Thursday, January 5, 2023

And So It Begins

I've been trying to throw in some non-golf items for amusement, mostly skiing-related thus far.  We'll go a different direction this morning, first with this rather impressive stalactite outside my condo window:

If you know anything about construction (and I certainly don't), this cannot be a good thing, indicating the accumulation of water where it should not be.  And, so it should be a learning experience, this is most definitely a stalactite:

Stalactites grow down from the cave ceiling, while stalagmites grow up from the cave floor. It's easy to remember which is which: Stalactites have a "T" for top and stalagmites have a "G" for ground. Speleothems actually form because of water.

So, now we know....

You've no doubt heard the expression "A day late and a dollar short."  This item could have been of incalculable value, but comes some forty years to late to help your humble blogger:

Insanity Wrap: Eugenics Experts Advise Having Sex with Short People

Seriously, "Do it for Gaia" would have been far more effective than whatever lines I was actually peddling.... 

Some golf, perhaps?

Two Rahms In One - Jon Rahm is in Hawaii and speaking to the press, with this bit getting the most attention:

“One thing I keep going back to, and it’s probably only funny to me, but I think the Masters Champions Dinner’s going to be a little tense compared to how it’s been in the past,” said Rahm with a laugh during his press conference ahead of the 2023 Sentry Tournament of Champions. “So I keep thinking about it because I wish I could be there and just be able to see how things work out. Too bad the U.S. Open doesn’t have one of those.”

We make a fetish of awkwardness here at Unplayable Lies,  so you've got lots of company.  In fact, this guy finds it amusing as well:

Scottie Scheffler, the defending champion at Augusta National, joined in on the fun during his Wednesday presser at Kapalua with a story about seeing two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson while on vacation in Tennessee last year.

“I haven’t seen many of the LIV guys. I saw (Bubba Watson) on vacation this year and I told him that I was just gonna have a separate table for him in the corner by himself,” Scheffler said with a big laugh.

It's more than just Bubba, they're need a full kids' table.

On the threshold issue of the day, Rahm waffles a bit:

“Yeah, I mean, I think we all know where we stand. There’s still going to be players that choose to transition to LIV is my guess,” said Rahm. “But for a lot of us, I think we see the direction the PGA Tour is going towards, right? I mean, they’re making the necessary changes to adapt to the new age and I think it’s better for everybody.”

Better for everybody?  Call from Honda on Line 2, Jon.....maybe you can explain how good this is for them.   But, when you say that others will transition, and isn't that just the perfect 2023 euphemism, which players might be involved?

But that guy I linked to above has a recurring feature for which Mr. Rahm just qualified, for which I'll offer this one example:


Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss totally, publicly contradicting and humiliating yourself.

So, what did the Spaniard do to qualify?  This is Jon in November at the Euro Tour season-ending event:

“The fact that the RSM doesn’t have any of the top 20 in the world has more points than this event [DP World Tour Championship] where we have seven of the top 20 is laughable,” Rahm said. “The fact that Wentworth [BMW PGA Championship] had less points than Napa [Fortinet Championship], having players in the top 10 in the world is laughable.”

In Rahm’s eyes, more weight should be given to tournaments where the top players in the world are competing, regardless of field size or depth, as he went on to explain.

My God, it's laughable..... But this is Jon this week:

“I mean, it’s a very, very, very extensive bonus to be able to – exactly, only have to beat 38 players compared to any other event, right?

So, what I hear you saying Jon, is that size matters.... Life moves pretty fast, Jon.

Kathy In Full -  I make no pretense of having given the death of Kathy Whitworth her due, but Geoff fills that void in his Thursday Quad freebie.  I was struck with the parallels to Jack contained therein, including this from a Ron Sirak reminiscence:

Fortunately, her father and a couple of local businessmen subsidized Kathy with $5,000 a year
for three years.

“I almost quit because I was playing so bad,” Whitworth said. “I went home after being on tour three or four months, and I thought, ‘I just don't know if I am good enough.’ I was talking to

Mom and Dad around the kitchen table, which we usually did, and they said, ‘Well, you have three years. If you don't make it, just come home and we'll do something else.’ When they said that it kind of took the pressure off me.’

Whitworth won her first check at the Land of the Sky Open in Asheville, N.C. “Thirty dollars,” she said. “Tied for last-place money, but you would have thought I won the tournament.”

Jack famously won $25 in his first Tour event, the L.A. Open if memory serves me.   But this is the bit that caught my eye:

Whitworth’s winning years spanned nearly as long, 1962 to 1985, and she lifted eight trophies after her 40th birthday, titles that took to her to the pinnacle of the sport.

Jack one-upped her, with his winning ways spanning 1962-1986.

Lots of good stuff linked in Geoff's post.

Wither The Tour - Will Knights of The Fried Egg has a timely tutorial:

Elevated Events for Dummies

Do tell:

What are the Elevated Events?

