Thursday, October 6, 2022

Thursday Threads

What is that bright thing shining through my shutter slats?  Oh, the sun?  Yeah, that's right, I remember....

Golf tomorrow with Bobby D., so I'll next see you on Monday.  Full blogging will proceed this morning despite impeded access to my monitor:

Would you make the Emperor move?  But please excuse any resulting typos, especially those in the lower-left quadrant....

Strange Daze - I was given a bad rumor yesterday that LIV had been accepted for Official World Golf Ranking points, which struck me as an unlikely capitulation.  I now know what triggered that Fake News, and I'm not the only one that finds this saga odd:

LIV Golf's quest for World Ranking points is taking a strange twist

Stranger than signing PReed?  Yeah, I agree, that's an awfully high bar.... But, this is weird indeed:

Officials with LIV Golf, frustrated that the Board of Directors with the Official World Golf Ranking has not expedited a review of the Saudi-backed circuit’s application for accreditation, are trying
another avenue in order to have players earn OWGR points.

On Wednesday, the MENA Tour (short for Middle East and North Africa) announced a partnership with LIV Golf. LIV officials believe the partnership with MENA, which already has OWGR accreditation, will allow LIV events to begin receiving points immediately, starting with this week’s LIV Golf Invitational Bangkok.

“We are taking this mutually beneficial action to support the game at the developmental level and because of the importance and fairness of LIV golfers qualifying for OWGR points,” said Atul Khosla, president and COO of LIV Golf. “We’re pleased to create pathways that give more opportunities for young players, while also giving fans rankings that include all the world’s best golfers.”

The MENA Tour?  With apologies to John Lovitz, that's the ticket!  Of course, there's this niggling doubt because, well, I do so hate to harsh their mellow but.... First, they're already affiliated with a Tour recognized by the OWGR plus, and I want to ask this as respectively as possible, but what the f***k is the MENA Tour?

The MENA Tour was founded in 2011 and has mostly served as a developmental tour for players looking to eventually play in Europe, Asia and South Africa. In 2016, the Dubai-based tour, which ran roughly 10-15 events a year for purses of approximately $75,000 (LIV purses are $20 million), was awarded OWGR accreditation. The tour was canceled in 2018, and though it returned the following season, it has not staged any tournaments in more than two years. But as part of the announcement of the partnership with LIV (first reported by The Telegraph), the MENA Tour revealed it will return with a 2022-23 season that kicks off with this week’s LIV Golf Invitational Bangkok and includes LIV’s last two 2022 invitational events in Saudi Arabia and Miami as well as its 2023 lineup of 14 tournaments. All LIV golfers will automatically become members of the MENA Tour.

Oh, THAT MENA Tour... Yeah, sounds totally legit.  And they think they're getting OWGR points this week?

Of course, Greg, the old adage is that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, although I prefer Mike Tyson's more cryptic version, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth":

However, whether the OWGR will award points for this week’s LIV event or any other LIV events in the near future is far from certain. Messages to the OWGR on the matter had not been returned as of this writing.

A source familiar with the workings of the OWGR technical committee, which is reviewing LIV’s initial application, told Golf Digest it’s unlikely the OWGR would award points for this week’s LIV event, saying that an alliance with another tour doesn’t initiate automatic inclusion of LIV Golf in the World Ranking. Furthermore, MENA risks becoming decertified because it appears MENA might be changing its competition format to align with LIV.

Well, the good news is that, when you haven't held an event in three years, decertification doesn't sting too badly...

Far more likely is that this is just a prong of LIV's warfare strategy:

Considering that LIV already has a partnership with a OWGR accredited tour in the Asian Tour raises the question of why the upstart circuit would need to reach out to MENA. A source told Golf Digest that LIV’s stalled launch in 2022 was part of the reasoning, and its lack of avenues for Asian Tour players to compete in LIV events—an issue LIV has addressed—was hindering that route.

Additionally, while LIV Golf officials are confident they will be included under MENA’s point umbrella, an OWGR denial could be part of LIV Golf’s antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour as well as a separate filing against the OWGR.

Is it possible that there could be trouble in paradise?  Let's remember that Greg Norman assured these guys that they couldn't possibly be suspended from the PGA Tour, and I would venture a guess that similar assurance were rendered about access to majors.  Whether they were sufficiently granular to included the OWGR we don't know, but I'm catching a whiff of something here....

Ryan Herrington apparently is sharing this olfactory moment:

If there feels like a bit of desperation in LIV Golf’s latest attempt to find a way for its events to offer Official World Golf Ranking points—partnering with the developmental MENA Tour that hasn’t held an event in more than two years—perhaps that’s understandable. Among the upstart Saudi-backed circuit’s remaining hurdles to legitimacy is being able to have its players earn OWGR points, primarily so that they can remain eligible to qualify for major championships in 2023.

Norman has seemed especially shrill lately, though the OWGR I would guess is just the most pressing issue.  I mean, the MENA Tour?  I don't care how the OWGR regulations are written, hiding behind the skirts of a tour that doesn't hold actual golf tournaments will make one look, well, Normanesque.

Herrington's interest is in seeing what's become of the defectors' rankings, and he's thoughtful enough to provide a chart:

A
As your grandmother might say, they made their bed....  I mean, I'm still laughing over the fact that some of these guys might have believed Norman's assurances.... Pro Tip: Never trust content from Greg Norman!

Interestingly, Geoff ties this story into the last 24-hour news cycle in ways that must have his liberal head exploding:

The vaunted MENA Tour is back after a three-year hiatus and ready to alter the course of major championship history. Or, so goes the logic around the latest LIV scheme for world ranking points and improved access to the big four events fans actually care about. In turn, these stupid little points would make LIV legitimate, thereby distracting the tours 100,000 streamers from noticing the nefarious activities of LIV’s Saudi backers.

That first link goes here:

In Rebuke to West, OPEC and Russia Aim to Raise Oil Prices With Big Supply Cut

Gee, Geoff, I don't know, isn't it their oil?   And isn't oil going to kill us?  So I'm little surprised that you're not all in on this decreased oil production... Are you perhaps, Geoff, revisiting the shear genius of shutting down domestic production?  No, of course not....

But I do like this formulation:

And that link goes here:

Putin and the prince: fears in west as Russia and Saudi Arabia deepen ties

Really, because you'd have to be Nostradamus to see that one coming... Just a reminder that Biden called the Saudis a "pariah regime", so good thing we don't have that guy in White House that alienates our allies any more....

But, closer to home, I'm guessing that the Justice Department antitrust investigation into the PGA Tour has lost any sense of urgency.  So, we've got that going for us...

This news was conveyed at the LIV Pro-Am party, where apparently Slugger White  busted some moves:

Amusing, but shall we let Geoff rant on?

There is sad news for those hoping to see Peter Uihlein improve on his World No. 329 status at the MENA-LIV Bangkok 48-ball: this exhibition is not yet listed on the OWGR tournament page and remains totally meaningless. But the lack of newsworthiness frees us up to read about LIV sugar-daddy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bonding over oil production cuts with Vladimir Putin. All with the expectations Westerners will forgive and forget the nefarious ways of these dictators once they’ve streamed some live, commercial-free LIV Golf.

