Thursday Themes - Calm Before The Storm Edition

You'll not expect much from me this week, as I husband my strength for the coming deluge....  So, a few of those random musings and I'll let you get on with your day.

The Walker Cup Reimagined - It's such a great event and a welcome respite from the overwrought drama later this month that it seem ungentlemanly to harp on a few nits.  But harp Geoff does:

A Few Ways The Walker Cup Could Improve

Two automatic spots from continental Europe, Friday four-balls, and other tweaks would in no way undermine the purpose of the biennial matches.

I know. Picky. Picky. Picky.

The 50th match delivered a spectacular success as both a competition and a captivating visual spectacle.

Who would dare dampen the mood by going straight to quibbles less than 48 hours after the last putt dropped? Guilty as charged.

These suggestions are not new ideas to the organizers, who have probably kicked a few of them around. Many have been inspired by questions posed to the organizers. Maybe to the point of modest annoyance that engenders the dreaded shaking head before the question is even finished. Apologies in advance.

Or, yanno, just go to Cypress Point every two years, and not much else would matter. 

OK, maybe that required a spoiler alert, but you know his lede:

Include all of Europe, with a nod to the match origin.

Before the Harris Tweed Society of Greater Fife types start clutching their Saint Andrew saltires and hurling empty Scotch glasses at Freddie Tait and Nails’ portrait, remember this: the Walker Cup was established to stimulate interest in golf via spirited competition on both sides of the Atlantic, all while engendering international friendship and understanding between the USGA and The Royal and Ancient Golf Club.

As Gordon Simmonds reminds us in Golf’s Finest Contest, “When the matches for the Walker Cup began, the Treaty of Versailles was only three years old, the rebuilding of a war-torn Europe was underway, heavily reliant upon the economic support of a booming America, and the game of golf in Britain and America was predominantly the preserve of the educated and/or well-to-do.”

Okay, some things haven’t changed.

But a great deal has occurred since the first official match in 1922. Heck, the Royal and Ancient even finally budged on Welsh golfers when it suited them. Like the Johnsons of Rock Ridge eventually caving and taking in the Irish, it would be a natural evolution of the matches to make golfers from all of continental Europe eligible. Just as the Ryder Cup has benefited from expansion, so would the Walker Cup. In modest fashion.

Just as both sides have agreed to rely on the World Amateur Golf Ranking to select teams—another argument for another day—and just as each side selects one mid-amateur in an understanding that has worked out well, the time has come to inspire golfers from all over the continent. Perhaps there would be two automatic spots from GB&I and another two from Europe, leaving six Captain’s selections. Going by the latest WAGR, this would have put Filip Jakubcik (Czech Republic) and Gunnlaugur Arni Sveinsson (Iceland) on the team. Michael Alexander Mjaaseth (Norway) and Tim Wiedemeyer (Germany) might have made the team as picks. The rest of the roster probably would have been made up of worthy GB&I players based on the current ranking. The matches still would have been spectacular and certainly more of an international gathering.

Oh, and control of the competition and venue selection can also remain relegated to Great Britain and Ireland. That should keep the Royal clubs happy.

Are those clubs happy to land Walker Cups?  The members already cede a healthy portion of their tee sheet to visitors, do they love shutting their clubs down for a fortnight?   Or is it something they put up with in the hopes of ascending the Rota?

I'm not sure I get the case for automatic picks allocated to continental Europe.  If the picks are required to achieve the representation, doesn't that just dilute the team's talent base?  Europe can only buttress GB&I to the extent it's not a DEI program.

Making the event more competitive will inevitably dwarf other suggestions in terms of importance, as you'll notice a pretty sharp drop-off in anticipated sizzle

Publish a dedicated points list more prominently and hold Captain press conferences to announce the selections.

The Walker Cup does not need to become the Ryder Cup or within shouting distance of its

bombast and spats. But the Walker Cup does need more attention leading up to the matches in order to build anticipation and basic awareness. I was staggered by how many serious golf fans did not know the matches were this year, despite the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see high-level golf at Cypress Point featuring one player who was regularly contending in PGA Tour events this summer (Jackson Koivun). He has remained an amateur (whatever that is these days) to play the Walker Cup, the Masters (if he gets a McCormick medal-inspired invite), and to contend for another NCAA Championship. I get that the logoed-crest jacket crowd wants to keep the event to themselves (made clear to the plebeians by Friday’s strange flex sending ticketholders at 1 p.m. while practice was still taking place on the course).

