Friday, March 8, 2024

Thursday Themes - 3D Chess Edition

If you're confused by that header, I started this post on Thursday morning, but was interrupted by some family business and the like.  Should I have changed the header?  Of course, but it's so much more difficult to find alliterative matches for "Friday" so, as a wise man once said, it is what it is...

It's Not Me, It's You - There are items I blog out of obligation, and then there are those that have me salivating from the moment I see the header.... Any guesses which kind this is?

Why LIV Golf suddenly abandoned its chase for OWGR points

I'm assuming it's some Vulcan mind meld, as per the sub-header....  It's Dylan Dethier, back from a vacation (not quite the perfect terms, perhaps) related to him becoming a new father, so let's see what he's got from the Sith Lord, Greg Norman.  Fortunately, he managed to distill LIV's move into one short 'graph:

And while there’s a segment of golf fans that are happy to see LIV defectors shut out of the majors, the majority would prefer to see the top pros doing battle on the biggest stages. Because the majors have long relied on the OWGR to build out their fields, the OWGR remains golf’s most relevant ranking system. Those two things are now in direct conflict — the best fields and the reliance on the OWGR. Something has to give. That’s part of Norman’s bet, then: The OWGR needs LIV more than the other way around.

Do I get a vote?  It's been three long years without Sergio and PReed, and yet somehow we've all managed to muddle through....

Now, there might just be a few small holes in the bucket..... It's easy to say that the OWGR are broken (as we'll get to in a sec, it's kind of interesting who is actually saying that), but what or, more accurately, who is the OWGR?

After all, the same people who rejected LIV’s OWGR application are the ones who would decide LIV pros’ major eligibility. The OWGR consists of seven members. Three of ’em are aligned
with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour and recused themselves from LIV’s application. The remaining four are reps from the four majors. Will their events recognize LIV more officially than the OWGR?

Golf’s institutions don’t seem overly fond of LIV but seem open to the idea of including its players in future competitions. During the last LIV decision, OWGR chairman Peter Dawson went out of his way to depoliticize the announcement.

“We are not at war with them,” Dawson told the AP. “This decision not to make them eligible is not political. It is entirely technical.”

He also signaled a future opportunity for LIV’s inclusion — an opportunity they’ve since rejected.

Yeah, that's the ticket.  I actually thought Dawson's response went way far in accommodating LIV, indicating that filed size and 54 versus 72 holes could be addressed through formulas.  The argument against 48-player (now, seemingly 54) fields are less objectionable when the PGA Tour has made its' premiere events 69 player fields.  Why don't we all just copy Tiger's Hero World and limit fields to twenty players?  I mean, if the only way to grow the game is make Patrick happy, let's make him really happy.... 

Of course, the OWGR are aligned with the PGA Tour, which is presented as some sort of conspiracy, presumably involving the Tripartite Commission and a grassy knoll.  The origins of this system relate to the underrepresentation of foreign golfers, who struggled for a means of entry to the majors.  Sound familiar?  Joaquin might want to keep this in mind as he's griping about his current world ranking, and he might also want to keep in mind who it was who promised him world ranking points.  Yeah, that same guy that just threw in the towel...

Joel Beall weighs in on the subject under this provocative header:

Golf's World Ranking is more trouble than it’s worth

To whom?

Beall does at least try to be even handed as per this excerpt:

To be clear, this is not an endorsement of LIV's OWGR vilification. LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman assured his constituents that LIV would get World Ranking points when the question was far from certain, and players should've known better than to take Norman at his word. They whined when the one-year process wasn’t expedited, and who can forget the desperate attempt to partner with the MENA Tour to siphon the little-known tour’s OWGR points only for the workaround to be immediately shot down. The OWGR subject has become such a weekly complaint from LIV that it borders on parody and is nothing more than a self-defeating exercise, because the moment you assert why you matter is the moment you prove the opposite.

