Casual Friday

No, you're fine in those jeans, just perhaps a collared shirt?  

Nothing too taxing today unless, yanno, I get up a head of steam.

OWGR Musings -  What's up with Mito?  I have him penciled in to jump on Monday, but that's been the case for the last 25 Mondays as well.

I'm going to lede with this Jon Rahm rant, though that disclaimer seems a tad suspect:

Jon Rahm unloads on 'laughable' Official World Golf Ranking, but it has nothing to do with LIV Golf

Is this the part where you tell me it isn't about the money?

“I’m going to be as blunt as I can. I think the OWGR right now is laughable. Laughable. Laughable,” said Rahm. “The fact that the (PGA Tour’s RSM Classic) doesn’t have any of the top

20 in the world has more points than this event where we have seven of the top 20 is laughable. The fact that Wentworth had less points than Napa, having players in the top 10 in the world is laughable.”

The OWGR website projects this week’s winner of the RSM Classic in Sea Island, Georgia, will receive 38.38 points. The DP World Tour Championship winner is projected to receive 21.82.

“I understand what they are trying to do with the depth of field but having the best players in the world automatically makes the tournament better. I don’t care what their system says,” he continued. “I think they have made a mistake. I think some aspects of it might be beneficial but I think they have devalued the value of the better players.

“Depth of field doesn’t mean better tournament. I could go on and on. I think they have missed the mark on that stance quite a bit.”

His shot at the field strength in Sea Island is spot on, though I disagree with him strongly on his larger point.  Rory takes a brief break from channeling Neville Chamberlain to connect the dots for his Ryder Cup teammate:

“Yeah, so when you look at two different fields, you’ve got a 50-man field (in Dubai) versus a 144-man field (in Georgia). So just in terms of how the strengths of field is calculated, they have 90 more players to contribute to their strength of field,” said McIlroy. “So the reason that this has got 21 points and the RSM has got 39 is the person that wins the RSM has to beat 139 other guys. You only have to beat 49 other guys here. It’s a much fairer system.”

McIlroy’s Ryder Cup teammate begs to differ.

Rahm tried to muddy the waters:

“But would you rather win a tournament when you have the No. 1 player in the world there or because you have the 30th or 6th there?” asked Rahm. “I think it’s more valuable if you’re beating the best players in the world. I think a lot of people would agree and I think it should reflect that.”

The question, Jon, is which is the more difficult event to win, and those extra 94 guys, while not highly ranked, are each capable of going low.  Obviously the PGA Tour has a similar small-field issue at its concluding event, although in the defense of both of these events players qualify based upon season-long performance.

Those of you taking notes while reading this blog might remember that, a few months back, we had some strength of field numbers for Tour and LIV events, including an especially weak week for the PGA Tour.  It was clear to me at that point, that the SOF measurement mostly ignored the depth of the field, and I believe that was the nature of the revisions recently introduced.  We're told that these changes were in process long before LIV, about which skepticism is obviously warranted.

Perhaps Mr. Rahm thinks they've overshot the mark, as I've no interest in diving into the long grass on that measurement metrics.  But th SOF measurement needs to accommodate the simple fact that it's way harder to beat 143 (or 155) other players, as opposed to beating only 49, even if those 49 are higher ranked.  

 But it seems to Euro players are the ones suing for peace most aggressively:

“I think a lot of people are against (LIV) having world ranking points. I’m not necessarily against it but there should be adjustments,” Rahm explained. “If your requirement is to have world ranking points as 72 holes and a cut, maybe you don’t award them 100 percent of the points since they are not fulfilling all of the requirements.”

The message discipline has been atrocious, no?

But this hints at a less dramatic, though perhaps more effective, counter-offensive from the incumbent golf ecosystem.  The LIV events have two obvious vulnerabilities that undermine their competitiveness, 54 vs. 72 holes and the small field size.  I don't disagree with the Spaniards fallback position, its' just not an effective strategy to broadcast said fallback to the enemy.

