Friday, November 11, 2022

Late-Week Logorrhea

As noted yesterday, I was ambivalent at best about visiting my keyboard this morning.  At least until I saw the latest LIV rumors....  Just when you think you're out....

As an aside, Park City has reported 32" of snow this week.  That's not exactly a bad thing, though a bit Spring, though, we seem to be in a cycle where early for your humble blogger's needs.  Including last spring, we seem to have evolved to a place where it only snows when the mountain is closed.

LIV Your Best Life - Do you remember this excerpt from the Wayback Machine? 
 
Winner – Greg Norman

A two-time Open champion and 20-time winner on Tour, Norman’s company has been involved
in various ventures since his playing days, from course design to apparel and alcohol. His shirts are
still being worn at PGA Tour events, despite the fact the former world No. 1 has been at odds with the Tour even before LIV, dating back to his failed attempt to create a world golf tour in 1994.

“He has basically found people to fund his vendetta against the PGA Tour,” said McIlroy to the Guardian on Norman. “I think he hides behind ‘force for good’ and all that stuff. … This has been his dream for 30 years, and he has finally found people who can fund that dream.”

LIV has put Norman’s name back in the spotlight, and that’s precisely where he wants to be. Backlash be damned, that’s a win in his book and wallet.

I excerpt from the widest array of golf publications, and on this one I'll include this reaction from the proprietor of a niche golf blog called Unplayable Lies:

Norman's cry for relevance has been temporarily sated, but I'd be awfully hesitant to declare victory at this point. The next few months will be interesting in that regard, but right now I don't see him sitting with especially good hole cards (with the minor exception of that checkbook).

OK, perhaps a tad self-referential, though this could well become my model for the future.  Blogging would be far more efficient if all I had to do was copy-and-paste that which I pecked out yesterday....

Report: Greg Norman could be out as LIV Golf CEO as league pursues ex-TaylorMade executive

Now, it's not like we haven't heard this particular rumor before, though this iteration comes with enhanced granularity:

Mark King, the one-time CEO of TaylorMade and current CEO of Taco Bell, is reportedly being
pursued by the Saudi Arabia-backed circuit to be its new CEO. King attended multiple LIV events this season and is believed to have met with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

Michael Bamberger of the Fire Pit Collective wrote in September that King told him “in five years LIV Golf will be another tour among existing tours and that everybody will learn to get along.”

King can rightfully be credited with growing TaylorMade into one of the most influential and leading equipment makers in golf. He was with the company from the late 1990s until 2014, starting as a sales rep and working his way up to the top seat.

To state the obvious, when the rumors of your demise include the name and C.V. of your replacement, that can't be a good thing....

The hagiographic treatment of King's tenure at TaylorMade is quite amusing though, as the authors might want to invest in their own Wayback Machine:

King was a showman and loved being on stage to unveil new products, and he even starred in the CBS television series, “Undercover Boss.” At the same time, sales grew, reaching $1.7 billion in 2013.

In addition to driving sales and pushing his R&D teams — TaylorMade debuted adjustable weights in drivers, white-crowned drivers and multiple driver releases under his leadership — King was a champion of broadening the appeal of golf and taking it in new directions.

Isn't he just the perfect fit for LIV, understanding that this all about growing the game....

But at least the mention the H-Word:

In early 2014, King pushed TaylorMade to donate $5 million to an initiative called Hack Golf which advocated for courses to consider adding 15-inch holes to greens to make the game easier for beginners.

And TM got exactly what for their $5 million?

King presided over an acceleration of product launch cycles shortly before leaving  TM, which Shack touches on in this 2016 post:

Business schools have many far more important things to study, yet they should embrace the opportunity to study the audacity of former Taylor Made CEO Mark King who still...still!...has
the intredipity to blame the sport for his and Adidas' decision-making.

Add him to the list of business minds blaming the sport for not embracing a grand vision of consumers replacing $500 drivers and $1200 sets of irons on a bi-annual basis. Or, in the case of Taylor Made circa 2013, tri-annual.

