Thursday Threads - Shipnuck Redux Edition

Yeah, I'm still absorbing that strange Phil bio, yanno, the one in which he admits he left the best bits on the cutting room floor.  But this is about to drop, though I certainly hope Sir Paul (or is it Ian Fleming's Estate?) is cashing royalty checks:

The book doesn't technically drop until October 17th, but this is that point at which they drop all the juicy bits to drive pre-orders... First, this whiny author's note to put us off any of the pesky questioning of sources:

This was a tricky book to report, in part because everyone was suing everyone else, or so it seemed. Government scrutiny didn’t help either: One key protagonist said he couldn’t respond to my emails because the Securities and Exchange Commission was monitoring his inbox, while another character in this book beseeched me face-to-face not to text him anymore, because the Department of Justice had access to his phone. Meanwhile, according to the wording in their contracts, LIV players are supposed to get authorization before consenting to one-on-one interviews. All of this is a long way of saying I tried to keep anonymous sources to a minimum but at times it was unavoidable in the service of getting the story. The phrase “anonymous LIV executive” covers six current and former higher-ups, but, per my agreement with each individual, I could not provide any further identifying details. Who knew that researching a golf book could be so cloak and dagger?

So, I guess we'll just have to take your word for it all?  

Origin Story - Conventional wisdom has done a 180, such that Jay is now blamed for not having perfect foresight.  Yet my reaction is that a card-carrying member of the golf media is explaining the burgeoning golf story that said golf media failed to tell:

Throughout 2020 and ’21, the renegade Premier Golf League tried to forge a partnership with the European Tour, staked by a $500 million pledge from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

Recognizing the existential threat to his business, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan swooped in, investing $100 million in the European Tour and creating a “strategic alliance” to thwart the Saudis. His Excellency Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the PIF, and Majed Al-Sorour, the CEO of Golf Saudi, began hunting for other ways to invest in the game.

Al-Sorour established a beachhead in West Palm Beach, Fla., renting office space and a big house. He became omnipresent on the back patio at the Bear’s Club, where Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler, Keegan Bradley, Ernie Els and other pros are members. But before blowing up the structure of professional golf, the Saudis extended an olive branch. Twice. In March 2021, Al-Sorour had a meeting with Jack Nicklaus at the Bear’s Club at which he asked Nicklaus to reach out to Monahan to discuss how “they might work together going forward,” according to a lawsuit Nicklaus later filed against a business partner in another matter. “Mr. Nicklaus reached out to Mr. Monahan later that week and was told that the PGA Tour had no interest in collaborating with Golf Saudi.”

Poor Jack seems to get himself used frequently in the manner, but isn't this something we might have been informed about?

Then the famous letter, about which we've heard previously, though without the telling details:

Increasingly frustrated, Al-Sorour dashed off a letter to Monahan dated April 17, 2021. That it carried Al-Sorour’s name and not Al-Rumayyan’s is, says someone close to them, “cultural,” adding, “H.E. would never put his name on a request if there was the slightest chance it would be turned down. He wouldn’t put himself in a position where he could lose face.” After some opening pleasantries, the letter, which has never before been made public, said in part:

I am writing in my capacity as lead advisor of a new golf enterprise. I want to introduce you to our proposition and outline its value as a prospective partner of the PGA Tour. We are proposing an innovative league featuring twelve “teams” of top talent competing head-to-head over 14 weeks, creating a new dimension for sports and stakeholders.

Al-Sorour talked a bit about the new league’s potential “social impact” while pledging to “uphold the values and heritage of the sport.” Then he got to the heart of the matter: “We have a very interested individual and group and are confident our approach will benefit all who participate. With the positive responses we have received, we have chartered our course to launch in 2022.” All the formal language did not disguise the inherent threat: We are launching with or without you.

In closing, Al-Sorour wrote:

I have respect for the PGA Tour and we view this as an opportunity for a collaboration that would grow the game. We’d like to arrange a sit-down with you to discuss our approach in more detail and highlight how this could represent value for you, your members, partners and community.

