Friday, February 24, 2023

Your Friday Frisson

Lots to cover on Honda and LIV, but also some schedule issues to warn of.  I head back to Utah tomorrow for what will be my last ski trip.  The issue is that it appears I'll be headed to Sun Valley on Monday, so the Honda may not get wrapped in the usual fashion.

I know it's not all about me, except when it is....

Tree, Forest - It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.... OK, I lied with that first bit:

I think that's right, how could it be otherwise given the location.  But it's curious thing when this item about the future of the event devotes so many pixels to wallowing in a glorious past, Tiger v. Rory in 2012, that can never be recaptured.

Rendering this quite the abrupt segue:

But that was then.

Fast forward nine years to this week’s Honda Classic and just three top 20 players are in the field.
Jupiter residents and former champions Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas are taking the week off. So, too, is 2016 champion Adam Scott. Fast forward another year — to 2024 — and the Honda Classic won’t even be called the Honda. The PGA Tour’s longest-running sponsor, dating back 42 years, announced last year that it is not renewing its partnership.

Which raises the question: What is to become not only of the Honda but also other non-designated PGA Tour events in this new era? On the surface, the schedule now appears to be comprised of the haves (the 13 events that offer purses of $15 to $25 million) and the have-nots (the AT&T Pebble Beach and Honda Classics, which this year drew their weakest fields in recent memory)

This no doubt has been a good strategy:

That’s when the Tour recruited Kennerly, a veteran of the sports marketing industry since 1987, to lead a reimagining of the tournament. Kennerly saw an opportunity. The tournament, as he saw it, was lacking in one key area: community engagement.

“We focused our customer energy, enthusiasm, as opposed to an old-fashioned golf tournament,” Kennerly said. “We focused on the energy. Making it fun for families, so many of the things that have taken the event from where it was in ’06 to where it is now.”

“Our strategy when we took over the harbor again after 2006 was to really embrace our community, to embrace Palm Beach county, embrace the Nicklaus family,” Kennerly said. “The assets were there. The tools were in place. They just weren’t being utilized properly.”

All good, but there's still a golf tournament to be held....And it helps to have players whose names are somewhat familiar.... But they also fill in some background:

As the Tour began searching for four additional events to be given designated status, Kennerly said the Honda didn’t even apply.

“We knew that with Bay Hill [Arnold Palmer] and the Players after us and Tiger’s event [Genesis] being before us — this was before the Waste Management was elevated — we knew that even if we wanted to be elevated, the PGA Tour wasn’t going to have four elevated events in a row,” he said.

And remind me, who did that to you?  Though this is curious for sure:

There was also one other complication: Honda nixing its sponsorship.

While the timing of the announcement may have led observers to believe Honda’s decision was related to the restructuring of the Tour schedule, Kennerly said that was not the case.

“We knew Honda was not going to renew shortly after the ’22 event,” he said. “Forty-two years is a great run. We’re fortunate to have had Honda for that long, the longest-running sponsor in golf. And we’re going to celebrate 42 years this week with American Honda.”

Yeah, I know you're going out of your way to not piss off those guys in PVB, but have you considered the fact that Honda was heading for the exits because the Tour's schedule had made their event non-viable even before the "elevation" of events.

Not only did the Tour move the Players back from May to March (which I prefer, but is obviously relevant to this event), but they shoe-horned the Match Play in as well (it used to be part of the West Coast Swing).  So, yeah, this year's schedule left the Honda looking like Poland in 1938, but Honda had been sold down the river many years previously.

In perhaps a first in these pages, I'll give props to Billy Ho:

This week, Shane Lowry, Sungjae Im and Billy Horschel are all playing the role of Iron Man.

No, they’re not donning red and gold suits and flying high above PGA National, but the trio is in the middle of a run of five-straight Tour starts. They’re all playing the Honda this week after the Phoenix Open and Genesis. They will then go on to Bay Hill and the Players.

Lowry will sleep in his own bed this week while Horschel lives near the Tour’s headquarters in Ponte Vedra, Fla., and seems to have an affinity for the Honda. This is his 11th time teeing it up in the event.

“When I look at the Honda, I grew up 90 minutes from there,” Horschel said in a statement when committing to the event. “I’m born and raised in the state of Florida. My family’s been in the state of Florida for nearly 100 years now. There’s a big Florida Gator contingent down there. So there’s so many reasons why I just couldn’t have skipped this event.”

 It'll be news when Sunjae Im actually takes a week off, but this is the issue:

“The Tour needs to understand that, that when you have 40 guys here that could stay in their bed, hop in their car and drive 10, 15 minutes to a tournament, they need to make sure that they’re putting this in the right spot so they get all those top players playing here on a regular basis.”

