes coming down the stretch, especially trying to win a PGA Tour event.”

Ben Griffin is the full name, and he took his learning experience with sufficient grace that we'd be pleased to see him make some noise down the road.

This is the stuff of bloated schedules and product dilution, so Nurse Ratched should take a bow.  Take away the FedEx Cup points (and, more importantly, the ever-present promos) and this could be a respectable event for the journeymen of the Tour to improve their status.  It just falls flat when its status dwarfs the strength of its field, and I suspect the TV ratings will indicate mass indifference.  The only remaining mystery is whether a discernable audience was detected.  Your humble blogger is going with the Under....

But, that miserable field of strength wasn't the most humiliating part of the weekend for Ponte Vedra Beach.  Faced with a miserable field, they asked themselves, what can we do to make this more of a clown show?  Shockingly, they came up with two very strong answers.

The first is captured in this tweet:

The name is Kim Swan and I believe that he's a Bermuda native, but he shot 89-81 and missed the cut by 114 shots.... OK, I might have made up that last number, but you'll take my point.

Even more humiliating was the presence of John Daly in the field.  Daly beat Kim by some 23 strokes, yet didn't so much as as sniff the cut line.  But I'm actually happy to have John Daly in the news, because he's an object lesson for us all, a tired act that simply refuses to go away.  But do we think PReed reads my blog?  Back in the day, Daly made the unforced error of suing a journalist, with the predictable result that his Tour disciplinary file was publicly released.  Talk abut a page-turner

The PGA Tour ordered John Daly to undergo counseling or enter alcohol rehabilitation centers seven times, once disciplined him for hitting golf shots off the top of a beer can during a pro-am and cited him 21 times for "failure to give best efforts," during Tour events.

Daly has also been accused of nearly hitting an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent after failing to stop his car at a security checkpoint at the 2005 U.S. Open in Pinehurst, N.C., and of launching golf balls over the heads of spectators who were sitting in the bleachers during a 1993 golf clinic, according to the PGA Tour's confidential personnel file on Daly.

The Tour's initial disciplinary action against Daly was for an incident on April 17, 1991, in Hattiesburg, Miss., when he cursed a playing partner during a Tour event there. That was four months before Daly burst onto the golf scene by winning the PGA Championship.

Eventually, his personnel file at the PGA Tour swelled to 456 pages, with incidents covering 18 years, through the fall of 2008. Daly was fined nearly $100,000 during that span, suspended from the Tour five times, placed on probation six times, cited 11 times for "conduct unbecoming a professional" and 21 times for "failure to give best efforts."

Begging the question, what exactly does one need to do to be excluded from the PGA Tour?  Rape?  Murder?

So, if I were a sports book, I'd have a prop bet for the over-under on the PReed disciplinary file at, say 456 pages.  So, do we like the over or the under? 

LIVing The Life - The first season of LIV concluded with a rousing coda, as the favored 4Aces hung on for a dramatic victory watched by million s of golf fans..... OK, I made most of that up, although I think the 4Aces actually did win.

I think this headline writer has it about right:

LIV Golf’s season is over, but the question remains: Do you care?

I do actually care that it's over.... does that count?

Sean Zak sums up their first season thusly:

After eight events in five months, it should be pretty clear what LIV Golf is all about. It is a
league backed entirely by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. It’s a plaintiff and counter-defendant in a major antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour. It has paid huge sums of money to pluck some of the best golfers in the world as well as some of the best young talent on the planet. It does not have Tiger Woods’ support but it has all of Phil Mickelson’s. It has reiterated good intentions for entering the global golf ecosystem, but that hasn’t totally manifested in reality. Its entire first season was streamed on YouTube to disappointing viewership numbers, depending on your analyst for that information. It’s been available on television in other countries around the world — ask your analyst for the value of that, too. It has staunch support in some corners of the internet and even stronger detractors in others. But now it’s even more clear — it is not going away.

We frequently see examples of headlines totally disconnected from the article below, most recently with that WSJ article on the Justice Department antitrust investigation.  But here we have a paragraph in which the conclusion seems equally disconnected from that which comes above, partially caused by the use of imaginative language to distort reality.  Because, Sean's use of the term "some" is the giveaway, no?  It is a sufficiently vague term that is used correctly, but the more accurate reporter might have been tempted to instead use the more specific term "two,", which is precisely how many of both they're acquired.

But the contention that LIV is "not going away" might prove true or untrue, but the only factor identified in that paragraph that supports that contention is  the first bit, its support from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.  I'd like Sean to commit an actual act of journalism and explain what the Saudis are getting for their money and why that leads him to expect continued support, but that's above Sean's pay grade.

Sean does fill in some color, which doesn't seem to help their cause:

What fans found at LIV Miami what exactly what we’ve come to recognize from the breakaway tour. On Day 1, spectators were greeted by a lady on stilts in a hot pink, bedazzled uniform wearing a flamingo hat and blowing bubbles into the air. Twenty yards away a unicyclist wove
through the crowd juggling bowling pins, nearly crashing when one hit the pavement. There’s a reason why some people call LIV Golf a circus. In some ways it is so different than the pro golf we’ve known that you stop to look around and wonder where you really are. But then a pro golfer and his caddie walk by to remind us of the sports event we’re attending.

Rather than a tense weekend filled with smack talk, what played out at Doral was something more akin to golf camp. Many players stayed on-site at the lavish resort on the edge of Miami. If you were too, you’d see Anirban Lahiri and his family walking to breakfast. You’d pass Louis Oosthuizen in his flip-flops or run into Sergio Garcia in the Sam Snead Villa. When four of the 12 teams had first-round byes, they played practice rounds together at the other course on campus. Each opponent selection show was a cozy affair between friends that mostly resulted in laughter. Teams that lost hung around all weekend to watch. Joaquin Niemann’s season ended Friday but he received a haircut from Cam Smith Sunday morning in front of dozens of fans. LIV golfers are by no means rivaling each other, and when asked about how tension between teams could be created, the four remaining captains Saturday night could barely muster up an example.

They've acquired a reputation for hosting exhibitions, which was only enhanced by the golf camp vibe of the week.  Clearly the guys are enjoying themselves, though your humble bloggers remains mystified as to why the Wahabis, a grim lot indeed, think self-satisfied golfers yucking it up  will appeal to the rest of us.  I'm glad Pat Perez has found happiness, but I don't feel any sense that he's earned it, do you?

Many made jokes and quips (this writer included) throughout LIV Golf’s inaugural season, but it was Pat Perez who got the last laugh.

Often the odd-score-out for his loaded 4Aces team that features Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed and Talor Gooch, the 46-year-old veteran couldn’t be happier after a final-round 2-under 70 at Trump National Doral – which tied Johnson and Reed for their team’s low score of the day – at the LIV Golf Team Championship.

How exactly did Pat Perez get that "last laugh"?  In that traditional LIUV way, for sure:

“All the push-back, all the negative comments, everything we’ve gotten, at this point I really don’t care. I mean, I don’t care. I’m paid. I don’t give a damn,” Perez said with a laugh

See, we've found common ground.  Nothing grows the game of golf quite like Pat Perez getting paid... 

So, LIV's not going away, but where exactly is it going?  We've heard about their plans to hold fourteen events, but there's news in this short 'graph:

As LIV executives explained Saturday morning to the press, LIV will begin its 14-event schedule in February, hoping to file in gingerly around the major championships and “heritage events” on the PGA Tour. Its operating purpose for the next three months is to commercialize its teams, even if your Saturday foursome doesn’t know exactly who is playing for the Niblicks. LIV dreams of a day where each team is sponsored, with its own operating budgets and staff. Making a Torque GC Instagram account is one thing. Convincing a Fortune 500 company of team valuations is another.

That bit about avoiding the PGA Tour's "heritage events is new to your humble blogger, but also add in this bit from elsewhere:

But next year, LIV will be renamed the LIV Golf League and will have 12 teams contesting a 14-event global schedule—nine in the U.S. and five overseas. It is set to run from late February to September.

