Bonus Sunday Content - Deep Stuff Edition

Wild times here in the Wasatch.... Park City just reported 18" of fresh stuff, it's just unclear when I'll get to lose my skis in it.  Yesterday the two lifts required to get up the mountain never opened due to wind, and today may not be any different.  

Prodigal Son Update - You can see now why limiting the proceedings to 54 holes was a stroke of genius:

Anthony Kim made his highly-anticipated return to professional golf and finished dead last in 53rd (Matthew Wolff withdrew in the second round). The 38-year-old shot rounds of 76-76-74 to finish 16 over, 11 shots behind 52nd-place Hudson Swafford and 33 behind the winner Niemann.

 This Yahoo Sports item looks hard for silver linings:

Kim just barely missed a short par putt on the 18th that would have replicated his Saturday feat: terrible start, clean card the rest of the way home. On Sunday, Kim bogeyed his first four holes, then settled down and stayed level for the remainder of the round.

"Obviously it was a rough week," Kim said after the round. "I'm excited to be playing professional golf again, and I feel pretty blessed I have this opportunity."

Kim joined LIV as a wild card, meaning he'll play for the rest of the season as an individual, with the possibility of joining a team somewhere down the line. He'll tee it up next at LIV's Hong Kong event next weekend, and will play in the United States for the first time since 2012 at LIV's Miami event in early April.

"I'm definitely hitting the ball well," Kim said, "doing lot of things well. I know scores don't reflect that."

Paraphrasing what a wise man once said, you are what your scorecard says you are.  I'm just relieved that he was doing so many things well, because otherwise he wouldn't have broken 100.

I didn't see a single swing of it but, while several layers of rust were to be expected, I'm having trouble seeing the positives here.  The writer seems to think they were playing Oakmont, where making pars is helpful.  But the absence of birdies seems a huge red flag, though I'm reliably informed that the check cleared.  Here's the current plan:

The script for Kim's return to professional golf was a curious one: He teed off in the middle of the night for American viewers, didn't do any significant pre-tournament interviews, and played in front of sparse LIV crowds in Jeddah. But he still cashed a paycheck thanks to LIV's no-cut format, and he has the chance to get his game in somewhat stronger shape before he has to return to face United States audiences and media in early April. By then, golf will have a better idea of how much of the old Anthony Kim remains.

On the bright side, I'm sure he thrilled those avid Saudi crowds....

If It Walks Like A Duck.... -  Could the PGA Tour be more of a scam these days?  Seriously, if you wanted to completely discredit yourself, what would you do differently?

First, I want to remind you of our discussion back during the Pebble Beach Signature Event Money Grab™, specifically when PGA Tour Players' Advisory Directors grabbed most of the sponsor's exemptions, which even trickled down to the lowly Peter Malnati.  Now Malnati has outsized importance because he's the one rue Rabbit among the player directors, or at least was at that time (Camillo Villegas has subsequently replaced Jordan Spieth).  Malnati had this reasonable-sounding defense of his exemption:

“I know why I felt worthy of writing a letter to get an exemption here. It’s not because I’m on the

board. It’s not because I vote. I felt worthy writing a letter because I come to this event every single year that I’ve been on Tour, and I don’t think there’s ever been an amateur play with me who didn’t have the time of their life. That’s why I felt comfortable writing a letter asking for an exemption,” he said. “If the reason I got that exemption is because I’m on the board, that’s not right. If the reason I got the exemption is because this is my 10th year, I would say six of the nine I’ve played with Don Colleran from FedEx, but those other three years I played with three different amateurs, and there’s always two amateurs in your group, not just one, and I take pride in making sure that those guys or gals have the time of their life. I think that gets back to Steve John and the Monterey Peninsula Foundation that if you come to this tournament, if you’ve never heard of Peter Malnati, he might be the guy that you want to play with.