Strange to see Geoff so concerned about the price of gas, when he lives in the People's Republic of California, where folks have been warned off trying to charge their EVs.  And, Geoff, any thoughts on our current strategy?  Stiffed by the noxious Saudis and the equally noxious Russians, we're now desperately trying to rehabilitate the Venezuelan regime.  Everything is going swimmingly, at least until the lights go out this winter.

The good news, though, is that golf is the least of it....

The Ryder Cup Hype - Luke Donald and Zach Johnson spent a day beclowning themselves in Rome, apparently under the impression that we'll have a Ryder Cup next September.  I wish I was as sanguine, though Geoff had this brief summary of the captains' comments:

Luke Donald expects Europe to be underdogs. “I fully expect us to be underdogs despite that home percentage of wins over the last 30 years.”

Zach Johnson is not buying it. “Do I really think the Europeans are underdogs? I can give you a
one-word answer: No. They are not underdogs. They are on their home soil.”

Johnson “does not know” what Tiger’s role will be yet. “I can't put this mildly: He loves The Ryder Cup. He has made it a priority of his, and certainly Team USA. He wants to be a part of it as best he can.”

Donald explained why he got six Captain’s picks, up from three: “I think there's definitely been times in the past where some players have managed to win seven, eight months out and been kind of almost guaranteed to make the team. I think giving myself more picks will give me an opportunity to pick the best in-form team.”

Donald is not beholden to analytics. “When it comes to forming pairings, statistics are important but it's also important to rely on your instincts which is what we relied on before. So it's a mixture of using technology and using your instincts to get the win.”

Johnson calls Marco Simone “a very high-character” golf course. “I feel it requires everything. I mean, it has a lot of hills, so it's the battle of the fittest, which makes sense, and then the character side of it. It's got left, right, up, down, every which way….it's going to require everybody on both sides to have all elements of their game to be on, and I think that's a true test of the golf course.”

Donald is brushing up on Rome. “The Colosseum obviously is iconic when it comes to Rome, built back in 80 A.D., I was reading up about it. Still the biggest amphitheater ever be to built. It's amazing they were able to do such amazing things back so many years ago.”

Johnson loves Rome. “Unbelievable hosts. Unbelievable hospitality. You can tell there's a lot of passion and desire to just want to host us and certainly The Ryder Cup. I'm grateful for that. But it's been a whirlwind. Whether you are talking the Pantheon to the Colosseum to the Spanish Steps to Marco Simone, I've had a taste of it all, and on that note, a lot of great food.”

Obviously, they're fighting over the mantle of underdog, which to me does capture the essence of this installment, which feels to me somewhat critical.  I think you have trend lines that go in opposite directions, the resolution thereof being of interest.  Recent editions have been resounding home victories, making road games look to be big asks.  But the countervailing trend is that the talent advantage seems to be tilting decidedly to the Yanks, as Europe's roster projects to be historically weak.

But can we all agree that Tiger can be a dick?  I mean, why isn't he announced as an Assistant Captain?  It can only be because he's refused to commit to being there, and see if you find any of this convincing:

“I can’t put this mildly—he loves the Ryder Cup,” Johnson said Tuesday as part of a news conference in Rome with European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald. “He has made it a priority of his, and certainly Team USA. He wants to be a part of it as best he can. Obviously, he’s gone through some things as of late that make it difficult, whether it’s travel or what have you.”

Just wanna be clear here, Zach, he can lay in three majors but can't commit to driving a cart in Rome?  

I find this quite bizarre and off-putting, not least because isn't he that captain-apparent for Bethpage 2025?  Obviously that was gonna be Phil's moment, but the only logical way to fill that void is with Tiger, no?

Shall we fire up the Wayback Machine and revisit this telling comment from 2002?  Yeah, that question was rhetorical:

No one can accuse Tiger Woods of looking ahead to next week’s Ryder Cup.

Woods birdied the last two holes Thursday for a seven-under 65 to take a one-stroke lead over David Toms and Steve Lowery in the American Express Championship at Thomastown, Ireland, a tournament he said means more to him than winning that little exhibition next week at The Belfry.

Asked which was more important, Woods chose an individual title and the $1-million check over a team victory and a 14-inch gold chalice.

“Why? I can think of a million reasons,” Woods said.

But sure, Zach, he loves the Ryder Cup....

Hard to not agree with Tron here:

Well, maybe, although I'm hoping they'll just crawl back into their hole for a while.

Since somebody mentioned the Ryder Cup, I've had this tab open for a while and I have no idea what to do with this piece, except of course to mock it:

The Numbers Game: After Presidents Cup win, Team USA's secret weapon is ready for the 2023 Ryder Cup

A secret weapon?  Yeah, that's the ticket....


The first thing that anyone who works at Scouts Consulting will tell you is that they're overrated. They don't matter, the media makes too much of them, and in fact, now that you mention it, they might not even exist. The second thing they'll tell you is …

Well, there is no second thing, because when you ask about the secret sauce that informs their statistical and non-quantitative analysis, and how it helped Team USA win two of the last three Ryder Cups and last week's Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow, you might as well knock on the front doors at CIA headquarters in Langley and ask to spend a few hours with their files. And frankly, why would you want to know? They're nobody! Sure, maybe the minute they finish chatting with you, you'll spot them in deep conversation on a golf cart with Davis Love III, who called them "invaluable." And, sure, maybe they've gotten closer to the team in an actual physical sense every time they’ve worked a new event since the first in 2016. And, sure, maybe they'll be an integral part of Team USA's strategy as they try to win a Ryder Cup in Europe next fall for the first time since 1993. But come on, go easy, move along: There's nothing to see here.

Before we get to the elusive bit of what they do, let's take a second to parse those qualification, which has your humble blogger laughing out loud.

  • It is technically true that the U.S. has won two of the last three Ryder Cups, but we all understand that home game issue.  But tell me about 2018, guys, when your vaunted big data apparently concluded that Phil should play foursomes.  I don't know much, but a man that hasn't hit a fairway since the Carter administration seemed a bad fit for that format...
  • Are we really crowing over that Prez Cup win against an historically-weak International team?  Weren't we winning Prez Cups without you guys?
But, I hear you asking, what is it they do?

So what do they actually do?

In a broad sense, they assist the captains with everything from match pairings to personality questionnaires to course set-up to overall strategy to you-name-it. They're on hand if historical questions come up (how many rookies have been captain's picks, and how did they do?), and if a captain has an idea that he wants to vet with the numbers, Scouts are at his service. Critical to all of this are their "models," which are weighted specifically to evaluate various statistical inputs and churn out optimal strategies. If that sounds like a simplistic explanation, well, it is; as Jee himself told me, while we walked around Quail Hollow and I asked about the evolution model, and how the weights have changed (i.e., what elements, from recent play to course fit to specific skills matter the most), "it would be unbelievably difficult for me to articulate in what I believe to be a safe way." In other words, even if he let me peek behind the curtain—which he wouldn't—I wouldn't understand what I was seeing.