It all perhaps depends upon your definition of "heritage events", but finding those fourteen weeks won't be the easiest exercise, though the most important word in the 'graph might be September.  Because, while Greg Norman blathers on about creating a global tour and growing the game, not even the Saudis are stupid enough to take on the NFL.  Combined with the surprise success of the CJ Cup (caused by being forced to hold it in the U.S.), seems to indicate that the death match will be played as a home game for Jay Monahan.

I simply can't have a conversation with anyone on the topic of LIV without the suggestion that they "have to do a deal".  To which I typically respond, "Sure, but tell me what that deal looks like", because I sure don't see it.  Jay doesn't know what to do with the Fall, so it's up for grabs, but Greg and his Saudi paymasters want it all, which they might get but only by continuing to overpay in perpetuity.

There's lots of happy talk about monetizing their teams and the like:

“Our goals are to transition to the league, have 12 teams established and get them off the ground,
and clearly build on the on-course and fan experience we are seeing and the engagement we are seeing," Khosla said. “We have to start commercializing the product. Get on TV. [We] need to find corporate partners. Those are milestones we need to hit going into next year."

The league will also grow to 60 players, given that each of the 12 teams will add a substitute player who can only be used if one of the teammates becomes injured or can’t play in a certain week. Teams will be made up of a “principal” player—the captain—selected by LIV’s board, as well as two seeded players determined by the top 24 on the points standings from this inaugural season. The fourth member of the team will be a wildcard chosen by the captain, and the team will be rounded out by the substitute.

LIV also has future plans for a 60-day transfer window similar to that in English soccer. Officials said Saturday that was already happening in an informal manner and that several players would be on new teams before the 2023 season begins in late February.

I for one have acquired a deep supply of popcorn, and eagerly await those milestones falling fast.

Shall we see what our Tour Confidential panel thought of it all?  I think so, then I'll need to wrap our wrappage:

1. LIV Golf ended its inaugural year on Sunday with the finale of its $50 team championship event at Trump Doral. Days earlier, Phil Mickelson said “it’s pretty remarkable how far LIV Golf has come in the last six, seven months” and that it’s “a force in the game that’s not going away.” Now that we can put a bow on the controversial league’s inaugural season, how would you assess it? How have your feelings about it changed over the past year? What worked? Or didn’t? What surprised you?

Josh Sens: A year ago, most of us on this forum would have said LIV had little chance of taking shape at all. And even less chance after Mickelson’s ‘scary mofos’ comment in February. That it not only exists but has drawn a bunch of green jackets, a former world No. 1, the reigning Open/Players champ, etc., counts as a surprising success. What LIV has failed to do is offer a compelling product — though I’m not sure that’s so much a flaw in LIV as it is a feature of modern professional golf. Many of us started saying this long before Rory brought it up. But what the world needs isn’t more pro golf on TV but less of it. The game should pack it in for a while each year. Let people miss it. LIV came into being partly by exploiting a weakness in the PGA Tour — too many snooze-fest events that too few fans care about. But what LIV is offering as an alternative are snooze-fest events that too few fans care about. LIV’s problem is the Tour’s problem, writ large: Enriching players is not the same as rewarding fans. Sure, the lack of a TV deal doesn’t help. But even my 83-year-old luddite mother knows how to click on YouTube. If tons of people were interested, they’d be watching. And they’re not.

Josh hits at one of my recurring points, which is that golf is a really bad fit for sportswashing.  It's just so damn boring and no one cares, which we might have reinforced by the coming World Cup.

We had the point made recently that the LIV effort should best be understood in the context of the cold (well, Jamal Kashoggi wouldn't consider it cold)  in the Sunni Arab world.  But my guess is that the Qataris will get much better value from their World Cup, so we'll see how that plays in the Kingdom.

Sean Zak: I wanted LIV to exist for strict chaos purposes. I saw the potential it could inject into the ecosystem for change on the PGA Tour. Unfortunately, I think it all has gone a bit too far. Who is to blame? A lot of folks. How much time do you have? Greg Norman did not work as a frontman. At least not as a speaking frontman. The team championship worked, which was good because it had been hyped up constantly. But the team formation didn’t work. The only brand I can really think of is the 4 Aces, mainly because they were the best players and they solidified from the second event. At this point, I’m sad that there wasn’t a bit of cooperation between the two sides, but I don’t actually care to blame Jay Monahan. If you give LIV an inch, it’ll want to take a mile. So perhaps we were always going to end up right here. I look forward to breaking down the lawsuit. Or rather, lawsuits.

I think the chaos only seemed appealing, mostly because the Tour's product has become so dreadfully boring.  Problem is that the reactions  to LIV will make the Tour less attractive going forward.

Dylan Dethier: I think the biggest story of LIV this season is that its future is … to be continued. LIV has signed enough players and built a successful enough infrastructure that it’s guaranteed to be around next year. That means next year will really serve as its first full season. A league with less determined backers than LIV might have waffled after its mixed bag of results and muted popularity. But these fellas have a long runway, which means they will have every chance to succeed.

Sure, as long as the Saudis want to continue to be duped....

2. The team of Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Talor Gooch and Pat Perez won LIV’s team championship, which used a unique format of stroke play, match play and alternate shot (not to mention picking your opponent) to decide its winner. Now that we got to see it all unfold, what did you think of the format for the season-ending event?

Sens: The format was fresh but — for reasons mentioned above — it was still a snooze of an event. When it comes down to it, I just don’t know that there’s an answer to be found in the format. We’ve seen it over and over. You can throw as much money — and wrinkles — at the problem as you want. Meaningless events are still meaningless events, whether it’s on the Tour or on the LIV circuit. Most people would rather watch guinea pig TikToks. At least they take up less time.

Zak: Match play worked well, and with a full season perhaps there will be a sense of rivalry built up. But you won’t get any rivalry until you get certain teams taking food off of other teams’ plates. That didn’t happen once during the regular season, but it did Friday, and Harold Varner was annoyed. His season ended early, just as he beat the brakes off Brooks Koepka. Some strife is really good. I’d love LIV to create a bit more strife next season.

Dethier: A lot of the format stuff LIV is trying is fun — especially when taken in a vacuum. But I think what LIV lacks is context. Wins on its tour are worth a boatload of money, but thus far none of this means anything, and sports fans crave context and meaning. For LIV, establishing that meaning might just take time or it might an un-clearable hurdle. I don’t think there’s any way to know. But thus far LIV garnered its attention through curiosity, disruption, politicization and money rather than the format itself.

A series of golf exhibitions were boring?  geez, you'd have to be Nostradamus to see that one coming....But, if you're going to have a team event and not use a team match play format, you kind of get what you deserve.

Bt this is a strange question:

3. Rory McIlroy told the Guardian he felt betrayed by his European Ryder Cup teammates who left for LIV Golf, although Ian Poulter countered by saying as far as he’s aware they can still qualify for the team. Recently Jon Rahm said LIV players should be allowed, while Shane Lowry was among those who said they should not be. In truth, we don’t know the official answer yet for the European squad, so we have two questions: Will LIV players be allowed on Team Europe? And should they be?

Sens: I don’t think they’ll be playing, but I wouldn’t mind seeing them in the mix. The Ryder Cup is already shot through with partisan divides. What’s a little more tension in the exhibition? It would be only fitting. The teams could even serve as an example, so badly needed these days, that you can disagree with someone’s politics and actions without having to treat them as mortal enemies. As a practical matter, though, it almost seems like a moot point. Aside from Sergio, the now-LIV golfers who played for Europe in the last Cup at Whistling Straits were non-factors. If you really want to win, are you taking any of them at this point? Time for new blood on the team, anyway.

Zak: I think they’ll be allowed AND banned. Shadow-banned, that is. I think they’ll be able to qualify automatically, but will only really be able to do so via majors and DP World Tour events, which they’ll need to work around their LIV schedule. And with half the team decided by captain’s picks, they’ll have to plead to captain Luke Donald and shadow captain Rory McIlroy. It ain’t happening.