So, you're saying there's a chance?  It's as good a case as you can put on it, but kinda over-taken by subsequent events....Though there's a reason I've always liked Malnati, and that bolded bit is at least a clear statement of principle.

I want to make more stop in our meandering narrative, a recent Webb Simpson interview.  In the middle of a discussion of the implications of allowing the LIV players to return to the Tour, he gave us a peek into the tortured logic, or self-absorption, of elite players:

“That’s where I scratch my head because somebody’s gonna lose here. Somebody’s gonna have to lose for us to solve this problem,” Simpson said. “Either there’s less spots, but we create a

more competitive product, right? Like field sizes, for example of 156, in my opinion, are just a terrible thing. Overall, it does give guys more playing opportunities, but it dilutes our product … And it’s easy for me to say, because I’ve never been in a position where I’m struggling to get starts, so I’m sympathetic in the sense that, like, I will admit, that will rub people the wrong way. But at the end of the day, as a board member, I need to do what I think is best for the product of the PGA Tour both what’s best for the players, and both what’s best for the tour.

Ya got that?  Ummm, Webb, I have quite the important follow-up question, what exactly do you think the product is?

I think the product is actually the great game of golf, and what dilutes that product is imposing such small fields on the most important PGA Tour events.  Limiting field sizes inevitably reduces the quality of golf presented, because the seventy or more players excluded can only improve the competitiveness of the field in any given week.  So, just to be clear, you are in the anti-competitiveness camp.

But that's not what Webb and his cronies think is the product.  Shockingly, they thing they are the product, or at least Webb used to be.  So, the product is Patrick, who in the cosmic scheme of the ages is little more than an itinerant circus performer, here today and gone tomorrow.  

But that might leave you a bit puzzled, because the contraction of those fields would seem to guarantee that there wouldn't bee a tee time for Webber himself, and we can include matinee idol Adam Scott in this discussion as well.  So, with three of the five Player Directors so positioned, why would they vote to exclude themselves from the most lucrative events?

Not to worry, they have a workaround: 

The PGA Tour sells itself as a circuit of meritocracy, where spots aren’t given and players only

make what they earn, and it is belief that has become a battle cry in the tour’s war against LIV Golf, a league which is the antithesis of this spirit with guaranteed paydays to players many fans wouldn’t pay to see. The problem for the tour is meritocracy lacks a middle ground. Meritocracy either is, or it isn’t.

Next week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational boasts a limited field thanks to its status as a signature event, the competition restricted to the top 50 finishers from last season’s FedEx Cup, along with 15 others (10 from this year’s FedEx Cup standing and five from the full-field event standings between signature events). They are spots that were captured by a performance that speaks to the tour’s true North Star. Except the tour announced Friday four additional entries via sponsor exemptions in Nicolai Hojgaard, Shane Lowry, Adam Scott and Webb Simpson, and this is where it gets problematic. For those last two names risk compromising the very thing the tour stands upon.

Scott and Simpson both serve as PGA Tour player directors, positions that hold outsized importance as the tour and its players attempt to secure the league’s future in golf’s civil war. Given that responsibility, you’re forgiven for thinking these sponsor exemptions could be viewed as kickbacks for their dealings on the tour board … especially since this is not the first time it’s happened. This is Scott’s third exemption into a signature event this season and Simpson’s second out of the three signature events that have offered special invites. Their previous exemptions were already under scrutiny; Golfweek posted a story with anonymous quotes from players during the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am that called their exemptions “fishy,” “shady” and “collusion.” Those Pebble criticisms could have been couched because, ultimately, it was just one tournament. But now that this is becoming a pattern shows their concerns are perhaps warranted.

Perhaps?  Heh, that's a good one.....  Utterly corrupt, and the most aggravating aspect might be that they don't even feel the need to be subtle about it.  All of Tiger's friends get taken care of.....

