Tuesday Trifles - Even More Minimalist Edition

I'm gonna give you like an hour..... Not much going on, but at least we'll close a few browser tabs.

All Things TGL -  Color me skeptical, but I'll also acknowledge I'm probably not the target market.  For instance, by now I hate each and every one of these guys, so there's that little detail.

But there's little else to talk about so we're off:

A shot clock (!) and timeouts (!!) are coming to golf as Tiger and Rory’s TGL league unveils more wrinkles

Do you need a shot clock n simulator golf?  I didn't realize that J.B. Holmes was included....

Just days after introducing its 15-hole match-play format and points-based scoring system, TGL announced on Monday that it will institute a 40-second shot clock that will be enforced by a referee,

though teams will have the opportunity to call a timeout before incurring a one-stroke penalty.

According to Mike McCarley, CEO of TMRW Sports and TGL, the format and technology used for the new indoor league allows it to incorporate elements that are familiar to sports fans from other sports in ways that would not translate on a traditional golf course. “Instituting a shot clock and timeouts will help make matches entertaining, fast-paced, and exciting for sports fans,” McCarley said in a press release. “These elements also add another level of strategy for the players in how they approach team decisions similar to other sports.”

Penalty shots?  Didn't know that Tianglang Guan was in the field....

 Lots of rules:

Each team will have four timeouts at its disposal in a match but can only use two per session, and it cannot call timeouts back-to-back without hitting a shot. TGL announced Wednesday that its 15-match season will feature a nine-hole alternate shot session among three players followed by six holes of singles split into three two-hole matches. A team collects a point for each hole it wins. Ties are broken with an overtime session consisting of a closest-to-the-pin contest.

The season standings also will reflect a points system similar to professional hockey. The top four teams among the six teams in the league advance to the playoffs. The six teams, representing different cities, are composed of four PGA Tour players each. Other than the Boston team, which features McIlroy, Keegan Bradley, Tyrell Hatton and Adam Scott, rosters for the league are still to be filled out. Justin Thomas and Collin Morikawa also have committed to teams from Atlanta and Los Angeles, respectively.

 They don't actually tell us what a session is, but I'm sure it'll rock.

Smart how they're doing this, stocking the Boston team with those that have longstanding ties to that community.  Yanno, guys like Rory and Hatton...And the drama of whether Tiger will play.  I mean, simplistically, it's golf without walking, so I'll lay a marker that he'll play.

The Tour Confidential panel weighed in unsurprisingly, as the next Tiger meme they skip will also be the first:

1. As the January debut of Tiger Woods’ tech-infused golf league nears (TGL), last week we found out the format they’ll play in the SoFi Center in Palm Beach, Fla. It’s 15 holes per competition, with three-man alternate shot for the first nine holes (“Triples”), then six holes of head-to-head play (“Singles”). What do you think about the format? Is it intriguing enough to keep your attention? Or the average fan’s attention?

Josh Berhow: I think it is, especially since they are somewhat handcuffed with options. It’s not like we are going to watch these guys play a scramble. But I think the most important aspect here will be the 22,000-square-foot short-game area, which they’ll use for anything inside 50 yards and putting. We’ve never really seen anything like what this short-game area promises to deliver — in a stadium surrounded by spectators, with actuators and jacks to change the slope of the 3,800-square-foot green — so that will be fun to see how it works.

It might be.  It certainly looks crazy:

Intriguing viewers is one thing, it then needs to hold them for fifteen weeks.  That seems overly aggressive, no?

Josh Sens: Makes me think of those old, silly skills challenges, updated for the high-tech, reality-TV age. In that sense, should make for a good showcase for ridiculously talented shotmakers, so golf fans should get a kick of that part. The problem with that kind of entertainment is that a little of it goes a long way. Whether the spectacle draws a wide and long-term audience will depend, I think, on other elements of the production. The quality of the editing. The commentators. The banter among the players. The silly season was fun because it was a short season. I’m not convinced there will be a sustained appetite for what TGL is serving, but then I thought Holey Moley was unwatchable and it went on for several seasons, so what do I know?

Editing?  Is this not being broadcast live?  But Holey Moley was new to this observer, but perhaps a suitably low bar... 

Sean Zak: I really like the idea of three-man alternate shot. And just 15 holes. And a time slot that doesn’t stretch past two hours. I think part of the allure of this product will be creating some form of heroism. Where on a given night, Boston Common wins because Keegan Bradley made consecutive 30-footers and the in-arena reaction flies around social media. But, as LIV Golf realized, you can create a platform for golfing brilliance, but that doesn’t mean it’ll happen right away. (If I’m making the schedule, I’m leading with Rory’s team against Justin Thomas’, and every commercial break I’m playing promo for Tiger’s debut the following week. Unfortunately, I’m not in charge of the schedule.)

Of course.  But that was the aim of the WGC's and LIV, and any actual heroism was of the tree-falling-in-the-forest ilk.

And your humble blogger's takeaway from all 114 installments of The Match is that these guys are pretty boring.  Except, yanno, Barkley, but I'm unclear as to which TGL franchise he'll be on.  Here's one more rendering of the excitement:

Can't you just smell the beers being spilled.....  It's The Wasted, only indoors.