Dethier: I’ll endorse Zak’s shadow-banned prediction. These guys may not be outright banned, but it’ll take some strong play in the majors to get them there. The more relevant conversation, to me, isn’t actually who can play on Team Europe but instead who could serve as future captains. LIV swiped the entire lot of ‘em!

The more I game play the situation, the more Europe figures prominently.  But these guys stop short of the ultimate nightmare scenario, to wit, that there might not be a Ryder Cup.  I'm not predicting it, but I can see two obvious scenarios under which Jay will have little choice but to not send his boys (he could do that because it's Seth Waugh's event).

I'm out of time, so let's hold that upbeat thought for tomorrow. 

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Friday, October 28, 2022

Your Friday Frisson

Tough time of year as those last few grains of sand descend to the bottom of the hourglass.  Our place is closed next week for aeration, so I guess winter is on for real....

The Shadow Game - Lots of public bloviation on the subject, we'll get to a bit of that below.  But do you remember your President going to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and fist-bumping the Crown Prince?  Yes, apparently Americans still use carbon-based energy products, and our Prez begged for the equivalent of a payday loan.

His doltish press secretary assured us that the trip wasn't about oil..... though you might wonder what one talks about with the Saudis if oil isn't on the agenda.... perhaps golf?  Concurrent with this trip, the Biden Justice Department took precious time away from their core responsibilities of designating parents domestic terrorists and and hold January 6th trespassers in solitary confinement to open an antitrust investigation into the PGA Tour, which reasonable people understood to be merely coincidental. In that, "Who ya gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes" kind of way.

You might think that going hat-in-hand to the Wahabis is a bad look, though I was reliably informed to the contrary, as POTUS put down his ice cream cone and beat his chest:

President Biden: “No one fucks with a Biden.”

If by no one you mean everyone....

OPEC+ slashed oil production following a Saudi pressure campaign that experts say aims to hurt Democrats in the midterms.

To review the bidding, the Saudis had announced production cuts of 1 million barrels per day.  Based upon Biden's request to prop up his tottering regime by opening the spigot, MBS increased the production cuts to 2 million barrels.  Remember Obama's warning about Joe?

Of course, I'm sure it wasn't personal:

People inside the Saudi government said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was unimpressed with Biden and favored former President Trump

So, why the deep dive on this subject?  Silly me, having been publicly humiliated by guys wearing towels on their head, I assumed that that Justice Department investigation would quietly close up shop.  Because, while Biden is no stranger to corrupt bargains with foreign governments (you do remember that Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Hunter that Joe got fired, right?) the big guy gets his 10% or there's no deal.  

 So, imagine my surprise when this broke:

I totally get it... they've been using predatory pricing to corner the pimento-cheese sandwich market for decades....

But is Augusta National "under investigation"?  This is where things get kind of interesting, especially if you're among those that naively think the Wall Street Journal is much different than Pravda.... Geoff does good work here (and we need him in this case, because the WSJ item is behind a paywall):

In another Wall Street Journal story featuring an exaggerated headline, the outlet cites “people familiar with the matter” claiming Augusta National Golf Club is “under investigation” in a Department of Justice antitrust probe of the PGA Tour (another story originally revealed by the Journal).


The Justice Department’s antitrust investigation into professional golf includes the powerhouse bodies Augusta National Golf Club and the United States Golf Association, in addition to the PGA Tour, according to people familiar with the matter.

This seems much different than “under investigation.” Particularly given court proceedings in Northern California where LIV Golf is aggressively trying to draw in the major championship organizations (more below). Yet the Journal casts the “under investigation” net over the other organizations as part of a possible anti-trust case against the PGA Tour.

Yeah, this is a recurring phenomenon in our lame media, where the headlines seem utterly disconnected  from the article they head.  

The DOJ investigation, however, is wider than was previously known, extending to some of the other most important bodies in golf. People familiar with the matter said those groups include Augusta National, which oversees the iconic Masters tournament each spring. The famously secretive club has produced documents for the Justice Department probe, these people said.

Producing documents seems quite a bit different than under investigation.

Yes, but those incendiary headlines unsupported by the reporting is just another form of journalistic malpractice.  They do it because the header will be picked up by other outlets which will tell their readers that the WSJ has reported that Augusta National is under investigation, whereas it has in reality done nothing more than write an unsubstantiated header.  This si what they now teach in J-School, kids....

It's really very curious in two aspects, but first this reminder from Geoff that the WSJ has taken potshots at the Tour previously:

As noted here, the Wall Street Journal has taken an interest of late in all things LIV and the PGA Tour. They posted a thorough deep dive into Jay Monahan’s jet usage, published a silly Greg Norman op-ed and shared a very straightforward primer on the official world rankings headlined, “The Secretive Body at the Center of the Fight for Golf’s Future.”

Fact is that the Journal's news pages are indistinguishable form those at the NY Times or WaPo, and should not be trusted to accurately convey the correct day of the week.

But it raises two quite obvious questions:

  1. Why is the news operation of the WSJ carrying water for the Saudis?
  2. Perhaps more importantly, why is the Justice Department carrying water for the Saudis?
Stay Tuned.

Reality Bites - Wow, the guys can be so surprisingly touchy.  I mean, guys try to destroy the Tour on which they earned their fortunes and reputations, and those left behind have harsh words.  Really, who could have seen that coming?

As noted earlier in the week, I think Rory would benefit from some message discipline, but I don't think there was much surprise in these comments:

“It’s a weird thing,” McIlroy says. “I think it is the first time in my life that I have felt betrayal, in a way. It’s an unfamiliar feeling to me. You build bonds with these people through Ryder Cups
and other things. Them knowing that what they are about to do is going to jeopardise them from being a part of that ever again? There was a great opportunity for GMac to maybe be the captain at Adare in 2027. Most of Sergio’s legacy is Ryder Cup-based, same with Poulter, Westwood.

“I feel like the place where they have been able to build their legacy and build their brand, they have just left behind. You could make the same argument about me, I started in Europe and went to America but I have always been supportive of the traditional system. If people felt so aggrieved about some things, I’d rather be trying to make those changes from inside the walls than trying to go outside and be disruptive.”

Disruptive?  That's an awfully polite word for their actions, no?

Ian Poulter isn't taking this lying down:

“We can still qualify for the team as far as I am aware,” he said ahead of the rebel tour’s Team Championship in Miami.

“Unless we have been told we can’t qualify I am still ready to play as much as I can and try and make that team.

“My commitment to the Ryder Cup goes before me. I don’t think that should ever come into question.

You've also been told that Jay Monahan can't suspend you.... How's that working out?

But what does that "goes before me" comment even mean?  Your commitment to the Ryder Cup goes before you, but does not survive contact with a large check....  Noted.

Also bloviating is our former POTUS, and likely not to any great effect.  Here I think he gets his cause-and-effect backwards:

Trump spoke with reporters beside the 18th green at the Blue Monster course, which from 1962 to 2016 hosted a PGA Tour event won by the likes LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman, Tiger Woods
and Phil Mickelson. The tour left Trump’s Doral property in 2017 for a new venue and sponsor in Mexico, which the former president viewed as an insult. This is the second LIV event hosted by a Trump-owned course; the first came at Trump National Bedminster in July.

“The tour mishandled it so badly,” Trump said. “The people at the top … something should happen with them. They mishandled it so badly. They not only had an advantage, they are dealing with very good people [Saudi investors] with unlimited money. They’re good people with unlimited money. And something could have been worked out very easily.”

On the one hand, I completely understood why the Tour and other golfing organizations didn't want Trump hogging the limelight.  But the flip side was that they unnecessarily discarded a Tour legacy (1962) and created an enemy that is now returning the favor.  

That said, the failure to cut a deal falls mostly on the Saudis, it seems evident to this observer.  They seem to have thought they could drink Jay's milkshake without a strong response, though that's not Trump's fault.

This mornings e-mail included a link to this from John Coupland:

Donald Trump has claimed The Open's organisers want to bring the tournament back to his
Turnberry course on the Ayrshire coast.

The championship, organised by the R&A, has not been staged there since Stewart Cink's victory over Tom Watson in 2009.

