Monday, January 16, 2023

Weekend Wrap

Your humble blogger is safely ensconced in World HQs, though a wee bit short on time....

Sony Stuff - Not elevated, not designated and unlikely to compete with Super Wild Card Weekend:

Hayden Buckley looked like he was setting up a classic PGA Tour underdog story as he buried a birdie putt on the 70th hole of the Sony Open to reclaim a one-shot lead.

But moments later and just a hole ahead, Si Woo Kim had an answer.

Kim holed his chip from behind the 17th green and then hit the green in two on the par-5 18th. His two-putt got him in the clubhouse at 18 under.

The number proved to be enough for Kim’s fourth PGA Tour title when Buckley failed to get up and down from short right of the green. His birdie try from 12 feet hit a spike mark a few feet from the hole.

“So this is really exciting, and hopefully a lot of the season is left,” Kim said after the round. “Hopefully trying to get more confidence and then like hopefully get more wins.”

If they can't draw your humble blogger's eyeballs, whose can they?   I would expect ratings to be measured in particles per million, I'll almost be surprised if they draw any measurable Nielsen ratings.  Obviously, with Hayden Buckley topping the leaderboard all week, followed by names unlikely to be PIP contenders, welcome to our new two-tiered PGA Tour.

The worst news for Ponte Vedra Beach is that this event should have an advantage over many others due to the forced attendance last week at that neighboring island.... And yet....

Geoff was not amused:

Like other red-blooded Mericans who enjoy the royal and ancient action from Hawaii, I flipped
over from the Giants-Vikings game in time to catch the Sony Open conclusion. The second PGA Tour event of 2023 was a moribund affair for three days after so few stars turned up. But at least Seth Raynor’s crafty Waialae design was cooking up yet another fun finish.

Si Woo Kim holed out for birdie at the 17th to become tied with 54-hole leader Hayden Buckley, who hoped for a last hole birdie and his first PGA Tour title. The winner would earn an invite to the Masters, but we don’t discuss such nefarious matters since such blasphemy can cost jobs!

Upon flipping over, I quickly learned that last week’s common sense progress—when Callaway sponsoring the Sentry Tournament of Champions final hour—would not be replicated. Worse, the bean counters stampeded over any stock of goodwill with a shameless FU to viewers and Sony.

Do tell, Geoff:

As Kim approached the final green and Buckley teed off at 18, the Golf Channel broadcast left for a break featuring ads for State Farm, Srixon and a PGA Tour house spot reminding us that next week was the American Express Championship. The Sony “show” returned to inform us of Buckley’s odd lie in the rough and what he faced with his second shot into the par-5 18th green. Buckley played short right of the green, where he would need to get up-and-down to force a playoff with Kim who had two-putted for birdie.

Instead of setting up Buckley’s next shot with some Shotlink scatter chart data on recovery rates from his spot or something of substance to invest viewers in the difficulty of Buckley’s shot, we got another break with six ads from Ram, Srixon, T-Mobile, Comcast Business, Golf Galaxy and Golf Now.

When the broadcast returned from this avalanche, viewers were subjected to a recap of the 2023 Sony Open broadcast sponsors. Exactly zero of the names listed had had commercials running during the last two breaks.

Boy, these guys really know how to sell the product.  Glad I stayed with the Giants game, commercials and all.

And, just to pile on, there was this bit of brilliance from the lead analyst.  The background is that Adam Scott has joined the Tour's Players Advisory Council, with these intentions:

There’s been news on the PAC makeup, too. The latest 16-member panel has yet to be announced officially, but various outlets have reported that Adam Scott will be a part of it for the first time in the 42-year-old’s career. There’s some significance there. The 2013 Masters champion had been rumored to also join LIV at various points, and one would think that PAC membership would mean Scott has committed to the Tour.

Notably, Scott told the Associated Press that the move to join the PAC was more Tour-focused than LIV-driven.

“I’m more interested in what the Tour is planning on doing with the Tour, not how we’re fighting a lawsuit, because I couldn’t care less about that,” Scott said Friday at the Sony Open. “I’m more interested in what the future of the Tour looks like.

“And I think I convinced myself that it was worth diving into that.”

Now, you know I have my own deep-rooted issues with Tour governance, the extent to which the Tour is actually run by its members, versus the paid administrators, is a very fair issue.  But it's a complicated issue,. as you could interpret recent events as a hostile takeover of the Tour by Tiger and Rory....

But NBC's lead analyst has his own hot take, and he apparently doesn't do nuanced:

The former longtime player and current NBC analyst was watching Scott finish his final round at the Sony when Hicks asked his booth mate about the PAC. Below is the full conversation.

“By the way, Scott among 16 players, Zing, appointed to the Players Advisory Council for this year,” Hicks started. “The PAC is that first step toward consulting the PGA Tour board and the commissioner on issues dealing with the Tour.”

“I was on that PAC for 13 years,” Azinger said. “I thought it was a colossal waste of time. But you think you’re achieving things, but …

“Really?” Hicks said, laughing,

“Ah, you know,” Azinger said.

“Well, you’re sitting in that chair to be honest,” Hicks said.

“It might be different nowadays,” Azinger said, laughing too.

“Jeeeeez,” Hicks said.

It might be different these days?  You might think that NBC's lead analyst would know something about Tour governance, given our obsession with such issues in the last year, and might have some keener insights.  But no, we Zinger is happy to parade his laziness and cluelessness, and to demonstrate the impulse control of...well, Nick Faldo.

 Zinger flew all the way to Oahu to phone it in.  Hard to see why millions of folks weren't tuned in.

Desert Doings - Surprisingly, at least to this observer, the moribund event formerly known as the Hope, appears to be generating a respectable field:

The American Express is back in the desert for the 64th year in a row this week.

But it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room. It’s time to talk about the impact LIV golf is – or isn’t – having on the desert’s PGA Tour event.

The defending champion of the American Express, Hudson Swafford, will not be in the field this week because he left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf last year. Also missing for the same reason will be three other past champions: Patrick Reed, Pat Perez and, most notably, Phil Mickelson.

Man, they got Hudson Swafford?  That's kinda game over, no?  Of course, that guy pictured was their host, so that's slightly awkward.

But they're doing better than I thought possible, especially as I thought this event was going the way of the dinosaurs a few years back:

Reed is a past American Express winner and a past Masters champion. But the reigning Masters champion, Scottie Scheffler, is in the La Quinta field as are past Masters winners Danny Willett and Zach Johnson.

One of the game’s hottest players, Jon Rahm, is also back this week. The 2018 American Express champion, Rahm just won his eighth PGA Tour event, is coming off a year of winning on the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour and seems primed to make a run at a second major title this year.

Patrick Cantlay, one of the game’s top players, is entered this week as are Xander Schauffele and Will Zalatoris. Rising stars such as Sahith Theegala, Tom Kim and Tom Hoge, accomplished veterans like Stewart Cink and Justin Rose and more rising stars than you can name are in the desert, too.

I have no clue why those guys are in the field, given what's to come shortly. 