We've got more from Rory today, but this strikes me as an odd sales pitch:

Rory McIlroy shares first look at TGL “clubhouse” locker rooms

 

Hey, I'm completely sold.  Hard to tell from that sepia tone, but they seem to have grabbed Celtic colors.... 

Your mileage may and probably should vary wildly, but what a weird time to launch this venture.  I have little interest in watching these guys play on real golf courses unless there's something important at stake (which happens exactly four times a year), so the appeal of seeing them hitting into screens eludes me.

But I am dying to know whether Patrick will wear a hat.... as I expect all America needs to know.

All Things Rory - About the only they haven't done is name Yasir as a TGL franchise owner, so maybe that's the snag in the PIF-PGA negotiations.  But during our two years of hell, the one constant has always been that Rory shooting off his mouth hasn't helped the process.

So, Rory's opened his pie hole once more, and one assumes it'll be....well, let's see what we have:

During a press conference for Boston Common Golf, one of six founding teams that will represent the mixed-reality league in 2024, McIlroy was joined by his teammates Keegan Bradley, Adam Scott and Tyrrell Hatton at the podium. And after 20 minutes of learning their thoughts on the franchise, their own connections with Boston and what they’re looking forward to, a very specific question was directed to McIlroy.

“Rory, a lot of the things you were mentioning [about TGL] — expanding the demographics and kind of interactivity with players — are a lot of the same things we heard with LIV when they were starting up and trying to change golf and make it more louder—“

“Louder, yeah,” McIlroy said. He didn’t seem thrilled by the topic.

“Why is [TGL] something you are excited about when [LIV] was something you were notably not excited about?”

That's easy.  It's different because Rory ius getting paid.... Anything else matter?

“Again, I think this is meant to be complementary. It’s not meant to be disruptive in any way,” McIlroy said. “So whenever Mike McCarley brought this idea to Tiger and I, I think one of the first things we said, well, ‘If you’re going to do this, we’re going to have to try to partner with the PGA Tour in some way and really try to make this complementary.’ So I think that was the first thing. This wasn’t adversarial at all. It was trying to, ‘How can we be additive to the entire system?’”

 No real issues with that content-free drivel....

But this bit is curious:

“And I think when you look at — we’re pretending to be competitive and it’s a different type of golf, but it’s not the traditional golf you see week in and week out. So, I don’t want to sit here and talk about LIV, but I think you can make an argument that they haven’t innovated enough away from what traditional golf is. Or they’ve innovated too much that they’re not traditional golf. They’re sort of caught in no-man’s land. Where [TGL] is so far removed from what we know golf to be.”

Say what?

I don't even know what to make of that, because I don't consider TGL to be golf.  Oh, I get that golf is involved, but it's a glorified video game.  LIV is golf, it's just the worst possible version thereof, which would be OK if Tiger and Rory weren't determined to turn the PGA Tour into LIV....

Now stick with me, because Rory made another appearance that is also interesting:

If you were watching CNBC around noon ET Monday, the image might have caught you by

surprise: There, on either side of the screen, sat the prospective futures of the PGA Tour.

To the left was Rory McIlroy, the four-time major champion and de facto voice of the PGA Tour, sporting attentive eyes and a warm smile. To the right was McIlroy’s business partner, Tom Werner, Red Sox owner and Fenway Sports Group chairman and founder, wearing the same frog-logo knit sweater as his professional golf counterpart.

Officially, the two men were on CNBC to discuss their partnership with the TGL, McIlroy and Tiger Woods’ techy Tuesday night golf league that will soon feature many of the biggest faces on the PGA Tour. Werner is financially vested in the league as the principal owner of the league’s New England-based franchise, Boston Common Golf. On Monday, BCL had its team launch presser, which brought the squad’s owner (Werner) alongside its star player (McIlroy) for a short spot on The Halftime Report from Fenway Park.

The pair’s shared airtime, though, was much more interesting than a promotional carwash. Monday may have marked the first time that Werner and McIlroy have appeared together in public in an official capacity, but it isn’t the first time their names have been connected in recent weeks.

Here's the connective tissue I'm after:

Werner’s primary employer, sports business goliath Fenway Sports Group, has been heavily linked in conversations relating to its potentially taking a private equity stake in the PGA Tour —

rumors that have only heated up in recent days. McIlroy, on the other hand, is one of six player directors on the Tour’s Policy Board who will likely be tasked with ratifying a potential big-name investor to shore up the Tour’s finances.

Werner hadn’t denied making an offer to the Tour, nor had he denied his involvement with McIlroy in forming that offer. Add in the fact that Fenway’s offer reportedly includes Mets owner Steve Cohen and Falcons owner Arthur Blank — coincidentally the highly influential owners of both the Atlanta and New York TGL teams — and suddenly it seems there’s an awful lot of overlap between the negotiations for the future of the PGA Tour and the entertainment product being launched by its two biggest stars. (A product, mind you, in which the PGA Tour owns an equity stake.)