I'll get to his strongest pint in a sec, but get a load of this hot mess of an argument::

In that same breath … why does the MENA Tour have point accreditation? Same goes for the Hero World Challenge, a hit-n-giggle of 18 players. Should winners in lesser-ranked tours in South Africa, Japan and South Korea get more points as a player finishing 10th in a major championship? Then there’s LIV itself. Yes, much of its league is filled with golfers past their prime or players who were they still playing the PGA Tour would be dubbed rank-and-file. It’s a closed-off competition with just 54 players per event. Talor Gooch, he of one win in more than 120 PGA Tour starts, turned into a world beater once defecting. Peter Uihlein was a talented amateur who struggled to keep his PGA Tour card, only to finish third in LIV’s individual standings during its inaugural year. The OWGR’s questions about LIV’s competitive integrity are valid.

Joel makes a good point but in a completely disingenuous manner as relates to the Hero World Challenge.  It's a joke that it gets OWGR points, but you might want to get your facts straight, in that it's been increased to a hefty twenty player field.... But it's just incredibly sloppy logic to compare an individual event to a full tour....  It's a strong enough point, one I've been arguing for years, that it doesn't require obfuscation.

I don't know if the MENA Tour should or shouldn't be part of the OWGR system, but it's kind of moot since it's been defunct since the pandemic.  But Joel is incredibly illogical or lazy to not understand that the arguments about relative point allocations are one thing, and I suspect we'd be in agreement as to many of the anomalies, as compared to participation in the system.  The facts of the matter are that LIV is a closed system, and therefore it's impossible to value performance there in relation to other tours.

But here might be the most intriguing anomaly of all:

But now those on the opposing side in golf’s civil war—including Xander Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick and Will Zalatoris—have raised similar issues about the OWGR’s relevance in the game. Given they are the ones benefiting from the current system, it does beg the question if said system is broken.

“I don’t really look at them or pay attention to them anymore. I don’t think they’re right," Fitzpatrick said this week at Bay Hill. "So I look at Data Golf as a better representation of how people are playing in the world, in my opinion. I think it’s partly a sign that there’s plenty of depth on here, which we’ve known that for years on the PGA Tour, there’s always been a lot of strength and depth, but I certainly think nowadays the ranking side of it is a little bit skewed.”

How are you enjoying your stay in the Bizarro World?   It reminds me most of that famous quote from a great friend of the game of golf:

“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

― Vladimir Ilich Lenin

It's really quite amusing, in that these same Tour professionals were continuing to decry the tainted Saudi money for months as Jay was in negotiations with Yasir behind their backs.  Now they don't seem to realize that no deal appears to be happening with the Saudis, they're still mewling about the OWGR system and the road back to the PGA Tour for the defectors.

So, let's compare and contrast Dylan Dethier and Joel Beall...  Here's the latter's rousing coda:

The thing is, the World Ranking isn’t needed. The governing bodies—which, again, are essentially, the OWGR—can distance themselves from the World Ranking by using other standards and measures to build their fields. The top 50 from the FedEx Cup, the top 20 from the Race to Dubai, and the top 10 in each ranking of the current season not otherwise exempt. Expand open qualifying spots, and invite the Order of Merit winners of the Sunshine, Australasia and Japan circuits. And, yes, give LIV’s season-long individual champion a spot; that doesn’t seem like too much of an ask. Should there be a LIV player who demonstrates value outside that window—such as Joaquin Niemann has done over the past three months—the majors have shown they have no qualms using special invites/exemption to round out their fields.

Abolishing the OWGR because of LIV may seem like a surrender from the rest of the sport. In reality, golf’s schism has provided the chance to evaluate everything in the professional ecosystem, and identify what’s really needed, what’s lacking and what likely should go. Ranking golfers should be a fun exercise, not something put into practice. LIV’s complaints about the OWGR’s existence are based on the wrong rationale, but overall, the complaints are probably right.

He could obvious use an editor and I'll add that, except for noting his concerns with the one event, there's nary a thought about the length of tournaments or depth of fields, not to mention a Tour stocked with has-beens  well past their sell-by date.  That's not even the worst of it, as several of these has-beens (take a bow, Graeme McDowell) have bragged about going to LIV because it's "golf without the grind".  Having cashed their checks, they don't even have to work hard anymore.... Quite the marketing premise, eh?