Speaking to Yahoo's Daniel Roberts about the Taylor Made sale, King is so eager to blame golf for Adidas' tired approach on most fronts, that he's even indirectly talking down TM's recent recovery from the depths of his wake to validate a warped view of how often folks should buy new stuff.

Talking down golf's prospects in 2016, which will only make it more delicious to parse his coming apostle of growth mode:

"I think the decision was made to sell it," King says, "because the company has realized that we should be focusing on the biggest growth opportunities. And the biggest growth opportunities are in running, training, basketball. And we have a lot of runway in those. As opposed to being in something that is harder to focus on."

Harder to focus on? In other words, golf equipment is a bad business these days (despite Hainer's insistence to the contrary)? "It is," King says. "And that was the realization."

Much of the pain was experienced by the golf retailers, who had to blow the excess inventory out at bargain basement prices. 

Ironically, Geoff recently posted at the Quad on the current state of the golf equipment manufacturers, who are hitting it out of the park.   If he cites TM, it's behind the paywall, but this was his lede:

Manufacturers

Buoyed by golf’s pandemic bounce and solid management of supply chain issues, the golf manufacturers dropped some mighty impressive numbers on Wall Street last week. The profits are especially amazing given that the robust numbers are not due to any kind of breakthrough technology, but instead, thanks to overwhelming demand thanks to a thriving sport. Something to keep in mind when rule changes are proposed and they cry wolf. Again. Yawn.

Callaway and Acushnet's numbers were boffo, though for Cally the subtext is the extent to which TopGolf is driving their valuation:

The takeaway to me is that Adidas sold TaylorMade at the bottom of the trough, and got little for it.  Which makes Mark King a perfect replacement for Greg Norman.

Eamon Lynch has shared some thoughts, though he's always so very cautious about being critical:

A shark left to thrash around on a dry deck hopelessly gasping for water will survive only a few minutes, so there exists at least one metric by which Greg Norman can be said to have exceeded expectations during his tenure as CEO of LIV Golf.

C'mon Eamon, tell us what you really think of the guy:

The ceaseless sluice of reports, rumors and conjecture about LIV has resurfaced speculation that
the flaxen-haired finger puppet could be replaced by the former CEO of TaylorMade, Mark King. I reached out to King through a mutual friend in July; he responded saying he wouldn’t be taking the job. If King does end up running LIV, his denial and subsequent volte-face would at least give him something in common with his players, and as the current CEO of Taco Bell he can certainly boast relevant experience in repackaging the synthetic and unpalatable as authentic and nourishing.

A change in LIV’s leadership won’t simply be about sidelining a polarizing figure motivated by a personal animus against the PGA Tour and viewed with disdain by many top players, including some he has caressed with MBS’s cash. Swapping out the Shark would suggest short-term desperation more than long-term determination, perhaps even a new face-saving strategy by the Saudis. It would also represent the only move left for LIV before having to acknowledge that the fundamental problem isn’t who captains the ship.

Recently we had all sorts of happy talk from the LIVsters, Phil specifically opining that they're in full flight, whereas the PGA Tour is losing.  I'm shocked to have to question the veracity of Mr. Mickelson, who has always been a reliable narrator, but organizations very rarely fire the boss when they're ascendant.

Is there any reason not to let Eamon rant on?

Despite Norman’s inexhaustible bluster and bots, all is not well in the LIV metaverse. While the PGA Tour has given its loyalists what they demanded—elite events, more lucrative prize funds, bigger bonuses—LIV has provided its recruits nothing of what they were promised except cash. There is no uncontested right to cherry pick from other tours, no world ranking points, no clear pathway to the majors, no broadcast rights deal, no audience, no public acclaim as visionaries, no applause for growing the game.

The Saudis secured what they could—players, a handful of unemployed executives, the goodwill of media influencers thirsty for access—but even the kingdom’s resources haven’t been able to buy fan loyalty or the acquiescence of golf’s established institutions. Team golf is a tough sell, but more so when the product is lousy and the association with a merciless regime too toxic for commercial sponsors. That reality won’t be altered by replacing a CEO whose confidence far outpaces his competency.

