Thursday Threads - Slow News Cycle Edition

I've been planning Thursday as a blogging morning, but that gosh darn news cycle isn't cooperating..... This might not take long....

Chevron Memories - The Tour that couldn't shoot straight continues to flounder.  While it's hard to contemplate a major commercial entity like Chevron being a negative, but when it locks you into a bad calendar slot at a dreary venue, how is it helpful?

Unsurprisingly, viewership wasn't great, although not as big a drop as I would have expected:

Chevron Championship: NBC averaged 811,000 viewers for Sunday's final round, which saw Mao Saigo come out of a five-way playoff.

Prior two years were 936,000 (Nelly Korda) and 941,000 (Lilia Vu). pic.twitter.com/oRhmKpP5WL

— Josh Carpenter (@JoshACarpenter) April 29, 2025

At this juncture, there are maybe two players that can bring eyeballs to the living room TV.  Given the absence of anyone named Nelly or Lydia from said leaderboard, these bad but not dreadful numbers will likely come as a relief.

The header to Dylan Dethier's Monday Finish column includes a reference to major championship golf getting weird, and he pays that off by listing the entire sequence of weirdness on the 18th hole at the Chevron.  It's lengthy, but I've already tipped my hand that I need filler:

GOLF STUFF I LIKE

Eyes on the prize.

Here are a few things that happened on or around the 18th green in the final hour of play on Sunday at the Chevron, the first women’s major of the year:

–Ariya Jutanugarn, needing birdie to definitely win and par to likely win, whiffed a chip from behind the 18th green and wound up making bogey.

–Haeran Ryu took several minutes to play from the fairway, took an extra club, nuked one into the grandstand, took several more minutes to figure out a drop — and then chipped in for eagle.

-Several pros got up and down from around the grandstand and made birdie to tie the lead.

-Five women finished at 7-under par, setting up a mega-playoff.

–Ronni Yin hit a sensational fairway-wood approach in the playoff, setting up a good look at eagle — and then three-putted.

-Jutanugarn missed a short putt for birdie when it horseshoed around the hole and out.

The last woman standing was Japan’s Mao Saigo, the 23-year-old rising star from Japan, who made birdie to get into the playoff, was the only player to make birdie in the playoff and walked off a winner.

That’s when things went from strange to downright scary. Saigo took the traditional winner’s jump into Poppie’s Pond — but soon was grabbing onto her caddie, Jeffrey Snow, for help.

“I’m not really a good swimmer. When I went inside, it was deep and at first I thought I was going to drown,” she said in her winner’s press conference. Yikes!

Beth Ann Nichols tracked down the details, reinforcing that a good caddie is there for their player when they need it; credit to Snow for going 19 holes on Sunday and pulling off his most crucial carry post-round. Let’s just say we’re impressed with Saigo’s two clutch birdie putts and not dwell too much on what would have been. A warm robe, some drama and a sense of relief — that’s golf stuff I like.

Perhaps only an actual drowning could have provided a fitting ending for that sequence of events.

While I understand Dylan's embrace of chaos, is this really golf stuff we like?  Or, asked a different way, do we think the ladies put on a good show?  Because I think it was major squandered opportunity, one in which their product was largely unwatchable.

I like women's golf and I want it to succeed, but often it seems me that they don't understand their product and its appeal.  The good news is that more folks than expected tuned in.  The nagging question the lades should be asking themselves is whether they liked what they saw.

Mixed Golf - Olympic Update - This tab as admittedly been open for a while, but it's an obvious segue from the above musing about women's golf:

International Golf Federation announces format for mixed-team competition at 2028 Olympics

Do tell:

The International Golf Federation confirmed the IOC's addition of a mixed-team event, which will debut at the Riviera in 2028. It will take place after the men's competition and before the women's, with all of them taking place at Riviera Country Club.

“We’re absolutely thrilled to see a Mixed-Team Event added to the program for Los Angeles 2028,” IGF Executive Director Antony Scanlon said in a release. “Golf was incredibly successful at Paris 2024, and as we continue building on the momentum from Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, we’re excited to bring even more attention to our sport through this additional format. The athletes were very enthusiastic about their desire to play with their compatriots, and we look forward to watching them compete together in Los Angeles.”

The mixed-team event will be contested as a 36-hole competition featuring 18 holes of foursomes (alternate shot) for the first round, followed by 18 holes of four-ball (best ball) for the final round.

Sounds promising.  You'll have guessed that I'm especially intrigued by the alternate shot format.  But golf and the Olympics are an awkward fit, so what haven't they told us?

There will be a maximum of one team per country, with teams comprised of one male and one female who are already qualified for the Men’s and Women’s Individual Olympic Golf Competitions, per the announcement.

Thud.  One team from the U.S. means it's not a competition, it's an exhibition.  Is watching Scottie and Nelly play alternate shot interesting?  Especially at Riviera, where I'm curious as to who will hit the drive on the 10th hole, but you see the issue.  We think of the golf, but the IOC is driven by the number of dorm rooms.  There is probably no way for them to accommodate a proper field size, even a paltry Signature Event field size, so it can never be a meaningful competition.  If it's not a competition, what is it?  I call it an Exhibition, but you might have other thoughts.

