Niels Bohr, the Nobel laureate in Physics and father of the atomic model, is quoted as saying, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future!”
Not sure I've ever previously cited Bohr, though I'm also unclear which of those two is the more substantial public intellectual. Plus, how many World Series rings does Niels Bohr have?
We previously had Eamon Lynch predicting another year of tumult, so let's see what the Tour Confidential panel thinks might be in our future:
We know all the craziness that happened in 2022, but now that some dust has settled does that mean 2023 will be more of a return to normalcy in the pro golf world? Or are we just getting started?Ryan Barath: With the LIV vs. PGA Tour lawsuit pushed back to early 2024, I think it’s going to be mostly a return to normal. What has me very curious are all the big promises LIV has madebut yet to backup heading into 2023. Where are the new signings? Where are the rest of the events? With COO Atul Khosla out after only a year have their plans been delayed or are they scrambling to secure sites for the rest of their schedule?Sens: I don’t see how we top 2022 for tumult and contentiousness. But things could definitely get testy over world ranking points. How much time will pass before the OWGR comes to a decision about LIV? That issue isn’t going away, and it’s not going to get less heated. And, of course, Patrick Reed could always file a few more tragi-comic suits.Zak: This new status quo of spicy statements and press conference headlines isn’t going anywhere. And I’d guess Phil Mickelson gets more involved on that front, too. We’ll learn more juicy details via the lawsuits. Governing bodies will have to make hard decisions. The majors will be MAJOR. It’s a fun rollercoaster ride. Hopefully the golf is good, too.
Guys, are you gonna be phoning it in all year like this? 'Cause there ain't a lot of there there.... I think most of us are expecting that LIV v. PGA Tour will dominate the golf news cycles, but you'd think these guys might have something to share on how that might actually play out.
As for Phil getting more involved, Josh, how did that work out last time?
Adam Woodward at Golfweek does a deeper dive on LIV-nation, though lots of waffling to be found here as well:
“Golf but louder” is one of a few slogans and catchphrases for LIV Golf, but lately the upstart circuit has been pretty quiet.
After an eight-event debut season in 2022, the Greg Norman-led and Saudi Arabia-backed series will transition to a 14-event league in 2023 while keeping its signature format of 54-hole, no-cut events that feature team and individual competitions as well as daily shotgun starts.With just two months between now and the first event on the schedule – Feb. 24-26 at El Camaleón Golf Course in Mexico for LIV Golf Mayakoba – there are still a few key questions that LIV needs to answer heading into its second year.
Need? That sound you hear is Abraham Maslow spinning in his grave....
Where's the full schedule?The goal was for both the schedule and team rosters to be finalized by the end of 2022. Let’s start with the schedule.Only half the events for 2023 have been announced, with three to be held in the United States and one each in Australia, Mexico, Singapore and Spain. LIV officials had previously said they would avoid going head-to-head with major championships and would steer clear of so-called PGA Tour “heritage events,” such as the Memorial and Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Sad to see the Greenbrier go over to the dark side, but add them to that lengthy list of former PGA sponsors that were valued partners of the PGA Tour.....at least until the ink dried on their contract. The pity is that, once the West Coast swing ends, it's an endless succession of indifferent golf courses, yet they couldn't figure something out to keep an actual Macdonald design in the rota.
Where can fans watch?LIV proved it has a product after successfully holding eight events in 2022. The goal for 2023 was to commercialize that product.“We’ve got to get on TV, we’ve got to have corporate partners,” said former COO Atul Khosla at the team championship in October. “Those are successful things that we need, those are sort of milestones that we need to hit going into next year.”Khosla has reportedly resigned from his position, putting yet another obstacle in LIV’s way on its quest for legitimacy in pro golf.Last season’s events were streamed on LIV’s website and YouTube page for free. LIV also had 20 international partners to broadcast events in 160 different countries. Golfweek previously reported LIV was nearing a deal to purchase air time for its tournaments with Fox Sports 1. LIV would also have been responsible to pay the production cost.LIV called the report “incomplete and inaccurate” at the time, but when specifically asked at the team championship if LIV would be open to paying for tournaments to be aired, Khosla didn’t reject the idea.CBS, ESPN and NBC all broadcast PGA Tour events and are assumedly uninterested in LIV. Same goes for Amazon and Apple. So the question now becomes, what’s better for LIV: a TV deal on a smaller network that brings in some money, or an easily-accessible free steam available to any fan on their phone, tablet or TV?