Yeah, and Norman deserves what he gets for the whoppers he peddled, not least his assurances that the Tour would not suspend the guys.  Though you'd have to be quite the rube to have accepted those assurances at face value, which only leads to the inevitable conclusion that it was, in fact, all about the money.

But Eamon is quite right that the problems are far beyond Norman's span of control.  In fact, I would argue that they predate the Shirtless Wonder.  Using Eamon's formulation above, let's go all hypothetical.  Let's assume all those things above were procured, fan loyalty, the acquiescence of the golf organizations and whatever other markers might be out there.  Could the golf ecosystem, the number of people willing to attend or watch golf tournaments, yield a return on their $2 billion investment?  Not bloody likely....

Yeah, Eamon's on that as well:

Recent days have brought rumblings of discontent among LIV players and reports of belt-tightening on the lavish perks once bestowed on their entourages. More ominous for Norman—or whichever luckless executive replaces him—are whispers that a reckoning is nearing on the one question for which LIV has no good answer: where is the return on investment? Even MBS has limits on how much he’ll be taken for a fool by the Pat Perezs of the world.

This being the question that needs to be asked of Phil.  What's your plan when the Saudis realize you're a grifter?  Not really a problem, yet, but it could quickly become one as the existing network of sponsors and tournaments is further weakened.  Of course, we know that doesn't affect Phil, because he's in his golden years...

Now I do think Eamon gets one big thing wrong here:

The coming months will see a steadily increasing drumbeat from a band of gobshites and charlatans who insist a deal must be reached for the good of the game, that accommodating LIV is the only way forward for professional golf. Some will advocate for such an agreement just because they abhor conflict. But for others it will be nothing more than a noble-sounding means to keep Saudi money in the game long enough to peel off their share.

The narrative we’ll hear from these graduates of the Neville Chamberlain school of diplomacy will demand that the PGA and DP World tours act as defibrillators for LIV, that they must come together to resuscitate an ebbing party so others may pick its pockets a while longer. That position is as shameless as it is specious, and needs to be dismissed with contempt. Only one of these tours is endangered, and it isn’t headed by Jay Monahan or Keith Pelley.

I agree that the status quo favors the incumbents, something the Saudis seem unable to grasp.  Amusingly, it does appear that the Saudis bought into the concept that they could skim the cream of the golf world without any resistance from those whose milkshakes are being drunk.  Sure, steal our top players for fourteen events and tur us into a feeder tour?  Hard to see why Jay Monahan didn't run to do that deal.

But Eamon's misfire is ignoring that Keith Pelley's Tour is endangered, though admittedly that was a preexisting condition.  Even Jay's tour is, if not endangered, threatened seriously, but that weakness in Europe strikes this observer as Jay's biggest recurring nightmare.

A couple of tweets that abut on this subject.  One of my recurring peeves is that the Shirtless Shark has somehow been credited with originating the concept of a world tour.  Mike Clayton takes a shot at that myth: 

As a rule of thumb, the next original idea coming from Greg Norman will be the very first.

Your humble blogger is a Jeopardy fan, it's part of our evening ritual, and I'm pleased to report that I got this one correct.  But is Alan Shipnuck similarly a regular viewer, because who doesn;t relish the thought of being the subject of a clue:


One of the men got this, though I'm a little surprised that they thought folks would know what LIV is.  

Your humble blogger is old enough to remember this from a few years ago, about a sport far more popular than golf:

Good times.   Though we all miss Alex....

Guard, Changed - If they hook up with Peter Kostis and Gary McCord, they'll have a nice foursome:

It’s the end of an era for NBC and Golf Channel.

Golfweek has confirmed that both Roger Maltbie and Gary Koch won’t be returning to broadcasts in 2023. The network told Maltbie and Koch the decision was made to “refresh” the
team for the future.

“Roger and Gary have been synonymous with NBC Sports’ golf coverage for decades, having educated and entertained multiple generations of viewers and having made some of the most memorable calls in the history of the game,” said Golf Channel Executive Producer Molly Solomon via a statement to Golfweek. “Their professionalism and prowess is only exceeded by their character as they have been great teammates and friends to so many of us here. We will be honoring their careers during our coverage of the PNC Championship in December.”