If I'm Jay, I fight them on the beaches, sorry I slipped into my Churchill persona, but I'd press the OWGR administration to hold the line on 72 holes as a competitive standard.  Force LIV's hand, which I think is defensible and was the preexisting standard for OWGR points.  I've long thought that naming it LIV could provide and amusing dollop of schadenfreude, because I can't even guess how LXXII is pronounced.

But, even conceding Rahm's proportionate award of points, combined with an accurate valuation of their small fields, the OWGR points available should be sufficiently small that most of the defectors would see their rankings drop precipitously.

Of course, Greg Norman promised them all that none of this could happen, so....

Other LIV Bits - Davis Love stays on script better than his Euro colleagues:

If McIlroy has become the de facto leader of the PGA Tour loyalist movement, Davis Love III

has become one of McIlroy’s most vocal lieutenants. On Wednesday, at the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic in Sea Island, Ga., Love was asked about whether he, too, thought it was time for Norman to step down.

“I don’t know how to answer to that,” Love said. “Again, if they say, Hey, maybe we made a mistake and maybe we should drop a lawsuit and maybe we should quit stealing your players, then we might want to talk to them, but I don’t think that’s their model.”

Love was referring to LIV’s antitrust suit in which it is seeking “punitive damages against the PGA Tour for its tortious interference with LIV Golf’s prospective business relationships.” As for the players LIV has lured away, they have come from all walks of the game.

“They’re recruiting college players, they’re recruiting PGA Tour players, they’re recruiting DP World Tour players,” Love said. “So as long as they’re actively trying to, you know, hostile takeover, take our players away, get them to break the rules and go somewhere else, I don’t think it matters who’s running it.”

Hey, at least he seems to understand they're at war.  Not exactly sure what Rahm and Rory think is going on...

But this might be the more interesting development, as presented by Mike Bamberger:

This uncomfortable and interesting year in professional golf just got more interesting. On Tuesday morning, the PGA Tour announced a move that had been months in the making: The

golf impresario Jimmy Dunne, the ultimate elite-golf clubby insider with the disarmingly candid demeanor of an old-school New York City cab driver, will be joining the PGA Tour policy board in the new year as an independent director. As boilerplate press releases go, the announcement had more news value than most.

That’s because of what the boilerplate press release did not say: One of Dunne’s primary tasks will be to try to ensure that more elite players do not leave the PGA Tour, or the game’s amateur ranks, to join LIV Golf. He has been doing this, in his own sui generis way, for most of the past year, without any sort of official title. In business and in golf, Dunne, a silver-haired, 5-foot-8, 65-year-old native Long Islander with the accent to prove it, is not afraid to insert himself or his views. But now his pro bono advisory services will come with a title, and he will have a vote, one of 10, on sensitive PGA Tour policy matters and decisions. Asked what it means to be an independent director, Dunne said, “It means you think and vote for yourself. The commissioner’s first job is to take care of the players, but an independent board member is thinking about the players, the sponsors, the fans, the TV deals, all of that.”

But Dunne’s broad view of professional golf is similar to that of Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner. They both have a scrappy, take-my-lunch-money-and-I’m-coming-after-you mentality. They have a close relationship. Given that, this won’t surprise you. Rory McIlroy, Dunne’s friend and a PGA Tour board member, has, at least at times, shown an interest in finding a working relationship with Saudi-backed LIV Golf. Dunne does not share that view. “I am 100 percent supportive of the PGA Tour and behind it,” Dunne said in a phone interview on Tuesday morning, before a meeting and a golf game, which is pretty much a typical day for him.

Stocking the board with loyalists is unsurprising, it's just that this specific board has never seemed all that relevant.  Interestingly, they are using martial language intentionally:

His appointment to the board, Dunne said, “is a war-time deal.” He did not use the famous line

from The Godfather, about “going to the mattresses” as the Corleone family goes to war with the other New York mob families. By the way, the line first appeared in the Mario Puzo novel. Dunne and McIlroy share notes on books. Dunne is now reading McIroy’s most recent recommendation, The Gap and the Gain: The High Achievers’ Guide to Happiness, Confidence and Success.