Fans? Name ten!
One recurring amusement for your humble blogger is seeing how amateurish and naïve the LIV roll-out has been. It appears that they're still a bit shell-shocked that Jay fought back, and the absence of a logical network to carry their broadcast in the U.S. was obvious to anyone that gave it a second's thought.
But isn't there a more primal question that needs answering before we speculate on LIV's 2023 fortunes? Don't we need to know if anyone else is going?
They had this which got me thinking:
Where do we stand with LIV and OWGR points?A player’s Official World Golf Ranking is key for access to major championships. LIV Golf events currently do not receive OWGR points. The circuit applied in July and is awaiting word as part of an application process that can take up to, and even more than, a year.Last week the OWGR announced a Mexican golf tour with 54-hole events will start to receive OWGR points in 2023 after a 16-month process, and noted the tour’s inclusion of a 36-hole cut and open qualifying, two aspects that are absent from LIV’s format. Despite their shortcomings in the criteria, LIV believes they deserve points and even formed a “strategic alliance” with the developmental MENA Tour in an attempt to force the OWGR’s hand.
To this observer, the Tour has been incoherent in responding to the structural inadequacies of LIV that I genuinely believe should be disqualifying for OWGR consideration. For instance, who gives a damn about a cut, when you have a 48-player field? For some reason they're not hammering them on field size, perhaps because of their Tour Championship and Hero World Challenge? The latter is an embarrassment, but the former can arguably be justified because the guys have to qualify in.
But LIV is an exhibition very much as that Hero World is, without a clear qualification process. They'll no doubt assert that the Asian and MENA tours will fill that need, but only if there are slots available in their micro-fields. As noted previously, here's where the commitments necessary to lure Phil, DJ and others can be used against them. We don't know the extent of these commitments, but they certainly should be reviewed (and mocked) before the OWGR makes a decision.
Mark Your Calendars - What would you bet that I'll have a quibble or two with this?
Yup, and it starts early in the year:
Feb. 24-28: LIV Golf League opens in MexicoWell, here we are. The LIV Golf campaign opens with its standard 54-hole, no-cut event ElCamaleon Golf Course in Mexico’s Riviera Maya. The upstart circuit survived its trial year (with a price tag of $750 million for the Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund) and heads into its new season with a new label as the LIV Golf League. There will be 48 players on 12 “franchises” playing a 14-event schedule. So far, LIV lists only seven events on its website—all of them new this year. “We hope to announce our other 2023 events soon,” says a note on the site. What the franchise model will look like and how it will change the nature of LIV’s tournaments and fan interest now that it’s not the shiny new object could be the most compelling news coming from LIV—unless it signs a couple big names from the PGA Tour. Oh, and there is the issue that LIV remains without a television deal despite rumors back in the fall that it was close to paying to get on Fox Sports 1.
That's not even the most important February date for LIV.... That will come in a courtroom, where it will be decided whether the Euro Tour can enforce its own rules. If it's decided that they cannot, things could get hot in a hurry.
This one kind of ignores how we got here, no?
April 20-23: Chevron Championship
This will be a sad week for some, with Dinah Shore’s historic LPGA major being moved from the California desert and played in Houston for the first time. But truth be told, the modern players will hardly mind competing at The Club at Carlton Woods outside of Houston because the new sponsor has upped the total purse to $5.1 million. It’s part of a larger move by the LPGA to raise prize money to a record $101 million spread over 33 events. Another plus is the change in dates from early April means the Dinah, uh Chevron, will no longer go directly up against the Augusta National Women’s Amateur or have a tough lead-in date before the Masters.