Maltbie was supposed to be done after the 20121 season, but was renewed when Bones took on JT's bag.  

Don't really know how I feel about this, because these guys aren't exactly spring chickens.  On the other hand, when they speak of a "refresh" it's usually them chasing millennials, which typically pisses off the old timers, which just happens to be the core demographic.

Hard to know given this:

As of writing it is unclear who will fill the departed roles for NBC Sports.

Obviously a bigger role for John Wood, one would assume, as well as Bones eventually.

That PNC tribute will be nice, and they'll have plenty of eyeballs given that we assume the 2021 runner-up team will be playing.

I think I mostly agree with this gent: 

I think they tend to underestimate the importance of our familiarity with their voices and personas.  Both have been a comfortable and unimposing presence on their broadcasts, and one can't imagine that that won't be missed.

Today In Appeasement - This item on women's amateur golf in Geoff's latest freebie Quad post hit your humble blogger with a resounding thud:

Chinese Taipei’s Huang Wins WAAP

Ting-Hsuan Huang birdied six of her last 11 holes to post a three-under par 69 and an 11-under
par winning total in the 2022 Women’s Amateur Asia Pacific.

It’s the first WAAP title for Chinese Taipei and especially impressive in holding off a spirited bid by home country favorite Natthakritta Vongtaveelap of Thailand.

The 17-year-old Huang is committed to UCLA next year and with the win secures a spot in two women’s majors: the 2023 AIG Women’s Open and the Amundi Evian Championship. She will also be invited to the Augusta National Women's Amateur (ANWA).

“To be able to play in majors is really a dream come true for me. I’d like to thank The R&A and the APGC for giving us this opportunity,” said Huang, who started the week ranked 83rd in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.

Huang’s win did not get her in the first women’s major of 2023, The Chevron Championship, as I reported last week. The Chevron announced an exemption to the 2023 WAAP winner, which is returning to its pre-pandemic spring date. The March 9-12 event will take place at The Singapore Island Country Club where Huang will defend.

Yowzer, Geoff, are you cashing Chinese checks?  Or just a useful idiot:

In political jargon, a useful idiot is a term for a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause -- particularly a bad cause originating from a devious, ruthless source -- without fully comprehending the cause's goals, and who is cynically used by the cause's leaders.[1][2] The term was originally used during the Cold War to describe non-communists regarded as susceptible to communist propaganda and manipulation.

Because there is no such country as Chinese Taipei.  There is a country called Taiwan, but we use this obfuscation for the sole purpose of placating the Reds:

Due to Taiwan's unique political status, representation in international organisations and events is quite tricky. Although Taiwan's official name is "Republic of China" (中華民國, ROC for short), because of the one China policy, both mainland China (the "People's Republic of China", 中华人民共和国 or PRC) and the ROC are adamant about the nomenclature used to represent Taiwan. If the ROC and PRC were to coexist in an organisation, this would be indicative that Taiwan is independent from the rest of China and imply the PRC is accepting of Taiwan as a sovereign state.

Due to the lack of formal recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign entity (mainly fuelled by the PRC's resistance and insistence that Taiwan is a renegade province temporarily separated as a result of the Chinese Civil War), Taiwanese participating in international organisations are often represented under the title "Chinese Taipei", or 中華台北 in Chinese. The team is, and has been, 100% Taiwanese since 1949 and competes in the Olympics under this invented name so China will not pressure the event to exclude Taiwanese athletes. At worst, competing under the accurate name of "Taiwan" would trigger a military reaction from Beijing against Taiwan as it would be viewed by Beijing as an "act of secession", although Taiwan is an open democracy and, in fact, the two are separate governments similar to the situation between North and South Korea.

When you conform to the PRC style book, you're aiding and abetting the enemy.  Like when we were assured that it was racist to call Covid the Wuhan Flu....

That's it for this week.  I'll see you Monday to wrap the weekend, and see if Greg Norman still has a job.

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