To this observer, Dylan seems at least to understand the game as it's being played:

But LIV’s move here counts on the fact that they still have some leverage in the form of its top players and their potential exclusion from top events. And so LIV is taking a stand. Norman and Co. are making a bet. And they’re showing signs that if they don’t get their way, they’ll happily burn golf’s institutions to the ground.

Roughly translated, it reads, "Nice little game you have there.  Sure would be a shame if anything happened to it".  

ADDENDUM:  Before going to press, I caught that Geoff connected a dot that I should be publicly shamed for not highlighting:

But at least the American side in pro golf’s tug-of-war got a break when LIV’s crazy coot of a
Commissioner couldn’t sit still and added an undeserving player to the rival circuit. Greg Norman is mired in the late stages of his well-chronicled case of acute Youth Desperation Syndrome and seems willing to blow up LIV’s recent progress by owning the whole Free Anthony Kim debacle.

The peculiar and decidedly shortsighted idea to welcome Kim came from Commish Norman at the worst possible time for LIV. By guaranteeing a spot to such a high profile flameout, Norman and friends gave rivals and boards fresh evidence that LIV still functions as an exhibition tour unworthy of the validation world ranking points could offer.

Kim had not played an event of any kind since a 2011 PGA Tour run of 11 MC’s and, a year later, a dreadful 4 MC’s, 2 WD’s and 1 DQ before he disappeared.

Those three certainly deserve each other, and we should work to ensure that they stay together in perpetuity. 

Going Live - PGA Tour Enterprises is now a thing, a for-profit thing most notably.  Who coulda seen this coming:


The tour announced Wednesday evening that a 13-member board of directors has been established for the new for-profit venture, formed in cojunction with the private-equity
investment from the Strategic Sports Group. The Enterprises division will house the PGA Tour’s commercial businesses and rights, as well as those of the DP World Tour. This will allow the tour to maximize revenue for itself and players while keeping the tour’s non-profit 501(c)(6) classification that carries tax exemptions for “business leagues" intact. SSG has pledged up to $3 billion to PGA Tour Enterprises with an initial $1.5 billion investment.

The tour will receive nine board seats, with SSG representatives filling out the other four positions. Six of the nine tour spots were given to the tour’s existing player directors in Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Peter Malnati, Adam Scott, Webb Simpson and Jordan Spieth. Former PGA Tour player Joe Ogilvie was named a “director liaison” and will join both the Enterprises board and the tour’s policy board. Monahan and policy board independent director Joe Gorder round out the tour’s final positions. The four SSG spots will be filled by John W. Henry (Fenway Sports Group), Arthur Blank (Atlanta Falcons), Andrew Cohen (New York Mets) and Sam Kennedy (Boston Red Sox).

Is that the only picture of Jay and Tiger together?  Because how much do I love that they keep using a photo that the both of them would detest.  Tiger, presumably because of that goofy winter get-up with the Lindsay Vonn era ascot, and Jay because he seems to be bowing to his Lord and Master.... Good Times!

The gist of the above is the tourneys are still in the not-for-profit entity, and I'll just admit that I've no clue which is correct.  

Seems like the gang at Golf Digest is taking dictation here:

Left unsaid was what role, if any, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will have in the new business. The tour announced in January that the deal with SSG will allow for co-investment from PIF in the future, but there are antitrust regulations that need to be hurdled, and Congress has announced that its investigation into PIF and its investments in American businesses will continue. Initially, the tour sought supplemental investment to appease government antitrust regulations rather than serving as an alternative to PIF, which is the financial backer to LIV Golf. However, talks have stalled between the PIF and tour, with PIF’s renewed recruiting of tour players—highlighted by the December defection of Jon Rahm to LIV—and the tour’s private-equity courtship leading to hurt feelings on both sides.

That bolding is my own, but which was the higher priority, appeasing the Justice Department or appeasing a certain phenomenal phallus?  You make the call...