Yours sincerely,

Majed al-Sorour

I'm no Jay dead-ender, but the criticism of Jay for not taking this meeting seems misplaced, though misperceptions abound for sure.  But, while I won't criticize Jay for not taking the meeting at that juncture, it's hard to explain why an experienced hired would fail to inoculate himself by disclosing it:

This was the moment of truth for Monahan, a former defenseman at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. Around Tour headquarters the dark side of his personality has a nickname: Hockey Jay. He had been masterful in guiding the Tour through Covid, securing a game-changing TV deal, and thwarting the PGL. But the Saudis were proposing to fundamentally alter his business and force him to give up some control. They were threatening Hockey Jay’s dominion. He never responded to the letter or even brought it before his full board of directors.

In describing the letter to a colleague, Monahan called it “strange.” It had come on a blank sheet of paper with no letterhead—not Golf Saudi or the Public Investment Fund. The postmark was from Oregon; after some digging, Tour sleuths discovered that Al-Sorour had a paramour there. The letter did not include his title at Golf Saudi. In this kind of high-level corporate correspondence, it would have been standard to include Al-Rumayyan and PGA Tour board members as addressees, but they were glaringly absent. No mention was made of the source of funding. Al-Sorour included no contact information. Of course, Monahan knew who Al-Sorour was, whom he worked for and how much money he was sitting on. But the letter’s curious lack of protocol and specificity gave Monahan just enough wiggle room to blow it off. Was Al-Sorour freelancing behind his boss’s back? Was the project tied to the PGL or something else entirely? Monahan could have asked any of his top players for Al-Sorour’s cell phone number—they were already in negotiations with him!—and given him a call. He could have bum-rushed the Bear’s Club and found Al-Sorour on the back patio to engage him in discussion. But imagine Monahan’s state of mind: He’s the muthahfuckin’ commissioner of the PGA Tour and one of the most powerful figures in golf. He was not duty-bound to chase after a shadowy would-be competitor offering a nebulous deal. He was already pissed the Saudis had set up shop in Florida—in his backyard!—and were trying to steal his players. If they wanted to talk, there was a right way to do it, and Al-Sorour’s unorthodox letter wasn’t it. It is true that Monahan could have taken a more nuanced view: that the Saudis—already friends of the LPGA and partners with Ladies European Tour and the European Tour (through the Saudi International)—were potentially an asset, an opportunity, a windfall. But that would have taken a humility, perspective, and savvy that eluded Monahan. He responded to the letter like Sonny Corleone, not like Tom Hagen.

A couple of points here not necessarily in order of importance.  But it occurs to me that Alan is misreading Monahan, who we can be assured was not one of his sources.  What Alan calls masterful in relation to Covid I remember as dithering.  Unable to make a decision at that 2020 Player's Championship, they went from allowing spectators to banning them to canceling in record speed.  More importantly, he kept repeating this "We play over hundreds of acres" mantra, blissfully indifferent to his paying customers who were crammed into shuttle buses and grandstands.

We also know that Jay basically had a nervous breakdown after his D-Day ambush, so the presentation of him as an hard-boiled executive spitting nails kind of lands flat, no?  But that second 'graph is quite the bit of melodramatic tradecraft, no?  We've been warned that the sourcing is problematic on the LIV side, but exactly who gave Alan the image of Jay stroking his kitty and mumbling "I'm the muthafuckin' commissioner?"  Is this book going in the fiction or non-fiction aisle, Alan?

My problem with Jay is not that he wanted to fight, but rather that he fought so poorly and apparently based upon such bad assumptions:

Monahan continued to take a hard line against the Saudis. In the fall of 2021, the PGA Tour convened another board meeting. Player director Charley Hoffman asked Monahan, “Why don’t we have a discussion with any of the Saudi guys who are putting together this tour?”

The answer to that simple query, according to Hahn and another person in the room, would shape golf history. “We are at war,” Monahan replied. “We do not negotiate with another entity that is trying to put us out of business. We do not negotiate with people who are trying to ruin the golf ecosystem.”