The Tour Confidential panel had no interest in anything that might have happened on Oahu, how Jay must seethe at that, but did have a thought for this event:

4. Next week’s American Express field is loaded with 10 of the world’s top-19 players, including five of the top seven, despite the fact that it’s not one of the Tour’s 17 big-money designated events. There was some concern, at least from the outside, that the tournaments that weren’t designated for 2023 would see less-than-stellar fields with fewer stars, but that’s not the case next week in La Quinta. Are you surprised, and will we see more of this with other non-designated tournaments?

Loaded seems a bit of an overstatement, but much better than expected, for sure.

Barath: If you look at the big picture, I’m not surprised. My reasoning is regardless of the purse, these non-designated events still reward the same amount of FedEx Cup points, which for top players (playing well) actually provides a potentially easier chance to stack up points compared to the “big events” with more higher ranking players. I also think that because it’s an event at the beginning of the year, a lot of these top players who didn’t play as much in the fall want to get off to a good start. The real question is what happens to the smaller events come the dogs days of summer.

Melton: I’m a bit surprised the AmEx has such a strong field, but a lot of the top stars haven’t played much meaningful golf in several months. They’re itching for competition. I’d expect we’ll see some of the non-elevated events in the non-major season have unexpectedly strong fields, but during the grind of the summer, top stars will likely stick to the status quo.

Hirsh: The AmEx seems to have a stronger field than in years’ past, but I think that has more to do with where it is on the schedule than anything else. After the Sentry, there isn’t another designated event until the Phoenix Open the second week of February. January is also the only month until July with just one designated event. Once Phoenix hits, however, there are four designated events in five weeks. Most of the big names playing Palm Springs will probably take Torrey and Pebble off before that gauntlet stretch. The other part is all the top players have a quota to meet for non-designated FedEx Cup events. Someone like Rahm, who played the CJ Cup last October, needs to add only one regular event to his schedule for the rest of the year.

Dethier: Good points from everybody here — schedule and location are both in the AmEx’s favor — and I’m guessing some sponsors have found ways to make it worth the players’ while to attend, too.

True enough but, given that some of those guys were in Maui, you'd have thought the Sony a more logical add-on.  But I can also see that this is a far better spot on the calendar than, say, the Honda, which well and truly has no chance of a single PIPster teeing it up.

I Saw It On TV - The Confidentialistas led with Netflix, though not much added value, methinks:

1. Netflix released its trailer for its much-anticipated PGA Tour docuseries, modeled after the popular F1 Drive to Survive. It will also apparently feature Rory McIlroy, which wasn’t known until the trailer came out. Dubbed Full Swing, it premieres Feb. 15. What are you most looking forward to seeing in this docuseries, and do you think it will succeed in attracting the non-golfer or viewer who doesn’t watch pro golf already?

Ryan Barath: As a hardcore golf fan, I’m excited to get more of an inside look at professional golfers, their views on the state of the tour as a whole, and in general, a behind-the-curtain look at the majors.

The issue that this show will create for new fans is an old one: how golf is presented on TV. Between TV windows and how some golfers are playing, no matter how many people love seeing Joel Dahmen at the Waste Management, trying to see him on a normal broadcast is next to impossible. This is where F1 still has a big advantage, since every race is every driver, though with the new designated events, I guess that’s what the Tour is trying to accomplish.

OK, but there's about twelve of us hardcore golf fans....  But what Ryan is actually saying is that there's way too many PGA Tour events so he, like Azinger, will likely be getting a nasty phone call from that 904 area code.

Zephyr Melton:: I’m most excited to see my coworkers’ cameos! A handful of GOLF staffers were mic’d up at various events last year, and I’m stoked to see how they’re featured in the show. As far as attracting non-golfers, I’m sure the LIV-PGA Tour rivalry should be an intriguing storyline. Drama sells, and there was nothing more dramatic in pro golf last season than the Saudi saga.

Yes, it's quite certainly all about the writers.  You guys aren't all that interesting in print, your home field, so I'm not hanging on how you'll do with your cameos....

Jack Hirsh: I’ve polled some of my friends who are either just getting into golf or not into golf, and most are at least intrigued. I haven’t gotten to watch the F1 series, but when that came out, I feel like I knew a lot of people who all of a sudden became F1 fans. I’d be surprised if it had the same impact, but I think we can expect a good number of people to be introduced to the game by it. I’m most looking forward to seeing the players react to LIV in real-time. So cool they got Poulter!

Wow, a Poults dead-ender.  How does it feel to be o the endangered species list? 

Dylan Dethier: Will it have an effect on non-golf fans? Of course — it’s Netflix. It’s hard to think of a better way to reach new audiences than to tap into their enormous list of content-hungry subscribers. What am I most looking forward to? Peeking behind the curtain as several stars make life-changing decisions about launching to LIV.

Really?  Because Netflix is molting subscribers lately, not to mention market capitalization?  So, golf seems just the ticket to stem that outflow.  Also, they just released a tennis version, which one assumes will capture the vaccine issues, whereby players were excluded from majors.  I don't know, it has a pasta against the wall feel to it, so I'm not expecting much.

They did, to their credit, also give a moment top that Harry Higgs issue:

2. Harry Higgs told Golfweek he thinks the PGA Tour may have a problem with its TV product now that several big personalities have jumped to LIV. “We joke back and forth, [LIV] took all the a**holes,” Higgs said. “They took all the villains. And that’s a problem.” What do you think about his assessment?

Because Harry thinks the TV product was great before we lost Poults and PReeed?   How much of it does Harry watch, given that he should be out there playing?

Barath: Sports are popular because they are entertaining ,and as much as it might become easier to engage casual fans with rivalries and ‘good’ vs. ‘bad,’ I think most golf fans tune in to watch golfers at a high level try to win events. So overall I don’t really agree with Harry on this.

Melton: I think Higgs has got a great point. Every sport needs its heels, and the Tour has lost most of theirs. Having no true “villains” takes a little bit of juice away from the Tour’s product.

Hirsh: Every sport has its villains. The NFL has the Patriots and the Cowboys. The MLB has the Yankees. The NBA has the Lakers. People love to have something to hate. That’s always been a little tougher in golf, but there were definitely guys who played the role at least. I think losing certain guys hurts a little, but given the way golf is, I think it’s more of a positive. I stand with RB’s more optimistic view.

Dethier: The Player Impact Program essentially ranks players by their value to the Tour — and LIV claimed five of the top 10 players from the 2021 PIP. (Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson.) That’s not good! The Tour depends on the storylines of its personalities and now several of those personalities are gone. More will replace ‘em, of course. But that will take time.

This is bizarre, because while extolling the existence of villains, they seem to have forgotten that the Tour has expended considerable effort to coddle these villains and assure us that they're all gentlemen.  That seems to have backfired in epic fashion, as those most coddled, DJ, Reed and Bryson pop into mind, were the quickest to cash those outsized checks.

Yeah, so about those disciplinary files?

Unfortunately, I need to leave you nice folks here.  Tomorrow is not looking good for blogging, so hopefully Wednesday looks good for you.

