Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Tuesday Teasers - Microblogging Edition

I wasn't sure whether I'd blog today, as it's a fairly content-free moment in the golf metaverse.  But, have you seen the Yankees lately?  So, just a couple of bits for your delectation....

The Year That Was - Alan Shipnuck has replaced Geoff Shackelford as the most-cited source on this blog, amusing in the sense that I would seem to be the last guy on the planet to make common cause with two such archetypes of SoCal lefties.... But, in my defense, that Mailbag of Alan's sure is some sweet, low-impact blogging...

In any event, Alan has scrutinized his navel and decided that the world needs to revisit his last year, and I'll admit there are some juicy bits.  Of course, there is commercial interest involved, as this becomes the addendum to the release of the paperback edition of his Phil biography.  I'm sure you'd be clicking on that Amazon link, though just a reminder that Alan has admitted that the juiciest bits he knows aren't in the book.  Rather a weird sales pitch to this observer...

So, Alan has this piece up at his new home:


In this exclusive excerpt from the new “Phil” paperback, the author reflects on the turbulent last year for himself and the protagonist of the book

I didn't realize that English isn't Alan's first language, because I assume each and every one of my readers recoiled in horror, screaming, "It's Mickelson and Me, you bloody ignoramus"....

Alan ledes with his last-minute decision to head to London to cover that first LIV event, including this story that still amuses:

After the round Mickelson journeyed to an interview area outside the press tent. I had my credential scanned to gain access to this roped-off spot, like every other reporter. I arrived just as Mickelson stepped to the microphone. Reporters and cameramen were already standing two- and three-deep against a metal railing, so I took my spot in the back row. Just as Mickelson began answering the first question, I felt some jostling to my right. I ignored it, assuming this was a persnickety cameraman trying to squeeze into the front row, which happens. Then a meaty hand squeezed my arm. Annoyed, I pulled it away without even looking back. Then someone grabbed my other arm. That was when I realized that I had been bracketed by a pair of neckless security goons. “We need to scan your badge,” one of them said.

I kept my eyes on Mickelson and said, “I’m good. It just got scanned two minutes ago.”

They tried to pull me backward, but drawing upon the swim move taught by my high school basketball coach, I wriggled free and stood my ground. Now these ear-pieced thugs grabbed me harder.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” I growled.

This worked, momentarily, and they loosened their grasps. But the balder, uglier of the two gents elbowed his way directly in front of me and said, with some heat, “We’re going to need to scan your badge. Right now.”

Bet you didn't knw that golf was a contact sport.  But what I find interesting and amusing is that he thinks he needs to explain n detail why he went along with the goons:

I suddenly became aware that some reporters were ignoring Mickelson and now watching my antagonists and me. In that split second I ran a quick cost-benefit analysis in my mind. The preceding four months—from the publication of the excerpts and then the release of this book and corresponding hoopla—had been an exceptionally turbulent time. A reporter’s job is to tell the story, not become it, but the revelations in this book and the upheaval it wrought for Mickelson put me at the center of the storm. The last thing I wanted was to make more headlines by rolling around in the dirt with a couple of security guards in front of the global golf press, so I decided to play peacemaker. I walked on my own volition about 20 steps to the nice young woman in charge of scanning the badges; the security henchmen shadowed my every move. My credential got zapped and it confirmed what each of us already knew: I had every right to be in the interview area. I strode back toward Mickelson, but the shorter, fatter security guard stepped directly in front of me, blocking my path.

“This is fucking ridiculous,” I said. “Who told you to pull this shit?”

“I don’t have to answer that,” he said, his breath reeking of tuna and onions.

This is a recurring theme, Alan insisting that he doesn't want to be the story, then immediately making himself the story (and every time he does I revert to that grammatically inaccurate header).  Including, in this case, an eerily specific account of the goon's prior meal....