Dunne does not do corporate word-parsing. Even his commencement address last year at his alma mater, Notre Dame, was informal and freewheeling in places. He said, “If you like cool, clinical detachment in people, I’m not that guy.” He demonstrated his penchant for real-world talking in his comments on Tuesday as well. Regarding Greg Norman, the LIV Golf commissioner, Dunne said, “I wouldn’t want to work for Greg Norman. I like people who are absolutely credible, more worried about fact than sizzle, and are reliable.”

 His views seem delightfully old-school:

One of his fundamental beliefs about the PGA Tour is that its greatness stems from being both democratic and meritocratic: Shoot the scores, make the money, hoist the trophies, become a legend. Live happily ever after. “Playing the PGA Tour is like playing center field for the New York Yankees,” he said. “Do that for 10 years and everything else will take care of itself.” His athletic heroes are Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, and Ben Hogan and Lee Trevino. He has played golf with Trevino, with Michael Jordan, with Michael Bloomberg. He has an obsessive interest in success and excellence. His hobby and his profession are the same: dispensing advice. His stock-in-trade is reading people and winning their trust. Players who have sought his advice and will in the future will see that.

“If guys are asking me what they should do, I point to the money you can make on the PGA Tour, what it means to play in majors, playing on Ryder Cups and President Cups, playing in the FedEx events,” Dunne said. “Yeah, you can make a lot of money playing LIV Golf. But you can make a lot of money playing on the PGA Tour, and you can look back at what you’ve done with real satisfaction.” Where to play, Dunne said, “is a pretty binary decision.”

If only he'd been in that slot when the PIP program first came up....  Probably good for Jay to have Jimmy's voice close at hand, although  forgive me for speculating that this could be more about controlling Rory....

Just gonna throw in this funny bit from Club Pro Guy:

Sure, though he shot some Sunday 78's as well....

The Dominos Fall - Another first for our little blog, the golf world explained based upon the Laws of Thermodynamics:

The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can be converted from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed.

Applied to our little fishbowl, I take this to mean that, if certain PGA Tour events are deemed to be "elevated" and guaranteed a blue-chip field, then that energy must have come from another source:

Golfweek has learned that Honda will end the longest-running uninterrupted title sponsorship deal on the PGA Tour.

Multiple sources have confirmed that the Japanese automaker won’t renew when its current deal expires after the 2023 Honda Classic in late February.

Founded in 1972 as the Jackie Gleason’s Inverrary Classic, the tournament has been sponsored by Honda since 1982. The tournament had been played at PGA National Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, since 2007.

This has been quite the wild ride, as it was only a few years ago that the Honda was ascendant, often attributed to the large number of Tour members living in South Florida.  The diminishment of this event predates the LIV threat, as detailed in the linked item.  But this is where the nice, longstanding sponsor found itself in the PGA Tour funhouse mirror:

With the changes to the schedule beginning in January, the Honda will have two elevated events before it — the WM Phoenix Open and the Genesis Invitational — and two following it — Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship. It makes for a challenging recruiting process — the top players are committed to the elevated events where purses will be $20 million compared to the $8 million for the Honda Classic. It’s ironic that the lower prize money of the event is part of its demise as the original winner’s share of $52,000 in 1972 made it one of the richest stops on Tour, greater than for any of the four majors, and more than double that of the Masters, which has a first prize of $25,000.

“It’s unfortunate that we will lose a loyal sponsor like that, especially one that is pulling out because of the decisions we made, not because their business is struggling or don’t see the value but because we’re sandwiching them in between these elevated events,” said a Tour pro. “They’re like, ‘You did us wrong and now we’re gone.’ They’re probably really mad. I’d be.”

I've been saying for a long time that the Tour makes for a horrible partner.  Once the ink is dry on your deal, they're off to the next deal, whether or not that affects the existing sponsors.  In this case, the Tour has clearly favored other sponsors and thereby undermined this event.  I would imagine that the conversations were along the lines of that famous scene from Animal House:

Honda Executive: You can't do this to us.  You promised us that we'd have an equal shot at players for our agreed-to sponsorship funding.

Jay Monahan: Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You f***ed up. You trusted us! Hey, make the best of it! Maybe we can help.