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Thursday, January 12, 2023

Thursday Threads

Crazy days here in Utah.  The snow keeps coming but, as I've bored you with repeatedly, it's snow of the wet, heavy kind.  Not the light, fluffy champagne powder we claim, but if you catch it as it comes down there's still lots of fun to be had.

Tuesday the mountain reported 13" (they report at 5:30 a.m., so often if it's still snowing it can be quite a bit more before lifts turn), though the skiing was disappointing, largely due to limited visibility on the socked in mountain.  There were soft turns to be found, but it was braille skiing for sure.

Yesterday I awoke to the mountain reporting a gaudy 18" of freshies, and the salivary glands were in the red zone (I know, those metaphors don't exactly jibe).  But the wind was howling, and that's always a caution flag here.  There are two lifts that move skiers up to the skiable terrain, a gondola and a bubble quad (the bubble is just what it sounds like, a plastic covering that protects the riders from the elements, even including heated seats).  The problem is that both of those types of transport are highly sensitive to the wind, the bubble actually functioning like a sail.  Often, when we know there's wind, we make sure those lifts are operating before heading up.  This was the snow stake at Deer Valley:

Sure enough, they didn't open yesterday and then we endured a comical few hours where one or the other would show briefly as open, but one of us would eagerly text the other, but by the time the recipient opened the app it had already gone back on wind hold.  Lee and I finally got our butts on a chair after 2:00 and headed to our favorite spot on the mountain.  The bad news is I only got in two real runs.  But the more optimistic take is that it was two epic runs down my favorite line on the mountain, a line that ends with a hard right turn and a couple of turns in untracked powder on a rich guy's front yard.  Somehow that makes it even more fun...

LIV Scat - One of these times it's going to be real:

According to The Telegraph, Mito Pereira, who fell short at the PGA Championship this past year after a wayward tee shot on the 72nd hole, is expected to join the LIV Golf League in 2023. Pereira will join his good friend and Chilean countryman, Joaquin Niemann.

LIV Golf has been quiet since its inaugural season ended with a team championship in Miami, although sometimes no news is bad news. It’s rumored several high-ranking members of the executive staff have recently left, including Chief Operating Officer Atul Khosla.

The surprise here is that, given the repeated rumors, that he hadn't already jumped.  The five or so weeks between now and that first LIV event in late February will be a nervous time, because there's no point in them announcing and foregoing those elevated PGA Tour purses until LIV's kick-off.

But, does Mito move the needle?  Not enough to matter, but watch this space for others.

Next, those waivers for the Asian Tour's Saudi event struck many of us as odd, though we were left in the dark as to the specific players involved.    That nagging sense of an undisclosed plotline will only be further fueled by one of the names involved:

The PGA Tour’s reigning Rookie of the Year and a winner last season are among the players
granted permission to compete at a controversial tournament in Saudi Arabia next month.

While the Tour has declined to reveal the exact number or the names of those who requested releases for the PIF Saudi International, multiple sources have told Golfweek that Cameron Young, Lucas Herbert and Cameron Champ are among the members who obtained waivers to compete in Saudi Arabia. Three Korn Ferry Tour players also received releases.

Young was named the PGA Tour’s Rookie of the Year after earning more than $6 million during a debut campaign in which he finished second five times, including at the Open Championship in St. Andrews. Herbert won the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in October 2021 and finished the season with more than $2.5 million in official prize money.

What's it all about, Alfie?  As you'll recall, Young seemed gone last year, but suddenly he and Hideki passed on jumping to LIV, and we saw at least one of the reasons when Jay bent his PIP rules and found $2 million large for each of those two.  Does this mean Cam might still jump?  Or is this an additional part of that Faustian bargain, an explicit agreement that Cam would be granted a waiver and allowed to grab an appearance fee.  Again, watch this space....

It's occurred to me that before this is over, we're likely to hate the guys that stay every bit as much as those that cashed the large checks from the bonecutters.

Well, upon further review, it's unlikely we'll hate them as much as the guys that bolted... Because, well, that's a rogues gallery of miscreants.  But have you caught the latest controversy?  I'm having trouble finding the original tweet, but apparently Sergio was miffed that the Euro Ryder Cup organization did not note his birthday.  Are you done laughing yet?  I certainly understand if you need a little more time....

Now, do you remember how gracefully Sergio handled his exit?  Yeah, that's not the Sergio that we know and love, here's just a small sample of peak Sergio:

So, he's upset that he didn't get sweet birthday wishes from a Tour he called s**t.  Yeah, I know, guys can be so sensitive....  And Poults is equally offended, confirming that they all deserve each other.

I very much liked this one as well:

Busted!

Seriously, grown men pouting about the absence of birthday greeting by folks they went out of their way to f**k.  Entitled much?  We can only hope that they choke on their thirty pieces of silver....

I had already moved on when this this Brendan Porath expose on Birthdaygate hit my screen, and he's got an extensive bullet pointed rant that is well worth your attention, assuming you can stand that much Sergio and Poulter in one sitting.  I just want to excerpt this one little bit that's really all you need to read:

While writing this, I explained to my inquiring wife that Ian Poulter was mad the Ryder Cup Europe Twitter account did not wish him a happy birthday. She doesn’t really know who that is but she promptly responded, “Is he turning 10?”

Emotionally, that just about right. 

Bob Harig has a quasi-interesting take on the state of the LIV:

The LIV Golf League is set to play its first event of 2023 in six weeks and right now it doesn’t have a full schedule announced, has not filled its 48-player roster or set its 12 four-man teams, is
still seeking Official World Golf Ranking points and is waiting to disclose some sort of TV deal.

It’s getting late early.

For all the scrambling LIV Golf did to launch in 2022, it had its full schedule announced more than two months prior to the first tournament. And that was considered crazy.

The first event is scheduled for Feb. 24-26 at Mayakoba in Mexico, but LIV Golf has not announced its full slate of tournaments, so far putting forth dates in Arizona, Australia, Singapore, Oklahoma, Spain and West Virginia.

No biggie, exhibitions can be arranged on short notice.  This would seem to be the issue of the day, far more relevat than on which channel no one will watch their events:

Perhaps more troubling is the lack of big-name defections from the PGA Tour. Although LIV Golf was more than pleased with the abundance of talent it signed last year, the addition of a top-five player such as Patrick Cantlay has been denied by the golfer himself and it appears that LIV Golf will sign far less notable players to fill out its roster.

Harig seems to go out of his way to make this sound, well, normal:

And then there is the TV deal that seems crucial to gaining momentum among sponsors for the team format. LIV executives have said they are confident a deal will be struck, and Sports Business Journal recently reported that the CW Network was a strong possibility for LIV’s landing spot.

While there will inevitably be jokes made about CW—a good deal of its afternoon scheduling is Court TV-type programming—the network is in more than 220 cities across the U.S., with many of them having their own local news programming. The network is common across most cable offerings, and it's fair to point out that early-round coverage of both the U.S. Open and British Open now lands on USA Network, which offers a good bit of the same type of programming.

Couldn't agree more that USA is an odd channel to cover golf, but has Bob cashed a check from the Saudis?  Because that's some world-class equivocation that has a whiff of being bought and sold, no?