Ari Emanuel, eat your heart out!  But, gee, I wonder which of those five bidde4rs will win the day:

But before entering into negotiations for a stake in the future of pro golf, it certainly helps to count the two biggest voices on the policy board — Woods and McIlroy — among your current business partners. Werner’s contingent has this backing along with the goodwill of PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, who was a Fenway executive before he joined the Tour.

“Follow the money” has proved a powerful axiom over these last two years in pro golf, and it may be useful again here. The bidding for the future of the PGA Tour is still a long way from the finish line, but right now the money seems to be running through, of all places, the TGL.

Neither Werner nor McIlroy spoke a peep of this on television screens across the U.S. early on Monday afternoon. But then again, they didn’t need to.

As they spoke shoulder-to-shoulder in glowing terms about the future of golf, their sweaters said it all.

It's all rigged.  We just don't know whether the end game is a deal with PIF or to use private equity to freeze them out.  

But wait, there's more.  Rory, who's been wrong about.....checking notes, everything, has good news for us:

On Monday, McIlroy made an appearance at a press conference for his TGL team, Boston

Common, and told reporters he is convinced that Rahm, a two-time major winner and reigning Masters champion, has no interest in going to LIV.

"I spoke to Jon a couple days ago and would be very, very surprised if that were to happen," McIlroy said. "I'm pretty confident Jon is a PGA Tour player."

Rahm has yet to dispel the rumors about any potential departure to the Saudi Arabia-funded league since his TGL announcement last Thursday, when he wrote on social media: "I am sad to confirm that I will not be participating in the first TGL season. While I still think it's a great opportunity, right now it would require a level of commitment that I can't offer. Best of luck to everyone [involved] and may the best team win!"

That's probably right for now, as it would be a surpassingly weird time to jump.  On the flip side, that $400 million ask seems weirdly specific, so there's that....

This should have gone above, as it's more about the TGL than about the Spaniard:

2. Also last week, we learned TGL now has one less star, since Jon Rahm withdrew from the league after he was originally one of the first players to sign on. While there are still several stars on TGL’s roster, how important will securing the big-name players be to its longevity and success? Or can the fun, laid-back format fuel it?

Berhow: It’s going to be crucial, and some players might come and go over the years if this thing sticks around, but it’s a lot like what we see in a regular PGA Tour season: More people are going to watch if Tiger, Rory and Rickie are playing. (I’d really love to see Spieth join this league, by the way! He has the star power and personality to be a really nice addition). That said, one of the most important factors here will be the entertainment element. These guys can hit the shots, yes, but we’ll need some fun banter or stories or conversation to keep it loose. Some of the forced chatter we’ve seen in some of the made-for-TV matches won’t cut it.

Sens: The names do seem crucial for the initial draw. But if it’s going to last, there has to be more to it than Rickie and Tiger and Rory hitting amazing wedge shots and talking their (let’s be honest) pretty boring version of smack. This gets down again to the other elements of the production. There’s lots of competition out there for eyeballs, and attention spans are even shorter than an indoor course.

Zak: Losing Rahm feels like a pretty big deal. He’s slowly becoming one of the most influential voices/figures in the sport. He’s probably the single player most likely to remain in the top 10 for the next 10 years. Maybe he’ll join season two! If there is a season two …

Here's the ironic bit.  The only actual player that's demonstrated a sufficient gift for gab to hold an audience is that Phil guy, and I'm pretty sure he won't be involved.  None of the other guys were sufficiently engaging to hold our attention through a 12-hole match, so fifteen weeks seems a rather large ask.

Overinterpreting Much? - Last it6em for today, one that I'm attaching way too much significance to for sure.  But when it comes to architectural criticism, this is my go-to guy:

Kelly Kraft, after finishing 71st at last week’s World Wide Technology Championship, says the PGA Tour could do a better job at picking tournament courses.

“Best part about this week was having my family here and watching the @rangers win the World Series!! About the golf, not sure where to start. All I will say is the @pgatour could do a better job at picking courses to host these events. In my opinion this wasn’t my favorite course, and I’ve played on tour for a little while. Better luck next week

“Side note, I will say that @wwt_inc did a great job with what they had. Thanks for the hospitality!”

So, click for a wide range of guardedly favorable comments  from Tour players, though with this caveat:

Still, those thoughts were given in Tour settings, in front of cameras, and opinions tend to be reserved.

On Instagram, Kraft’s post was liked fellow by Tour pros Sam Ryder, who tied for 10th; Dylan Wu, who didn’t play; and LIV Golf player Cameron Tringale.

My question is simple, would Kelly Kraft have criticized a Tiger design two years ago?  We can't know for sure, but in those two years Tiger has authored a takeover of the Tour's operations by the elite players, and has now been placed on the Tour's Advisory Board  

To this observer, the most under-reported part of this story is who wanted Tiger on the Advisory Board and to what purpose?  I will speculate that Kelly Kraft assumes that Tiger will not have his interests at heart, and I certainly don't think he's wrong in that.

We saw a similar thing in that Grayson Murray - Rory dust-up in Canada, and I think we'll see a wave of disgruntlement from the Tour rabbits who have been carved out of the gravy train.  Not our kind, Dearie!.

That's it for now.  I'll see you down the road, said without a clue as to what that might mean.