The former US president bought the resort in 2014 and invested hundreds of millions of pounds renovating the hotel and redesigning the course.

"I can tell you they want to come back," Trump told reporters after playing the pro-am at the LIV Golf Team Championship being held at the Trump Doral resort here in Miami.

"The Open wants to come back. I think this will have to be sorted out first," he added, referring to the ongoing disputes over the breakaway LIV Golf tour.

"It is rated the number one course in Europe now. We did a big surgery on Turnberry and it has gotten great reviews, even from people who hate me.

Shockingly, much of that is true, though with an asterisk the size of the state of Texas.  The renovation of Turnberry has garnered great reviews, and it's our misfortune to not have a chance to see it. But you don't need me to tell you that the R&A isn't headed back there as long as it's under its current ownership.

But Trump is no different than everyone else to whom I speak on this subject.  Each and every person is certain that a deal must be and will be struck, though none have been able to furnish even a cursory outline of what said deal might look like.

As longs as we're on Trump, there's one other open tab of relevance:

This is its own interesting subject, because the purist's love of links is typically tied to their longevity and the manner in which they fit into their surroundings.   The reason I mention this list now is because the medalist will have heads exploding:

1. Trump International Scotland 7.90
Balmedie, Scotland; Martin Hawtree (2012)

2. Kingsbarns 7.86
St. Andrews, Scotland; Kyle Phillips (2000)

3. Loch Lomond 7.66
Dunbartonshire, Scotland; Jay Morrish, Tom Weiskopf (1993)

4. Castle Stuart 7.64
Inverness, Scotland; Gil Hanse, Mark Parsinen (2009)

5. Waterville 7.53
Waterville, Ireland; Eddie Hackett (1973)

6. Old Head of Kinsale 7.41
Kinsale, Ireland; Eddie Hackett, Joe Carr, Ron Kirby, Paddy Merrigan, Liam Higgins (1997)

7. Queenwood 7.28
Ottershaw, England; David McLay Kidd (2001)

8. Renaissance Club at Archerfield 7.25
Dirleton, Scotland; Tom Doak (2008)

9. Hogs Head 7.19
Waterville, Ireland; Robert Trent Jones Jr. (2018)

10. The European Club 7.18
Brittas Bay, Ireland; Pat Ruddy (1992)

In a perfect world I'd link you to my review of the course, but a quick Google search came up empty.  It's a fascinating golf course he built, but no one will confuse it with a traditional links.  Like Trump himself, it's just so over-the-top, not least because of the wide range of tees available to the player.

To me, much as I respect places like Castle Stuart and Kingsbarns, which are both well conceived and execute, I would have Waterville topping my list, just because it feels like it's been there forever.  

 The second ten includes some really fine links that are far more characteristic:

11. Tralee 7.01
Tralee, Ireland; Arnold Palmer (1984)

12. Enniscrone 6.90
Enniscrone, Ireland; Eddie Hackett, Donald Steel (1974)

T13. Hillside 6.80
Southport, England; Fred Hawtree (1967)

T13. Carne 6.80
Belmullet, Ireland; Eddie Hackett (1992)

All worthy creations, with that back nine at Hillside being perhaps the best nine holes in linksdom....at the very least, the most underrated.

Also good to see thos eplaces we've hunkered down get a mention:

17. Ballyliffin (Glashedy) 6.68
Ballyliffin, Ireland; Pat Ruddy, Tom Craddock (1995)32. Crail (Craighead) 6.20

Crail, Scotland; Gil Hanse (1998)
Crail, Scotland; Gil Hanse (1998)

Good stuff.

Alas, that will be as far as I can go today.  Have a great weekend and I'll see you on Monday. 

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Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Midweek Musings

With the Wednesday Game™ moved to the afternoon, we've got all sorts of time.  Not all sorts of content, so bottoms will be scraped...

On Rory - OK, folks, I'll stipulate that he's a nice young man man with a lovely family, but isn't the Mother Theresa treatment jumping the shark these days?  First, Sean Zak with this open-mouth kiss, the lede for which is quite the sad tale:

In a world where seemingly everything deemed important is posted, analyzed and streamed through cameras, two pivotal moments of Rory McIlroy’s dominant 2022 are left strictly to the imagination.
No one saw the first.

It came in San Antonio, at the Valero Texas Open, where McIlroy played for the first time in nine years. He missed the cut by two and struck it so questionably that he changed his golf ball the next week. An average if not solid (by his standards) season had culminated there, one week before the Masters. He was desperate to get out of town. Only he couldn’t get out of town. For travel reasons left unclear, the man worth more than a hundred million dollars — who literally pays to nullify the carbon footprint of his private flight habits — had to spend an extra night in the JW Marriott.

“Got back up to my hotel room and went to order room service and they said it will be a two-and-a-half-hour wait,” McIlroy said Sunday night. “So I basically missed the cut, went to bed on an empty stomach and I was like, let’s just wake up tomorrow and start again.”

OK, I'll take virtue signaling for $1,000, Art.... Seriously, yanno, Sean Zak links back to an old item penned by, checking notes, Sean Zak, in which he ununcritically accepted this blather:

What does Carbon Neutral actually mean? It means simply neutralizing the harmful output. Pulling greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere at the same rate you put them into the atmosphere. McIlroy does it by spending extra money — 150,000 pounds this year, according to Golf Digest — so that on New Year’s Eve, he’s treated the environment in a neutral way. Or at least in a non-negative way. McIlroy didn’t expound upon where his 150,000 pounds goes.

Of course he doesn't, none of them do, because it's one of modern life's more obvious scams... But did Rory "not expound" or did the brain-dead journalist not ask?  These questions never get asked, because how exactly do you pull those greenhouse gasses out of the environment?  

Sorry for the early rant, but I'm not the only one that thinks this way:

Carbon offsetting is truly a scammer’s dream scheme.

It’s a bookkeeping trick intended to obscure climate wrecking-emissions. It’s tree planting window dressing aimed at distracting from ecosystem destruction.

It is the next big thing in greenwashing — and we must not be fooled.

And when Greenpeace is the voice of sanity..... But greenwashing, I love it.

As for the golf portion of the programming, here begins Sean's hagiography:

As he takes a step away from all those cameras for the majority of the next three months, it’s worth noting just how much McIlroy delivered as a pro golfer in 2022. He gave fans a healthy dose of everything we really want. And what is it we want? Firstly, we want to see success. McIlroy literally has played statistically the best golf of his life the last few months. His golf since that fateful, hungry Friday night in San Antonio has been consistently better than his previous peaks (2014, 2020).

We want to hear from our golf heroes, and we haven’t heard from any pro more than we’ve heard from McIlroy. He declared LIV Golf “dead in the water” back in February and ate his words months later. He dunked on Greg Norman when he won in Canada, reciting how his career win total was now one better than Norman’s. During the summer of pro golfers actually sharing what they really think, McIlroy shined. He gave us his true thoughts a lot of the time. He made a point to seek out reporters and tell his truth while plenty cowered away from contentious topics.

Fair enough, but has Sean considered the point on the calendar in which Rory showed his best golf?  

We heard from McIlroy so much that he inspired vitriol from LIV Golf supporters. We like seeing that, too: confidence in what you believe. McIlroy accepted the bullseye on his back, speaking at length and endlessly about the civil war within the game. He’s never flipped his core position, like so many pros have done this year. McIlroy has publicly stiff-armed the Saudi money for years now, dating back to March 2020. But he hasn’t shied away from admitting where compromise should take place. He’s not bipartisan by any means, but on the spectrum of some debate topics — see world ranking points — he can be pulled toward the center. An inspiration for us all this time of year.

He did express concern over the source of the money form the get-go, and has been the most stalwart defender of golf's status quo.  And, of course, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.... So, the high marks are justified, although Jay must be cringing at some of what comes out of the young man's mouth.  There was this from September:

Rory McIlroy said he believes the time might be near for the PGA Tour and LIV Golf to speak because the “game is ripping itself apart.’’