Honda Executive: I don't think so, but stop calling me Flounder.

The mystery remains the next guy who is all too eager to believe Jay's assurances, notwithstanding decades of evidence of how sponsors are treated by the Tour.

Upon Further Review... - So, you're telling us that you're a bloody fool?  Thanks, but we already knew:

The Incredible Bulk is no more.

Bryson DeChambeau, who added around 50 pounds in an effort to become the longest driver on the PGA Tour, has shrunk in size and admitted it was a mistake.

Speaking on the 5 Clubs Podcast with Emma Carpenter, DeChambeau said he went on a Whole-30 diet and lost 20 pounds in one month.

“I had such huge mood swings from it,” he said, noting his face had thinned out and all the inflammation is gone from his system. “I look like I’m 20 again, not 35.”

I only have one question.  Has Rocket Mortgage got their apology and have you returned their money?

With the help of trainer Greg Roskopf, DeChambeau’s radical approach that he called Muscle Activation Technique did transform his 6-foot-1-inch frame and contribute to him becoming the longest driver on the Tour in 2020 (322.1 yards) and 2021 (323.7 yards) and he won the 2020 U.S. Open by bombing driver at Winged Foot. But DeChambeau, who suffered a fractured hamate bone in his left hand as well as a torn labrum in his left hip, admitted gaining a lot of weight is not necessarily the best thing for the body.

“I ate things that were not great for my system that I was very sensitive to and ultimately it got to the point where it was a little bit too much,” he said on the 5 Clubs podcast. “I ate improperly for almost a year and a half and I was starting to feel weird, my gut was all messed up and so I went completely healthy and went on a Whole-30 diet, got a nutritionist. I was super-inflamed.”

“I start out with going to each side and then from there I best fit what works for me,” he said. “It’s a decent way to live life, it can be a tough one at times because it’s such extremes but if you don’t know one side of the coin to the other, I mean, how can you ever figure out what works best for you? That’s what I’ve done with my life so far.”

Would you please just go away.  What?  Oh, he went to LIV?  So he did go away... Thanks, Bryson!.

Closing Bits -  Wrapping the week with some long open browser tabs.  First, from Dylan Dethier's worthy Monday Finish column, a subject near and dear to my own heart:

Houston Open podium

Second place is, as they say, first loser. But at the Houston Open the silver and bronze medalists were each delighted to be there. Runner-up Tyson Alexander, a 34-year-old Tour rookie, felt very

much like a winner despite losing by four.

“Great week for me,” he said. “I wish Tony [Finau] would have taken the week off, but, yeah, you know, 132 players, I think one guy’s going to beat me, so that’s what it’s all about — just trying to beat as many people as possible.” Alexander moved from No. 320 to No. 162 in the world and improved on his previous high finish on Tour, which was…T64.

Third-place Ben Taylor was similarly satisfied when asked how he felt about his week.

“Accomplished,” he said. “I mean, now I’ve put myself in contention at a PGA Tour event, and I think with how well Tony played today, I think I handled everything pretty solid.”

It's Houston in November, so who cares, right?  But this bit about guys grinding their way on tour is the best part of our game, and to me it can be endlessly captivating.  I'd like to think that there's a place for this on Golf Channel, though of course it's going to be a tiny audience.

Bot Graeme McDowell gave the LIV game away, it's Golf Without The Grind™.  But that grind is the best thing about our game, and without it there's no intensity or interest.  That's why I continually reject the LIV vision, even absent the blood money that funds it.

Jay Coffin has a longer piece on Tyson Alexander's long road to the Tour, that might be worth your time.  I say "might" only because I've not yet read it myself.

Lastly, a couple of quick bits from the Tour Confidential panel on the Big Cat:

It’s going to be a Tiger Woods-filled month of December as Woods has committed to his Hero World Challenge (Dec. 1-4) and The Match VII (Dec. 10). He’s also expected to play the PNC Challenge (Dec. 17-18) — although he has yet to commit — with his son, Charlie, which would make three straight weeks of Woods on TV. What are you most looking for out of Tiger from this stretch? Will anything he does give you a better idea of what his 2023 might look like?

