Thursday, December 22, 2022

Thursday Threads - Wasatch Range Edition

Notwithstanding 9" of freshies out there, we've got work to do.  

The Long Game - I'm old enough to remember when a "Masters Ball" was supposed to solve the distance debate, which struck this observer as a big ask of a simple golf club.  OK, maybe not so simple, but still a big ask, so little surprise here:

Augusta National scolds LIV defectors, stops short of Masters ban

I'm actually reminded of Billy Payne's scolding of Tiger at the 2010 Masters, but it's fairly mild:

“Regrettably, recent actions have divided men’s professional golf by diminishing the virtues of the game and the meaningful legacies of those who built it,” the statement said. “Although we
are disappointed in these developments, our focus is to honor the tradition of bringing together a preeminent field of golfers this coming April.”

“As we have said in the past, we look at every aspect of the Tournament each year, and any modifications or changes to invitation criteria for future Tournaments will be announced in April,” the statement continued. “We have reached a seminal point in the history of our sport. At Augusta National, we have faith that golf, which has overcome many challenges through the years, will endure again.”

So, who looks like they're in?

LIV golfers currently eligible for a 2023 Masters invite include Abraham Ancer, Bryson DeChambeau, Talor Gooch and Brooks Koepka, as well as LIV golfers who have won the Masters: Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Bubba Watson and Patrick Reed.

That's an incomplete list, but now doubt you're wiping your brow with relief that Talor Gooch is in.

Geoff's take aligns with that of your humble blogger:

Moving along, at least we got some much-needed clarity on a possible Masters “ban” that will now force LIV bros to rage about something else. And based on the tone of Chairman Fred Ridley’s statement, it sure sounds like he’s going to let the Official World Golf Ranking weed out most defectors by 2024.

That and another year of LIV playing in the Cone of Silence, perhaps. But this is what I meant by the long game:

All former champs, with the exception of Cam.  But, can you say awkward?  Back to Geoff:

As for certain past Masters champs and Tuesday’s cherished dinner? Would anyone really miss DJ’s storytelling? Bubba’s gripes about the menu? Phil’s steady stream of bull&%^$? Or wondering if a certain Augusta State great might make off with the silverware?

Thursday-Friday pairings should be fun, as well.  But yeah, that Champions Dinner should be awkward on steroids.... Does Netflix have access?  Or will we have to depend upon the FBI sheep-dipping an agent in?

Family Values - I know its tough growing up with a famous father, but this one's pathology has now spilled into a third generation:

Gary Player is suing his son and grandson over memorabilia, including trophies and clubs, he
says the duo have sold or tried to sell despite an agreement requiring the items be returned to the nine-time major championship winner.

Player filed a legal complaint in May in Palm Beach County against his son Marc Player, followed by a November lawsuit against Marc’s son, Damian Player.

The lawsuits were “reluctantly” filed after a years-long dispute between Gary Player and Marc Player about the 87-year-old’s collectibles after he ended a business relationship with his son in 2019, said Gary Player’s attorney Stuart Singer.

Damian Player was named in a separate suit because it’s alleged that he solicited buyers for memorabilia held in 19 lockers at a South Carolina storage facility, and allegedly sold or helped sell multiple Rolex watches to someone in Florida “for significant sums of money.”

Allrighty, then.  The Player family is the gift that keeps on giving, beginning with the ethical cloud that follows the patriarch.  For anyone unfamiliar with this, I'd recommend YouTubing the original Skins Game, in which Tom Wartson told The Black Knight that we're all tired of this s**t.

Amusingly, this isn't the son that fouled Lee Elders last moment in the sun:

Because the world gave a rats ass as to what ball Gary used for a ceremonial shot.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  Forget banning the Livsters, how about relieving us of the tedium of the Player clan, Fred?

VanCynical Redux - The rather dramatic changes to the golf media ecosystem have, alas, not been for the better.  Gary Van Sickle has been banished to the rotting husk that is Sports Illustrated, so we don't see much of him anymore, which is a pity.