The world has changed. We know from the Masters and Ryder Cup that a gradual “race” to qualify is as much a nice thing to track as it is a classic marketing tool to build interest. A dedicated points list updated regularly, followed by a Captain's press conference to explain the selections made by each side, does not seem like a big ask.

The shock is that Geoff penned two full 'graphs on this subject, yet CTRL:F: Sam Burns Yields zero results.

Let me first say that this seems an obviously reasonable suggestion that can't possibly hurt the process.  That said, a Walker Cup points list would get zero ink, although there's a far better reason for publishing it.

What Geoff doesn't share is that the USGA has not been merely opaque in their selections, they've seemingly gone out of their way to leave deserving players off the squad.  This is no small issue, as U.S. amateur golf has undergone a fairly substantive change, the NCAA Championships have been ascendant and the U.S. Amateur somewhat diminished.  Much of this comes from the PGA Tour, whereby the kids are ill-served hanging around until August for the Am.

You can read the Burns story here:

Somehow the college player of the year was left off the U.S. Walker Cup team and it has a lot of people upset

After winning the Jack Nicklaus Award as the Division I college player of the year in June, Sam Burns did what a lot of talented collegiate golfers do: He announced he would not be returning to

school for his junior year at LSU this fall, but instead would turn pro. However, the 21-year-old from Shreveport, La., has one more accomplishment he wanted to achieve before making the formal jump: play for the U.S. team in the Walker Cup. So he announced he wouldn't be turning pro until the end of the summer, hoping that his impressive college resume would be enough for him to make squad.

Turns out the wait was for naught as Burns’ name was not among the 10 listed Sunday night when the USGA unveiled the 2017 U.S. team at the conclusion of the U.S. Amateur Championship.

Of course every year there are going to be players with solid pedigrees who just miss out on the squad. But the case of Burns might have a lingering impact on the U.S. Walker Cup teams down the road. By waiting the entire summer to see if he’d get picked, Burns passed up trying to play in any PGA Tour or Web.com Tour events on sponsor’s exemptions in hopes of winning enough money to grab a card for 2018 on either tour. Essentially Burns lost a year on his pro career by waiting the two-plus months to try and make the U.S. Walker Cup team.

First, a seemingly obvious point, that this isn't about Sam Burns,  Rather, it's about all the kids that come after Burns and see how the USGA treated him....  Even if you don't think it was personal, the kids will understand that the USGA cannot be relied upon to  pick the obvious candidates.  The Tour has added at least a year of indentured servitude on the Korn Ferry Tour, do we think the youngsters will want add another year wasted as per Sam Burns?

Am I the only one that sees linkage between Geoff's two suggestions.  The USGA seems to revel in their control of the young players, and there's no blowback because it never costs the U.S. a Cup.  I'm not sure the USGA is motivated to make the event more competitive, because they're not accustomed to ever losing.

None of us even knew this was an issue:

Enough with the home team’s early arrival.

The teams convened on the Friday prior to the matches. The United States, which did not have to travel from overseas, appeared to have done all of its prep work by Thursday and was bouncing off the walls by the time crowds arrived. They were understandably less enthused about playing many holes on Friday ahead of a busy weekend featuring four sessions in two days. The GB&I team took Tuesday off in an attempt to peak by the weekend. Thankfully, they played more holes than expected and gave the fans in attendance on Friday something to watch before being asked to leave. On Friday morning, the USA teed off as a ceremonial tensome, played a few holes, then weirdly went over to the ocean holes to play those under the watchful eye of former President George W. Bush. Would they have played any holes Friday if not for the presence of a former President, whose great-grandfather donated the trophy (as 43 joked in his speech)? Probably not. They can roll into Bandon Dunes on Sunday in September, 2028.

Not sure I'll get worked over that, although clearing the golf course midday on Friday seems unnecessary.

Geoff has one last suggestion, though only this header is available before his paywall:

Four-ball Friday.

An odd sign, given the absence of four-ball play in the 50th Walker Cup.

I was wondering whether Geoff would go there, especially since Geoff is well aware that fourball play in the Ryder Cup now verges on the unwatchable.  But the bigger issue is that this is an amateur exhibition match, does it need and/or should it be a grueling three-day event.  Seems to this observer that we should keep this to just the weekend.  No one watches even then, so how do we justify making it bigger?