So, you're saying that we can't understand the complexity of your worldview?   Bonus points for anyone that gets that literary reference....

But my BS detector is in the red zone, so lets' see if they can explain further:

Still, you can start to get a sense of the complexity by asking yourself basic questions about, say, lineup formation. Pretend you're the American captain, and in the foursomes (alternate shot) session, you want to play Sam Burns and Scottie Scheffler together. The first thing you might look at is which player should tee off on the odd and even holes. Maybe one is better on par 3s, and it just so happens that all the par 3s are even holes (as was the case at Quail Hollow). Or maybe one has an approach-game vulnerability from certain yardages that would rear its head based on the other player's drives on odd holes, but not even. Maybe one of them is a better putter, and the way things shake out, the player who tees off on odd holes will be taking the first putt on 12 of 18 holes (again, as was the case at Quail Hollow). In a Ryder Cup, maybe they could even suggest spots on the course where the rough should be cut down (or grown out, to count for opponents' tendencies). But wait—how does pairing Scheffler and Burns affect the rest of the pairings for that session? Will the ripple effects compromise the captain’s options in statistical or extra-statistical ways? What about the rest of the weekend? How might it fit the plan or throw everything out of whack? And where in the lineup should they be playing, to give them the best potential advantage considering the opponents' tendencies? Oh, and what balls do each of them play, and assuming it's an acceptable match, does it also jive when you factor in the other pairings? And how would the expected wind affect it?

I have no grudge against analytics, but much of this is laugh-out-loud funny.  I can't help but be reminded of that 2004 Ryder Cup, the one where Hap Sutton famously paired Tiger and Phil.  One of my stock bits from that Cup was that the famous pairing was merely the second stupidest thing that Hal Sutton did on the famous Friday, so you'll want to know which was the first.  Oakland Hills also had all four Par-3's as either the even or odd holes (doesn't matter which), so how would you have handled the Fred Funk - Davis Love III pairing?  Fred Funk had one conspicuous skill in golf, he hit every fairway he saw, so naturally he let Fred hit the tee ball on four of those Par-3s (which he reversed on Saturday, though Funk was paired with Jim Alas Poor Furyk.

As a pure aside, I actually had argued at the time that it was a perfect opportunity to pair Funk with Tiger in foursomes, as putting Tiger in nine fairways (not to mention letting Tiger play all four one-shotters) seemed an incredibly promising opportunity.  

But my larger point is, as right as these guys might be about who should tee off on the odd holes, is it something we need big data to understand?  Isn't it all rather basic?

But that sound you hear is your humble blogger slapping his forehead:

They had warned me during our conversation that no matter how well the planning went, no matter what advantages America had, these events could always be lost due to sheer randomness on a bad week.

Ya think?  isn't that pretty much the same as this Tom Watson rebuttal of St. Phil at that infamous 2014 Ryder Cup press conference?

I had a different philosophy as far as being a captain of this team. You know, it takes 12 players to win. It's not pods. It's 12 players.

So sure, we have a secret weapon.  What could go wrong?

Have a great weekend and we'll pick things up on Monday.

 

Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Tuesday Tastings

A little LIV is teed up for you today, but then perhaps a palate cleanser....

OWGR, Consensus Reigns - The Official World Golf Rankings have long been in our field of vision as as a flashpoint in the PGA Tour-LIV Golf cage match.  But a scan of pieces on this subject reveals an emerging consensus:

LIV Golf's Quest for Legitimacy Rests on Its World Ranking Application—and It's Complicated

And this:

Will LIV Golf be validated by the Official World Golf Ranking? It’s an essential, if thorny, question

You say complicates and I say thorny....let's call the whole thing off.

Sean Fairholm at the Global Golf Post goes deep on the history of the OWGR, beginning with the ever-present Mark McCormack:

The start of this complicated equation begins with the OWGR, golf’s universally recognized ranking system since the week before the 1986 Masters. It was created, ironically, because
players started splitting time between Europe and the U.S, a factor which did not jibe with the Open Championship’s qualifying system. The R&A used to award spots strictly by a player’s standing on each respective tour, so some who split their time were failing to qualify despite being accomplished players.

Agent Mark McCormack, who had individually published his own rankings from 1968 to 1985, was appointed chairman, and the organization he founded, IMG, owned the OWGR until 2004. That’s when Alastair Johnston, IMG’s new CEO, recognized a conflict between his agency that represented players and what the OWGR had become – an ever-more-valuable ranking that served as a gatekeeper to major championships and sponsorship dollars.

It was then that golf’s major stakeholders came together to form OWGR Limited, a company with an office in the DP World Tour Building at Wentworth in London. With former R&A CEO Peter Dawson currently serving as chairman, the seven member entities contribute financially to the company’s operations while also serving on its board. That board includes the organizations that run each major, the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the International Federation of PGA Tours.

Bet you didn't know that.  But don't you love that seventeen year period when it was done by McCormack alone?

I do love this paragraph, although there's nothing that's actually new in it:

LIV is hoping to break open a free market of golf where players can openly compete where they wish – except, of course, for the mandatory events their own members are contractually obligated to play. This free market wouldn’t include the majors, however. All four of the most coveted events are not operated by the PGA Tour. Each has its own qualification system that relies heavily on the OWGR.

To me, that just exposes the hypocrisy of LIV's position more cryptically than I've seen previously.  They want to break the PGA and Euro Tour rules that protect sponsors and other parties-in-interest, but their own requirements will be sacrosanct.  How schadenfreudaliscious would it be to find another petro-autocracy to offer these guys even more money, yanno, just to watch Greg Norman squeal.

But did you know that the OWGR just rollled out a brand-spanking new system?

The Official World Golf Ranking ushered in a new format this week, the culmination of a four-year-long process to reimagine an adequate but flawed system.

This is no small tweak. The rules of how points are awarded have changed significantly, and the impact of this revamped ranking could be the core defender of LIV Golf’s challenge to the game’s ecosystem.

The OWGR has gone through many changes over the years, so this latest install is far from being the only one. It is poetic, however, that the OWGR made this announcement on Monday, one day before the PGA Tour won a TRO (temporary restraining order) hearing that excluded three LIV players from participating in the FedEx Cup. The timing was awkward but coincidental, since this week’s install date was set more than a year ago. While the PGA Tour and LIV are now mired in an antitrust case that is likely to overlap with at least a few, and perhaps a handful of major championships being contested in the coming years, the thread being pulled on this ugly sweater seems to end with LIV’s desperate need for OWGR points.

The first bit to note is that, as in their antitrust suit, time is the enemy:

The first obstacle for them is the most obvious. LIV officially applied for OWGR certification on July 6. But unless there is a sudden and dramatic change in OWGR rules, the earliest the league could start earning points is 2024. Even that timeline appears optimistic for multiple reasons. The first is that the OWGR takes around one to two years to process applications. The second is that LIV does not meet several criteria that the OWGR lists as mandatory to be considered, and all of those criteria would have to be in place for at least one year prior to the application being accepted.