He has a year-end feature up and it's got some bits of interest:

> Notah Begay and Padraig Harrington said in recent weeks they believe Tiger Woods still has it in him to win another tournament, maybe a major. (Well, he’s probably not going to play in
much other than major tournaments, so ...) You saw his impressive clubhead speed in the PNC Championship, the fun father-son made-for-TV event. He looked great the first day, less than great the second. If we were talking about anyone other than Tiger, I would disagree with Begay and Paddy and say Tiger is reduced to ceremonial golf. However, Tiger has earned the benefit of any doubt with his career and his work ethic. Maybe I wouldn’t bet on him to win again, but I definitely wouldn’t tell him there’s anything he can’t do.

I find this whole discussion tedious in the extreme.  It could be interesting, because it's hard to think of a precedent, where a player's ability to perform is dictated by non-golf factors, to wit, Tiger's ability to walk.  The closest I can come is Fred Couples' back, but that's obviously not quite on point.

But when Tiger tells the world he's had two surgeries since we last saw him, and no further details are forthcoming, that's the exact point at which I lose interest.  Even the newer, warm and fuzzy Tiger, is still a dick, so who cares?

But you'll be shocked to know this was my fave:

> In case you were wondering, Bryson DeChambeau didn’t go into a witness-protection program. He jumped to LIV Golf, a tour that gets a lot of attention for existing but almost no attention for the players who play on it or the tournament results. DeChambeau was golf’s biggest attraction two and a half years ago. When was the last time you saw him hit a shot? Not this year. If his face shows up on a milk carton soon, I wouldn’t be surprised …

As it so happens, I wasn't wondering in the least.  LIV has done us a huge service in taking a healthy portion of the Tour's miscreants under that Cone of Silence.

I'll throw this one in as well:

> The PGA Tour’s plan to elevate 12 of its events in response to LIV Golf’s super-big purses seems like a great way to minimize the PGA Tour’s other 30 or so events. So they’re going to pass around the elevated status to other events? Sounds great but the reality may not be so great. One year, your tour stop is elevated and gets all the big names. The next year, it’s not elevated and that event is practically guaranteed to NOT get anyone in the top 70 of the world rankings. Good luck selling those tickets. The elevated tournament plan is a punch in the gut to the non-elevated tournaments and the first step toward potentially shrinking the number of PGA Tour events—and the number of playing opportunities for tour players—dramatically …

Ya think?  It does force us to focus on the reality that the Tour's product has become too diluted and undermines the Tour's position in the golf ecosystem.  Those other events need to exist, whether under the PGA, Korn Ferry or other banner, it's just that there'll be no interest or audience.  

Funny Bits - A few bits that activated your humble blogger's funny bone, including this rather awkward transition:

The reader is free to insert his own DJ joke here.

And the LIV bots are everywhere, at least according to my Twitter feed.  I won't even pretend to know what this means:

 If that's the guy snorting the Vicodin?

And this:

Fair enough, but the most notable stalwart that never assured himself a Tuesday dinner reservation would be, checking notes, Greg Norman.

 Alan In Full - Shippy has another mailbag up, satisfying my need for anaerobic blogging,  Shall we?

At what age does Charlie Woods turn pro? #askalan@RealTurtleBR

I’d say 22 or 23, once he has earned a degree from Stanford. When his old man waxes about his two years at Stanford, it is clear those were the happiest times of Tiger’s life: finally away from his omnipresent parents, surrounded by other high-achievers, who didn’t care that much about golf, and part of a diverse team that supported and inspired him. No matter what endorsements are waiting for Charlie he’ll never have to fret about money, so I am quite sure his dad will mandate that he max out his college years instead of cutting them short.

I think that's both well-argued and mostly nonsense, because ultimately it will be driven by Charlie's talent.  But Alan is right that Tiger loved his years at Stanford and  I certainly expect that Charlie will play some college golf, let's just see how good he turns out to be.

Tiger turns 50 in three years. Will he play on the Champions Tour? Y/N/ LOL? And has your answer on this changed in recent years? #AskAlan @stensation

It’s all about the cart. Tiger has made it clear that, even if such a thing is possible, he won’t take one in major championships or even regular PGA Tour events. But he’s fine riding in fun events like the Father-Son. I think he will look at Senior Tour events in the same vein. Taking a cart will allow him to compete and hit golf shots, two things he will always love. So I think the answer is yes, and certainly smashing up his foot in the car accident changed Woods’s thinking, and mine.

Color me skeptical.  The precedent here is Jack, but with the caveat that Jack was healthy.  He seems unwilling at this point to use a cart in Tour events and majors, so why would that change?