Forgive the long excerpts, but it was quite the show:

We stood there talking in circles for a few more minutes. To his everlasting credit, the Welsh sportswriter James Corrigan—a frequent antagonist of mine on Twitter—wandered over and began heckling the security guards. About then Mickelson ended his press conference and exited stage right. The security dudes suddenly became unconcerned with the state of my media credential and skulked away.

I was pissed. I didn’t get to listen to Mickelson’s comments or ask him a question. I texted Greg Norman: “Are you aware that I just got muscled out of Phil’s press conference by a couple of your goons?” He didn’t respond immediately.

I retreated to the press room to put the final coat of polish on my dispatch about the debut of golf’s new world order. I didn’t mention the incident with the security guards because I didn’t want to make myself the story. After filing the article, I caught an Uber back to my hotel, closing my eyes for a few minutes at the end of a long, crazy day. When I connected to the wifi at the hotel, my phone began dinging like a slot machine. A video had begun making the rounds of my confrontation with the security guards. Shot by Alex Thomas, the sports anchor for CNN International, it captured the moments when I was being obstructed by the meatheads after having my badge scanned. Its Zapruder-like value comes from what can be glimpsed in the background: Standing directly behind me was Greg Fucking Norman. His face was contorted into such a scowl he looked like the Grim Reaper, only more devoid of a soul. I had no idea he had been standing right there, a witness to the tomfoolery of his security lackeys.

He gets a characteristically lying text from Norman later, but then uncritically allows LIV to dodge blame and drops it at Phil's feet:

In watching the video snippet, I had noticed that standing in the background, simpering, was Mickelson’s swing coach, Andrew Getson. At one point he leans in and whispers something to Norman, looking a little too pleased with himself. After subsequently unwinding the events with various involved parties, I believe that it was Mickelson, or his people, who sent in the clowns, not LIV. Sure, Norman could have interceded, but, charitably, he might not have grasped what was happening until it was too late. I confronted Mickelson’s manager, Peter Davis, with my theory. With his preppy wardrobe and slicked-back hair, Davis has the vibe of the punchable bad guy from every teen movie. He denied any culpability, but his smarmy smirk told a different story.

The whole kerfuffle is noteworthy not because one brave and hardworking reporter was mistreated but for what it apparently said about Mickelson and those around him: Despite the carefully worded press releases and cloying public statements, they still felt the rules didn’t apply to them, and that they could warp their reality, and public opinion, through bullying. When Mickelson returned from his exile, he paid a lot of lip service to being a changed man. The early returns suggested otherwise.

Do I have the slightest problem with him laying this at the feet of Phil?  Of course not, but can you see the extent to which he's going out of his way to absolve LIV of blame?  Remind me, Alan, whose event was it?  Are all the players allowed to bring no-neck thugs?  Or just Phil?  If it happened on Greg's watch, he's responsible...

Or perhaps you too find these scary mofo's and are more concerned about your personal safety....

I wasn't aware of the first part of this, but boy do I go a different direction on the back end:

A couple of weeks after the Open, Mickelson did enjoy rich vindication: Forbes named him the highest paid athlete in the world, estimating he had earned $138 million in the preceding 12 months. (Tiger Woods, who in his heyday topped the list 10 years running, was surpassed by four LIV golfers despite weighing in at $68 million.) Professional golf had never been awash in so much funny money, and then the spigot was opened even further. At the Tour Championship, in August, embattled commissioner Jay Monahan announced that in 2023 the PGA Tour would roll out a super schedule of “elevated” tournaments with $20 million purses, double or more what these events had previously been paying out. Some would not bother with 36-hole cuts. It was LIV Lite, and in the wake of the announcement one veteran golf writer tweeted simply, “Phil was right.” OK, that was me. With more nuance: Mickelson had long nursed the suspicion that the PGA Tour was not giving the players their fair share of the revenue. He cited the Tour as having cash reserves of $800 million, an exaggerated number that hinted at the truth, especially with a new TV contract kicking in for the 2022 season. Faced with the LIV threat, the Tour created the nebulous Player Impact Program as a way to funnel money to the top players, and in less than a year the pot has ballooned from paying 10 players $40 million to distributing a whopping $100 million among 20 players. (One of the Tour’s best selling points had been that it is a pure meritocracy versus LIV’s corrupting guaranteed money, but the PIP now offers lavish compensation that is not directly tied to on-course performance.) Asked at the Tour Championship where all this fresh money would come from, Monahan said existing tournament sponsors would help defray the costs, but he also cited the primary source of this new largesse: “Reserves.” Phil was right, and even his shrillest critic begrudgingly admitted it. “As much as I probably don’t want to give Phil any sort of credit at all,” said McIlroy, “yeah, there were certain points that he was trying to make. Some of these ideas, did they have merit? Of course they did.” Mickelson had resolved not to publicly discuss Tour matters and was clearly trying to shed his smart aleck tendencies, but he couldn’t resist noting, “The guys on Tour are playing for a lot more money—that’s great that they magically found a couple hundred million.”