Frustratingly (and perhaps intentionally so), good luck finding a simple listing of criteria, so we'll have to patch together disparate threads to see where their events might have issues.  Yeah, might...

Let's circle back to that golf.com item linked above:

According to the executive, a tour seeking OWGR recognition must meet upward of 15 criteria,
nearly all of which he said LIV meets, with others falling into a “gray area” that LIV believes it can get past. For starters, the applicant must be proposed for consideration by an existing tour that is already in the OWGR fold. The Asian Tour, in which LIV has invested hundreds of millions of dollars, will check that box for LIV, the executive said.

Several other OWGR criteria relate to the scheduling and formatting of events. To be eligible for OWGR points, for instance, a tour must operate at least 10 events a year.

Those events must have a minimum purse of $50,000 (LIV clears that bar easily) and an average field size of 75 players. While LIV’s invitational events, including its inaugural tournament outside London earlier this month, are limited to 48 players, its international events will feature 144 competitors, bumping its average field size above 75, the executive said.

Seems to me that we can already see Norman's nose growing (for the record, what follows is sourced to an anonymous LIV executive), as this appears to be an intentional effort to conflate the Asian Tour with the limited field LIV moneygrabs.  Good luck with that.

If you're in need of a laugh, this might fit the bill:

Take, for instance, the OWGR requirement that events be a minimum of 54 holes with a cut after 36 holes. LIV events do not have a cut. But the Tour Championship, the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play and the Hero World Challenge are also cut-free, and they all dole out OWGR points.

Look, I've been making this "hoist on their own petard" argument since forever, but when they do it the petard seem kinda flimsy.  Awarding OWGR points for Tiger's 18-player event in which he invites is friend is just wrong, guys.  It's always been wrong (fortunately your humble blogger has been calling BS on this since Day One) and you deserve to have this decision jammed back down your throat.  That said, at least Tiger has stayed bought....

I'm inclined to give the Tour a pass on the Tour Championship.  Don't get me wrong, it's a train wreck of a format and those that subject us to it should be strung up in a public square, it's just that the OWGR points seem the least of it (and they're at least awarded based upon what the guys actually shoot, not the stagger start).

But it's the citation of the match play that provoked my spit take, because it offers that lovely aroma of desperation.  Of course, you'll scratch your head and ask yourself, can there be a cut in a match play event?  There actually is in the new pool-play format, because on Friday afternoon 75% of the players go home.  So, Greg, you keep sharing your brilliance with us...

Other problems:

There are other criteria, the LIV executive said. The OWGR requires that a tour provide a pathway for its players onto the full-member tour that is proposing the application. LIV could meet that requirement, the executive said, by guaranteeing that its top five finishers receive an Asian Tour card (whether those players would opt to play on the Asian Tour is another matter). The OWGR also requires that a tour hold a qualifying school before the start of the season or offer a qualifying process into each event.

LIV will be able to check that box, the executive said, through a concept it plans to implement within the next few years, after its switch next season to a league format with 48 full-time committed players and 12 committed teams. As part of that concept, the four lowest-ranked players will be relegated and a separate event will be held that will provide a pathway into the league.

Yeah, maybe.... It admittedly gest complicated, but we've also heard talk that several of their contracts protect players from relegation, so it feels like it's more for show.

This going to get ugly and litigious, though I repeat myself.  Where LIV can, however, score some easy points, is in the strength of field numbers:

Norman also outlined that the Strength of Field (SoF) for the first three events under the OWGR calculations exceeded both PGA Tour and DP World Tour events the same week.

The LIV Golf Invitational London had a SoF of 96 and the DP World Tour Volvo Car Scandinavian Mixed the same week had a SoF of 18.

LIV Golf Invitational Portland had a SoF of 128 while the PGA Tour’s John Deere SoF was 53 and LIV Golf Bedminster was SoF 140. The DP World Tour’s Hero Open played that same week had a SoF of 17.

This strikes me as another unforced error from the powers that be.  I know nothing of how SoF is calculated, but I'm guessing it grabs world rankings of top players, but doesn't capture the depth numbers adequately.

There's little doubt that the John Deere featured an embarrassingly weak field this year, utterly bereft of name-brand golfers.  But here's the thing, I still believe it was a more difficult event to win, merely because it feature a full field of professional golfers.  beating 155 (or 143) players is harder than beating 47 players, regardless of the names involved.  Somehow our SoF numbers don't seem to capture that important fact of life, although there's nothing that will make those Euro Tour fields look impressive.

We'll continue to watch this space, but the first battle will be over the timing of the response to the LIV application, and whether Norman and the Saudis can bring pressure to speed up that process.  The calendar doesn't seem to favor LIV, but there's more going on than is visible to mere mortals. Just a reminder, that as Joe Biden went to Saudi to plead for them to pump more evil carbon, his Justice Department opened an antitrust investigation into the PGA Tour.   Just a coincidence, I'm sure, but none of should assume we can anticipate what comes next.

Wither Jay - Lots of damage incurred and more to come, but what does the Tour look like going forward?  Well, the Fall isn't in especially good hands, is it?

While the best players have agreed to play against one another in a minimum of 20 events between January and August starting in 2024, the Tour’s nine official fall events are about to receive a demotion, beginning in 2023.

The top 70 in the FedEx Cup regular season points race will qualify for the playoffs and retain their cards for the next season. Numbers 71-125? They will have to duke it out during the fall to retain their playing privileges in what will essentially become eligibility events. Without FedEx Cup points at stake or any punishment for not playing during the fall, the top players have been given the option of an extended vacation from September through December. It’s the off-season some of them have long been asking for, but PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and his business development team have their work cut out explaining to title sponsors why fields will be watered down.

“The Tour knows this isn’t awesome for the sponsors of the fall events to tell them that the guys who finish top 70 don’t have to play your events and probably won’t,” said Tour veteran Peter Malnati, co-chairmen of the Player Advisory Council. “They say they are going to make them stronger and I’m just taking them at their word for now.”

This to me is the dark underbelly of the Tour, and they deserve everything they get.  The biggest problem with the Tour is that they expanded to a year round schedule simply so no one else could occupy those periods of the calendar.   The problem is that it substantially dilutes their product, creating an endless series of mind-numbingly boring events, and devalues their brand.

Adam Schupak does reasonable job of sifting through player reaction, though I think errs in failing to note Jay's prior ambition, since postponed:

The Fall Series

Monahan added that there will be a series of up to three international events that will be played after the conclusion of the FedEx Cup playoffs. These events will be limited-field and no-cut
events and their specific format is under review by the Player Advisory Council.

The effect here is threefold: It’s a chance to gather the game’s best players, it’s a chance for top-50 pros to double-dip and increase their earnings for the season and it’s an easy enough commitment that pros can play (or not) and still get an offseason.

What of the “other” Tour pros? Those outside the top 70 at the end of the PGA Tour season will compete in a “compelling, consequential final stretch” that will determine their status for the following season.