Some don’t see these elevated tournaments as a chance to gather the game’s best, instead viewing them as a way for the blue bloods to stay where they’re at—and get paid handsomely in the process—while curbing avenues for social mobility. The entire season has to play out before judging if that perception is reality; conversely, that a number of Korn Ferry Tour grads are struggling to earn starts is amplifying that perception.

Because of the no-cut format and guaranteed OWGR and FedEx Cup points, they insulate those at the top of those rankings from the great unwashed masses, something that more than "Some" have noticed.

But the same theme pervades:

The easiest solution would be to get rid of sponsor exemptions for signature events, but look no further than the last signature to see why that won’t happen, as one of the four spots at Riviera was used on tournament host Tiger Woods. Even as he nears 50, Woods remains the star this sport revolves around; if Woods wants to play, the tour—for better or worse—will do everything it can to facilitate that wish. But Woods should be the exception to the rule, and let’s be frank, that’s looking more and more like a theoretical problem.

Of the myriad problems facing professional golf, sponsor exemptions are a low priority, but they’re also a self-inflicted and unnecessary wound and speak to the larger, systemic issues plaguing the tour. Perhaps it’s serendipity that Bay Hill’s exemption announcement coincided with Anthony Kim making his debut at LIV. Kim is playing as a wildcard in Saudi Arabia on LIV’s version of a sponsor exemption. Given his hiatus, it’s fair to question Kim’s validity as a formidable golfer, but there’s no questioning the curiosity around him as an entertainer. LIV is often knocked for being an exhibition; here, at least, there’s value in being an exhibition vehicle. You ultimately have to know what your core product is, and how it’s presented. And just as importantly, what can confuse the messaging.

If you don't know what the product is, you'll inevitably make the wrong calls.....  But in this case it's even worse, because those making the decisions, such as Patrick, think that they are the product.

The final stroke of genius was designating Tiger as a Player Director, though no one seemed to care what he thought the product was.  

Did Someone Mention Tiger? - It's not just the Tour that views Tiger as a savior:

Tiger Woods and Bobby Jones are the only two golfers in history to win nine USGA titles, and it was only a matter of time before their names were joined in the governing body’s highest honor. That moment has come, with the USGA announcing on Saturday that Woods was selected the 2024 recipient of the Bob Jones Award that “recognizes commitment to sportsmanship and respect for golf’s time-honored traditions.”

Got another time-honored tradition for you, full fields at major Tour events..... Never mind.

“This award goes beyond playing performance, recognizing the lasting impact of one person’s journey that has forever changed the image and growth of golf,” Mike Whan, CEO of the USGA, said in a press release.

“There are very few who stand alongside Tiger Woods in terms of on-course accomplishments, and he is in a class of his own when it comes to the impact he has made on the game and future generations who will play it.”

And this differs from the PIP Program how?

But, remember when Tiger told us he was well enough to play once a month?  Most of us assumed that that would have him peg it at sawgrass.... Turns out he had a different March event in mind, ne that is completely consistent with the current zeitgeist:

Tiger Woods is back. You just won’t be able to watch him.

Thanks to the 5 Clubs Golf account on Twitter, the field for the prestigious Seminole Pro-Member has been revealed and Woods is the headliner.

The pro-member at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Florida, is one of golf’s most exclusive events. Annually held the day after the PGA Tour’s stop in nearby Palm Beach Gardens, the event draws an elite crop of pros each year. Regulars include Rory McIlroy — whose dad Gerry is a Seminole member and his partner — Rickie Fowler, Justin Thomas, Tony Finau, Nelly Korda, Ernie Els, Matt Fitzpatrick and more.

Woods, despite moving to nearby Jupiter Island 13 years ago, will be making his first appearance at the event. He’ll be partnering with PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh in a group with — you guessed it — Justin Thomas and partner Mike Walrath.

Yanno, I didn't think I could hate these people any more but, as always, beware the early call.

That'll do you for a Sunday for sure.  I blogged today because I won't be available the next two days.  Catch you Wednesday from Unplayable Lies World HQ.