You don't need me to tell you that the relevant comparison is to the PGA Tour, not the majors.  The audience will find the majors because of their importance, and, equally important, the weekend coverage is on the networks.  LIV will be buried on a channel nobody knows where to find,  and my prediction is that they will not even draw a recognizable audience from Nielsen.

I love when a plan comes together....

I Saw It On TV - Is Netflix TV?  In any event, it's on, as the official trailer has dropped:


Is this going to work?  I can't tell, except to note that they at least picked the most interesting year in golf history, and you'll see some faces that won't be in the second season, if you know what I mean.

And this seems to provide an airing date:


Thoughts from Geoff:

Three players seen in Wednesday’s trailer launch stood out: Rory McIlroy, Ian Poulter and Brooks Koepka.

McIlroy was not expected to participate, yet he’s seen ending the trailer by saying, “If I want the game that I love to be played by future generations, the game needs to be pushed forward.”

I knew he’d come around on bifurcation so that we don’t leave a totally unsustainable model for Gen Z!

Poulter and Koepka are generally the most interesting LIV defectors who are only appearing because no one in Cult Ponte Vedra had control over the show content. LIV defectors Joaquin Niemann and Dustin Johnson were also highlighted in the trailer rollout, but no one’s marking a calendar to hear what they have to say.

The filterless Poulter and Koepka should add significant color. Then again, Poulter’s enraged over the Ryder Cup Twitter account not wishing Sergio Garcia “happy birthday.” We now have incontrovertible evidence that Poulter’s several Titleist’s short of a dozen.

Also included in the rollout and press material is Mito Pereira, who led the PGA Championship until the 71st hole and appears to be defecting to LIV’s Team Torque based on an exclusive from The Telegraph’s James Corrigan.

The minute-long Netflix trailer released Wednesday suggests we’re in for many scenes of grown men in gym rat gear flying private and telling us how “hard” it is to win on the PGA Tour. But that fantastic locker room hissy fit offers something to look forward to!

I had the same reaction to the trailer, though Geoff seems to find Koepka a more interesting voice than certainly I do.... The question seems to be whether they can capture the intensity of the LIV threat and the resulting friction among the players.  Because, if it's all along the lines of that last 'graph, it'll draw lower viewership than LIV on the CW.

I'm going to leave you there.  Not sure about tomorrow, but when I arise perhaps I'll be compelled towards my keyboard.  Saturday I travel back to New York, so worst case we'll pick things up on Monday.

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Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Tuesday's Trends

Notwithstanding that Park City reported 13" of fresh white stuff, here is your humble blogger pecking away at the keyboard.  Now stop me if you've heard this before, but it's a wet, heavy 13"....

The good news is that it's supposed to keep snowing all day, what we in the trade refer to as free refills.  The bad news is that my life out here resembles an Agatha Christie mystery, with my one remaining permanent Park City ski buddy specifically not a morning person, so we'll be on Lee Standard Time today.  In fact our friendship is unlikely, given that we're only awake for about two of the same hours in a day.  

So a light day of blogging....

I Saw It On TV - Ch-Ch-Changes are afoot:

Good news, I don't think we need to expend much energy worrying about them getting worse....

This is certainly one take on things:

Networks understand that golf needs to appeal to a younger audience. It’s great that people 50 and over love and watch the sport, because that demographic tends to have more leisure time and more
disposable income - things that advertisers crave in a viewer. But the sport needs younger viewers, too, fans who will embrace the sport now and follow the young stars for the next 15 or 20 years or even longer. So younger voices might seem like the right thing to do.

It’s not that Maltbie or Koch or McCord or Kostis did a bad job of reporting on PGA Tour events or were rapidly deteriorating as broadcasters. But inevitably, older voices get pushed aside by younger voices. That’s true in any part of media or entertainment.

Yes, but the trick is to accomplish that without alienating those core customers, something the Tour has been pretty ham-fisted about, not least with that Live Under Par™ campaign.

But this rousing coda will be unlikely to rally the troops:

But it will be different watching golf as 2023 begins not hearing Faldo or Maltbie or Koch. Some familiar voices, such as Mark Rolfing at NBC and Ian Baker-Finch at CBS, remain, as do the main anchors for their network, Dan Hicks at NBC and Jim Nantz at CBS.

Will it be better or worse? Chances are it will be about the same, with the networks throwing in some technical innovations but hanging on to the tried and true method of broadcasting a PGA Tour event. Sometimes it isn’t the voices that need to be freshened, it is the approach to the broadcast itself that gets stale.

Either way, golf will look familiar in 2023 on NBC, CBS and Golf Channel, even if it sounds a little different.

Although anyone who pines for Sir Mumbles should be required to re-watch last year's Masters broadcast, wherein his excuse for that egregious spoiler was that he couldn't control himself and completely forgot the competitive situation, two obvious qualifications for the job he held.

More substantively, according to this in the invaluable Sports Business Journal, the Tour has actually awakened to their questionable presentation:

The PGA Tour and its broadcast partners are hearing their fans’ call for more golf in 2023, as
NBC/ Golf Channel and CBS are both stepping up efforts to streamline broadcasts and add technological innovations as the season resumes this week in Hawaii.

A common complaint among fans is that not enough golf is shown during broadcasts on the weekends, with the networks’ commercial ad load inundating significant portions of the telecasts. By contrast, Saudi-backed LIV Golf is able to show unlimited shots due to its lack of sponsors.

Now, the Tour, broadcast and corporate partners are working together to show more golf on their platforms. That starts this week, from 7-8pm ET, when Golf Channel and Peacock will show the last hour of the final round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions commercial free for the first time, with presenting sponsorship from Callaway Golf. The commercial-free, presenting sponsorship option is on the table for all sponsors and events, NBC lead producer Tommy Roy said. “Whenever we can have commercial-free golf, we do it,” Roy said. “To get it here on the first designated event, to get it on Sunday, we’re really happy.”

Yeah, which has exactly zero to do with younger voices, but whatever...

This seems a bit of a mixed bag:

One of those ways is the standard interview with the CEO of the tournament sponsor, who typically joins either Dan Hicks on NBC or Jim Nantz on CBS for an 18th tower interview during Sunday coverage. One option has been moving that interview to Saturday’s third-round coverage, something that select tournament sponsors have been open to. Other options mentioned specifically by Shy are using sponsored tabs on the network’s constant leaderboard, or tweaking its “out of town” leaderboard segment that shows scores from the Korn Ferry Tour or other PGA Tour-affiliated circuits. “Possibly truncating some of these obligations yet fulfilling them,” Shy said.

Both networks have already been utilizing side-by-side coverage in recent years to show ads and live coverage at the same time. Shy noted CBS is “about 50/50” when it comes to full-screen commercials and side-by-side. PGA Tour SVP/Media and Gaming Norb Gambuzza said overall, 42% of ad breaks on broadcasts are of the side-by-side variety, and they are working with CBS and NBCU to grow that number.

I can't tell you how much I hate the dual windows, in which we have to trust the network to not show anything that's really significant.  Of course, these folks haven't exactly earned our trust in how they present, have they?