Really?  What would they speak about?  The terms of surrender of the PGA TOur HQ in Ponte Vedra Beach?  Can't imagine Jay liked this one either:

“If Dustin Johnson is somehow 100th in the world it’s not an accurate reflection of where he is in the game,’’ McIlroy told reporters at the Dunhill Links Championship, a DP World Tour event which takes place this week across three courses in Scotland—the Old Course, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns.

 If it's the moral equivalent of war, didn't he just give aid and comfort to the enemy?

Even these more recent comments seem, well, unhelpful to the cause:

"I think it is the first time in my life that I have felt betrayal, in a way," McIlroy added. "You build bonds with these people through Ryder Cups and other things. Them knowing that what they are about to do is going to jeopardise them from being a part of that ever again?

"I would like to think the Ryder Cup means as much to them as it does to me. Maybe it does. But knowing what the consequences could be, I just could never make that decision."

You're telling them that they're getting to you....  I've consulted my Sun Tzu and that stratagem is nowhere to be found....

Everyone and their brother want to see a deal struck between the warring factions, but should FDR have negotiated with Tojo on December 8, 1941?  Perhaps a slightly melodramatic analogy, but LIV's business model called clearly for the destruction of the PGA Tour, and one ignores that at one's own peril.

I think Rory complaining about the fracture in golf is providing succor to the LIVsters, and he really should be shutting his piehole on that subject.  The operative position should be that the world of golf continues to move forward unaffected by the absence of certain players mostly near the end of their useful life.

Alan Shipnuck has a new Ask Alan up for our delectation, and he goes quite a different direction on Rory's run of success:

Has LIV (to the detriment of fellow PGA Tour players) lit a fire under Rory where we may see what we expected all these years? @TBromfman

It certainly feels that way. Remember a few years ago, when McIlroy was underachieving on the golf course but professing to be content because he was in love and enjoying a nice life? That was a healthy perspective, but it also felt a little bit like a copout. The golf gods bestow talent like Rory’s only once or twice a generation, if that. For him to just coast along would have been a little sad—not just for the fans but especially for McIlroy, who deep down knows what he is capable of. It seemed then that Rory lacked purpose as a golfer, and he has certainly found it in this ongoing battle for golf’s soul. It’s a bummer that the Masters is still six months away, but this doesn’t feel like a hot streak; rather, McIlroy has found the secret sauce, with his driver, in his wedge game and his overall approach to preparing and competing. This run feels sustainable for a good long while, and it will be a thrill to watch.

A secret sauce with his wedge game?  Sustainable?  Gee, Alan, haven't you watched this golf thing for a while now?  Apparently, Rory playing his worst golf in the most important events is just some rando piece of bad luck.  Good to know.

Readers of these pages will recall that I've been ranting about Rory's wedge play (distance control, especially) and putting since at least 2014.  His distance control with the wedges has seemed better recently, although there are the usual sample size issues at play.  Will that secret sauce still be in evidence the second weekend in April?  I for one accept Alan's contention that it's sustainable, though I think we should go ahead and play the event just to, yanno, be sure.

Has Rory's role in fighting LIV contributed to this run of strong play?  The golfer's mind is the ultimate black hole, so it's possible that there is some cause-and-effect in play, although that theory struggles to explain Sunday in St. Andrews, no?

As long as we have Rory under the strobe lights, there was also this Q&A (in which Alan at least mentions that other guy):

Doesn’t Rory’s World No. 1 designation need an asterisk? Because the communist (maybe elitist? or even fascist?) UNofficial World Golf Ranking have yet to assign points to my annual Spooky $70 Halloween Weekend Chip-off? And I’ve already mowed, so I need some good press… @ANTIFAldo

Rory himself noted the OWGR is in danger of becoming meaningless with the exclusion of so many accomplished players, though he inexplicably failed to mention the competitors in the Halloween Chip-off. But his place at the mountaintop is unimpeachable because for the last six months he has been by far the game’s most dominant force week in and week out; being No. 1 is really about consistent excellence, not a couple of triumphs mixed with a bunch of middling results. Obviously, McIlroy’s failure to win a major championship weakens his case, particularly when he got blitzed at the Open by Cam Smith, who is the clear world No. 2 no matter what the computers say. There is very little meaningful golf left this year, so we can all exhale and then rekindle the debate next spring.

Is there anything in our game less significant and less interesting than changes at the top of the OWGR?  Seriously, why is this even a thing?  OK, Rory just passed Scottie Scheffler, but the latter hasn't even looked like a top ten player since his five-putt on the 18th green at Augusta.  So, yeah, points are awarded and roll off week-to-week, but if it changes your assessment of these guys, you're really easily distracted by shiny objects.

Twelve Is The New Eighteen - Everything old is new again....  Remember when Bryson and Brooks played their cage match?  Did you happen to recall how many holes they played?  Did you perhaps find that number random?

Shack does a deep dive on a wonderful homage in Ayrshire:

Jealous!

On Sunday evening Prestwick Golf Club finished two weeks of play around its original 12-hole
design. The decision to put the course back to the original Open Championship layout by Tom Morris took years of planning, trained marshals, modern mowers, LED lights, and a risk that all of the effort might backfire. But as a special year of 150th Open celebratory events wraps up, the Scottish club recognized a rare chance to commemorate the first professional golf championship.

Prestwick’s original 12 had been somewhat re-created in 2005 when a noble-but-compromised effort did the job. But to give golfers a chance to enjoy the 12-hole version played between The Opens of 1860 and 1881, the club secured additional details about the original layout, decided to re-install key greens and pieced together many necessary pieces. They even sought local council approval where, remarkably, some residents complained about limited coastal access points for what would be a two-week celebration.

Led by club secretary Ken Goodwin, keeper of the green Dave Edmondson, and professional David Fleming, Prestwick embarked two years ago assuming the 150th Open was to take place in 2021. While pushed back a year by the pandemic, the club always knew the purpose of such a return should be done right.

Care for a history lesson?

Before we get to that coverage, a few facts regarding the original 12-hole course:
  • The Open was born at Prestwick 162 years ago on October 17th, 1860 as a tribute event to Allan Robertson (who died in 1859).
  • The Open carried on 24 more times at the Tom Morris-designed links.
  • The first 12 Opens were played on the 12-hole version (1860 to 1872).
  • No championship was contested in 1871 after Tommy Morris won three straight Open’s, giving him permanent retention of the “belt” and a lot of head-scratching about what to do next.
  • Young Tom’s three-peat led to a year-off before the clubs at Prestwick, St Andrews (Royal and Ancient) and Musselburgh (Honourable Company) each put up £10 to create a new trophy.
  • Young Tom won again in 1872 at Prestwick. Sadly, the Claret Jug was not yet ready and he never got to hoist it due to his passing in 1875
  • Old Tom captured four Opens on his Prestwick design.
  • Young Tom also won all four of his Open Championships at Prestwiick. 
  • Willie Park Sr. won four times on the 12-hole version, while Andrew Strath (1865), Jamie Anderson (1878) and Bob Ferguson (1881) each captured one.
  • The 12-hole was home to the first recorded hole-in-one and par-5 “eagle.” Young Tom Morris was responsible for each.
  • The course record of 47 by Young Tom came in the 1870 Open. He was also the first to shoot 50 on Old Tom’s design and was first to break 50 there.
  • Six of the original greens from the 12-hole course were retained by Old Tom in his redesign and are still used today (the 2nd, 3rd, 13th, 15th 16th and 17th).

I might just have to excerpt it all:

About the course? Based on the accounts of those who played the last two weeks, it could be somewhat confusing if you weren’t sure where you were going. But the 12-hole version was Old Tom’s idea of design before he had fully formed his understanding of what “golf architecture” might be.

The original Prestwick covered just under 35 acres. Morris used a narrow swath of extreme dunesland and played the holes over and through the most extreme terrain. He was not worried about moving a full field around or injury attorneys questioning the sanity of criss-crossing holes. (Morris became a width advocate as his design career continued and he became obsessed with gorse removal at St Andrews despite it being bad for his ball-making business.)