Good luck getting the Tour to understand that, though it might have been preferable if that Eureka moment came before they burned off their longest continual sponsor.  I'm sure another sponsor will step in, they always have, but you'd think they would understand how they'll be treated once the ink on the contract dries.

LIV Follies - We've got some all sorts of fun stuff lined up, but we'll start with a semi-serious item.  To wit, the U.S. courts have seemed strangely hostile to these lovely Saudi folks:

The hits keep coming for LIV Golf and the Public Investment Fund in U.S. federal court.

Last week a judge ruled against the “sovereign immunity” claim by the PIF and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, a serious blow to LIV and its financial backer in its antitrust case against the PGA Tour.

On Tuesday, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled the PGA Tour will be able to add the PIF and Al-Rumayyan as defendants in its countersuit against LIV, dragging the financiers deeper into the judicial weeds.

The Saudis seem to have believed that they could use the courts while somehow remaining above the fray.  Doesn't seem to be working so awfully well:

This is why this lawsuit was inevitably going to take a decade or more, rendering it a sideshow in our circus proceedings.   The better bet might have been that Justice Department antitrust investigation, though they don't seem inclined to play like the Chinese and Ukrainians and simply pay off the Biden family.   

It's Go Time in Mexico, so have you figured out where to find the CW?  Because there's comedy gold to be found, as they apparently will humiliate themselves and wear matching outfits:

If that amuses, Alan's got one more:

Egads, these guys are just clueless....

At one point LIV seemed to be muzzling the guys, which is quite the good strategy given the guys involved.  The very existence of LIV seems to this observer counter-productive in that it's triggered a consistent revisiting of the Saudis Greatest Hits Album of Atrocities.  Ironically, this comment does the same:

It doesn’t appear Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy will mend fences any time soon. On Thursday, ahead of the season opener for LIV Golf, where former Masters champ Garcia now plays, the
Spaniard said the breakdown of his friendship with four-time major winner McIlroy is a "sad" development.

“I think it is very sad,” Garcia told Telegraph Sport at the Mayakoba resort ahead of LIV Golf's season opener. “I think that we’ve done so many things together and had so many experiences that for him to throw that away just because I decided to go to a different tour, well, it doesn’t seem very mature; lacking maturity, really. But Rory’s got his own life, and he makes his own choices, the same way that I make mine. I respect his choices, but it seems like he doesn’t respect the ones I make."

Sergio, have you considered the fact that it's not your decision that Rory doesn't respect, but rather it's you personally?

You find Rory immature, but I just want to quickly review a few things with you and see your thoughts on the relative immaturity demonstrated therein.  First your incredibly gracious exit from the PGA Tour:

Last summer, Garcia left the PGA Tour, where he had won 11 times, for LIV Golf not long after a rules controversy in which he voiced frustration at an official at the Wells Fargo in May. "Can’t wait to leave this tour," he said at the time. "Just a couple more weeks until I don’t have to deal with you anymore.”

So, on the way out, you could resist s****g on the Tour that made you fabulously wealthy and that your friend Rory continues to support.  Just to be clear you worthless piece of pond scum, who is not respecting the other's decision.

 But Sergio didn't just crap on the one Tour that made him famous, he turned on the other one as well:

And according to Telegraph Sport, Garcia blew a fuse when news broke he was being disciplined.

"The news (of the ban) came out during last week's BMW International (in Munich)," an anonymous source told the broadsheet.

"Sergio flew off the handle, shouting 'this Tour is s***, you're all fucked, should have taken the Saudi money'. Bob MacIntyre was there and was disgusted."

So far, MacIntyre and his management team have yet to response to the Telegraph's story. But he did post a cryptic tweet.


"Amazing how fast you can lose respect for someone that you’ve looked up to all your life," MacIntyre wrote.

You looked up to Sergio?  Geez, what were you thinking?

I mean, surely you knew about this demonstration of Sergio's Maturity:


I love this one because it's so difficult to decide the worst of it, was it the act itself or the "nothing but net" defense?

 And this in Saudi Arabia, leaving us to wonder why they wanted him back:


Again not the worst of it, as the next day he intentionally damaged several greens in a fit of pique.  So, Sergio is the one guy I want to hear about on the subject of immaturity, because he has retired the Championship Belt in the genre.

I almost forgot this one, confirming that he's an a****e to pretty much everyone:

This reaction to the Adidas story made me laugh as well:

But...but I had been reliably informed that it was a Jet-Ski accident.... Heh!

Should we care about this?

What happens to LIV golfers once they’re left off a roster?

