Thursday Threads - Memorial Day Edition

No, not that Memorial Day.  This is the Dublin (OH) edition....

Houston, We Have A Problem -  Specifically, the problem is Houston, or at least the opening provided for them:

Just a handful of months after putting the final pile of dirt on the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play, a fellow Texas tournament has slid back into the Austin event’s slot in the PGA Tour’s spring schedule.

Tour officials announced on Wednesday that the Houston Open will be held March 28-31, marking the first time since 2018 the event will be in the spring rotation. The Valero Texas Open in San Antonio is expected to maintain its position as the following week’s event, leading into the Masters.

According to an announcement from the Tour and Astros Golf Foundation, the tournament has also secured a long-term agreement with Texas Children’s, the largest pediatric and women’s health system in the nation. The agreement is for five years.

Although locking in additional pediatric resources seems a good call, given the maturity level on display in our game.... Just a shame that PReed won't be able to play, because the synergy of combining his skill set with the imaginative use of garbage cans by Mr. Crane's crew could be good fun....

Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, they might need to do something about that restoration design credit:

The event moved from the private Golf Club of Houston to the municipal Memorial Park in 2020 after significant investment from Crane, who funneled enough cash into the muni track to get esteemed designer Tom Doak on board, with Brooks Koepka as a player advisor.

Memorial Park is a good story, it's really only the sacrifice of the match-play to the gods of money grabs that has me so cranky...

Dave Shedloski updates us on the status of that 2024 schedule, and it's never too early to stop watching:

What are the designated events for next year?

In addition to the Sentry Tournament of Champions and the Players Championship, there are the three invitationals—the Memorial, Arnold Palmer Invitational and Genesis Invitational—and three others yet to be confirmed. Sources have identified the Travelers Championship and Wells Fargo Championship, which also were elevated this season, as well as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am. The RBC Heritage and WM Phoenix Open were the other high-dollar events this year and they will revert back to "swing" tournaments in 2024.

To "elevate" Pebble, they need to first destroy it.  Say goodbye to Monterrey Peninsula and amateurs playing on the weekend, kids, because those traditions that go back the Der Bingle, Hogan and Nelson and The Match mean absolutely nothing when there's money at stake.

This is really rich, though:

How did the tour decide to settle on fields of 70-80 players in regular season designated events?

First of all, we're not talking about all designated regular-season events. The Players, the tour's

flagship event, will remain at 144 players. Meanwhile, the Sentry Tournament of Champions has a fluctuating field depending on the number of different winners and the number of Tour Championship participants who didn't win in the previous season.

Said Dennis: “When you studied the overall strength of each and every event, so all those 31 weeks going into the FedEx Cup Playoffs, the smaller field size emerged as something that really lifted every tournament. And it has to do with how the eligibility system works and sort of the meritocratic way of guys who are playing the best either through a swing a full field events, or you know, at that point in the season, they can promote themselves into the designated events, and having that be something you're trying to strive to achieve. It really strengthened significantly all of the other full-field events, which as we said, top guys are also going to be playing in those depending on their own kind of personal choices.”

Ya got that?  The way we "lift" events is by weakening the fields.... Wow, that's some world-class rationalization....

Let me go on a tangent here, because I have this tab still open relating to the world's most famous club pro:

The Michael Block backlash was inevitable, but not for the reason you think

I always love when they pretend to know what we think, but see how you react to this 'graph:

However, there are two incontrovertible reasons for the Block backlash. The first is that golf does not have a sustained appetite for underdogs. While other games run off upsets, this one often lives in fear of them. It pulls for its Goliaths, and whatever stage given to the little guys is meant in small doses. And to an extent, that is true with Block. The story is warm, the story is endearing … now move aside so we can watch the big men battle it out. But the only way the Block Party wouldn’t end was for it to continue what started it in the first place. Specifically, his play.

Is he correct?  God, I hope not because, if you don't have an appetite for underdogs, then you don't have an appetited for golf.  Because the best players win so infrequently, they are now excluding all those pesky underdogs.  

Of course, they're doing it only for the best of reasons....

Look at the BS being thrown around:

What is the tour’s response to the notion it is creating a two-tier system or two separate tours?