The original Prestwick presented golf in the wild. Morris made players of the day take on cruel carries with implements ill-suited to the task. But no one was turning in a score for vanity handicap purposes. They just tried to advance their unpredictable golf balls in fewer strokes than their competition.

I've long been fascinated by the two Old Tom holes at Lahinch, one of which features a blind shot over dunes that carries the 18th fairway, requiring a marshal to direct traffic from the top of those dunes.  Apparently, his original twelve here was even crazier:

To make 2022’s reboot work, the club instituted a fascinating marshal and LED-light system to ensure golfers knew when they could play the various blind shots without the rounds turning into antagonistic combat. The original Open was comprised of just 8-players and they likely moved around just fine. But as the fields grew larger? The need for such a system today suggests those early events must have been pretty zany affairs. FORE!

 Including one hole with a cutesie nickname:

Cookie Jar Golf’s Tom Mills was one of those who couldn’t stop talking about the 6th hole, dubbed the “killing zone” by Secretary Goodwin.

“The only hole it doesn’t interact with is the 8th,” Mills said. “It either plays over, around or touches the other 10 holes. Mental stuff.”

Thanks to the team of marshals for the full two-week tee sheet, the club earned raves for the efficiency of getting around the bizarre course. Cooper also said the unusual routing highlighted another key way The Open has changed.

“Eight men played the entire Championship in less time than a single round took this year in St Andrews,” he said. “The evolution of our game is astonishing.”

The killing zone?   Not a term often associated with our genteel game....  Read the whole thing, it goes without saying.

Orange Is The New.... - I don't know nothing, but this showed up in my Twitter feed, typos and all:

On the one hand, he's old and bad enough to fit their profile perfectly, and the rumors have been out there forever.  On the other hand, why the wait?  I suspect this is fake news, but the rumor itself is of interest....

Alan, Asked - A little anaerobic blogging as I head for the exit:

#askalan What’s worse, LIV showing an entire tourney start to finish and few caring OR people caring about the CJ Cup but the PGA Tour doesn’t allow fans to watch it? @wesleywhamond

This is not a positive development for either tour, or golf in general. This whole season is a beta test for LIV Golf. I don’t think we will be able to fully assess the product until this time next year, when LIV will have had an offseason to tweak everything and then have played a “full” schedule with the roster and team elements more baked out. So we’ll see if LIV can get more fans to care. But the Tour’s pathetic TV presentation of a compelling tournament is inexcusable. Why is it so hard to give golf fans what they want? Especially right now, when the PGA Tour is in an existential battle for its survival, you would think the lords of Ponte Vedra Beach would be doing everything possible to display their product in a dynamic, innovative way, not blacking out coverage, as happened to chunks of time at the CJ Cup. It’s maddening.

I'm sorry, what's your problem with the LIV events being ignored?  Win-win, baby!

To be honest, Alan has been on this LIV beta test thread for quite a while, and I really don't know what wacky tobaccy he's been smoking.  I know they're planning some kind of tweaks to their team format but, otherwise, isn't what we (don't) see just about what we get?

But what does he mean about them blacking out coverage of the CJ Cup?  Unless being broadcast on Golf Channel is now the moral equivalent of being blacked out.... But isn't it useful to be reminded that, even with a deep field, no one is going to watch golf in October.

How awesome will Max Homa be as a dad? @procaddiecoach

This is such a cute, wholesome question. None of us are ever really prepared to be parents, you just gotta learn on the fly. I trust Homa will be an excellent dad because, in the way he relates to people and lives his life, he has already displayed much empathy and sensitivity and good cheer. These are key ingredients to being a good dad. Also, if the baby needs a cozy place to nap it can burrow into Homa’s arm hair.

Gee, maybe.  But I could also argue that his focus on social media could be a concern in that regard... Homa seems like a fun dude, though we should all probably stop assuming that we actually know the guy.

Really?

Does Phil ever win a tournament again? @DLP1968

Oof, good one. Getting banned from the senior tour certainly hurts his chances. But I’ve detected more pep in Phil’s step lately. He has too much pride and ego to be an afterthought; I think he’ll be more of a factor at LIV events next year. (Do LIV wins count?) And he’s still dangerous on a baked-out Augusta National or a fiery Open links. It seems like a lifetime ago, but Mickelson’s PGA Championship triumph was only 17 months ago. The guy has nine lives, so I’m never gonna say never when it comes to Phil doing the improbable.

Isn't the more pressing question, "is this the man Phil wanted to be?"  Because that's what he promised in his fauxpology, so seems like a reasonable follow up question, ignoring the fact that Phil avoids microphones these days like I avoid cockroaches.

But Alan's reaction to Phil, especially in light of his most recent tweet about scandals not in his book, remains puzzling to this observer.

When will Augusta National and other majors make their decision for LIV in the field ? #askalan @radiolimamatt

They don’t have to make a decision: The majors’ criteria is already set, and they can simply choose to do nothing. For 2023, that will knock out a handful of LIV golfers based on their slippage in the World Ranking, but for both the U.S. and British Opens these competitors are free to go through open qualifying and try to play their way into the field. If LIV doesn’t get World Ranking points throughout next season, the ’24 majors will suffer more attrition, but you have to figure some kind of compromise will be reached before then. Also, the governing body behind each major championship can independently decide its own criteria. Nothing is stopping Augusta National or the USGA from, say, creating an exemption category for the top 10 players on LIV’s individual money list. Or the majors can use each other as the yardstick for each other: If a player is top 15 or top 20 at the Masters, he is invited to the PGA Championship, and the top 15 or 20 at the PGA are exempt into the U.S. Open, etc. Lotsa ways to fill out the fields with LIV players independent of the World Ranking, if that’s what the minders of each major want.

Yeah, they can and probably will mostly just slow-play them on the OWGR front.  

This is a good one, though perhaps too inside baseball for many.  But Alan does name check quite a few worthies:

Can you disclose your writing muse, if any? @todgerstone

The newspaper writers I read growing up had a profound effect on me: Jim Murray’s syndicated columns, Mark Purdy in The Mercury News in San Jose, Ray Ratto in the San Francisco Chronicle. Murray was in a class by himself, but the others also had such distinctive voices. When I was around 12 I discovered SI and those writers blew my mind: DeFord, Nack, Kirkpatrick, Fimrite, Wolff, Reilly. Giants! I would reread the stories over and over to inculcate the rhythms of the language and the way the articles were structured. Among the authors I read in school, Vonnegut’s zaniness, Joseph Heller’s sardonic irreverence and Fitzgerald’s elegance made the biggest impression. When I was an intern at SI, at 20, I spent months doing nothing but reading old back issues and borrowing golf books from the library. That’s when I came to appreciate Jenkins, Wind, Darwin, Diaz, Bamberger, Garrity, Kindred and Callahan. I became interested in the New Journalism of the 1960s and ‘70s and devoured Talese, Wolfe, Breslin, Halberstam, Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and sundry others. There was a time when I subscribed to around 20 magazines, and I was inspired by modern practitioners like Tom Junod, Gary Smith, Chris Jones, Wright Thompson, Scott Price, Lee Jenkins and Chris Ballard. But at some point you have to filter out all these influences and find your own style. That, to me, is the muse: When the ghost of every other writer leaves your head and all you can hear is your own voice.

Of course, the disconnect between the questioners use of the singular form of the noun and Alan listing every guy he ever read is pretty comical, no?  Pretty sure that Gay Talese has never come up in tis blog before...

I'll use one of Alan's recurring bits to exit.  Alan had famously never had a hole-in-one, and he's milked it amusingly in his writing.  Joy is at hand, as Alan is off the schneid, though with an asterisk the size of Texas:

How did it feel to finally dunk one? @ESPN_SwingCoach

Cathartic. In the moment I didn’t even feel that much joy, just utter disbelief mixed with relief. But for days afterward I was kind of floating along in a haze of bliss.

Did you buy a round of drinks for everyone in the clubhouse after the hole-in-one? @philengle21

There was already an open bar provided by Youth on Course for those of us partaking in the 100 Hole Hike. I highly recommend making an ace when free alcohol is readily available!