But there's no downside to this, which was used to spectacular effect at Kapalua:

TAKE TO THE AIR: Viewers can expect to see a significant uptick in coverage from above in 2023, as both CBS and NBC have plans to increase aerial shots at tournaments, albeit via different methods. NBC and Golf Channel this week will utilize a drone at the Tournament of Champions for the first time, showing off Kapalua’s famed 18th hole and other vistas around the Plantation course, providing what Roy described as “wow” shots for viewers.

CBS will ramp up use of its fly cam this season, especially at the designated events, following the success it saw at last year’s Waste Management Phoenix Open when it captured Sam Ryder’s ace at the famed 16th hole on Saturday. Designated events this season that could see fly cam usage including the Wells Fargo Championship (18th hole), Tour Championship (around the finishing holes at East Lake) and the 18th at the Travelers Championship in Connecticut, among others, Shy said. “We want to match the strength of the stars on the course,” he said.

Spoiler alert:  Most venues aren't like Kapalua.  So, while the drones are great, at Hartford all you'll see is the housing stock surrounding the golf course....

In the freebie portion of a Quad post on this subject, Geoff had some fun with these moves:

The move: Commercial free final hours. This option, according to NBC producer Tommy Roy, will be available to all sponsors and events. This is an obvious and overdue move after the successful incorporation of Rolex’s sponsorship at the U.S. Open dating to the Fox years.

Reaction: It’s unclear why this is only now something to do on a Tour broadcast, but we’ll take what should become standard on all significant events. Callaway took the opportunity at the Sentry TOC and it was tremendous. The stark difference in staying with the closing stretch action as Collin Morikawa folded gave the announcers time to put the shocking conclusion into better perspective without having to worry going to a break or cross-promoting…oh wait, they had to do a little of that. But the important thing to remember: execution of Callaway’s final hour sponsorship was not overbearing nor disrespectful to Sentry. And what a huge difference this made for viewers.

It's great and, while it's hard to understand the delay given what Rolex has been doing in majors, let's be thankful for small favors.  It does require a sponsor to step up, however, and the fear might be that this will be an additional wedge among the elevated designated events and those other orphans.

You knew this one would draw flak:

The move: Taking the contractually obligated 18th tower CEO interviews to Saturdays.

Reaction: What does it say about the egos of CEO’s that this has to be gingerly presented publicly through an industry publication when it’s such lay-up? I can imagine Commissioner calls that get sent to voicemail knowing the likely reason he’s calling. “Hey Bob, it’s Jay here, congrats on the third quarter earnings! Those layoffs really trimmed the fat off the bone! Inspiring! Say, uh, look, I love hearing from you and about your C.I.’s [charitable initiatives] every year. It’s a real highlight of the product. But look, not sure if know it, but a lot of our C-level eyeballs are on Saturdays. What would you think about doing your inspiring conversation with Nantz on Saturday this year? Let me know what you think and thanks again for kicking in another $4 million to be designated. Call anytime, I’ll pick up even if I’m in Steamboat!”

The one to watch here might be AT&T at Pebble.  One would assume they'd already be miffed by their non-designated status, but cutting away from the CEO on Saturday to watch Ray Romano putt out for a net triple will be appointment TV.

And one last bit before the dreaded paywall (and I'm wondering if I need to subscribe):

The move: More “side-by-side” ads with live coverage but minus audio. CBS producer Sellers Shy told Carpenter that the network is at “about 50/50” when it comes to running ads this way, and Tour SVP of Media and Gaming Norb Gambuzza said 42% of ad breaks are of the side-by-side variety with hopes of going higher.

Reaction: The CBS execution of this has been better thanks to a slightly larger viewing window. The NBC version, used initially at majors and now all too regularly, positively stinks. This week at Kapalua here’s what it looked like with stagnant action and the smaller box for “action”:


Combined with the noticeably louder commercial audio, it’s hard to see many fans viewing these as a promising feature. Perhaps a live 10-second ad read by announcers or increased on screen “branding” would be more positive for the sponsor and viewer.

Yeah, it sucks.

Now, one last take, which is pretty amusing:

 Well, I don't know if they got all of them.....  Where's Grayson Murray and Robert Allenby these days?

You can read the full interview or not, as I don't think there's much there beyond the amusement in the header.

Jay In Full - Mr. Monahan deigned to submit to questions from the media, and we have two Rashomon-like takes.  Dylan Dethier provides a conventional take here:

Jay Monahan met with media. Here are 15 issues he addressed

Not that there aren't interesting nuggets, such as this parsing of the number of angels on the head of a pin:

3. Monahan had a hand in the Delaware player’s meeting — but it wasn’t his meeting.

“That was a meeting called by Tiger and Rory,” he said of this year’s high-profile player’s meeting, which took place in Delaware at the BMW Championship and featured roughly two
dozen of the tour’s top stars. Woods and McIlroy led the meeting and got pros in attendance to commit to this year’s designated events, thus strengthening and consolidating the schedule.

Monahan added that while he didn’t dictate which players would be invited, he had a good understanding of who would attend and what would be discussed. He added that there were additional players who were invited to the meeting but didn’t end up attending.

“I think the reality of that is I had a lot of conversations with Tiger and Rory,” he said. “So I had a general sense of what they were talking about, absolutely.” 

Which basically tells us that the revised Tour architecture was designed by the two guys most unlike the remainder of the Tour's membership.  So, yeah, the Tour while fighting off the LIV challenge, will end up looking much more like LIV, not necessarily a good thing.

This was interesting as well:

1. The Tour granted every Saudi International request.

Monahan confirmed reports from earlier this week that a number of PGA Tour players have applied to play in this year’s Saudi International, an Asian Tour event held opposite the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Tour players have been asking for Saudi International releases for years; last year 30 or so Tour pros applied, many of them beckoned to the Kingdom by massive appearance fees. But this year feels different given everything that has happened with LIV in the past 12 months and given that the event is sponsored by the Public Investment Fund, the same group that’s behind LIV. (You can bet there will be a sizable contingent of LIV players there, too. Cameron Smith has already committed.) But Monahan said the Tour went through its typical process and the releases were “treated in the exact same manner that they were in 2022” given it’s an Asian Tour event.

Monahan confirmed that the Tour approved every player who asked for a release. He declined to name any names.

Here’s where it gets tricky. Remember last year, when the Tour said that pros could go play the Saudi International as long as they played the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am twice in the next three years (or once in the next two years, if they’d played Pebble in the last five seasons)? Well, now it’s coming time to pay those debts.

A significant number of the 30 Tour pros who got releases in 2022 have now gone to LIV. (Harold Varner III, Bubba Watson, Cameron Smith, Matthew Wolff, Abraham Ancer, Dustin Johnson and Joaquin Niemann all finished in the event’s top 10 last year.)

But there are other Tour pros who played last year but didn’t make the jump to LIV. Jason Dufner, Tony Finau, Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, Lucas Herbert, Shane Lowry, Xander Schauffele and Jhonattan Vegas caught my eye at first glance. They have some debts to pay these next couple of years, and Monahan says they’ll be expected to pay them.