From 1973-2018 the LPGA had the perfect date and the perfect venue for their iconic event. What happened? Apparently the green jackets hate women, because they stuck it to the LPGA pretty well, and to the best of my knowledge Christina Kim is the only woman to call it out for what it was.
There's lots of team match play on offer, but this one might be the most intriguing to your humble blogger:
Sept. 2-3: Walker Cup
The Walker Cup is a rite of passage for top amateurs from both sides of the Atlantic, but it’s extra special when played at an historic venue, and it doesn’t get much better than competing on the Old Course at St. Andrews (though we’ll be saying the same thing in 2025 when the U.S. hosts at Cypress Point). It’s ultra-cool to know that the first Walker Cup played at St. Andrews was a century ago, in 1923, and the winning American team included Francis Ouimet. Great Britain & Ireland have the Home-of-Golf turf in ’23, and maybe that will be an inspiration because GB&I needs to rally after losing three straight.
Many of us worry about the Old Girl holding up to the big boys in future Opens, but that mostly doesn't matter in match play. This to me should be the greatest match play venue on the planet, all those short Par-4's and Nos. 17 and 18 as finishing holes should be epic..... Should be, we'll see how it actually plays out, just fingers crossed that we get a decent TV window.
More than a little strange to have these back-to-back:
Sept. 22-24: Solheim CupThe COVID-19 pandemic pushing back the Ryder Cup a year is to blame for the biggest event in women’s team golf, pitting the U.S. against Europe, being scheduled for Spain in the same year as the Ryder Cup heads to Rome. The women will move away from the conflict by switching the Solheim Cup to even-year dates starting in 2024 at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va. Europe holds the Cup after winning for only the second time on U.S. soil in 2021 at Inverness. The Americans, who will have their youngest captain ever in 37-year-old Stacy Lewis, will be shooting for their first victory in Europe since Germany in 2015. Suzann Pettersen helms Europe for the first time.Sept. 29-Oct. 1: Ryder CupWith the major championships looking to include LIV golfers if they have rightfully qualified, it appears as if this first Ryder Cup, post-LIV, will be the biggest event affected by pro golf’s Great Divide. (Sorry, Presidents Cup; we know you suffered, too.) For the matches outside Rome, the U.S. would seemingly be more weakened than Europe by the loss of stars Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau. But captain Zach Johnson has a deep reserve of talent to dip into. In contrast, Europe’s Luke Donald has a tremendous core—Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood—but plenty of holes in the lineup. Europe will be keen on not repeating on home turf the embarrassing rout it suffered at Whistling Straits.
Really unclear how this plays out for the ladies, but with the early morning TV window I can't believe it will draw much of an audience. That said, three team match-play events in five weeks is not something we'll see again soon.
'Dis & 'Dat - Quick bits upon which to riff, first back to that TC panel:
Welcome to 2023! We got a new-look PGA Tour schedule complete with elevated events (the Sentry Tournament of Champions kicks off on Thursday), its rival league with a beefed-up slate of its own, a Ryder Cup in the fall and so much more. What are the one or two storylines every golf fan should be salivating over in 2023?Ryan Barath: I believe the two biggest things to watch this year will be PGA Tour and LIV players congregating at the major championships, and how LIV will build out its yet to be released schedule. Although not officially pitted against each other on the golf course, I think there will be a palpable rivalry when these groups of golfers get together. I’m also extremely curious to see if another golfer will have a breakout year like Scottie Scheffler did in 2022.Josh Sens: Ryan’s right. The Tour vs LIV rivalry stands to be a compelling subplot in all the majors. Whether or not there is bad blood between the players themselves, they’ll be seen as proxies in a larger fight. Think about Cam Smith edging Rory last year at the Old Course. At that point, the expectation was that Smith would soon join LIV. But it wasn’t yet official. If he’d already signed on, people would have layered all kinds of additional symbolism onto his win.Speaking of rivalries, the Ryder Cup always makes things more interesting. The US hasn’t won the event in Europe in 30 years. But the Americans are pulsing with young blood and the Europeans looked badly outmatched in the last cup. They are a team in transition. Which trend will win out?Sean Zak: Team Europe is most interesting to me. For both the Solheim Cup and Ryder Cup. On the men’s side, it’s an overhaul of faces and names from a former era. It’ll be all we talk about in September. On the ladies side, can they do it again, and keep the Americans reeling?