Sean Zak: We can learn the most about his health from the Hero. Walking 18 holes for four straight days has been a struggle for Woods this year, but those struggles were four, five, six months ago. Has it gotten any easier? He’s been doing plenty of moving around as a caddie for his son. I think Woods the golfer can beat a handful of those top pros in the Bahamas, but how will he look doing it.? That’ll give us a good idea if there’s progress being made or if there’s a legit ceiling on his body.

Alan Bastable: That TW is playing three times in three weeks is certainly cause for cautious optimism, but let’s not mistake these starts for Torrey, Pebble and Phoenix. As Zak notes, only the no-cut Hero will ask Woods to play four consecutive competition rounds, and it’s not hard to imagine him taking a cart in the Bahamas should he feel he needs one as the event progresses. (Host perk!) As for what we might learn about his 2023 prospects from this stretch, ehh — hard to say. I mean, what did we learn from his 2022 starts? He’s still got game, sure, but seemingly not the stamina for four rounds. I really hope that’s not the case in ’23, but the way Tiger continues to lumber around, it’s hard to envision him going deep in too many tournaments.

Josh Berhow: I don’t think it will give us any great insight into what we’ll see from Tiger in 2023. The Hero is his event and not a super taxing walk, he’ll get a cart at The Match and he can also take a cart at the PNC Championship. The Hero has long been a birdie-fest, so expect him to mix in some good scores there, and I would anticipate he looks pretty good playing casual, cart-aided rounds in the other two events. That said, I still don’t think it’s a great barometer of Tiger’s prospects come 2023. We’ll have to wait for that. But for now, watching Woods tee it up three times in December sounds good to me anyway.

I think they're forgetting that one of those is all of twelve holes....

The only bit of interest on Tiger will be, as Sean notes, just to see how well he's walking.  The far more interesting aspect will be seeing what a year of growth and development has done for Charlie, which means that Tiger might not actually hit too many shots.

And, as noted above, where was Jimmy Dunne when he might have saved us from this:

Speaking of Woods, a report from the AP’s Doug Ferguson named Tiger the winner of the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program for the second consecutive year, edging out Rory McIlroy to win the biggest portion of the Tour’s new bonus pool. If Woods only played three Tour events in the last year but still won, is the formula broken?

Zak: Great question. It might be? Woods earned it during those weeks, though. The will-he-or-won’t-he at the Masters was as great of theater as we’ve had for a non-Sunday in awhile. Then breaking par in the first round? No one was gonna compete with that. I think we’ll know if the formula is broken by next year’s race. If Woods wins again, running away with it, after playing just four events … it’s possible they’ll need to rejigger the details. But then again, this whole thing feels like a payback for his years and years of carrying the Tour on his back. It might be broken and that might be okay.

Bastable: Shame for Phil he’s not still a PGA Tour member — he would have run away with it! Yeah, as Zak said, PIP is largely another avenue by which to line the pockets of the Tour’s stars who feel (rightly!) that they have been under-compensated. And no matter how many titles Rory, Rahm or JT win, nothing riles up the golf-loving masses like any speck of Tiger news, from what he’s thinking to what he’s wearing to where his private jet is headed. Forget millions of dollars — when you consider the attention and sponsorship deals Woods has driven to pro golf, the Tour probably owes him billions.

Berhow: It sounds broken but I don’t think there’s a way to fix it, as it seems silly to make someone ineligible for playing only a certain amount of events. If the PIP continues, it will be fascinating to see if Tiger can keep winning despite not playing as often. Oh well, as Alan says, consider this backpay he very much deserves. And I don’t think other pros have any issue with it, either. They know their purses are what they are due to Tiger.

You can't call it broken unless you know its intention, which these guys seem determined to avoid.  

It's intention was to keep the best players on the PGA Tour.  Given that half of the ten recipients of the prior year's baksheesh pocketed the money and bolted, clearly the first year was a failure.  Will it work better this year?  We only know the top two names, so stay tuned, but Tiger has at the very least stayed bought.

Have a great weekend.