Are people really calling a hole-in-one on a par-3 course or a simulator a “Shipnuck.” I’m hearing murmurs. @fakePOULTER

Look, I fully understand that me holing a sawed-off lob wedge on a 61-yard hole I had already played eight times that day invites a little scrutiny. And, yes, it would be more majestic to make an ace with a 1-iron on a 242-yard hole over water. But after a lifetime of lip-outs and balls expiring just short and tee shots clanging off the pin, I ain’t apologizing for shit.

 Ya think?  Look, I'm happy for you, but about those three Phil scandals....

That's it for today, kids.  See you again on Friday.

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Monday, October 24, 2022

Weekend Wrap

Quite a sports cornucopia yesterday afternoon, as I needed at least four screens to watch everything....  The golf, notwithstanding a reasonably interesting leaderboard, got lost in the shuffle, though a popular guy seems to have prevailed.

No. 1 With A Bullet - Better a bullet than a mullet, don't you agree?  I'll taking "Ironic Framing Devices for $1,000", Art:

Rory McIlroy’s climb back to the top of the golf world began with an empty stomach. Six months and three weeks prior to winning the CJ Cup on Sunday to take his place again as the No. 1 ranked
golfer in the world, the four-time major winner missed the cut at the Valero Texas Open in late March. That same Friday night, he also missed dinner. The tournament hotel was so busy McIlroy decided it was easier to skip food than wait hours for it.

“I guess there was some party on Friday night [in the hotel], and I was feeling pretty bad,” McIlroy recalled on Sunday at Congaree Golf Club. “I went to order room service and they said it would be a 2½-hour wait. I missed the cut and went to bed on an empty stomach, and I was like, let's just wake up tomorrow and start again.”

Ninth on the Official World Golf Ranking at the time—before the OWGR became the point of contention it is these days—McIlroy’s fasting session prompted a mid-year rebuild that culminated in Ridgeland, S.C., with the 34-year-old Northern Irishman winning his 31st professional tournament, his 23rd career PGA Tour title and his third of 2022. A final-round 67 included four birdies in a five-hole stretch on the back nine that allowed McIlroy to bogey the final two holes and still win by one over Kurt Kitayama with a 17-under 267 total. And it put him back as the best player in the world for the first time since July 2020.

So, you're saying he was hungry?  Got it...

He got a bit emotional, which seems a tad misplaced to this observer:

A minute later, Lewis wanted to know about meaning.

At “the golfing world,” it hit.

“Um, it uh.” HIs voice cracked.

McIlroy put his right arm behind his head.

“Means a lot. I’ve worked so hard over the last 12 months to get myself back to this place. I feel like I’m enjoying the game as much as I ever have. I absolutely love the game of golf and I think that when I go out there and I play with that joy, it’s definitely showed over these last 12 months.

“Yeah, it feels awesome. I’m looking forward to celebrating with my team tonight and the next couple of weeks because I think it’s a big achievement. I’m really proud of myself right now and I want to go and enjoy this.”

To me, being World No. 1 isn't an achievement in and of itself, it's the result of actual achievements, of which he's had a run.  But, and it's a big but, not the really important kind...

The Tour Confidential panel had these thoughts:

1. In an entertaining back-nine back-and-forth on Sunday, Rory McIlroy reclaimed World No. 1 and won the CJ Cup over Kurt Kitayama. For McIlroy, it marked another strong
finish — over his past five starts now, he’s won twice, tied for second, finished fourth and tied for fourth. How much do you suppose his role of de facto PGA Tour leader off the course has inspired his resurgent play on the course?

James Colgan: Cause and effect? I don’t think so. Rory was the best player on the PGA Tour before he became the de facto president of it. But the success has certainly affirmed that position. Golf has never needed a star of his stature more than right now. Good on him for delivering it.

Jack Hirsh: It’s interesting because up until the Canadian Open, there was kind of a feeling the responsibility was weighing McIlroy down a bit. Now he’s the hottest player in the sport. I think clearly he was motivated when the first LIV event teed off, as evidenced by his dig at Greg Norman when he won at St. George’s. Of all the players who could have won the FedEx Cup last season, the first when the Tour had a legitimate rival, McIlroy had to be the best-case scenario for the Tour. I guess what I’m saying is it’s clear he’s motivated to back up his words off the course in support of the Tour with his play on the course.

Claire Rogers: Like James said, I’m not sure they’re cause and effect. I do think they’re both a result of him growing up a lot both on and off the course. Call it maturing or perspective or whatever you want, but McIlroy has reached a new level of poise in front of the media. His thoughtful answer to Tom Kim’s question was the perfect example of it, and I think we’ll only see his role of de facto PGA Tour leader off the course grow as he continues to play well.

He is on a bit of a heater, which inconveniently comes at a time when we're still six months away for that one event of utmost importance....

Rory is a popular guy to begin with, and his éminence grise role ensures that his triumphs, especially that FedEx Cup win, are extremely popular.  But, that said, doesn't it also remind us that for the one that really mattered at St. Andrews, where it was the forces of good against the forces of evil, he let it slip through his fingers.... Frustrating because it seems that, the more he wants it, the worse he plays.

Before moving on, let's just note the implications of this event on future scheduling issues.  They turned up a surprisingly strong field in South Carolina, and perhaps we'd do well to understand why.  Remember, this event is actually supposed to be held in South Korea, but kind of exceeded expectations with its relocation.  Although, even with the strong field, I expect that the Golf Channel broadcasts will struggle to show even a recognizable viewership, going up against the NFL, NCAA Football and the baseball playoffs.

You Ko, Girl! - If a woman born in South Korea wins an event there broadcast in the dead of night, does it make a sound?

If there was any doubt before, there shouldn’t be now — Lydia Ko is officially back.

Ko, a former world No. 1 and teenage sensation, claimed her second victory of 2022 early Sunday morning as she ran away from the field in Korea for a four-shot victory at the BMW Ladies Championship. After going five years with just one victory between 2016 and 2021, the 25-year-old has now won three times over the past 18 months. The win also moves her into a tie for 30th on the LPGA all-time wins list.

“I think this is probably the best I’ve played,” Ko said. “I think when I was No. 1, I had just more wins in that season. [But] I don’t think I’ve had as many top tens and top ten percentage.”

She's still only 25, although that's AARP-qualified in the context of the LPGA Tour. 

This is a silly bit from the TC panel:

5. On the LPGA Tour, Lydia Ko won the BMW Ladies Championship for her 18th career victory, continuing a strong season. “This is probably the best I’ve played, the most consistently I’ve played,” Ko said. That being said, can Ko get to 25 victories?

Colgan: The LPGA gets younger and better every single week, but there’ll always be room for players with her short game to find wins. I think 25 is not just a possibility, but a probability.

Hirsh: *Checks Notes* Lydia Ko is my age (25)? I think there’s obviously a fear of burnout given she started her pro career at age 16 (when she had already won on the LPGA Tour). However, Ko has already gone through some ups and downs in her career and could just be entering her prime. She could choose to walk away at any time, of course, but I think the better question is whether she could win 25 times before she turns 30?

Rogers: I’ll be surprised if Lydia Ko doesn’t get to 25 victories. Her first win was a decade ago, she’s at the top of her game right now and she’s only 25. I could see her getting to 20 wins before the end of 2023.

Isn't the more pressing question whether (and when) she'll get to nineteen?

More substantively, where does her game fit into the younger and stronger fields of her Tour?  She's still a bit of a short-hitter, compensating with those impressive sort-game skills.  But she hasn't been much of a factor in their majors recently, so is she a top-level player, or just one that can pick off a win here and there?  I don't actually know the answer, but it's one reason to tune in.