“I don't think that's a fair comment,” Pazder said. “To me, the beauty of the schedule that you'll see next year is that it is one FedEx Cup competition. And the designated events are designed to be aspirational in nature. You always want to play against the best, right? You've heard us this year and years past—to be the best you gotta beat the best and all that. We know our top players want to play against each other more often. And these designated events, as I said, are aspirational. So if you're not in the top 50, on the prior your FedEx Cup lists, well, one of your goals, top of the list, you always want to win. But short of that you want to play your way into those designated events … to measure yourself against the best, the financial rewards of being in those, and so forth. And, again, the way we've stitched together this schedule, it allows every single week on the PGA Tour to have a massive chance of being very successful. I don't buy into this notion that somehow there's two different tours, not at all, not whatsoever.”

Of course they want to play against only each other, because that ensures they don't have to share the big money with the riff-raff.

There's also the minor detail about how they're screwing sponsors, who signed up under the old system.  They then go to said sponsors saying, "Nice little event you have here.  Sure would be a shame if anything happened to it."  What might happen to it?  Te Tour decided to favor other events and, unless the sponsor is willing to pony up further, you'll have no chance of any top players showing up.

Think that's an exaggeration?  No reason to worry about Honda, after all they only supported the Tour for 42 years.... Nope, we don't need their kind, when out top dogs need to get paid.

While these guys are pounding their chests, is anyone watching how this is playing out in the real world?  I don't know, but maybe we might want to know where the viewership has gone?

You’d think in the hours after more concerning ratings were posted showing big audience year-over-year declines for the Charles Schwab Challenge to make it 10 of the last 12 weeks were fewer people watched the PGA Tour, today’s athletes would be wondering what’s going to be done to make them more interesting. Or watchable. Or, something besides manufacturer lapdogs who can’t even keep their stories straight!

The triumphalism over the Designated Events would be well justified, if they had a clue what to do with those other 31 weeks.  This, though, is interesting:

What are the chances that future tour schedules will look roughly similar to the 2024 slate? Initially, there was a plan to rotate designated events.

Said Pazder: “Our intention is to have consistency from year to year in the schedule, which means designated events specifically having blocks. That's important from a membership standpoint. From a fan standpoint, though, we'd like for our fans to begin to understand and follow the flow of our schedule to know roughly the timing of when the designated events will happen, and we think that, generally, will elevate the entire schedule. And that is our objective.

“We looked at all sorts of different models over the last couple of years: Do you rotate? Which events in which sponsors are designated events? There's some plusses to that. But I think there's more negatives. It would create isolated weeks. Putting the schedule together, as you all know, it's very complicated for weather and agronomics, and a million other factors. So having designated events rotate from year to year, on paper, it sounded good initially, because we kind of dove into it. And it quickly became apparent that the best path for me to identify strong events on good golf courses. That would be our plan.”

It probably is better that way, because at least the sponsors will know what they're signing up for.  But it also means you're signing up for permanent, institutionalized second-class status, and good luck with that.

Can anyone tell me what hell is up with Rory McIlroy?  Not only is the man pushing the Tour in what I consider a horrible direction, but he's unable to maintain any message discipline.  I don't know what to make of this latest fever dream:

Should the major championships, including the U.S. Open and Open Championship, find a continual proliferation of purse increases unsustainable, McIlroy said it wouldn’t stop him from competing in golf’s four biggest tournaments, but the organizations that run those championships might risk losing other players. And they can’t afford to do that.

“It wouldn't stop me from playing a major, but at the same time the major championships basically rent the talent for a week from the PGA Tour, and you could argue from LIV and DP World Tour and wherever else,” he said Wednesday at Muirfield Village Golf Club. “So, the major championships aren't going to be the product that they are without the top players in the world.

“So, would that mean that I would, or anyone would, go to the lengths of not playing a major championship to make a point? No. But that's just having a reasonable conversation with the governing bodies and the people that run those tournaments and try to come up with a solution.”

The solution being more money? It appears so.

Say what?  

Nevertheless, he believes golf overall is in a position to continue to increase financial incentives for players.

Based on exactly what, Rory

“You have a new entity [LIV] coming into the game offering 25-million-dollar prize funds and other entities feel the pressure to keep up,” he said. “You think about the four most important tournaments in our game, the prize funds aren't in the top 20 of prize funds. You think about that, right? That doesn't quite add up. So whether there needs to be some sort of correction in that or—I don't know.

Wow, does he not hear the words as they come out?

What's crazier?   That after telling us for two years that it's not about the money, he's worried that it is about the money for everyone else but him?  Don't worry, Rors, we noticed..... and you seem to have assumed Sergio's position in this matter, that you're getting what you deserve.