Blessed Quietude - Eamon tackles the Tour's existential Fall issues, though not sure we're in agreement on the objectives, much less the solutions:

Lynch: As the PGA Tour kicks off its quiet season, it has to figure out how to make noise now

Do we need twelve months of noise?  Or is that perhaps how we got into this mess in the first place?

The Procore Championship, which begins the seven-stop FedEx Cup Fall this week, is the exception that proves the rule—the exception being that the presence of 10 members of the U.S. Ryder Cup team adds reputational heft to the field, while the rule is that this stretch on the PGA Tour schedule usually boasts all the star power of a county fair hootenanny.

Last year, the California kick-off drew not a single player who might accurately be described as a boon for viewership and things weren’t much better at the other seven stops (Las Vegas is no longer part of the line-up). A few top guys competed at the Zozo Championship in Japan and Ludvig Aberg defended at the RSM Classic. Otherwise, Scottie Scheffler was on his couch and the European stars had decamped to play over yonder.

None of which much recommends the PGA Tour product after Labor Day and before the Super Bowl, and highlights the need for both a domestic rebrand and a global rethink.

Or, yanno, we can just ignore it.....

The Fall tournaments—whether positioned at the start of a wrap-around season or as an addendum to a calendar-year schedule—are relics of a time when the Tour focused on creating playing opportunities for its members, regardless of actual fan interest in seeing those particular members. Tomorrow’s Tour is obviously intent on building the business around popular superstars, which renders this portion of the schedule unfit for purpose. But should it be retired or recast?

Which would be great if the sport involved weren't, yanno golf.  Because, if golf is only about those twenty guys, where do the future stars come from?  That's why I'm so down on Tiger and Rory, amongst others, because this focus on only the handful of players is contrary to the nature of our game and quite destructive in the long term.

There is something at stake in the next seven events, though not for those who secured status for ’26 by finishing top 50 in the FedEx Cup. They’ve no incentive to play, save for sponsor obligations, boredom or marital discord at home. Those who end up in the AON Next 10 (positions 51-60) earn a berth in two early season Signature tournaments, a category Aberg and Maverick McNealy have used to great effect. And with only 100 fully exempt cards available, versus 125 previously, there’s no shortage of guys who will be competing under intense pressure for the next two months.

But that’s part of the problem with how the FedEx Cup Fall is marketed. Hey, come watch guys who had mediocre seasons jockey for a chance at a less mediocre season next year!

This is just so misguided and I'm a little surprised to hear Eamon seemingly buying in.  The Tour should be focused on playing opportunities, not that the Fall hasn't always seemed to be more logically Korn Ferry territory. 

But watching players fight for their professional status is the essence of our game and is actually great theater.  I'm not suggesting that it will ever draw big viewership or be able to go tore-to-toe with the NFL, but why are we dismissing it out of hand?  It's a lot purer to this observer than the made-for-TV signature events, which go out of their way to deny playing opportunities and protect those top tweenty players from actual competitive threats.

Here I think Eamon does better:

We’ve seen terrific stories emerge from Fall events, none better than Erik van Rooyen winning in Mexico under the weight of a close friend’s imminent death, plus breakout victories by McNealy and Aberg, and the comeback of Camilo Villegas. But crossing fingers for feel-good leaderboards isn’t enough for tournaments that need to better justify their existence. It demands a compelling narrative framework to juice fan interest.

It should be simplified as a stand-alone stretch. Let the 70 who qualify for the FedEx Cup Playoffs have their status and manufacture a hunger games-style battle for the last 30 cards. Dispense with presenting things in relation to a season-long points race that concluded months earlier, because when the Tour encourages fans to root for someone to finish 51st or 100th, it’s admitting they’re selling chaff. But fans might engage with a tussle for 30th place if 31st means unemployment. That subtle shift can change the perception of scavengers fighting for crumbs to one of hopefuls scrambling for seats at the banquet.

This window can be additive to the PGA Tour, but right now it’s awfully close to being dilutive. That’s a bad place to be when the new CEO, Brian Rolapp, and his investors at Strategic Sports Group are bent on streamlining the product according to business merits, not legacy attachments or satisfaction surveys in the locker room.

The Fall should be for the non-elites for sure, but perhaps we don't need to make the big money events such tiny fields?   They try to convince us that we don't want to see the no-names, but it's pretty damn exciting when the no-names take down the boldface crowd, no?  Which is exactly why they need to be kept out of such events.

I did warn you that today might be a little light.  I need to dive in on a few things and will expect to be back on Monday.  Have a great weekend.