It's unclear from the excerpt I found, but Jay's plan was the lay this on top of the existing Fall events.  So if you have the misfortune to be Sanderson Farms or Fortinet, you've sponsored an event that will be limited to Golf Channel and competing with the evil NFL, so you've already taken a healthy bite out of shareholder value.  Now Jay comes along and threatens to further diminish your piddling event by doing exactly that which LIV did to him, skimming to top players, setting up a competing event and wishing you a happy life.  What a great partner, no?

 Eamon Lynch has thoughts on the scheduling issues as well:

Lynch: In Jay Monahan's coming PGA Tour plan there will be winners, losers and still more griping players

That last bit is certainly a mortal lock... Of course, no one frames an article quite like Eamon, today going the papal route:

When it comes to making consequential changes, the PGA Tour’s Global Home has much in common with the Vatican, two cloistered realms accustomed to moving at the drowsy pace of papal encyclicals rather than with the immediacy expected in the modern world. It’s been 39 days since the Tour’s ultimate authority, Jay Monahan, issued his bulletin — let’s call it Electi pretium (“Chosen Price”) — outlining a vision to secure the loyalty of the world’s top golfers, details of which he said would be revealed in 45 to 60 days. That’s a dizzying pace for the prelates of the Ponte Vedra curia tasked with executing the particulars, as it would be for any major sports league to fundamentally overhaul how it does business.

The easy part involves money: the Player Impact Program doubling to $100 million, the $500,000 guarantee for all rookies, the modest stipend so cut-missers can defray expenses. More problematic is the radical reshaping of the product that Monahan promised at the behest of a group of players led by Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods.

As an aside, I have no heard Eamon react to being sued by PReed for defamation, which should be good fun for all except the aforementioned PReed.

Here's the gist of his thoughts:

Some of the anointed have been announced — three FedEx Cup playoff events, the existing invitationals (Memorial, Arnold Palmer and Genesis), the WGC Match Play, and the Sentry
Tournament of Champions. The remaining four are to be determined, but will likely rotate among sponsors willing to pay the premium required for elevation every few years but not annually. When elevated events are decided, where do they fall on the schedule? Most events earmarked for elite status are fixed on the calendar. The puzzle of pacing won’t be solved without some tournaments being nudged to new dates, which raises fresh considerations in every instance.

An unavoidable by-product of designating elevated tournaments is creating a caste system among PGA Tour events, one tier where elite players are guaranteed to show up, another where their presence would be an unexpected bonus. For sponsors historically focused on impacting their host communities — Sanderson Farms this week, for example — implied relegation might not diminish the tournament’s corporate value, but that view won’t prevail in every C-suite.

Elevating tournaments only formalizes the existence of a second division, since it’s always been the case that some events attract better fields. The Tour will insist that increasing the value of one tournament does not automatically reduce the value of another, but mitigating sponsor jitters is why top players must also commit to playing three non-elevated stops every year. Some events will see elite talent simply because the dates suit to fulfill their obligations.

Sponsors whose events do not now have Elevated Status include Framers Insurance, AMEX, Waste Management, John Deere, AT&T and God knows who else I'm forgetting.  When the music stops, the scrum to secure seats should be quite vicious.  But, riddle me this Batman, why would you want to commit shareholder resources to these people?  They don't exactly protect you, do they?

Eamon finishes strong as is his wont:

This entire process has been driven by unhappy players and what they need to be slightly less unhappy. Some chose the balm of Saudi cash, others opted to stay and fight for improvements to the PGA Tour. But most simply sat back and waited to see what others will serve them, ready to turn up their noses and threaten anew to go eat next door at Greg’s Grill, despite the owner’s reputation for not handling criticism well. Monahan must know that the day nears when he will have to do what every exasperated restaurant manager does: tell disgruntled diners that the menu is the best he can offer, and if they don’t like it, well then, there’s no barbed wire around the exit.

I'm sure it'll be great, though our perception of the character of these guys has taken quite the hit....

Care for some udder stuff?  Yeah, we all do...

Isn't GolfLogix, an Oxymoron - A while back I bought two green-reading books for Fairview, one from these folks:


Amusingly, the second such book from PuttView was of little use to your humble blogger, because the arrows used to indicate slope are simply too small for my 67-year old eyes.  

But I've always wondered how they map the greens:

Chapter 2: WALKING THE LINE

The tall, slender scanning device (2), which is fitted with a wheel on the bottom and a data-collecting smartphone (4), is in some ways similar to a GPS surveyor, except that it gathers more
than 2 million data points per green. Starting with the first green, the technician (or head pro or greenkeeper) walks the scanner around the entire outline of the putting surface (3), moving relatively slowly to ensure proper capture of the data points.

“What’s crazy,” Charleston says, “is that we can pull this data off the device wirelessly, so our mapping team in Scottsdale, Ariz., can look at it in real time and see that everything was done correctly.” After tracing the green, the tech does what’s called a “looping”— rolling the scanner from one side of the green to the other, at two- to three-foot increments, to fill in the data points for all slopes and contours. The final step is to trace the outline of each greenside bunker. The process takes about 15 to 20 minutes per green.

It's $30,000 of equipment, and they'll even send it to a club with a how-to-video guide.

One last bit:

Epilogue

Open the book or app, make putts and play happily ever after.

 OK, but why start now?

A Taste of Linksy Goodness - In honor of the recently-concluded Dunhill, shall we spend a little time where golf is the greatest?  Ummm, that was really meant as a rhetorical question....

The economics of Scottish golf differ greatly from our own ecosystem, but here's something we almost never talk about:

What does it cost to maintain a Top 100-caliber links course? This one told us

Interestingly, this one comes with an irony alert:

There’s something decidedly different about the color palette you see on Scottish links courses.

Instead of lush greens, which you often find on tees, fairways and putting surfaces at top courses in the United States, you’ll see a paler green likely with some brown and gold mixed in. You may have noticed this coloring when the Open Championship visited St. Andrews this summer.

The brownish blend isn’t because these courses aren’t treated with the same care as their American counterparts — quite the contrary.

It’s largely a result of Mother Nature.

You guys saw my pics from Crail, where the turf in August was as spongey as the hood of a Pontiac....

The net result for maintenance costs? Big savings.

Neil Hampton, Royal Dornoch’s general manager, said the maintenance budget for 2022 fiscal year (April 1 to March 31, 2023) is about £1 million, or about $1.15 million. That might sound like a good chunk of change, but that’s for a 36-hole facility, which includes the Championship course, ranked No. 3 on GOLF’s Top 100 courses in UK and Ireland list and No. 12 on our World list — and which Tom Watson once described as “the most fun I’ve ever had a on a golf course.”

Comparatively, the average maintenance budget for an 18-hole private facility in the U.S. is just over $1 million annually (that figure, of course, varies regionally), according to the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. That includes all private golf courses, not just top-ranked ones, and is roughly the same as what Royal Dornoch pays to maintain two courses.

First, it's just interesting that the club would share the information.  But it's a place I know, at least the first twelve holes (a little gallows humor there for those that were with us at the time), and I'm actually surprised that the disparity is not greater.