Fauxpology Tour - Shockingly, this might well be the first time I'm quoting this particular source:

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Karl Marx

I only mention this because that TC panel took on the Majed Al Sourer walkback:

2. LIV Golf, along with the PGA Tour’s fight against the Saudi-backed series, was profiled in a lengthy story by the New Yorker. Among the newer revelations was a comment from Majed Al Sorour, the head of the Saudi Golf Federation and managing director for LIV Golf, who said: “If the majors decide not to have our players play? I will celebrate. I will create my own majors for my players.” Al Sorour, through a statement, later issued a statement in response, saying in part: “I had a casual conversation with a New Yorker reporter at LIV’s Boston event a few weeks ago, during which I expressed my frustration at the unfortunate blackballing of LIV Golf players by the PGA Tour. When it comes to the majors, tournaments that stand alone and are independent of LIV, I have the utmost respect for the majors.” Our question is simply this: What’s your takeaway here?

Colgan: My takeaway is, primarily, that the president of the Saudi Golf Federation should have a better grasp on his “casual” conversations, particularly when they’re with reporters from the New Yorker. Everything else struck me as pretty standard rich guy hyperbole.

Hirsh: Seems the go-to response for LIV execs and players when they don’t like the perception of a comment is to say the conversation was off the record (See Mickelson, Phil). Credit our colleague Sean Zak for this idea, but I’m not really sure who has “casual conversations” with New Yorker reporters. The way our profession works is everything is on the record until someone says otherwise, and it’s clear between the two parties. Important to note that Sorour never said he didn’t say what he was quoted as saying. I think he was intending to build up LIV further in the event its players are unable to compete in the majors, but obviously, it came off as a dig at the majors. It’s not a great look when the bodies that run the majors are the ones who will decide if LIV events get ranking points.

Rogers: There seems to be a lot of miscommunication when it comes to golf-related interviews lately. I think it’s safe to assume that if you are speaking to a journalist such as, say, Alan Shipnuck or someone from the New Yorker, unless something is “off the record,” it’s fair game. The “I’ll create my own majors” comment did make me laugh, though.

This is just a fun bit on so many levels.  There's the thuggish threat to Fred Ridley and others, that the stock-in-trade of the Saudis...  Should Fred receive an invitation to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, I'd suggest that he send his regrets.

One of your humble bogger's recurring motifs on this subject has been that, whatever you think of the PGA Tour, the Saudis simply can't be the answer.  This I think makes that point well, because they're fully prepared to tear the golf ecosystem to the ground for their own purposes, so why would we allow that?  Of course, that begs the question Phil's nihilism as well...

But there's also an epic level of incompetence on display, the simple inability to handle the press without stepping into guano seems a bridge too far for these guys.  And that's just comedy gold, making us parse what's an interview and what might be a casual conversation with a reporter.  Yeah, I can see where you should run the golf world...

Schedule Musings - That TC panel and the estimable Eamon Lynch take on different aspects of the PGA Tour's scheduling conundrums, first the former:

3. On the PGA Tour, next year’s four additional elevated events were announced, with the Waste Management Phoenix Open, the RBC Heritage, the Wells Fargo and the Travelers joining the previously announced tournaments that will receive $20 million purses and the promise that the Tour’s top players will be in the field. With that portion of the schedule now set, who are the winners and losers?

Colgan: Winners: The WMPO, hotels in Scottsdale on Super Bowl weekend (where both the WMPO and Super Bowl will be played simultaneously) and … the RBC Heritage? Losers: The Canadian Open, the Farmers and the people paying for hotels in Scottsdale on Super Bowl weekend.

Hirsh: Obviously the winners are the elevated events and specifically the city of Phoenix. All of these tournaments will be getting the PGA Tour’s best 20 players, and Phoenix will be getting that and the two best NFL teams in the same weekend for the Super Bowl. Make your hotel bookings now. The losers will be the Honda Classics and other tournaments sandwiched in between elevated events. The Honda sits between back-to-back elevated events before and after, and what was once a rising Tour stop, given its proximity to many pros’ homes in South Florida, may not have many big names this season. We expect there will be four elevated events rotating around each season so we can only hope the tournaments that get the short end this year will get their turn in the elevated sun soon. Part of this issue also runs around the fact the Tour had to work with a schedule that was mostly set already. With a year to set up the schedule, we will likely see a radically different look in 2024.

Rogers: I’m not a football gal so I’ll let James and Jack cover the WMPO and Super Bowl overlap in Scottsdale and instead focus on the Travelers. Cromwell, Connecticut is winning big time here. I’ve been to the Travelers a handful of times, and it has some of the kindest, most engaging volunteers I’ve come across. It’s had a smaller-tournament feeling to it for as long as I can remember, so I’m excited for it to become one of the can’t-miss stops on the PGA Tour. The losers? Fan parking lots. Good luck, folks.

Wow, talk about avoiding the elephant in the corner....

To read both the question and responses, you'd think the Tour merely picked four lucky parties from among their candidates....  Do there writers understand that these are  transactional?  The four weren't chosen based on their worthiness, but rather because they were willing to fork over what's necessary to support the higher purses.

Is anyone asking whether they'll get enough value to support the higher payments?  This is a massive change to the Tour protocols, and really has the effect of screwing folks like Honda, which certainly isn't the terms and conditions that were in effect when the sponsorship deal was executed.  The Tour hasn't been a faithful partner even before the LIV threat, but the folks at Honda should know they're on their own....

Eamon takes a crack at the Black Hole of Calcutta:

Are they?  

Winter comes early on the PGA Tour. Late August, usually. There’s an unseasonable interlude every couple of years thanks to a Ryder Cup, or a brief glimpse of sunshine from an elite field, like at this week’s CJ Cup, but this is a mostly desolate stretch for those among us who neither know nor care who is pitching for the Patriots against Auburn.

Which isn’t to say there’s no product. The CJ Cup is the fifth of nine PGA Tour events in the post-playoffs fall, all of which have provided fans worthy winners and ample entertainment while benefitting communities, sponsors and players alike. But that owes more to the happenstance of competition than because fall golf is considered appointment viewing.

Throughout the nine years in which the Tour has used a wraparound schedule, it has maintained a painfully democratic insistence that every tournament has equal stature, an understandable position to adopt when corporations are signing checks for the privilege. Fans know it’s not true though. Fall events have come to be defined by who chooses to work, or more often, not work. With 15 of the world’s top 20 golfers in action, this week’s CJ Cup is an outlier. Next week’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship feels like a Head Start program for journeymen and rookies by comparison.

The whole issue is the FedEx Cup, which has unintentionally calcified the Tour's scheduling options.  No one with secure playing privilege will show up if no FedEx Cup points are awarded, but hos do you rationalize some of these events getting such points with their weak fields?

Whatever slender prospects fall tournaments had of drawing stars to compete, they’ll have none at all with the coming reconfiguration of the calendar, which commits the Tour’s upper crust to 20 starts between the Sentry Tournament of Champions in January and the Tour Championship in August. Yet a by-product of that change may finally bestow a semblance of identity on this long-maligned portion of the schedule.

Beginning this season, just 70 players will qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs and secure cards for the new calendar-year season of 2024, down from 125. The rest will join a shootout for ’24 status in the fall events, a Hunger Games-style scrap with a cast that includes up-and-coming talent and recognizable names searching for redemption. Under this new dispensation, the old dead zone from East Lake to New Years has life, and something meaningful at stake: future employment, earned via tournaments and the resurrected Q-School. The fall can finally be welcomed for what it offers rather than dismissed for what it lacks.

Does Eamon not remember that this is what the Fall Finish used to be, and it wasn't half bad?  You had actual golfers playing for their careers, and that can be compelling.   Caveat, it was actual golfers, but not the ones people know, so no one will watch.  There's nothing especially wrong with that, except for the minor bit about screwing your sponsors that signed up for something very different.

The irony of LIV threatening the organizations that run majors is that Nurse Ratched and the Tour have mostly been doing the same thing, just more cooperatively and less effectively.  It drives the PVB folks mad that they don't control the majors, and they've tried to "elevate" the Players and the FedEx Cup to "major" status, as per our old "Fifth of Four" bit.  

But it's not clear to me that Jay is jiggy with such a downgrading of the Fall, because that leaves quite the void for others to fill.  It's a difficult time, because there's no U.S. TV rights that will fund it, but those Saudis seem willing to fund just about anything....

I'll need to leave you here, Dear Reader, but we'll have more as the week unfolds.

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