I think the fight over the reserves vindicates Jay.  He anticipated a threat to the Tour's business an ensured that his organization had sufficient resources.  Perhaps the only thing he missed is to not anticipate, per the horror movie cliché, that the calls would come from inside the house.

But Alan does at least add some piquant details about our boy Phil, for whom sincerity isn't his strongest suit:

The sense of vindication, or righteousness, finally put a little pep in Mickelson’s step. He had looked utterly lost on the golf course since returning from exile, including woeful missed cuts at the U.S. and British Opens. But he tied for eighth at LIV Chicago and 15th at LIV Bangkok, and then he flew from Thailand to Saudi Arabia for LIV Jeddah. This was Mickelson’s first visit to the Kingdom since he had been quoted calling its people “scary motherfuckers.” He channeled all that anxiety into a relentless charm offensive. A fellow LIV golfer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says, “If you think Phil is a bullshit artist normally, this was another level. You’ve never seen anyone kiss so much ass with that kind of enthusiasm and skill. He was ‘on’ from the second he got off the plane and never broke character. I’m pretty sure by the end of the week he could have been elected mayor of King Abdullah City, if they actually held elections over there.”

Mickelson ramped up his rhetoric in his pre-tournament press conference, saying, “Pretty much all the best players played on the PGA Tour, at least for the last 20 years. That will never be the case again. I think going forward you have to pick a side. You have to pick which side you think is going to be successful. And I firmly believe that I’m on the winning side of how things are going to evolve and shape in the coming years for professional golf.”  

 Does he know how they feel about gambling?  But I would argue he breaks character here:

Those were fighting words, but another question in the presser offered a chance at reconciliation: “You made some comments about this country last year which you’ve apologized for. I wondered how you feel about it now that you’re here? Have you changed your opinion?”

This was the ultimate softball, a chance for Mickelson—who at that moment was adorned with a temporary henna tattoo he had received the night before at a tournament party—to wax about the wonders of Saudi Arabia and the hospitality of its people. Instead, he responded, “So I will reiterate, I never did an interview with Alan Shipnick. And I find that my experience with everybody associated with LIV Golf has been nothing but incredibly positive and I have the utmost respect for everybody that I’ve been involved with.”

there's a seeming typo in the above that certainly missed, but Alan explains: 

Once again, Mickelson was trying to be too cute by half, suggesting in this little semantic game that our hour-long phone call that informs a crucial chunk of this book had not been an actual interview. At least, that’s how I took it, but fans and reporters less learned in the black art of Mickelsonian misdirection thought he was claiming I had made up the whole thing. (If that was the case, what the heck was he always apologizing for?) Instead of some warm, fuzzy remarks about his host nation, Mickelson touched on another frenzied news cycle about his weirdness and duplicity. He was forced to clarify his remarks the next day to Bob Harig of Sports Illustrated: “We agreed multiple times that I was not going to be interviewed or a part of the book. He obviously took a conversation differently and we’re going to have to agree to disagree.” This was utterly nonsensical. Not be part of the book? He is the book! We had no such agreement that he wouldn’t be interviewed; that’s why I kept asking him to sit for questions. And then he called me.