This on Van Cynical's point:

How bad a spot is the PGA Tour in with its sponsors? With LIV picking up the high-profile players it has, plus many longtime tournaments not being included in the new elevated events (i.e. weaker fields for them), is there a danger of many sponsors pulling out like Honda? @KitDuncan10

The Tour has managed to hold things together for 2023, but ’24 will be the big test. Expect more attrition from sponsors as the newly bifurcated Tour promotes dozen of tournament featuring basically no stars. Many tournament directors and the corporate masters they serve are grumbling behind the scenes about a steeper price for sponsors and a diluted product. It has already passed into legend that one tycoon who singlehandedly saved an old, proud Tour stop, upon getting a recent phone call from Jay Monahan informing said tycoon that his event would not be granted elevated status, offered this verdict to the commissioner: “Go fuck yourself, Jay.”

OK, did that guy work for Honda?  Really, it could be any number of sponsors, but the Tour has long treated its sponsors with contempt, and the surprise is that Jay hasn't heard that more often.

But isn't the problem less the LIV defections than the Tour's response thereto?  This is a point I've been trying to hammer home, that the steps deemed necessary to retain the alphas would make the Tour a worse place.  I suspect the sponsors would have been reasonably supportive of the Tour in face of the LIV defections, but in the face of Jay "elevating" events above their own, the only appropriate response is Honda's or that gentlemen Alan quotes above.

This whole season I’ve felt like a kid whose parents are getting an ugly divorce and now my favorite uncles Roger and Gary are leaving. Please tell me next year gets better?? #AskAlan @pete_adamson

It has to! The LIV disruption has peaked; the upstart league will pick off one or two more players between now and the start of the new season, because splashy signings are an important part of the business model. But there won’t be anything like the upheaval of this summer. The changing of the guard on TV is also largely complete. Gone are Gary McCord, Peter Kostis, Roger Maltbie, Gary Koch, Nick Faldo and Judy Rankin, and Jerry Foltz and David Feherty are entrenched in their new gigs, so things have to settle down on that front as well. I, for one, look forward to a golf season during which we talk more about…golf.

Well, good luck with that, Alan.

In that Quad post linked above, Geoff had a long bit on the forced retirement of Rog and Gary:

I’ve seen my share of television goodbyes and there has never been one as weird as the send-off to NBC’s Gary Koch and Roger Maltbie.

To be clear, the NBC crew handled an unprecedented situation beautifully without depriving viewers of PNC Championship action. Anchor Dan Hicks was left to handle most of the landmine-filled moments, artfully navigating the awkward farewell of two stalwarts who weren’t ready to say goodbye. Hicks had to do this knowing that craven ageist executives were watching from afar, not welcome at any going away proceedings and with ghastly Comcast vultures on the lookout for any suggestion these forced retirements were…forced retirements. So Hicks and producer Tommy Roy tip toed around the hissing Peacock in the room: this goodbye was brought to you by crude cost-cutting in the name of shareholder value brought to us by Peacock having just 1/3 the number of paying subscribers as Paramount+ (even with Viacom’s streaming effort launched 8 months later than ’cock).

I'm of mixed minds, because the broadcasts have gotten awfully stale.  That said, the golf audience is an older crowd and doesn't deal well with change..... Well, we'll deal fine with that change that has Sir Mumbles in Montana, but otherwise.... 

What is Charlie’s ceiling? What is his floor? #askalan @mattymcginley

Bill Haas is his ceiling. A stroke average of 74.7 as the fourth or fifth man on the Stanford golf team is his floor, and that ain’t half bad.

Bill Haas?  That strikes me as a weird answer, and I'd be interested in what he's seen that sets the ceiling so low.  We can't know, but he sure can hit the ball and you'd think that since, per Bobby Jones, golf is contested between the ears, that he'd be learning much that will prove useful.