Eamon Lynch draws a different conclusion:

Lynch: PGA Tour board changes prove players can’t run a billion-dollar business as a side gig

Pay no attention to the usual suspects, he informs, this is the key guy:

It’s the 13th man on the roster who warrants attention. Joe Ogilvie competed on the PGA Tour for 15 years before quitting in 2014 to become a money manager. He’s smart and personable, a man who studies the minutiae of the golf business with a fervor that most of his peers can only muster for yardage guides and conspiracy theories. Few people are more invested in or animated about the jacketed side of the PGA Tour.

Ogilvie was named to both the Tour’s governing Policy Board and to the board of PGA Tour Enterprises as a “director liaison” — a position described by HQ as an aide-de-camp for players facing the significant time commitment of serving on two boards. He will be additive and influential, and not only because he gives players a symbolic 7-6 majority in the room. But his appointment is a tacit admission that the prevailing wisdom on Tour — players should be in charge — is twaddle.

Gee, I'm an Eamon fan, but methinks he's tripping over his tail (at least I hope that's his tail, otherwise I'm quite impressed) with this.  Ogilvie is no stranger to us and has always seemed a sensible guy, but the last three years have taught us to not assume we really know these guys.

But perhaps the biggest logic fail in Eamon's thoughts is that Ogilvie has a day job, so this is, in fact, a side hustle for him as well.

Eamon makes  a fair point here, the immediately seems to forget it:

A small group of stars has largely assumed directional control of the Tour, but how well that works will depend on how those stars exercise the power they’ve accumulated. In their eagerness to show that they’re the captains now, newly empowered players risk confusing governance with management.

A board ought to focus on the former — strategic goals, organizational health and structure — while leaving operational decisions and execution to an executive team. But this is a member organization and every member has a granular list of grievances around which he thinks the Tour ought to be arranged. The board includes players whose faith in its executives is sorely lacking, and who are themselves overly concerned with score-settling over the secretive Framework Agreement announced on June 6.

His governance vs. management distinction is a good one, though the problem baked therein is time.  What happens typically, and look no further than the U.S. Federal Government, is that the player directors providing governance are a rotating band of distracted  players, whereas the managers are forever.  What we see with the PGA Tour and most similar organizations, is that the professional managers ultimately run the organization for their own benefit...

Does a guy like Joe Ogilvie change these dynamics?  Perhaps, but if he does it's only because of his own individual stature and capabilities, but that's hard to replicate once he's done his year or two of service.  In this case I'm especially cynical, because it seems unlikely that he'd be considered for the gig unless those calling the shots, take a bow Tiger and Patrick, were confident that Joe won't obstruct their brilliance.

But Eamon put together a fun list of challenges for our heroes, and let's just say it's not exactly a short list:

That matters because PGA Tour Enterprises faces numerous issues that are existential. A rudimentary accounting of those:

  •  The lack of progress in reaching a deal with the Public Investment Fund, and what must be a gnawing fear that the Saudis are deliberately delaying things to bleed out the Tour’s product strength.
  • The looming expectations of a return on investment — or at least material changes in business operations — by the Strategic Sports Group, a daunting reckoning for a complacent, legacy organization.
  • Broadcast ratings that are sluggish at best, and worrisome at worst, and which suggest eroding consumer interest just as the Tour tries to persuade constituents that they need to invest more capital.
  • Sponsors fed up with being asked to pay more for the same, or less.
  • Tournament directors angry at having to pay higher fees to headquarters, which for many means robbing the charitable poor box to give more to millionaires.
  • Leadership that is still struggling to regain the trust of the membership nine months and one day after the Framework Agreement was announced.
  • Players who are single-mindedly bent on retribution against those who engineered that Agreement, as though the guys who did nothing but hold their own Tour hostage can claim moral superiority over those who tried to do something, imperfect as it was.
  • Rank-and-file members who see opportunities they earned be diminished because of the relentless focus on rewarding those at the top of the pyramid.
  • Stars who insist the Tour’s business be organized around them — and that they be compensated not as the assets they are, but as the owners they imagine themselves to be — while underperforming for the product in 2024.
  • Around all of that, internal and external messaging that only departs from the banal so that it might veer into the blundering.

Eamon, I'd actually feel better if I believed that they were still bent on retribution, because that would at least be an acknowledgement that LIV is still out there trying to destroy their feed lot.