A funny and ridiculous postscript came by way of a phone call from someone very close to Mickelson, who told me, “When he said your name wrong in Jeddah, I know him well enough to know that he intentionally mispronounced it. That way he has a technicality he can fall back on: ‘I didn’t say Shipnuck, I said Shipnick.’ I know it sounds crazy but that’s how smart he thinks he is.”

If you go back through my arc hives you would find that I've often made a similar point, that Bad Phil was often the result of an over-estimation of his own cleverness.  But the thing is, I think Alan is as well....And, like Phil, he keeps saying it's not about him, then making it all about himself.

But the whole thing is weird, including Alan's role in it.  I found this interview with him that has some curious bits as well:

Were you surprised by how honest he was?

Yes, because everyone goes over to Saudi Arabia and takes their money. But there’s a script and if you stay on script, you’re only there to grow the game and you’re a golfer, not a politician. The
rest of us roll our eyes because we know it’s all BS and all about the money, but Phil actually said the quiet parts out loud and he was brutally honest about it. I was impressed by his candor.

I knew in that moment that what he was saying was going to spark some controversy. But Phil has spent his whole career talking his way out of controversy. I never imagined it would send him into exile. But I guess like Phil, I kind of underestimated the emotion around Saudi Arabia, especially for Americans. It wasn’t so much his words, it was his actions. He was actively colluding to subvert the interests of the PGA Tour. That’s really why the players closed ranks and were so harsh in their criticism.

Phil?  Honest?  Surely you jest....The whole of his bio of the man demonstrates a transactional relationship with the truth, but now we're crediting him as a truth teller.

But what is this truth?  It was white-hot anger at the organization to which he belonged and that had made him a fabulously wealthy man, yet he spewed contempt.  Then a willingness to use the Saudis, the firggin Saudis, Alan, as leverage against his own peers.  Did that not set off some alarms, Alan?  

Plus, and this is a relatively minor point, but I love the misdirection Alan provides and abides in that first 'graph.  Yes, many players before Phil went and played an event In the Kingdom and took the blood money.  But LIV's business model was always one that would destroy the PGA Tour if it succeeded, so no one wants to talk about Phil conspiring to destroy the place where his alleged friends wanted to play.

But tis is really rich:

What kind of feedback have you had from players, agents and PGA Tour staff?

Universally, the reaction I got was thank you for showing the world who Phil really is and thank you for putting all the cards on the table with the Saudi stuff. There’s always been a gulf between the public and private Phil. People in the game have always known the real Phil, but the fans haven’t so I think there was some gratification for everyone getting to see the real Phil.

Obviously the interviewer has missed what an apologist for the Wahabis Alan is.  May I remind all of this:

I still haven’t found out if you are for or against LIV? @ReneSchaufuss

Good. Why do I have to pick a side? The golf world, and the golf media, has already become too tribal. I am intrigued by LIV, and exasperated and amused. The new league has made some monumental mistakes and gotten some things right. The players can be obnoxiously self-righteous and comically oppressed, but they also make a lot of good points. The tournaments are kind of ridiculous but also sort of fun. The Saudi Arabian government has done, and continues to do, abhorrent things, and the outcry around the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi undoubtedly stoked the sportswashing campaign that birthed LIV. But from the genocide of the Native Americans to the internment of Japanese citizens to the treatment of Blacks during the Jim Crow years to the torture at Abu Ghraib and the policy of “extraordinary rendition,” the U.S. government has often been on the wrong side of history. The source of LIV’s money is extremely uncomfortable, but it’s also true that we all happily burn Saudi oil and many American politicians (and business leaders) are in bed with the Kingdom, so it seems weird to hold golfers to a higher standard than public servants. I know nuance is unfashionable in these polarized times, but that is what I aspire to.