The Elevated Events are a collection of tournaments featuring top PGA Tour players and outsized purses. There are 17 total events that fall within the elevated series: the four majors and 13 other
PGA Tour events. In 2023, those tournaments will be this week's Sentry TOC, the Waste Management Phoenix Open, the Genesis Invitational, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Players Championship, the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, the RBC Heritage, the Wells Fargo Championship, the Memorial, the Travelers Championship, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the BMW Championship, and the Tour Championship.

Who plays in the Elevated Events?

The top 20 players from the previous season’s Player Impact Program ranking are required to participate in Elevated Events in order to collect their PIP bonuses but are allowed to miss one per season. (The Sentry is an exception, as not all PIP stalwarts will meet the TOC’s qualification criteria, which are a win in the previous season or a top-30 finish in the FedEx Cup.) Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry are the only qualified players not in Kapalua this week.

It remains to be seen how large elevated fields will be in the future, but the 2023 editions will be almost maximum size. There are also OWGR implications to be considered.

Fair enough as far as it goes, though this seems more of a punt:

Why is there an Elevated Events series?

How much time do you have?

All right, the short version. Led by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, a group of top PGA Tour players got together at last year’s BMW Championship to discuss a vision for the future of the PGA Tour. As No Laying Up reported, the players agreed to play in the same events more often. That meeting prompted the PGA Tour to announce its initial idea for the elevated series.

Obviously, the schedule change and money behind it are efforts by the PGA Tour to stem the tide of defections to LIV Golf. While the Tour will never be able to compete with the financial resources of the Saudi-backed league, it’s trying to help its top players feel as though they aren’t underpaid. We’ll see if it works.

Before I opine, there's also this Golf.com primer on the same subject:

The PGA Tour is about to look different. Will it be different enough?

Amusingly, that piece begins with and goes on at some length about.....talk about a relentless focus on the important issues of the day, caddies being granted locker room access.   But, unlike Will, they do at least hint at the dark underbelly involved:

If LIV Golf’s 54-hole individual-team hybrid shotgun-start format was a revolution, the PGA Tour’s response remains a bet on the status quo. That’s all well and good as long as the Tour doesn’t forget why it made changes in the first place. But there’s an awkward tension between hyping up the big events without leaving the others behind, and the Tour seems unsure whether or not it should be bragging about this week as the beginning of something big and new. Even the terminology “elevated events” has all but disappeared from its recent communications, and a story on its website homepage touts the strength of field for its upcoming (non-elevated) tournaments in California, a clear reminder that it wants those events and their sponsors to be happy, too. And its FedEx Cup points system does little to distinguish star-studded elevated events from the others. If you don’t look at the end-of-week payouts you’d be forgiven for thinking that nothing had changed.

The Tour has traditionally held 48 events each year, but only thirteen have been awarded elevated status.  That's rather a large disparity, no?  We understand that the Fall portion will change to events for the rabbits of the world, but seems to me there are 35 sponsors that have been effed by the Tour, with Honda being effed the most (sandwiched in the 2023 schedule with elevated events both the two weeks prior and two weeks after their date), but they can't be the only unhappy sponsor.

The more interesting question is what the Tour's schedule should look like.  Those seventeen events, which includes the four majors, is already more golf than many of the top players want to play, at least those not named Sungjae Im.   To me, that's about what the PGA Tour should be, with the remainder logically falling under the Korn Ferry or other developmental tour purview.  But that leaves openings for others to encroach on Jay's turf, and they've never liked that.

While everyone's eyes are focused on these elevated events, the more interesting questions might be the ability of other events to survive.  Some might make a go of it, for instance some of the guys that are on Maui might make the short trip to Oahu.  I saw a header indicating that the Palm Springs event has been able to land some name players, but let's see who actually shows up.

Developing, as the kids like to say.

Twitter Bits - Just a couple of things from my Twitter feed as I eye the exit.  No doubt you've heard this story:

How is this possible, given that the guy has played in two pervious Masters?  Yet his invite goes to some rando?  More importantly, if they were going to lose an invite in the mail, I have a few suggestions.... Yanno, ones that would make that Tuesday dinner less awkward.

The boys at the Fire Pit want to celebrate St. Andrews, a wonderful instinct, but they seem not to understand one of their photos:

Matt, that top right photo is the former premises of Old Tom Morris' shop, which has been converted to the 114th establishment hawking Open swag.  So, celebrating the history of the home of golf is great, but providing evidence that those charged with maintaining that history are clueless is a public service.

This last one also supports one of my oft-mentioned beliefs:  

Sure, let's examine the ties between both the PGA Tour and LIV.  The former has connections to those that lost friends and family on 9/11, whereas the latter has connection to 15 of 19 men that killed those friends and family.  Yeah, I can see why you'd want to point this out to everyone.

Remind me again, what are the Saudis getting for their $2 billion?

That's it for today and this week, as I won't be able to blog tomorrow.  We have prime time golf from scenic Hawaii to amuse us, so let's watch Jon Rahm beat up those 38 other guys.  see you Monday to get back to our typical wrappage.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)