But maybe even crazier is that the LIV money now seems a normal part of the golf world to him.  This isn't an extraordinary influx of money from a party attempting to repair their geopolitical reputation, but rather this is now part of our entitlement.  It's now seemingly win-win for Rory, because he gets the buckets of cash but without the stain of Wahabi human rights abuses.  Glad it all worked out for you, Rory, because you played golf fans for suckers.

One more Rory bit, just one of life's enduring mysteries:

Opinion: Why is it that Rory McIlroy hasn't won a major in nine years?

Ummm, because he sucks when it matters most?

Which brings us back to McIlroy. It remains a puzzler why the Northern Irishman, now fully acclimated to living in southern Florida, cannot seem to win a fifth. His last major came in 2014 at the PGA Championship.

For a player whose swing comes close to perfection and whose short game is top shelf when it is on, failing to come away with a major trophy for almost a decade is akin to Rafael Nadal constantly coming up short in the tennis Grand Slam. It should not happen, and in Nadal’s case has not happened.

No one can explain it, not even McIlroy. Though he tries. Ahead of the Memorial Tournament on Wednesday, the No. 3 golfer in the world addressed the state of his game, explaining how three weeks ago at the PGA Championship his swing felt more uncomfortable than it has in a long time. Yet he still tied for seventh, a testament to his talent.

I've explained it repeatedly.  Rory's game features two blindingly obvious weaknesses, distance control with his wedges and his putting.  He's 144th in Strokes Gained: Putting, yet his major drought is compared to the Loch Ness Monster and Bigffot.

Here's a prediction.  Rory's major drought will continue for as long as Harry Diamond retains his job carrying Rory's luggage.

As In Sherlock? - Did you ever wonder what the J. B. stands for?  When last we saw the man, he was doing a spot-on impression of paint drying in the 18th fairway at Torrey Pines.  Needing eagle to get into a playoff, he took an eternity to decide that winning is over-rated and laid up, the golf gods doing their thing an ensuring that he laid up into the rough.

So, having long established that he's slow, we now learn that he's a slow scumbag:

Ready for this one? Because it’s wild. J.B. Holmes, who has played eight PGA Tour events this

season, entered a scramble tournament at a Tennessee club two weeks ago in which a nearly $30,000 Calcutta was up for grabs.

The only problem? He was entered under a cryptic name, his first and middle: John Bradley.

Most people know who J.B. Holmes is. He’s a five-time PGA Tour winner — most recently at the 2019 Genesis Open, where he beat Justin Thomas by one — and even played on two Ryder Cup teams. The 41-year-old pro has made more than $25 million in his career.

As for John Bradley, the golfer who entered this tournament? He apparently flew under the radar, but only for so long.

John Bradley played under a fictitious handicap, although the story is a bit more convoluted than that:

Twenty-two teams entered this year’s tournament, and after the first day they were divided into three flights, with a Calcutta organized for the final day. A Calcutta is an auction-style wagering that’s popular in many golf club tournaments. Golfers can bid on individuals or teams, and the money raised through the auction is put into a pot. If your golfer or team wins or places in the money in the predetermined payout structure, you can win cash, too. And, with thousands on the line, even though handicaps don’t factor into scoring, it’s wise to have a good understanding of who is in the field — especially if one of them has won five times on the PGA Tour.

“If he would have just said his name was J.B. Holmes, that would have been fine,” West said. “But it would have definitely messed up the first-flight Calcutta, but at least it would have been based on real names.”

After the first day, Holmes’ team led at 21 under, one ahead of their closet pursuers. The flight Holmes was in had a Calcutta purse of nearly $30,000, of which 70 percent (or about $21,000) would go to the team with the lowest Day 2 score; the rest would go to second place. The lowest two-day total in each flight would get trophies. Holmes’ team didn’t buy themselves in the Calcutta, but they did buy half after someone else claimed them with a bid of $5,000.

One source GOLF.com spoke to explained it as sticking a finger in the peanut butter jar, but not taking a big scoop: “I think they were after a mild hustle here.”

A mild hustle?  I guess that makes sense since J.B. isn't good enough to get a slice of Rory's bigger hustle....

As I predicted long ago, the net result of the LIV story is that we're going to find out who all these guys really are, and it's not going to be a pretty picture.

That's enough aggravation for today.  Not sure about blogging tomorrow, it may well depend upon the news flow.  If not, enjoy the weekend.