Mostly not, though of course you can decide for yourself.  It's a tangled web, but I'll just excerpt this bit because I thought the youngsters made a horrible decision:

Since the end of LIV’s season, most of the above players (plus other LIV cast-offs) have spent significant time playing International Series events. Those are held on the Asian Tour, but they’re LIV-adjacent; in February 2022 LIV commissioner Greg Norman announced a 10-year, $300 million commitment to the seven-event series. The tournaments have world ranking points, unlike LIV’s 54-hole no-cut events. They have also attracted a significant number of LIV players in their offseasons, who have teed it up at International Series events in Morocco, Oman, Qatar and more in recent months.

That’s also where former U.S. Amateur champ Andy Ogletree finds himself. Ogletree received a berth into the first LIV event, finished in last place (at 24-over par, 31 shots behind winner Charl Schwartzel) and was suspended for the rest of the year by the PGA Tour. While he didn’t appear in another LIV event, he did receive an exemption into the International Series event in Egypt, which he won. Last week, he won the International Series event in Qatar, making him the current Order of Merit leader.

“It’s crazy to think about all that’s gone on the last year, it’s kind of been a roller coaster ride. I don’t know where to begin,” he said after his win.

But where does that get him?

We all kind of understood the end-of-career guys grabbing a last paycheck, although their whining has dissipated any lingering support.   But a young kid coming out of school that wants to avoid the grind?  I have little interest in that, and I suspect that foregoing the grind will prove to be a career-minimization strategy.

We'll see how their week goes, but I'm not seeing any reason to tune in.

Full Swing - As you'll know by now, I found the whole series quite lame, though I'm finding it difficult to put into words its failing.  My frame of reference is The Last Dance, and Mike Bamberger interestingly has the same touchstone:

You can shoot all day and into the night until you get (if you’re lucky!) Michael Jordan, looking heavy, his eyes yellow, drink in hand, suddenly giving you a face, with no advance warning, that
captures all of his disdain for Isiah Thomas.

But it’s a talkie, this famous documentary called The Last Dance, right? So you need audio too. You need spoken words. And not just any old words from a press conference. Words that will somehow give you more insight into the face you are watching. As for the director and the sound engineer and the boom-mic operator, that whole gang has one chance to get it right, if Jordan gives you anything worthwhile at all. Because you cannot say, “OK, Mike, but this time give us a beat after the word asshole, would you?”

Let’s go back to MJ and The Last Dance. You’re sitting there and he’s offering you, the viewer, a facial expression that you have never seen, not from him, but you’re going to use every bit of your life experience to read it. Nobody asked Jordan to produce this face, as a director does with an actor. A mood was created and it just showed up on him, washed over Airness like a wave.

Jordan’s words, the same. They’re not from a script. They’re from him. They come from deep within. And that combination, the one-two punch of words and pictures, advances our understanding of the subject—and ultimately some tiny part of the human condition. The gift of insight. We crave it in our lives.

Which is great stuff, except for the fact that he's not reviewing The Last Dance....  But amusing that he and I had the same reaction, essentially whining about what Full Swing isn't.  And he seems to have the same issue in describing what's missing:

In the first segment of the Netflix series, the subjects are Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas and the episode is called “Frenemies.” It’s the only episode I watched and it did not make me want to watch others, although I have heard from reliable sources there are some good ones.

In “Frenemies,” the stakes are so low, and the problems of the two protagonists, as they were revealed to me, engendered no emotion. I did learn that Spieth tends to sit upright, with his seatbelt on, when flying in a private plane, while his lifelong friend and competitor, Thomas, looks as if he’s slouched on a sofa at home, playing on a Nintendo DS or something.

I wish the series well. I root for all serious storytellers.

Maybe someday, years or decades from now, other filmmakers will have another crack at this story.

Just doing some public note-taking here:

Both Thomas and Spieth were born in 1993. How does that biographical start, proximity in age, influence your connection to another person?

When did they feel closest as kids?

When did they feel most distant as kids?

How did each handle the agent recruitment process? Could they be open with one another, or was it the first time they had to keep things from each other?

In his deepest place, what was it like for Justin to watch Jordan win the Masters? The U.S. Open? The British Open? His blowup on 12 in the last round of 2016 Masters?

What was it like for Jordan Spieth, in the oasis of his lifelong home, Dallas, to be so far from the cool kids, as “JT and Tiger” became a thing, with Rickie Fowler riding shotgun?

How did it feel for Spieth to watch his buddy Thomas star on the 2019 Presidents Cup team, chest-bumping with Tiger and saving the day while Spieth, in a slump, neither made the team nor was chosen as a captain’s pick?