“Yeah, January of last year I think we laid out the rule very clearly as it relates to the number of times that they would have to play either of the next two or three years, and those rules apply,” he said.

So, we should see all those guys at Pebble?  But when do we get the list of guys going to Saudi this year?  I mean besides Mito....

Quite a different take comes from Alan Shipnuck:

Deep in the Plantation Course clubhouse, behind a wall of hats in the pro shop, through some backroom cubicles, there is a small, windowless conference room. A few minutes before 11 on Sunday morning, a dozen frumpy sportswriters (and one well-tanned TV smoothie) were ushered into the room for an audience with the most embattled man in professional golf, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan. I sat to his right, and we made awkward eye contact.

“Hello, Jay.”

“Hello, Alan.”

The Commish could not quite contain his smirk. I spent most of 2022 trying to get a one-on-one sit-down interview with Monahan but was thwarted at every turn by the watch dogs in the Tour’s communications department. I don’t like asking questions in press conference settings because in this business, information is the coin of the realm; if the subject says something funny, or controversial, or particularly insightful, it will be cherry-picked by the aggregating elves at every golf website and thus lose its luster. At the Tour Championship in late August, I was desperate enough to throw some moderately tough questions at Monahan, which seemed to arouse the interest of the former high school hockey player. When I cornered him afterward, he said, “I know what you’re doing.” It was slightly enigmatic, but I believe he was referring to the book I’m working on about the battle between the Tour and LIV Golf. He fixed me with a look and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to you.”

OK, sounds like a remake of Roger and Me, but let's see where he takes it.  Though the new book is newsworthy, although I'm still awaiting my refund for his prior release.

Though as you read Alan's account, it seems he's the source of all fifteen of Dylan's items:

The Kapalua confab was Monahan’s first time meeting the press since then. In advance of it, a
Tour official requested that I keep things “cordial.” Monahan looked tan but a little tired, having jetted in from Florida a couple of days earlier. (No one had the temerity to ask if he had flown commercial in the wake of damning revelations from The Wall Street Journal about the commissioner’s extensive jet-setting on the company plane.) He began with brief opening remarks, but I wanted to cut to the matter: A fundamental issue at the Tour level has always been, Do the players work for the commissioner or does the commissioner work for the players? The Delaware uprising—the mid-August meeting at which Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy convened a bunch of their friends and reshaped the entire Tour schedule—seemed to answer that question, but I have always been curious about Monahan’s role behind the scenes. I asked if he had any input about which players were in the room. “That was a meeting that was called by Tiger and Rory,” he said. “I may have made suggestions. I understood who was going to be in the room, but it was their meeting. I mean, I want to be very clear that it was their meeting.”

And this:

One kernel of news that came out of the Kapalua conference room was that the Tour has agreed to grant releases to some of its members to play in next month’s Saudi International, which is not a LIV event but is co-sanctioned by the Asian Tour. I asked Monahan about the process of reviewing such requests; these granular bureaucratic processes have become of more interest in this era of golf’s warring tribes. The players may have seized control of the Tour, but in certain matters it remains a monarchy. Monahan said the leaders of his competition department review the release applications and make a recommendation but the commissioner makes the final call. I asked Monahan if he ever overrules the advice.

“I’m sure I have,” he replied.

Did anyone else ask a question?  And this is his self-absorbed conclusion:

The meeting broke up and all of us filed out of the conference room. Near a sale rack in the Kapalua pro shop, I cornered Monahan again and asked if we could continue the conversation in a more private setting. “As was promised at the Tour Championship,” I noted, helpfully.

“I probably shouldn’t have said that,” he said.

“Ah, but you did,” I countered.

Monahan flashed a big, broad smile and reached out to shake my hand. “Alan, thank you,” the commissioner said, and then he was gone.

Though perhaps the most interesting bit was this after-action tweet from Alan:

I'm thinking that his chances of that one-on-one are asymptotically approaching zero.... Though am I the only one that thinks he seems a bit self-entitled?

I enjoy Alan's work, especially his hot takes in his mailbag feature, though some of his reporting on Phil and LIV leave me puzzled.  But I can't imagine that Jay will give him the time of day going forward, and not sure he should.

I'm going to leave you here and get on with my day.  Not sure of a blogging schedule, but check back early and often.

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Monday, January 9, 2023

Weekend Wrap - Elevated Post Edition

As yesterday's concluding round at Kapalua took that bizarre turn there was little to do but turn away in horror....  Fortunately for your humble blogger, this was what caught my averted gaze:


After a day off to rest this creaky body (and watch some football and golf), we'll be back out there shredding it later.  Well, maybe not so much to shred, as it'll be a groomer kind of day, though Open Snow tells me to leave something in the tank for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Maui Meltdown - If an elevated event falls in the forest with a resounding thud, does anyone hear it?  But yowzer, Dylan Dethier ledes with this worthy candidate for the framing Hall of Fame:

The final question posed to Collin Morikawa at his post-round Saturday press conference turned out to be foreshadowing of the most painful kind.

Had he ever held a big-time 54-hole lead like this before?

Morikawa, whose lead was six, paused.

“Well, Hero,” he said with a grin. “It’s okay, I’m over it.”

“Hero” referred to the 2021 Hero World Challenge, where he’d needed a win to get to World No. 1. He put himself in position, building a five-shot lead through three rounds, only to shoot 41 on the front nine Sunday and evaporate from contention. He wound up a heartbroken T5.

You might be over it, though I'm not so sure about the rest of us....

But, given the results, this sartorial challenge for the Spaniard is quite amusing:

Still, he was so far back entering the Sunday’s round that he didn’t think twice about what he normally considers an off-limits final-round outfit. He likes to wear a pinkish-red shirt on Sundays but typically avoids pairing it with black pants out of respect for golf’s most iconic uniform.

“I usually don’t want to wear anything that’s close to red and black on Sundays because of Tiger. That’s his outfit,” he said.

Instead, he’ll pair the shirt with gray or navy pants. But in his preparations for Maui Rahm neglected to pack his usual supply of belts. (“I also forgot socks,” he said. “Yeah, I forgot a few things.”) By the time he got to Sunday, he’d run through his supply of navy pants, too. Red and black it was.

“We’re so far away [from the lead], whatever,” Rahm told himself. “I’m like, we’re going to need a small miracle.”

Two miracles actually, but whatya know....

Dylan has lots of reactions from the two protagonists that are worth your time, though the Morikawa stuff isn't for the faint of heart.  The focus will, inevitably, be on the young man's implosion, an interesting phenomenon for sure.  But let's not elide that Rahm shot a 10-under 63 Sunday, making his a deserved champion.  As the 2022 season began, I was curious to see if the Spaniard could separate himself from the field, only to see him regress fairly substantially.  As with all my predictions, some are dead-ass wrong, while others are merely early....

Of course, as we noted last week, he only had to beat 38 other guys... so, perhaps I should chill.

Morikawa's reaction sounds constructive, though I won't be so cruel as to Google his reaction to that Hero World collapse:

Afterward, Morikawa said he felt “sadness.” That “it sucks.” Kudos to him for talking.