PGA Tour board meetings are populated not only by the directors but also legal counsel and a handful of Tour suits. “All of the other Tour people are on Jay’s side, obviously,” says Hahn. “As a player, you feel outnumbered. When Jay said we wouldn’t negotiate with the Saudis, as a player, that was it. End of discussion. It felt like a dad yelling at his son: ‘This is how it is because I said so, and we’re done talking about it.’ There was no pushback, no follow-up questions. Every meeting we had from then on was about how do we combat this threat to our business? ‘We’re at war here, fellas. These guys are trying to take over our business.’ That’s all we heard: ‘We are at war, we are at war, we are at war.’”

Not sure whether Sun Tzu actually says this, but one should only fight those wars one can win. There's also the bit about thinking you're winning when you're not, but in keeping the letter to himself Jay seems to have violated all rules of corporate survival, yet survive he will.

A Game For Gentlemen - I'll try not to strain anything while patting myself on the back, but my early prediction was spot on.  While the world was training its fire on the LIV defectors, my instinct expressed early in the proceedings, was that the LIV initiative would result in us coming to hate every major player in the game, and whatya know?

Alan shares some vignettes that aren't going to change hearts and minds:

LIV launched in June 2022, in London. At the completion of its second tournament, in Portland, LIV supplied a jumbo jet to ferry its players to the JP McManus Pro-Am in Ireland. It marked just the second comingling of LIV golfers and PGA Tour loyalists. Amid all the palace intrigue at Adare Manor, the LIV guys were living it up. Deep into the night following the closing party, Brooks Koepka, Jason Kokrak, Pat and Ashley Perez, and Dustin Johnson and his bride, Paulina, repaired to a small, private bar tucked into the Manor. The drinks were flowing, and Paulina, spilling out of a tight black dress, was having trouble balancing atop a leather barstool. Perez, wearing a backward baseball cap, pointed at Johnson, who had recruited him to LIV, and shouted, “I owe everything to that man!” DJ was too busy tending to his wobbly wife to notice. Despite the relaxed setting, Koepka radiated some heat when reflecting on his career change. “Fuck all of those country club kids who talk shit about me,” he said, referring to the likes of Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth and others. “You think I give a fuck what they think? You think I care what people say about me? I just had three surgeries, and I’m supposed to turn down $130 million? I grew up with nothing. After signing that contract, the first person I called was my mom. We both cried.”

And what did you call your Mom?  But here Alan is woefully short on details, because I'm dying to know whether Paulina was falling out of her dress and more than Pat Perez' wife was in this photo:

Talk about a competitive category....

This story bothers me, just because I thought him one of the better-grounded guys out there:

The Open marked Paul Casey’s first real tournament since the onetime UNICEF ambassador had gone to LIV. Sky Sports reporter Jamie Weir approached Casey on the practice chipping green at the Old Course to see if he would do an on-camera interview. “He said, ‘Oh, hello, mate,’ in his usual smug, insincere tone,” says Weir. “I asked about having a chat, and right away he was defensive and wanted to know the questions. I told him I wanted to talk about the 150th Open, his good history at St. Andrews, how his back was feeling, and then finish off with a question about LIV.” Casey asked what the LIV question would be. Says Weir, “I said that he was 29th in the world but had just joined a tour without ranking points and would surely fall out of the top 50, so, given that, had he given serious consideration that this Open could be the last major championship of his career? His face darkened. He said, ‘Fuck off. Go fuck yourself. What a fucking shit question. Go fuck yourself. That’s a shitty fucking question from a shitty fucking reporter.’ I said, ‘Paul, you’re massively overreacting to this.’ He was like, ‘No, I’m not. Go fuck yourself. Fuck you, and fuck your interview.’”