That's not nuance, Alan, it's carrying water for one of the most reprehensible regimes on the planet...

Think about the disingenuousness of Alan's presentation.  Oh, he throws out Kashoggi, so he can't be accused of failing to acknowledge their abuses.  But, and here's where the mental illness that is modern liberalism comes to the fore, we can't criticize the Saudis because we too have sinned.... and because, get this, we put gas in our cars.  Alan lives in a world where he doesn't have to deal with governments that don't meet his exacting moral standards, which is little more than empty virtue signaling.

But, what is the end result of this mindset?  Alan is free to criticize his government, but has he asked himself what might happen to a Saudi citizen that mentioned Kashoggi?  He's going out of his way to nullify criticism of those he calls abhorent, and in doping so he is doing the Saudis the same favor that Phil is and that so outraged us all.

And, in doing so, he feels smug and self-satisfied, because, yanno, Abu Ghraib.  And, to repeat myself, he's seems all in the Saudis destroying the premiere golf tour on the planet.  I guess he just wants to grow the game...

Udder Bits - Just a few things on an expedited basis.  This I think could actually be fun:

The idea of a Ryder Cup- or Presidents Cup-style event for senior tour players has been bandied
about for years. And, in fact, the inaugural playing of such a tournament was supposed to take place in late 2022. That didn’t happen, but many of the same organizers have kept pushing forward, and the event will become a reality later this year.

PGA Tour Champions and sports event and marketing company Intersport announced on Monday that the first World Champions Cup will be held Dec. 7-10 at The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla. The competition, chaired by Peter Jacobsen, brings together teams from the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup, with six-man squads representing the U.S., Europe and Internationals. Jim Furyk will captain the Americans, Irishman Darren Clarke leads Europe, and South African Ernie Els helms the Internationals.

Fun, as long as you keep your expectations in check.  Though speaking of expectations....

“We're about to launch here in December an event that we think's going to be a 100-year event. This is going to go on forever," said Charlie Besser, founder and CEO of Intersport.

Remind me, how did that thousand year Reich turn out?

Is there anything that could make the LIV events less credible?  You in the first row:

I don't know Chris, but I found this an enjoyably droll reaction:

Yeah.  I'm guessing the pencils will have erasers.

I can't resist one Patrick jab.  Hey, I'm only human:

Have you heard the DJ-Pat Perez story?  

On Sunday evening, close watchers of the professional game might have paused when they saw quotes critical of PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan attributed to LIV golfer Dustin Johnson.

“We don’t give a damn how he feels,” the Australian Associated Press reported Johnson saying of Monahan, after Johnson’s team, the 4Aces, won the LIV team event in Australia. “We know how he feels about us, so it’s mutual.”

When the report surfaced, it seemed odd that Johnson would take such a pointed shot at the Tour. In the months following his departure for LIV, Johnson has avoided speaking ill of the Tour or its leadership, lending only that he felt his decision came down to money and a lighter playing schedule. (Johnson reportedly received a $100 million signing bonus with the new league.)

And, indeed, by Monday morning in the U.S., it had become clear there was a problem: Johnson said he didn’t deliver the dig.

In a statement to the media Monday morning, Johnson’s agent, David Winkle, wrote, “I spoke with Dustin from Singapore this morning at which time he emphatically denied making any such statement. He elaborated by saying his actual response to the question was ‘no comment.'”

Look, DJ doesn't say much of anything, so the story strained credulity when it broke, and it later came out that the comments came from Pat Perez.  Yeah, that's the thing, have you ever cared about anything that came out of Pat Perez' mouth?

But facts are facts, and it's now Tuesday morning, and this is the Golfweek home page as of when I sat down at the keyboard:

It's been more than 24 hours since those comments were attributed to another player, yet Golfweek isn't seemingly interested in clarifying things.  I'm a believer in Occam's Razor, so I'm perfectly happy to attribute it to laziness and/or incompetence, but that's probably worse, no?

I'll see you later in the week.

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