Dornoch is heaven on earth, so of course their golf course ifs maintained to an exacting standard.  there's two threads of interest to me here, one being that Dornoch is better funded than 99% of Scottish clubs.  As a rule, clubs spend on their golf courses what they can, and Dornoch fills every visitor tee time from April through October.  As a follow up to this, I'd love to see what a more representative links, say a Lundin Links or Tain (just to pick names almost at random) spend to maintain their links, which you'd assume is far less.

Lastly, I'd love to know whether the cost of water is included in this number.  For all their encomium to browner and firmer conditions, the thing that struck me at Dornoch was how green it was, despite the hot, dry Scottish summer.  Our host Ross attributed that to their irrigation system, and I got the sense he wasn't a fan thereof.  

Our second linksy item is merely Dylan Dethier in love:

I first fell in love with Portrush in the summer of 2019.

The Open had arrived in Northern Ireland, its first time there since 1951. The golf world arrived with it. Thousands cascaded in from the U.K. and Ireland. Thousands more, including me, came from further afield; I took a redeye into Dublin and then made the trek north, watching bleary-eyed as the Emerald Isle whizzed by. I was born and raised in a rural New England town, so while the pastoral landscape was familiar, it felt distinctly different. Older, for one thing. Secluded, for another; the landscape was timeless, outwardly unaffected by time and technology.

I loved the town first. Portrush is a tiny seaside village of 6,000 or so that sits on the northern tip of Northern Ireland. The downtown sticks out in particular, as it’s a one-mile peninsula jutting dramatically into the Atlantic. It’s built for fun: restaurants border beaches, which border pubs, which border arcades, which border ferris wheels, which border more beaches, which border the golf course. And I soon learned to love that, too.

He goes on at great length in this vein, but the reason for the love letter is that he actually got to play Royal Portrush, and he didn't hate it.  In fact, he goes on about at similarly great length:

1. The elevation changes. Like other top-tier links courses, Portrush has a breathtaking seaside setting. Panoramic views include downtown to the west, the open Atlantic to the north and a
dramatic coastline — including the craggy ruins of Dunluce Castle — to the east. But it’s rare to have a links course that features so many hills. As a result both the views and golf shots are more dramatic. The wild dunescape takes you up and around and over humps and bumps and mounds. It’s a more three-dimensional experience than your typical links. It’s also hard as hell.

2. The hole variety. Portrush keeps your head on a swivel; every single hole is oriented in a slightly different direction. Some links courses are 18-track albums, only appreciated when listened to all together. Portrush has 18 hit singles. Not just the showstoppers, like the photogenic seaside par-4 5th and the beefy par-3 16th. Every hole, from Rory’s tragic 1st to the 18th, site of Shane Lowry’s coronation, demands your attention and can be easily recalled at day’s end — ideally back at the Harbour Bar. Because, again, it’s hard as hell.

3. The setting. Plenty of links courses boast an epic history. Plenty more boast an epic coastline. Portrush has both; the hundred-year-old trophies will give away the first bit, while the chalky cliffs give away the second. Portrush’s championship layout doesn’t sacrifice in any category. This is, after all, a setting robust enough for an Open Championship and wild enough to serve as a filming location for Game of Thrones. That’s range.

Dylan is slightly over-the-top here, but only slightly.  This is one of the finest links on the planet, and since links is the best version of our game, this is simply one of the 4-5 best golf courses on our little planet.  Of course, that's just an opinion, but it is that good, because they took a piece of land made for our humble game and turned it over the gentleman named Harry S. Colt, and that might be all you need to know.

Why do I call Dylan a little OTT?  Well, with the two new holes built for that 2019 Open, I am very open to the concept that the Dunluce includes seventeen individual masterpieces, but aren't you forgetting that rather dreadful opening hole, Dylan?

Remember the nerviest tee shot of Rory McIlroy’s career? It got me, too

This is actually a piece by Sean Zak, who played with Dylan that day.

And he proceeds to tell the story of poor Rory, including his plaintive cries in the dark:

Bless the heart of Rory McIlroy who stood on the 1st tee at Royal Portrush in 2019, wind breathing in off the right. Bless his heart because Northern Ireland’s greatest golfing talent, then
30 years old, said he wasn’t trying to be the center of attention that week, as the Open Championship returned to his home country.

Bless the heart of a four-time major champion who admitted to being nervous, playing in his 11th Open but the first to be held there in more than 60 years. Bless the heart of the fan favorite whose name was right there next to the course record: 61. This scene was the kind we dream about, we being the golfers who play it and the thirsty fans who watch it.

McIlroy stood on the tee in the center of a chute created by the grandstand. He couldn’t have felt the wind quite as much as the spectators out lining the ropes. But as soon as he hit his driving iron, that right-to-left wind upgraded his patented draw into a hook. He started calling for it to sit.

Sit.
Sit.
Sit.
Sit.
Sit.
Sit.

Spoiler alert, it sat....eventually, but very much OB.

It's a pretty bad golf hole, most notably because that opening tee shot has OB bother left and right.   You don't see that anywhere, not to mention on an opening tee shot.  Down the right is the property line, so there may not be any recourse, but I've never really understood why left is also OB.  

Just not a great hole with a totally unfair tee shot, but we don't obsess over things like this in linksdom, because the opening and closing holes are invariably the weakest, because clubhouses are built close to the road, and the best land might take a hole or two to access.

I need to get on with my day, as i assume you do as well.  see you later in the week, I hope.

Posted by at No comments:

Monday, October 3, 2022

Weekend Wrap

Yeah, we'll wrap it in the most desultory of fashion, as no golf was played and little was watched.  I might have liked to catch more of that dreadful weather day at the Dunhill on Friday, but otherwise not much was on offer.

Weekend Notes - Just a few thoughts, mostly from Geoff's newsletter, including this on the long-hitting Kiwi that won at the Dunhill, including his ties to Kiwi sports:

  • No one saw this coming. Ranked 47th in the world, Fox’s last three events were awful: MC, WD, MC. Earlier this summer, the New Zealander posted 2nd’s in the Irish and Dutch Opens and 3rd in the BMW International to go with a February win in the Ras Al Khaimah Classic. 

Rugby and cricket don't move the needle here, but in the vestiges of the British Empire, they're yuuuge.

Not only was Fox a mildly surprising snub at Quail Hollow, but so was another of yesterday's winners:

He used a Presidents Cup snub as motivation. Even though Fox was ranked higher than all but one of Trevor Immelman’s selections and plays a power game ideal for bloated Quail Hollow, Fox was passed over for Taylor Pendrith. (Another bypassed player, Canada’s Mackenzie Hughes, won Sunday’s PGA Tour’s Sanderson Farms.)

Neither rises to the level of obvious mistake, especially since Pendrith played so well, but it also speaks to the depth among the International team, even after the LIV defections.

And since this is how we count nowadays...