My framing of Eamon's penultimate bullet is that, having been fawned over and offered untold riches, these stars have concluded that they are the product.  Am I the only one that sees that, if Patrick Cantlay is your product, you're doomed to fail.  Dour and humorless doesn't begin to cover the man, quite the contrast to the man for whom this week's event is named, but Cantlay has exactly four top tens in majors, and in none of those was he ever a threat to win (only one top five, the 2019 PGA).  Yup, let's build our model around this prickly a****e.  What could go wrong?

There's always been a place for guys like Cantlay on tour, it's just that historically those guys have known what that place is.  In many ways Cantlay is a hero of the times, in that his biggest accomplishment in golf was winning a FedEx Cup, where he only had to beat 29 other guys to win $15 million large.  But with strong and deep fields, he misses more cuts than he records top tens.  he's seemingly become Mr. Thursday/Friday, most recently at Riviera.

But the Tour has been reconfigured to meet Patrick's exacting demands, principally the absence of competition.  How's that going on the ground?  We had the bit about Nick Dunlap playing alone, a bit that other found odd and unnecessary as well:

And this guy that agonizingly just missed out on as slot in the field was prepared to be helpful as well:

Andrew Novak, who finished sixth in the Aon Swing 5 between the Mexico Open and Cognizant Classic, one short of getting into the field this week, even offered to play as Dunlap’s marker.

“I’ll play as marker this week, but if I top 10 again yall gotta pay me. Deal?” Novak tweeted after the pairings were released.

Dunlap actually didn't want a marker, worried that the guy would shoot 125, though he might want to reconsider for Friday.  Thursday he was first off, but in the second round he's in the middle of the pack playing as a single.  Really fair, guys!  But it's the explanation that should get these guys a last cigarette:

Entry into the Signature Events — the Arnold Palmer Invitational is the fourth of the year — has been a hot topic. The fields are limited to 80 players but the only event required to have a field of 80 is the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am because it needs to have a pro partner for every amateur.

Think about that for a minute....  the only event they're worried about "filling" the field for is a result of a concern about the amateurs.  Sheesh, only illegal immigrants get treated that well these days.

The Sentry (which has spots only for 2023 tournament winners and the FedEx Cup top 50) had 59 players, and the Genesis Invitational had 70 players.

Don't you love that "only has spots for" bit.  That's because you people are bloody idiots....  It hasn't been a TOC since the Fall face plants got FedEz Cup points, but keep grasping at any straw to ensure that Patrick doesn't have to compete against the great unwashed masses.

The new eligibility categories for these eight events (aside for the Sentry) are last year’s Top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings, the new Aon Next 10 and Aon Swing 5, tournament winners from the current season, sponsor exemptions and Top 30 OWGR players, in that order.

Because of the priority difference, players who have won tournaments this season, but are not in last year’s Top 50 — like Matthieu Pavon, Jake Knapp and Austin Eckroat — are still counted in the Aon Next 10, the top 10 players in the current year FedEx Cup standings not otherwise exempt.

A similar issue occurred for Pebble and the Genesis when the Aon Next 10 was drawn from the FedEx Cup Fall rankings and Pavon and Greyson Murray were counted in the Aon Swing 5 for those events.

If tournament winners were ranked above the Next 10 and Swing 5 categories, then more players would gain entry into the field. But perhaps the rationale for the PGA Tour is that as the season goes on, there will be more winners, and not all of them will be in the Next 10 and Swing 5 categories, meaning there will be fewer players who qualify as both a winner and as one of the other exemptions. By the last Signature Event at the Travelers, there will likely be enough winners to fill the full 80-man field.

This is the first year of the Signature Event model, so the PGA Tour is likely to make some tweaks after this year, but it still leaves the Arnold Palmer with just 69 players.

They keep repeating this crap like it makes any kind of sense..... It really isn't hard to attract players to an event with a $20 million purse, so the only obvious conclusion is that they don't want players there.

Although it is itself notable when the PGA Tour takes time out from its core operations of screwing sponsors to instead screw their members. 