“You work so hard and you give yourself these opportunities and just bad timing on bad shots and kind of added up really quickly,” he said. “Don’t know what I’m going to learn from this week, but it just didn’t seem like it was that far off. It really wasn’t. Yeah, it sucks.”

On the contrary, he was hitting on all cylinders for 63 holes..... But this is part of what makes our game so fascinating and bewildering, no?

The Tour Confidential panel leads with this very subject:

1. The PGA Tour kicked off its year at the Tournament of Champions, and we watched one of the worst collapses in recent memory. Collin Morikawa, up six to begin the final round, stumbled over his back nine, making three-straight bogeys at one point, and that opened the door for Jon Rahm, who shot a nine-under 63 to win by two. We’ll start with Morikawa, and we’ll ask it simply: Where does he go from here?

Alan Bastable: The practice green, for starters. You don’t need a Ph.D., in Golf Analysis to deduce where it went wrong for Morikawa Sunday: on and around the greens. This isn’t a new
issue. Last season, he finished 131st in SG: Putting (and 168th from inside 10 feet) and 152nd in SG: Around-the-Green. His ball-striking remains near-peerless but seems the closer he gets to the hole, the more the struggles — and that’s a serious problem come Sunday afternoons, when the significance of every shot is magnified. This is a day he’ll want to vanquish from his memory bank as soon as possible. As Morikawa himself said, “It’s hard to look at the positives.”

Jack Hirsh: It may be difficult now, but when Morikawa takes his time to reflect on this week, he’ll see he had one of his best putting performances of his career. He ended up finishing second for the week in SG: Putting, but he was leading the stat until the back nine. It’s clear the changes he’s working on with Stephen Sweeney are taking hold. I’m sure the last thing he wanted to be asked about Saturday night was the 2021 Hero, where he blew a five-shot lead after 54 holes. With how good his ball-striking normally is, he doesn’t have to putt and chip lights out, but he was putting lights out for most of the week. I think there seems to be a mental block with him winning right now. His next step could very well be working with a mental coach to get past it.

Josh Berhow: I thought an interview Collin did last year with Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis said a lot about his mindset. Lewis relayed some of Trevor Immelman’s comments, in which Immelman explained Morikawa was so good early in his career it would be extremely difficult to replicate that success. Immelman meant it as a compliment, but Morikawa took it as a slight. What does that mean in this context? It means he’s stubborn and expects more of himself, so he’ll be just fine. There’s no lack of drive there. And while Morikawa’s chipping and putting let him down on Sunday, he was actually pretty good in those areas the first three rounds (especially putting). A bad round and a bad three holes, but he had eight top 10s last year. He’s not going anywhere and has the game to win in bunches when things are clicking.

Josh Sens: Not to be blase about it, but … these things happen. Even to the greatest. Chipping was a weakness last year. It looked great for much of the week. But changes take time to hardwire. This was his first tournament testing his tweaks under pressure. No doubt he can’t be happy. But if you’d listened to Hicks and Azinger’s commentary down the stretch, you would have thought Morikawa had been diagnosed with a fatal illness. He stumbled. Rahm shot a great round. Life moves on.

Hirsh: Interesting thought reading this, Josh. Do you think there is a bit of Tiger-effect here, conditioning us to forget blown leads can happen to the best?

Sens: For sure. Nobody’s nerfect. Tiger just made it look that way for a long while.

I think we can all agree that nobody's nerfect, but also that Golf.com could use some proofreaders, as they seem to have as many typos as my own posts, which isn't a great look.

But, Josh, the chipping yips pretty much are a fatal disease....or at least an untreatable one.

What fascinates me, is the cognitive dissonance of Morikawa's short career.  In grabbing those two quick majors he seemed a cold-blooded big-game hunter, one able to summon great play in the crucible of major Sundays.  But, while we all understand that playing with a lead is somehow different, two major collapses is hard to square with the guy we saw at Harding Park and Sandwich.  What comes next for Collin has just become quite interesting, methinks.

Of course, it does place him on this unfortunate list:

You'll no doubt anticipate that I can't resist excerpting this one:

Greg Norman, 1996 Masters Tournament

Whatever became of that guy?  Anyone know what's he's up to these days?

Back to the TC gang for their further thoughts, first on the victor:

2. On to the winner. We’ve seen plenty of explosive play from Jon Rahm over the years, but what did you learn about Rahm and/or his game on this particular Sunday?

Bastable: When it comes to the debate about which player is the best when he’s at his best, in recent years Rory McIlroy has been the stock answer. Might be time to swap in Rahm’s name. When Rahmbo gets rolling, there are few golfing spectacles quite like it: an avalanche of blistered drives, nifty chips and dead-center putts.

Hirsh: Nothing I didn’t already know. Rahm has already won a number of times from behind, and we know he can take it deep. It was hard to imagine Morikawa blowing this at the beginning of the day, of course, but if anyone was going to catch him, it was going to be Rahm.

Sens: All of the above. So much firepower.. On the flip side, although he’s still plenty demonstrative out there, the fits of pique we used to see out of him are now more tempered these days. Maturity plus world-beating talent. Tough to top.

Berhow: You see that fist-pump after he finished off his Sunday 63? This was no low-key, easy-money cash grab in Hawaii to him. I’d expect a big year from him, but that shouldn’t be a surprising prediction to anyone.

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but it has me wondering if he can separate himself from the pack.... 

One final bit from Kapalua:

3. Whose 2023 PGA Tour debut gave you even more promise for their upcoming season?

Bastable: Max Homa continues to impress. After a slow start (70-70) at the TOC, he closed 63-66 to finish at 23 under and in a tie for third. Interestingly, he said afterward that he’s been working hard on his mental game, staying in the moment, playing one shot at a time, yadda yadda, and that new mindset seemed to be useful this week after what he described as a “frustrating” first two rounds. The best golfers are as mentally unflappable as they are physically talented. If Homa puts it all together this year, watch out.

Hirsh: Bastable took my answer! Luckily I came prepared with a second and that was Will Zalatoris. Zalatoris also got off to a slow start in his return from injury, playing the first eight holes one over, but he rebounded to break 70 each day and finished with a 65 to notch a T11. Nothing fancy, but in an elite field, that’s a pretty successful return after three-plus months off. He’s going to get only better from here.

Sens: Sungjae Im. A good early bet for Augusta.

Berhow: Tom Kim, in his first trip to Hawaii and still just 20 years old, tied for fifth and shot four rounds in the 60s. This kid isn’t going anywhere.

Zalatoris being healthy is certainly promising, but for the rest it's really early days.  

OK, I sort of lied.... this characteristic bit from ClubProGuy might amuse:

Not gonna make Collin feel any better about things....

Wither LIV -  This is true enough:

LIV Golf has gone mostly quiet. That’s new

Curious for a Tour that's branded, "Golf, but louder™", though I'm happy for the interregnum.  

So if you’ve taken the PGA Tour’s side in this civil war, enjoy this moment! It won’t be quiet for
long. But when LIV Golf does return to the headlines, it will be fascinating to see how much noise it can actually create. Last year was a slow burn of statements, events, pre-tournament press conferences, world ranking requests and letters that began “Surely, you jest.” Even when LIV was stagnant, it felt like it was evolving.