LIVsters Failed To Collect Many OWGR Points. There were T10’s by Peter Uihlein and Louis Oosthuizen along with a T56 by Richard Bland. The six other LIV defectors all remained in their 54-hole comfort zone and were (kindly) dismissed prior to the Dunhill’s final round. With his finish, Uihlein should climb back into the world top 350 while the LIV cut-missers could get to Bangkok early and enjoy the glorious weather.

 Hope they can cover their travel expenses...

Geoff has this from Kyle Porter, and I'll confess to being quite unclear as to what point he thinks he's making:

Like at this year's Masters, Rory played well on Sunday and grabbed one of those backdoor top tens that have become his signature move.  But, as ever with Rosy since 2014, he seems to only play well on those Sundays when it's too late.  But on that Sunday when he awoke with a share of the 54-hole lead?  Yeah, you know the rest...

That pretty much guts me as far as pretending to care about the weekend events, so shall we catch up on some LIV nonsense?

I Saw It On (Cable) TV - The world according to Greg Norman:

Just two weeks ago, the CEO of LIV, Greg Norman, said he was fielding intense interest from media companies eager to broadcast LIV tournaments.

“We’re talking to four different networks, and live conversations where offers are being put on the table,” he told ESPN. “They can see what we’re delivering.”

He's being truthful for once, at least in that bit about seeing what's being delivered.  But, alas, reality gets time for a rebuttal:

A well-placed industry executive says LIV struck out with approaches to multiple broadcasters,
including NBC, CBS, Disney, Apple and Amazon, and that Fox Sports got involved only at the behest of Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corp. Last month, Sports Business Journal reported that Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump, had been calling broadcasters trying to generate interest in a LIV television package. In 2021, Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, secured $2 billion in funding from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

“There were people at Fox who wanted nothing to do with this,” the source said. “They were forced to do it.”

LIV requested a rights fee for year two of any deal and a guaranteed time slot on network television but both proposals were rejected by Fox, according to a source familiar with the specifics of the conversations. It is believed Fox has offered to re-evaluate network placement at a later date. LIV will also be responsible for the production of its tournament broadcasts and for selling commercial sponsorships during its time slots, two tasks that would usually fall to a broadcast partner.

“Any advertiser who touches this will get blasted,” a longtime sports TV executive said. “It’s a weak product but it’s a tainted product on top of that.”

This is an Eamon Lynch piece, whish he ledes by noting that this is the basis on which the LPGA secures many of its own broadcasts, but being all-square with those behind the hijab isn't exactly what MBS had in mind when he committed $2 billion large.

And, just to be clear, this is Fox Sports cable channel, not the flagship Fox network, and they are merely selling LIV the time.  But this bit will perhaps confirm the prescience of those shotgun starts:

Again, a time buy is basically just that, an organization buying a block of time on a network, say two or three hours. The organization then has the right to fill that block of time – within reason of course – with its own programming. The organization generally makes its money back by selling advertising during the period. A time buy gets a golf event on the air, but it also causes some problems if the golf goes beyond the time bought. That’s why you often see LPGA events cut off when there is still golf being played.

Does it rain on LIV events?  Not hard to see the issues coming, no?

That last bit comes from this Golfweek thumbsucker:

 More accessible?  Sure, that's a low enough bar for them to shimmy over....  More acceptable?  They're still bonecutters, so I'll go with "No" here.  Will anyone watch?  barely anyone watches the PGA Tour, so seems a silly thought, no?

The Tour Confidential Panel devotes a question to this subject, but not sure why they bothered:

2. According to a report from Golfweek, LIV Golf is nearing an unconventional deal to pay Fox Sports to air its tournaments on FS1. LIV Golf, however, refuted the report, saying it was “incomplete and inaccurate” and added that LIV is actually ahead of schedule in its quest to lock-in broadcast rights. Considering everything, what are the chances golf fans see LIV Golf outside of YouTube for its 2023 schedule?

Sens: My goldfish could land a TV deal for 2023 if it had enough money to toss around. I’d be willing to wager heavily that LIV gets one. The question is what kind of deal. It would be
interesting to know more about the back-room calculus involved — if you land a deal, but it’s a bottom-of-the-barrel kind of deal that has a whiff of desperation to it, is that worse than not getting a deal at all?

Colgan: The chances are 100 percent. But if LIV can’t find someone willing to pay for their TV rights in *this* market, it should be a tremendous warning sign about their long-term prospects. Networks/streamers have spent some $50 billion (with a B!) on sports rights in the past five years. If LIV can’t get ANYTHING, how can they earnestly expect to be breathing in five years?

Zak: James has been covering this beat well for GOLF.com. I can’t add any expertise beyond his!

Forgive me, but I can't get the image of Greg Norman negotiating with Fox out of my mind, given their rich history together.  Even with the political influence brought to bear, seem sit was pretty much always going to be, "Greg, this time you write us the check."

Alan Shipnuck had this take on it all:

They're not lining up at the door to pay to broadcast Talor Gooch and Pat Perez?  I mean, really, who could have seen that coming?

The Team Stuff - OK, I guess I finally have to read this:

Some match play, some stroke play and a $50M purse: LIV Golf announces format for upcoming Team Championship in Miami

OK, so now that I've read it, it sounds really weird, and it's a bit unclear where the match-play comes in:

Friday, October 28 –

  • QuarterfinalsTeams seeded one-four will receive a bye.
  • Teams seeded five-12 will compete in head-to-head match-play competitions.
  • Highest-ranked teams select their opponents.
  • All 32 players amongst the eight teams will compete in a shotgun start.
  • For each head-to-head team match-up, three matches will take place: two singles matches and one alternate-shot (foursomes) match.

I assume those matches in the last bullet are the extent of the match-play, although aren't these four-man teams?

To this observer the only bit that I really like is the higher ranked teams selecting their opponent, which could prove amusing and/or confrontational.

But, just to avoid any risk of this actually being interesting, they dispense with the interesting formats early in the week, and Sunday is just more mind0numbing stroke play:

Sunday, October 30 – Team Championship

  • The four winning teams will compete in a shotgun-start round of stroke play.
  • All 16 players will compete in twosomes with team captains playing together.
  • All four scores count towards the team’s score.
  • At the end of Sunday’s round, the squad with the lowest team score is the LIV Golf Invitational Series Team champion.

Not even smart enough to use a team match-play format once they're down to four teams.  Back to the TC gang:

1. LIV Golf finally revealed its team championship format, with a mix of stroke play, match play and alternate shot, for a share of $50 million. What are your thoughts on the format, and will it be enough to help bring attention to the start-up league?

Josh Sens: Match play and, especially, alt-shot are great breaks from the same old, and LIV is
smart to adopt them. But ultimately, the league is up against the same challenge faced by all of professional golf — there’s a relatively small number of players who really move the needle. If those players aren’t in the mix and the event itself has no real weight of its own, the competitors could be playing blindfolded while doing handstands and the viewing public is mostly going to respond with a collective shrug. That’s my way of saying that Pat Perez and Charles Howell playing alternate shot is more interesting than Pat Perez and Charles Howell playing stroke play. But it’s still not THAT interesting. As for the big purses, I think thatas;ldakfsj … sorry. Nodded off at the keyboard.