Says Casey with a laugh, “That’s a fairly accurate recounting. But what is missing is the fact he sauntered over, invaded my space, and interjected himself into an environment where he was not invited. And what he actually said was, ‘This is probably going to be the last major championship you ever play.’ He’s just assuming I’m going to fail! I could have won that Open and been exempt for another 25 years. I was there grinding on my game, and it was his smugness that got me. I can debate with anybody, but he was just being a dickhead. You know what, Jamie Weir can go fuck himself. Again.”

Yeah, a game for gentlemen..... It's the insistence of zero scrutiny that I love most, there should never be any consequences or, even discussion, of their betrayal.  Remind me again, Paul, what tours did you achieve your success on?  And what did you do to those tours by jumping to LIV?  Nothing to see here...

As for this guy?  His father should explain how being an adult works:

During these acrimonious times, no person in golf provoked stronger feelings than Brandel Chamblee, the Golf Channel analyst who relentlessly offered withering critiques of LIV. Claude Harmon III is the swing coach to Koepka, Johnson and Perez. Harmon says of Chamblee, “He has to take Rory’s cock out of his mouth so he can suck off Tiger.”

Which trikes me as amusing, because his career is based on providing a valuable service sucking off Brooks, DJ and Pat... As Dylan once said, we all gotta serve somebody, but Brandel will stay above the allegations of fellatio a lot easier than a swing coach....

Shadow War - With the benefit of hindsight, it seems to me that Jay would have come out better in allowing the Saudis to invest in the Euro Tour, but that's very much Monday morning quarterbacking.  Deep into explaining the turnabout, Alan throws out some numbers that still have me scratching my head:

The Tour was fighting legal battles on multiple fronts, with the lawyers’ fees running deep into eight figures. With the barristers for LIV and the Tour fighting tooth and nail over an endless number of procedural matters, casting doubt on their antitrust trial beginning as scheduled on May 17, 2024, the United States Department of Justice became reengaged in its own antitrust investigation, interviewing players, agents and executives from both tours. Key protagonists had to surrender their phone so evidence could be extracted. “You give them all your passwords, and they take the phone for five or six hours,” says LIV golfer Carlos Ortiz, who was one of the original plaintiffs in the antitrust lawsuit before dropping out. “Then they know everything you’ve ever said to anyone. And they tell you not to delete anything because they will find that, too. It’s fine, I have nothing to hide. But I know other people were nervous.”

I've never understood their statements on the antitrust lawsuit.  Eight figures might sound high to you and me, but the $15 million number I've seen elsewhere is chump change in this context, heck it's smaller than the PIP program.  And also smaller than the nine-figure sum pumped into the Euro Tour, so color me skeptical about Jay knowing what he was doing.

I'm not completely sure of the significance of this, though it might explain why Jay had such an urgent need to settle that antitrust matter:

That included Monahan, who had used all of his political capital to thwart LIV. Surely the DOJ knew that Endeavor—the parent company of International Management Group and the William Morris Agency, with Spieth and Patrick Cantlay among its clients—had been considering a $1 billion investment in LIV but scuttled the deal under pressure from Monahan. “We’re all connected in golf,” Ari Emanuel, Endeavor’s CEO, would say on the Freakonomics podcast. “And [the PGA Tour] said, ‘Please don’t do it.’ So we stopped. I’m friends with Jay. We have a lot of business with Jay. I don’t want to hurt Jay.” Was that merely hard-nosed business or illegal antitrust bullying? The clues to this, and many other instances of potential malfeasance, were buried in the phones of Monahan and his lieutenants, and the government investigators had access to everything.

Noted.  But, lest you think I've been milking that "terrific penis" reference to Patrick Cantlay, so is the source:

As contentious as the battle between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour has been, winning the peace was never going to be easy. Patrick Cantlay is a member of the Tour’s board, which must ratify any final agreement with the PIF. He is known for driving hard bargains; a fellow player who has worked with Cantlay on governance issues calls him “a terrific penis.” Translation: He’s a dick. (Of course, if Cantlay is salty perhaps it is because he turned down a $75 million offer from LIV.)