With the COO of LIV gone, we now must wonder how much time Sharky has left? If we start the clock on January 1, who lasts longer—Greg Norman or a head of lettuce? @ZitiDoggsGolf

I hope that lettuce is freeze-dried because Norman isn’t going anywhere. Things are definitely happening behind the scenes at LIV; one exec described it to me as “corporate restructuring.” In fact, it is a consolidation of power for Norman, and the recent departure of COO Atul Khosla is only one manifestation. His day-to-day duties will be handled by the clever fellows (Gary Davidson, Richard Marsh, and Jed Moore) who basically birthed LIV. While Norman has been out front, Marsh and Moore especially were handling the details and hammering out the contracts. They have a Day 1 kinship with Norman and are more spiritually aligned with him than Khosla, a sports/media veteran who was brought in to be an outside voice. But Khosla’s abrupt departure does speak to LIV’s behind-the-scenes dysfunction; at Trump Doral he welcomed the assembled media for a splashy presentation about how the team franchise concept is key to LIV’s financial future. It’s a weird look to make him the public face of organizational competence and then he’s gone a couple of months later. And Khosla had already performed triage for LIV, absorbing the chief commercial officer duties after Sean Bratches abruptly departed in May, four days after the London media day, at which Norman dropped his infamous “Look, we’ve all made mistakes” line about the Saudis’ assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. LIV was set to announce on Dec. 21 its 2023 roster of 48 players and 12 reserves, but that is now on hold until after the holidays, just as the release of the full ’23 schedule has been bumped back a few times. These delays speak to all of the internal turbulence. But the bottom line is two C-Suite warriors have now been ousted without full-time successors being named, meaning Norman is more entrenched than ever and he has more of a direct line to the Saudi kingmakers who have been dazzled by his star power and willingness to fight for them. As long as the Saudis are happy with Norman he’s on firm footing, despite the press conference sniping of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.

Dazzled by his star power?  Yowzer, talk about getting what you deserve.

Some interesting background from Alan there, but you know I think Tiger and Rory erred in going after the Sharky, and have probably entrenched him further as a result.  But that's a good thin, methinks, because he's quite the boob.  But this whole issue devolves into the question on what the Saudis think they're getting for their $2 billion large.

Alan doesn't indicate whether those announcements will include new defections, but he's previously said that he thinks whoever wanted to go has already gone.  

Most impressive return to #1—Rors or Lydia? I got with Lydia. @golfnomadic

Oooh, good one. Both are exceptionally impressive, but I agree Ms. Ko had a tougher climb back to the top simply because of her years-long victory drought and associated strife. McIlroy certainly had his struggles but was never that down and out.

Gotta be Lydia because she did it without the glasses.  But the common thread is that neither did much in their majors, leading to this Q&A:

#Askalan Can you see a major championship win in McIlroy for ’23? @CiaranGBoyle

Of course! Unfortunately, so can Rory, and that’s the problem; he keeps getting in his own way. But I liked his recent comments that it has been so long since his last major it feels like he is chasing the first one again and he can feel some of that old hunger. I have no doubt McIlroy will contend in at least a couple of majors next year. Can he finally get it done? Gawd, I hope so, because he is playing at such a high level. If he doesn’t nab one in ’23 I fear he will be irreversibly broken.

I'm not loving his chances, as he seems to play his worst when he wants it most.  But we can speak of majors generically, but there's the one he needs the most, only so that he can impose his childish antics on Sergio, et. al.

Is it just me or has golf become so vanilla to watch in any format? PS: it’s not just me, I don’t know any golfer who watches outside of the majors. @georgebooth73

This is the result of many things. You can blame equipment advances, which have allowed the modern professional to overpower outdated playing fields, leading to mindless caveman golf that lacks artistry and creativity. Blame the PGA Tour (and now LIV) for choosing boring venues and setting them up unimaginatively. You can blame the GQ cover story from 1997 that captured Tiger Woods telling tasteless jokes, leading to a minor media backlash that burned into Woods’s brain it was safer to be bland and boring rather than risk endorsement by being yourself; generations of would-be Tiger imitators inculcated this depressing worldview. You can blame the old dogs at the TV networks who rarely innovated and allowed golf telecasts to become so stultifying. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and the bloated, boring state of PGA Tour golf made an easy target for a new competitor. LIV has at least tried to do things differently, but its product is not exactly wowing disenfranchised golf fans. At least not yet. It will take even bolder thinking to win back the fans cited in this question.

Golf is boring, kids, which might have taken the Saudis by surpise.

Kids, I'm going to leave you here.  I've moved my travel day to Saturday from the craziness of tomorrow, but that's not without its own wind related risks, though not sure I'll get to the keyboard tomorrow.  Why don't we just agree that I'll see you when I see you.  

And a Merry Christmas to all.


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