James Colgan: LOL, Sens. I think it was a smart, great move by LIV to adopt some of golf’s criminally underused team-play traditions. I don’t, however, think those team-play traditions will make me (or anyone, really) care about a competition in which the only thing at stake is a boatload of cash. The outlying political implications of the event would only seem to depress broad interest further.

Sean Zak: I think the competition will be a ton of fun. At least that is until it’s Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace going against Cameron Tringale and Bernd Wiesberger for the decisive match. That doesn’t do much of anything for me. Could we get DJ’s 4 Aces against Cam Smith and Marc Leishman? Perhaps! I’d tune in for it.

At least he knows the name of DJ's team, though he's quite obviously unwilling to even do the work of Googling the Aussie's team name....  But when you say, "Tune in", how exactly does one do that?

LG&M, Continued -  The TC gang had this on the legal maneuvering:

3. Perhaps the biggest lawsuit in the history of the PGA Tour will wage on without Phil Mickelson’s involvement. Mickelson and three others asked to be dismissed as plaintiffs in LIV Golf’s lawsuit against the PGA Tour. What does it say or mean that Mickelson is no longer a part of it?

Sens: Like my former law school classmate, Saul Goodman from the University of American Samoa, I do not specialize in this area of jurisprudence. But credible attorneys I’ve talked to tell me this will shield Mickelson from quite a bit of discovery. He could still be deposed, but the scrutiny wouldn’t be as intense — if there are skeletons in that closet, they’d be less likely to be exposed. But I also take this as a measure of Mickelson’s confidence in the case itself. How does a guy who got paid so many millions to join LIV argue that he has suffered ‘irreparable harm’ — the legal standard that the plaintiffs will have to meet? It’s a tough case to make. Not great PR for him to be part of this, either.

Colgan: I think the crumbling lawsuit — along with Phil’s why-can’t-we-be-friends rhetoric — shows LIV’s lawyers have serious doubts about their case against the PGA Tour. If those suspensions stand, it makes the case for LIV all that much more difficult.

Zak: I found the sequence particularly interesting. The week where both sides are hammering out the details of discovery, Mickelson (who no doubt has the most to lose) bails. Was he simply an honorary plaintiff for name’s sake? I think so. What remains is bizarre. Bryson’s team refused to respond to my question on if he intends to remain. I could see it becoming strictly LIV Golf as the remaining plaintiff, which is sort of how this whole thing has been moving toward this entire time.

I'll get to the rhetoric in a bit, but this lawsuit has always been a hail Mary, resembling nothing so much as the USFL v. the NFL.  The good news for Mr. Norman, et. al., is that the USFL won.... 

But the fact that dumb golf writers understand Phil's need to avoid placing his hand on a bible tells us most of what we need to know.  If he's no longer a party to the lawsuit, there's a logic in assuming that his testimony might be limited....But the Tour's counter-suit for tortious interference in its business will have Phil hogging the spotlight yet again, so I'm thinking that we'll still have some fun ahead of us and that our opinion of Phil will not improve the more we see.

Kids Say The Darndest Things - Folks are talking, and some of them really should know better.  But most notable was this from the Commish:

In the ESPN interview — which you can and should read in full here — Monahan was asked this:

“Some players have said that the Tour and LIV need to come together. What is your opinion?”

“Well, I think words and actions are important,” Monahan said in the interview. “I think it’s impractical when you look at the fact that certain players have sued the PGA Tour, their employer has sued the PGA Tour. It’s not in the cards. It hasn’t been in the cards, and it’s not in the cards. I think we’ve been pretty consistent on that front.”

ESPN’s Mark Schlabach then asked: Can the PGA Tour and LIV Golf coexist?

“I’d provide the same answer,” Monahan said in the interview. “The answer to that is they’ve gone down their path and I think we have been pretty consistent that we’re going down ours, and I don’t see that happening. Haven’t, and I don’t.”

In the immortal words of Dan Hicks, "Expect anything different?"

This is basically the question your humble blogger gets most often, to which I typically respond, "What kind of do you see happening?"  because the Saudis (and, to some extent the Brits before them, created this kind of moment:


The Saudis came and told Jay that they were going to grab the tope 48 player sin the world and compel them to play in 14-15 events around the world, to which Jay is to respond how?  He is not going to allow Greg to drink his milkshake, and it's a bit surprising that his reaction seems to take Norman by surprise.

Given the current state of play, why should he be open to a deal?  Oh sure, there's been extensive damage to the PGA Tour's ecosystem, and the defensive measures taken will likely only make the Tour a drearier place going forward.  But, most importantly, what has LIV built?  Nothing that is remotely sustainable in your humble blogger's opinion.  Nobody will tune in to watch that group of players, so unless we're thinking that Rahm, Cantlay and others are about to bolt, isn't it true that Jay ultimately wins this stalemate.

I at least understand Phil's desire to sue for peace:

"The PGA Tour, for the last 20 or 30 years have had all the best players in the world. That will never be the case again. LIV Golf is here to stay," Mickelson said after carding 2-under 70 in the opening round of the LIV event in Chicago on Friday.

"The best solution is for us to come together. I think that the world of professional golf has a need for the old historical 'history of the game' product that the PGA Tour provides. I think that LIV provides a really cool, updated feel that is attracting a lot of younger crowds.

What do you mean by "a lot"?  

What puzzles me terribly are the mixed signals coming from Rory:

“I’ve always said I think there is a time and a place where everyone that’s involved here should sit down and try to work together,” McIlroy said Wednesday at the DP World Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. “It’s very hard for that to happen right now when there’s two lawsuits going on.”

“But look, I don’t want a fractured game. I never have. You look at some other sports and what’s happened and the game of golf is ripping itself apart right now and that’s no good for anyone,” McIlroy continued. “It’s no good for the guys on, you know, this side or the sort of traditional system and it’s no good for the guys on the other side, either. It’s no good for anyone. There is a time and a place for it. I just think right now, with where everything is, it’s probably not the right time.”

“But saying that, I don’t think we can let it go too much longer,” he added. “So I’m all for everyone sitting around the table and trying to figure something out for sure.”

I would have expected Jay and Rory to be reading from the same script at this point.  I know Rory craves a kumbaya moment, but what deal does he think can be struck?

I can't help but believe that this will be looked back on as a major over-reach by the Saudis.  I can only compare it to the business plan for CNN Plus, wherein a network struggling to get one million people to tune into their free content convinced itself that fifteen million viewers would pay for that which they wouldn't watch for free.

In this case, the Saudis seem to have believed that they could buy the top forty-eight players in the world, without a reaction from the PGA or Euro Tours.  I don't think they've gotten much for their $2 billion, except of  course to put the Jamal Kashoggi murder on an endless loop on Golf Channel.  They can continue to write checks to Pat Perez and Talor Gooch for as long as they want, but that slate of fifteen 2023 tourneys looks set to be the equivalent of the proverbial tree falling in the forest.

I've got some more varied items teed up for tomorrow, but I'll leave you here for now.

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)