The anxiety gripping the Tour was codified at the end of July, when 41 top players sent a sternly worded letter to Monahan demanding more transparency and oversight in the ongoing negotiations with the PIF. The embattled commissioner responded the next day, creating a sixth seat for the players on the Tour policy board, though they still don’t have a voting majority with six independent directors hanging on the commissioner’s every word. Tiger Woods had been noticeably silent in the wake of the framework agreement, but he was the key signatory of the letter and he snatched the new board seat.

Woods has always preferred to exert soft power; it is a significant development that he has now put himself on the firing lines. Says a member of the Tour’s Player Advisory Council, “No offense to [board members] Peter Malnati or Webb Simpson, but we need Tiger in the room. We need his presence. He’s not going to take any shit from Jay or Jimmy Dunne, because he doesn’t have to. What you’re seeing with Cantlay, with Tiger, is the players trying to take back control of the Tour.” With a rueful laugh, he added, “Before it’s too late.”

Alan continues to play fast and loose with his sourcing, because it matters completely who that Player Advisory Council member is.  Could it be that terrific penis himself?  Here are those members:

PATRICK CANTLAY. Term: 2023.

CHARLEY HOFFMAN. Term: 2021-23.

PETER MALNATI. Term: 2023-25.

RORY MCILROY. Term: 2022-24.

WEBB SIMPSON. Term: 2023-25.

TIGER WOODS.

Because what Alan seems to be deliberately obscuring is that this isn't the amorphous players taking control, it's a specific sub-set of the players, to wit, the top twenty.  I would guess his source would have to be Charley, no?  Not an elite player for sure, but a guy who wants to hang with the cool kids.

Everyone is universally over the moon about Tiger taking the position, and the soft power reference is laugh-out-loud funny.  But have you seen anyone curious as to what Tiger has taken the position to actually do?

In fact, it's pretty funny to think about Claude Harmon's fellaciatic image above about Brandel.  Because if there's one guy alternating between Rory and Tiger's junk these days, it would be our Jay, no?  Though that might explain his bout of depression....

Bromance Aborted - these guys have never had any use for each other, and I find merit in each of their positions.  This is a fairly minor bit garnering way too much attention, but who doesn't like a cat fight?

The following week brought the 150th Open. It was supposed to be a joyous celebration of the game’s oldest championship and most historic venue, but everyone was edgy during Open week. Mickelson was snubbed from a private dinner for Open winners held in the R&A clubhouse. Woods orchestrated that. “He talked to a handful of other [past champions] to get their blessing and then went to the R&A and told them, basically, no one wanted Phil there and it would make the night weird and awkward,” says one of the men at the dinner. “Whose side were they going to take Tiger’s or Phil’s? That’s an easy choice.”

But it's quite true that no one wanted Phil there.  I'm far less concerned with Tiger boxing out Phil than with the prospect of him being welcomed back with open arms.

So, is this a best seller?  Meh, most seem bits we could have imagined, though I do like the unscripted bits where Brooksie and Pat Perez demonstrate the wide gulf between money and class, bits that Netflix would presumably kill for.   But mostly I'm guessing we'll be treated to a series of anecdotes showing golfers behaving badly, but all within a context of acceptance of the Wahabis and the players the enabled them.

So, what do the players think?  They don't like it one bit, do they?

I’d like to speak on behalf of a lot of Tour players and say we’re sick of @AlanShipnuck doing what he does. Bring positivity and good stories to help grow the game of golf, not try and make money bashing guys, earning zero trust, with a lot of incorrect information. Ridiculous

— Justin Thomas (@JustinThomas34) October 5, 2023

Perhaps you should worry more about demonstrating actual positivity?  As for trust, JT, that's gotta be earned....

I don't like Alan's sourcing any more than the other guys, but JT has obviously made his peace with the New World Order, so we know where he stands.  But very much like Phil's famous faux apology, you don't get to call the information wrong without some evidence that it is incorrect.  Otherwise, JT, you're just an enabler of the bonecutters......  

Have a great weekend and we'll be back next week as content requires.