Alex, Where You Been? - Alex Myers writes The Grind at Golf Digest, a typically amusing take on the week in professional golf.  GD has a way of burying it in their clunk website, so it's been quite a while since we've checked in with Alex.  You might want to give this week's edition a read, if only for the photo of his two adorable little girls.  I know, combined with Dylan and Anthony Kim, it's Girl Dads everywhere.

He picked up on this bit that caught my eye and ear as well:

Anthony Kim’s “HATERS”: I liked everything about the LIV social media push around Anthony Kim until it got to the end of that comeback commercial. “HELLO HATERS, I’M BACK”? Huh?  Have a look:
Again, it’s great. And that song is fire. But who exactly are AK’s haters? Doubters? Sure, but HATERS? All golf fans have been doing for the past decade is building this guy up into a legend and begging him to come back.

I get that athletes do this me-against-the-world song and dance a lot. Even guys like Travis Kelce and Klay Thompson claim “NO ONE BELIEVED IN US!” while playing on dynasties. It’s absurd. Just like . . .

It's always been thus, this very phenomenon accounting for most of The Last Dance. 

But the best part is that Alex had seemingly moved on to other topics, the throws this in late in the column as his Tweet of the Week:

Heh!  Arnie wouldn't recognize this world and, as we had on Wednesday, he'd wonder where the deep field at his eponymous tournament went.

Alex also dealt with Tiger's appearance at Seminole and absence at Bay Hill:

ON TAP

The PGA Tour continues its Florida Swing by going to Orlando for the Arnold Palmer
Invitational, AKA that event Arnold Palmer used to host, AKA that event that Tiger Woods used to win every year. Sadly, Tiger is not in the field after playing in the one-day Seminole pro-member on Monday and finishing a disappointing T-40 in the gross division with partner Seth Waugh (Congrats to Mackenzie Hughes and Frank Edwards, BTW). That placed him one shot behind the team of Vinny Giles and 71-year-old Gary Koch (AKA “BETTER THAN MOST!).

So like with most of the PGA Tour’s stars, it hasn’t been a great start to 2024 for Tiger. You’d think someone who is playing so sparingly would at least play at a place where he’s won EIGHT times. But I guess he’s really taking that “once-a-month” plan literally and playing one round a month.

That's fair enough, but I always considered The Players a more likely venue for a March appearance than the API, notwithstanding those eight wins.  But for Tiger to play at Sawgrass, he would need to announce awfully soon, and by awfully soon I mean TODAY.  

Otherwise he'll most likely play the Masters with only two competitive rounds in the books, none of them good and one completely ceremonial.... 

One last bit from Alex.  I opted to not blog this for reasons I'll explain in a second, but first enjoy it for yourself:

I didn't blog it for the simple reason that, with the possible exception of the first putt, Detry is simply not trying.  I have no clue what McDonald finds relatable, but watching a guy swipe five time like he's got a plane to catch doesn't ring any bells for me.

I was a little surprised when I finally pulled up the final leaderboard to see that it happened on the 6th hole of the second round, and he was only +2 before the meltdown, so he might have waved the white flag a bit prematurely.  When I saw the item I had assumed it would have occurred later in the round when any chance of a weekend tee time was gone.  I can only assume he got himself fined as a result, it being so reminiscent of John Daly's estimable body of work.  But way too many assumptions for the one 'graph, so shall we move on?

With Phriends Like Phil... - The Fire Pit Collective, where Alan Shipnuck hangs his hat, has an excerpt from Billy Walters' new book, which will not be released until late August.  I'm curious to see what else might be contained therein, though this excerpt is more than a little disappointing.

There's some background for those unfamiliar with the relationship, but there are two things that I thought worth excerpting.  First, Billy's take on the magnitude of Phil's love of action:

Based upon my detailed betting records and additional records provided by the sources, here is a snapshot of Phil’s gambling habit between 2010 and 2014:
  • He bet $110,000 to win $100,000 a total of 1,115 times.
  • On 858 occasions, he bet $220,000 to win $200,000. (The sum of those 1,973 gross wagers came to more than $311 million.)
  •  In 2011 alone, he made 3,154 bets—an average of nearly nine per day.
  • On one day in 2011 (June 22), he made forty-three bets on major-league baseball games, resulting in $143,500 in losses.
He made a staggering 7,065 wagers on football, basketball, and baseball.