I shall contain my Ryder Cup fever at least until we see that February court decision, for I take nothing for granted.
Which major-less pro finally gets their first this year?Ryan Barath: If there is one player that really needs to put his foot down this year it has to be Patrick Cantlay. He has played well the last few seasons, including some big wins and some, shall we say, career-padding-on-wikipedia type wins. But, like his on course demeanor, he’s been pretty quiet at the majors. Everything says his game should translate to something like the Masters or the PGA Championship but it hasn’t come to fruition. Maybe this is finally his year.Josh Sens: Cantlay is a top contender for best player to never… But I’ll put my money on Tony Finau. Doubts still linger out there about his ability to rise to the biggest moments. But every player progresses differently. We know he’s got the talent. At this point, he’s got the necessary seasoning. Feels like his time.Zak: Leona Maguire. She’s still ascending, it seems. But she’s a total bulldog.
Yawn! And this one is even yawnier:
And the PGA Tour’s 2023 Player of the Year will be…Barath: I hate to make an obvious choice but I think Rory McIlory is ready to fire on all cylinders this year and will finish 2023 as the POY.Sens: I’ll stick with my man, Finau. Ended last year on a hot run. Already has a win in 2022-23. Sky’s the limit for him.Zak: Xander Schauffele, with three wins, one of them at LA Country Club.
Maybe the more interesting question would be, if you offered Rory a carbon copy of his 2022 for the coming year, would he take it?
Golfweek has this one on that prior TC query:
Another mostly Usual Suspects list, although this one is of interest, though probably on the early side:
Rose ZhangCollege and amateur golf don’t have major championships, but Stanford’s star sophomore isn’t afraid of the moment and has the poise to shine brightest on the biggest stages. I’ll even call my shot: she’s doing it at the 2023 U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach, July 6-9. Here’s why.Zhang won her first three collegiate starts last year and ended a phenomenal freshman campaign with her fourth win of the season at the national championship. The Irvine, California, native also earned four runner-up finishes, a T-4 and a T-10 thanks to an impressive 69.68 scoring average, which set a new single-season NCAA record. She won the 2022 ANNIKA Award as the player of the year in women’s college golf and also claimed the Mark H. McCormack medal as world’s best female amateur golfer for third consecutive year.A two-time USGA champion at the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur and 2021 U.S. Girls’ Junior – yeah, she won the Am before the Junior, wild – Zhang made the cut in all three of her major appearances last year and was the low amateur at the AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield (T-28).Stanford’s campus is less than 100 miles from Pebble Beach, so it’s basically a home game. All kidding aside, Zhang did in fact set a women’s course record at Pebble Beach back in September, a 9-under 63 that led her and Stanford to sweep individual and team titles at the 2022 Carmel Cup. She also won the Stanford Intercollegiate and Pac-12 Preview this fall.Sure, it’s a long shot, but don’t be surprised to see her in contention next July.
She looks to be a monstrous talent, but she's still only 19 years old. The bride and I are still laughing over how she berated her caddie at Westchester Country Club in last years U.S. Women's Amateur, the joke being that he's also her father....
The most interesting thing about Rose is that she's won both a Women's Amateur and a Women's Junior, though oddly she won the former before the latter.
I'm going to leave you good folks there. I'll be back as the week evolves, with actual golf to watch beginning on Thursday.
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