In “Frenemies,” we see and hear Spieth calling Thomas to discuss his role as the best man at JT’s wedding. It’s a neat moment.

It’s the tip of an iceberg.

We know who won the 2022 PGA Championship. We have seen the interiors of private planes.

What we want is an insight into the human condition.

Is that asking too much?

Apparently it is.  The first thing you'll note is that he watched that first episode and rendered a hard pass on the rest, which is pretty much all we need to know.

But the point he's making is that nothing interesting is seen or heard.  It's all trite clichés, repeated endlessly.  Golf Digest has this interview with Executive Producer Chad Mumm, in which he takes a victory lap.  Though I'm not seeing it:

Sam Weinman: We watched all eight episodes, and as we watched this, we wanted to know, who did you envision as your audience for this? You know, we're golf people. Was it us? Was it people who knew nothing about golf? Was it somewhere in between?

Chad Mumm: I think from the beginning, we always wanted to try to use this show to expand the audience for golf. I think it’s surprising that golf hasn't had a treatment like this before. We were trying to get inside golfers’ heads and understand who they are as people to build stakes for those big competitive moments. That was the goal, and we thought that if we did that right, it would satisfy the golf sickos. But I think the hope was always to do something you could watch with your friend who's not a golfer, or your spouse. My dream was my aunt calling me, being like, “I love the show. It was great.”

Yeah, but noted golf sicko Mike Bamberger couldn't be bothered with Episodes 2-8.... I don't think they did themselves any favors in screwing with the sequencing, not least because I lost count of how many times they used Mito's tee shot on the 72nd hole at Southern Hills.  I think those dramatic moments that they wanted to hype tend to be frustratingly less dramatic than they envision, which is one reason why the audience for golf is so tiny.

And the LIV stuff was a bit strange:

Alex Myers: There's been a lot of debate over whether LIV Golf was a blessing for you guys or a curse. I wonder where you fall on that.

Chad Mumm: When it first came down, it felt like maybe it was a curse in some ways because

we had amazing access. You'll see in the show Brooks Koepka is somebody that we've been working with for the entire history of shooting the show. He was one of the first two interviews we did. He had given us amazing access, along with his fiancee Jena. Same thing with Ian Poulter and Dustin Johnson. We invested a lot of time and resources in sort of telling their stories and we were afraid they’d shut us out.

But they didn't. And what was really interesting about it was that you have golfers who aren't really known for being that outspoken about anything, and now they're being asked these questions about geopolitics and even more importantly, about why they're even here. Is it to win? Is it for legacy? Has playing the PGA Tour been the dream their whole lives, or is it for money? Is this a business to them or is this passion?

And so that created these really interesting stakes that I think gave the show an extra boost.

Yeah, but you weren't able to extract much from that underlying drama, not least because those involved (Poults and Brooksie) come off as entitled jerks.

And what of our Poults?  That locker room meltdown was pure performance art, no?  I don't know this guy, but Shipnuck's tweet above generated this reaction:

One last bit on the Poults meltdown.  Are you familiar with the concept of an Easter Egg?

An Easter egg is a message, image, or feature hidden in software, a video game, a film, or another, usually electronic, medium.

It turns out that Poults gave us an Easter Egg in that clip:

The egg in question comes in Episode 3, otherwise known as the Ian Poulter episode. Many viewers probably went into that episode prepared to hate the Englishman, but it actually showed him in a new light. Except, of course, for his infamous locker room outburst at the WGC-Match Play, which featured him aggressively throwing multiple clubs into the ground after losing to Matt Fitzpatrick. One thing most of us didn't notice, though, was a handle of Tito's vodka in Poults' locker. Nice catch here by thegolfersgirlfriend on TikTok:

Potential unpopular opinion incoming ... this makes me kind of like Poulter more? Despite having made nearly $30 million in on-course earnings and who knows how much more off the course, Poulter is still sneaking vodka into the locker room for a post-round drink (we assume) like he's a sophomore in high school and his parents are away for the weekend. Why bother going to the 19th hole bar where the same vodka pour will almost certainly cost $15 or more when you can literally bring the 19th hole to your locker? Chess, not checkers, folks.

That presupposes that these guys actually pay for their drinks, which seems naive.

Poults is technically an adult and therefore legally entitled to purchase and consume alcohol, but this is still a bit weird....  None of it makes me like the man any more, that's for certain.

More importantly, several of the guys were given the opportunity to share their thoughts on the move to LIV and, spoiler alert, it seems that it was all about the money.  I don't know you, Dear Reader, but I am so profoundly disillusioned....

That's it for today.  Not sure when I'll get back to the keyboard, but best for you to check back early and often.

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