Part of the reason the league has gone mute is one of its prime characteristics: an offseason. Phil Mickelson will have had three months away from competition by the time he inevitably tees it up at the Saudi International. If he skips that event, it’s three months and three weeks away. LIV-ers highlighted this as one of their favorite aspects of the tour, promising the golf world they want to play less. Joaquin Niemann spent a lot of his break back home in Chile, putting on his best recruiting effort for fellow countryman Mito Pereira.

Mito leads the league in rumors, so the only surprise there is that he hasn't actually defected yet.  But the quiet also seems, at least partially, because the actual news hasn't been great for them:

The other interesting reason for LIV silence is upheaval in the c-suite. Atul Khosla, widely regarded as one of the key brains behind LIV’s business, resigned from his role as chief operating officer in the month that followed LIV’s first season. Mere weeks after sharing LIV’s business model with reporters. When the New York Times reported on Khosla’s exit, Greg Norman provided a statement to the publication, but no further public announcement was made by LIV. Khosla’s bio was still on LIV’s leadership webpage at the time, but has since been removed. His stewardship has been replaced by a combination of high-level staffers from Performance54, a golf marketing company that has worked with LIV from its inception. (Meanwhile, LIV lawyers have argued in court that Performance54 is not a LIV Golf agent.) Furthermore, this week Sports Business Journal reported that Matt Goodman, LIV’s President of Franchises, was no longer a part of its management.

I thin Ian Fleming put it best:

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”

 Or maybe Geoff did:

Making the economics work when you've committed $200 million to Phil?  That's a good one....

But Geoff or somebody needs to explain to me the origin of this purported franchise value.  LIV has committed to paying the guys for these team results, but where does the franchise value derive from?  Tee-shirt sales?  This from Golf Digest seems, well, delusional:

As LIV Golf transitions to Year 2, taking on the moniker of the LIV Golf League, officials have touted the franchise component of the endeavor as a primary facilitator for future sponsorships and revenue. Twelve teams are expected to be competing in a 14-event schedule beginning in late February. The 12 captains—who figure to be high-profile players such as Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia and Cam Smith—would have as much as a 25-percent equity stake in their teams. Each team would cover their own operating costs, using sponsorships, team prize money and merchandise to do so.

To players and potential sponsors and owners, the number LIV Golf has forecasted has stayed consistent, sources tell Golf Digest: a $1 billion potential valuation for a four-man club. However, LIV Golf lacked any formal sponsorship during its inaugural season, while spending $784 million to launch the circuit. A month out from its sophomore campaign it is unclear what, if any, financial backers are lined up for 2023.

Unclear?  Excuse me, but I think we have perfect clarity, there are none for quite obvious reasons. 

But two fairly substantial promised deliverables remain outstanding, this being the less significant of the two:

So perhaps LIV has had reason to stay out of the news recently. And perhaps the slow release of 2023 intel didn’t make sense before the holidays. At LIV’s team competition in October, reporters were told to expect a finalized schedule to be released in November. When that didn’t happen, December was the next obvious opportunity. Instead, LIV has released just half of its events, sprinkled out in spurts.

Then there's that nagging bit about a TV contract.... The golf might be louder, but also invisible....

But now the plot thickens.... I certainly didn't see this coming:


Things could get a little awkward next month.

During the week of the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is the Saudi International in Saudi Arabia, an Asian Tour event sponsored by the Public Investment Fund. Alas, the same folks
backing the LIV Golf series, which is in numerous lawsuits against the Tour, have created a rift in the golf community over the past year.

And, according to a report from Golf Channel, a ‘few’ PGA Tour players have asked and been granted releases to play in the Saudi International, which is scheduled from Feb. 2-5 at Royal Greens Golf and Country Club.

The report didn’t specify exactly how many players were granted conflicting-event and media releases. The event used to be a DP World Tour stop until the emergence of LIV Golf.

No explanation has been given, but one can only imagine that this involved layer upon layer of lawyers, as Alan Shipnuck implies:

 One assumes Mito will be on that list, no?

But the Pebble event is not on that list of "designated Events", and one can only wonder how this all looks to AT&T, another long-term Tour sponsor seeming to take it in the shorts.  

On the more substantive issue of who else might be departing, it's hard to know what the silence might indicate.  There's of course the argument to be made that anyone inclined to go has already bolted, with the only that Mito exception.  But, with the possible exception of this Saudi event, there's money to be made on the PGA Tour and little need to jump until late February, when LIV holds its first 2023 event.  

Of course, this unimpeachable source tells us it's gonna rock our world:

Hey, the LIV Twitter bot wouldn't lie to us, would it?

Though this tweet, from a reputable source, indicates that the C-suite might be more depopulated than we realize:

Boy, growing the game is hard work.  

Kapalua Memories -  Alan Shipnuck relates a story that I remember from ten or more years ago, although his version doesn't exactly square with my own recollections:

As I recall it, Gulbis was shown on Golf Channel and it was made quite clear that she was there with DJ.  But late in the week DJ was asked about it on camera, and denied even knowing Gulbis, an extremely public humiliation of a woman that had flown halfway around the world to be there.

 Good times except, yanno, for Natalie.

Cry Me A River - We had our bomb cyclone in New York, but the Left Bank has been dealing with an atmospheric river, generating dramatic videos such as this from Monterrey Peninsula Country Club:

Crazy stuff.

Notable Quotables -  I'm eyeing the exit, but Gary Van Sickle had posted some great quotes from 2022 that are worth excerpting, if only to amuse ourselves.  Given the year we had, it's not at all shocking that some of these haven't aged like a fine claret.

This guy got an early nod from me as most annoying LIVster:

NOW THAT YOU MENTION IT, YOU WILL NEVER PLAY A RYDER OR PRESIDENTS CUP

“I haven’t played a Ryder Cup or a Presidents Cup, but I can’t imagine there’s a whole hell of a lot of a difference. This was as cool as it gets. It’s awesome.” —Talor Gooch after his squad won a LIV Golf team title in Portland.

Fact check: It would be hard to be more wrong. Example: “I’ve never driven a Bentley, but I can’t imagine there’s a hell of a lot of difference from driving a Toyota Corolla.”

Amusing if only because of how little Gooch has done in our game.

And this from a guy we're well done with:

YES, HOW DARE WE QUESTION YOUR INTEGRITY, SIR!

“It’s been pretty clear for a long time now that I’m with the PGA Tour, it’s where I’m staying. … [LIV Golf] will get their guys. Somebody will sell out and go.” —Brooks Koepka at the WM Phoenix Open in February

So, everyone that goes is a sell-out?  Finally I've found common ground with Brooksie....

HOW MANY MILLION 'OPINIONS' DID IT TAKE?

“Opinions change. I did what’s best for me.”—Brooks Koepka, explaining his defection to LIV Golf shortly after the U.S. Open.

 Not to worry, Brooks, it's not like we ever assigned any value to your opinions.

if you like last night's sunset, can I interest you in this morning's sunrise?


I'll see you as the week unfolds, although I'll be playing it by ear
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