Based on our relationship and what I’ve since learned from others, Phil’s gambling losses approached not $40 million as has been previously reported, but much closer to $100 million. In all, he wagered a total of more than $1 billion during the past three decades.

The only other person I know who surpassed that kind of volume is me.

Yowzer!  The funny bit being that he bet those kinds of sums while not being especially good at it...  Yanno, the kind of clients a sports bookie would kill for.

The other bit of interest is this related to the insider trading in Dean Foods that got Billy locked up:

A number of people in the media, on Twitter, and in the golf world have suggested that Phil ratted
me out on insider trading charges (leaving the trial in New York, left). That is not what happened.

What happened was much worse.

Phil Mickelson, one of the most famous people in the world and a man I once considered a friend, refused to tell a simple truth that he shared with the FBI and could have kept me out of prison. I never told him I had inside information about stocks and he knows it. All Phil had to do was publicly say it. He refused.

The outcome cost me my freedom, tens of millions of dollars and a heartbreak I still struggle with daily. While I was in prison, my daughter committed suicide – I still believe I could have saved her if I’d been on the outside.

While this excerpt focuses solely on our betting relationship, my book explores how Phil finagled his way out of not one, but two cases that ended in criminal convictions. As my book makes clear, Phil is not always the person he seems to be.

Obviously he's an author with a book to sell, hence the tease.....

Veddy interesting....  I'll refer you to this Golf Digest deep dive on the case, and only excerpt this small bit to show you how lucky our Phil was:

But Mickelson's legal odyssey had a final twist. The Newman case, decided by the Second Circuit in December 2014, effectively prevented a criminal prosecution against Mickelson. But while the criminal prosecution of Walters was pending, the United States Supreme Court took up another case from California, which had limited insider-trading law in a nearly identical way that Newman had done in New York. In a unanimous decision in December 2016, the Supreme Court rejected the Newman rule and held that recipients of inside information could be prosecuted even if they didn't know what the original tipper received. In other words, Mickelson might have been prosecuted if his case had arisen before December 2014 or after December 2016. But because the Newman case was the law in New York when his case came up, Mickelson dodged trouble on either side—just as he did between those two trees at Augusta.

Color me unconvinced that the testimony Walters was seeking would have resulted in a different verdict, as life rarely follows such a tidy script.  I also suspect that he doesn't allow for how cross-examination would have played out, as I suspect prosecutors would have had no shortage of dirty laundry with which to undermine Phil's reputation and testimony.

To this observer, the tangent that's most intriguing is that Walters apparently felt the need to share this insider information (Walters still denies it was anything more than an innocent tip) in order to get Phil to pay up.  While that Golf Digest piece cites examples of Phil paying similar gambling debts to Walters, it's clear that Walters' trial strategy required contesting this quid pro quo.  But, including this debt, there are three examples I know of where Phil failed to pay off his gambling debts, the other two involving Callaway (quite the back story to that 2004 Ryder Cup) and the Detroit mob.

On this, we'll just have to wait and see if anything further is in the actual book.  Though my experience tells me that authors put all the juicy bits in these excerpts to, yanno, move the goods.

But, if you thought the above was a tease, you'll love this:

Ever since it was revealed that I was writing an autobiography, there’s been a lot of speculation regarding what I’d have to say about Phil. I have no intention of sharing any details about his personal life. I will leave that to others if they so choose.

I assume that's a slam of Shipnuck, given that the link is to the Fire Pit Collective's home page.  Though, except for this bit from the afterward appended to the second edition of his biography, Shipnuck frustratingly steered clear of all the really tawdry bits.  The closest he got to my knowledge was in an Ask Alan Q&A.  A questioner speculated that these untold scandals had to be about either sex or money, to which Alan replied, "Well, they're not about money".

I know you had to wait an extra day, but hopefully that's a sufficiently meaty post to keep you happy.  Have a great weekend and we'll wrap it on Monday as usual.

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