M-I-C-K-E-Y -This piece is currently up at ESPN:

Top players, best moments and more at the PGA Tour midpoint

My first pass answer is that there haven't been any, but hold that thought for a second as we focus on the concept of being midseason.

Because there's also this:

You probably wouldn’t change the Super Bowl’s rules in the middle of the NFL’s regular season. You wouldn’t tweak the World Series at the All-Star Break. But the PGA Tour still feels it hasn’t quite nailed the recipe for its big-money, season-ending Tour Championship — so it’s planning to tweak the format. Those changes could happen in the next few weeks. And they could take effect as soon as this season.

On the one hand, that seems like a wild move considering the stakes; the FedEx Cup awards $25 million to its winner and $100 million in total. On the other hand it makes all the sense in the world — if you’re dishing out that big a prize, you’d like to make sure you’ve got it right.

Fair enough, but wouldn't it be appropriate to note that this event has had more tweaks than Zsa Zsa Gabor?  I'm sure they'll get it right this time, but the best way to avoid being considered a Micky Mouse Tour is, yanno, to stop acting like a Mickey Mouse Tour.

WHAT WE DO KNOW

Starting strokes are likely to be eliminated, per Scott, who said that he thought “everybody involved” wanted to ditch the confusing staggered-start format.

But match play, which was likely the flashiest potential addition to the format, seems unlikely to get incorporated, either.

“It’s hard to wrap your head around you play one style all season and then your final event is an entirely different format,” Scott said.

It seems like they have reached consensus; Sam Burns told Schupak that the Player Advisory Council met at last week’s RBC Heritage and reached a preferred format. Now it’s a matter of getting other stakeholders — broadcasters NBC and CBS, plus sponsors like FedEx, Coca Cola and Southern Company — on board.

Kevin Kisner, who wears multiple hats as a Tour pro and NBC analyst, teased out one TV-approved potential format where they’d cut the field down to 16, then to eight, then to four to ramp up drama. But that seems unlikely to be the final answer.

“I think it will be a more traditional tournament with more consequence,” Kisner told Schupak. “I don’t want to spoil the surprise too much.”

“It’s going to be a better tournament for the players, a better tournament for the sponsors and really everyone involved,” Burns said.

Change is coming. Players seem excited. The new format will likely be greeted with some skepticism. But one thing will measure its success: whether there’s an immediate push to change it again.

So, nothing then?  

This event almost can't work, because the Tour brass can't decide whether it's a season-long contest or a year-end shootout.  They want it to be both, but the internal contradictions are doom it.  To the extent that they're giving us anything of substance, it feels like a bit of push towards the latter.  But when they speak of whittling the field down to four guys, that will die when they realize they can't just pick the four guys   

Back to that ESPN item for just a sec, as this reminds of Jay's existential anxiety:

Best victory

The Masters, the first major championship of the season, provided golf fans with everything they could possibly want: Rory McIlroy vs. Bryson DeChambeau in the final round. High drama on the second nine at Augusta National in Sunday's final round, thanks to McIlroy's near-collapse and Justin Rose's stunning comeback effort.

Rose, who carded a 6-under 66 in the final round, sank a 20-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole to put even more pressure on McIlroy, who had squandered a four-stroke lead. McIlroy missed a 5-footer for par on No. 18 to force a playoff with Rose.

On the first playoff hole, Rose hit his approach shot to 15 feet of the hole on the No. 18 green. McIlroy hit his second to 4 feet. Rose missed his birdie putt, and then McIlroy sank his to capture his first green jacket in his 11th try.

"This is my 17th time here, and I started to wonder if it would ever be my time," McIlroy said. "I think the last 10 years coming here with the burden of the Grand Slam on my shoulders and trying to achieve that, yeah, I'm sort of wondering what we're all going to talk about going into next year's Masters."

So, the best victory on the PGA Tour this season is not an actual PGA Tour event.....  In the existential struggle for professional golf, I don't quibble that LIV looks to have fewer cards to play than the PGA Tour, but the Tour position is quite tenuous as well.  The schism in the game has only served to elevate the importance of those four majors, to the detriment of the Tour.

Stuff I Like -  Hey, if Dylan can use it fill out columns, why not a humble blogger?  Do you know the name Clifford C. Wendehack?  The man literally wrote the book on golf clubhouses, and designed many of the greatest versions thereof:

Have you ever stepped into a clubhouse so beautiful, so historic, so relaxing that you wished you could live there? Well, now’s your chance … sort of. Enter 7 S Mountain Ave. in Montclair, New Jersey, a rare residential foray by Clifford C. Wendehack, the architect responsible for many of the Tri-State’s finest clubhouses including Winged Foot, Bethpage State Park and Ridgewood Country Club. The elegant French Norman-style estate hit the market last month and could finally make your dream a reality … provided you have $1.7 million in the cookie jar.

Pretty great, though I'd rather belong to Winged Foot than live there.

Just a couple of fun headers, and then I'll release you into the general population:

Oz the Mentalist reveals Scotties Scheffler’s ATM code to the entire world in latest viral stunt

I haven't clicked through, because the article can't live up the header, can it?

This as well:

Did I dishonor the game via handicap shenanigans?

No, you dishonored yourself.  The game will be fine.

I know, a bit of a thin post, but it will just have to sate you until we meet again.  Have a great weekend.