Friday, February 9, 2024

Your Friday Frissson - Deep Stuff Edition

For my last ski day this trip, Park City Mountain resort just reported 12" in the last 24 hours....  Might need to get me some of that.  Here's the snow stake:

If you like that sort of thing....

Scenes From The Wasatch - I'm past taking too many photos, but let me shar what I have.  First, a sunrise from my condo from early in the trip:

And from Wednesday, ski buddy Lee preparing to shred the eponymously-named Lee's Trees, a line he discovered a few years back (first time in it this season):

It's wet, heavy snow, but no one had been in there for a while.... Our tracks have filled in by now, so one might find us there later.

As hinted at above, I fly home tomorrow.  

Scenes From The Wasted - We typically only look for ski beanies at the Scottish or the Open Championship, but this week in, checking notes, Phoenix, we've been rewarded:

One can only hope that he doesn't remove the beanie on the 18th green and try to cover his receding hair line....

And while your humble blogger continues to exert his influence to ban the dreaded hoodie, we now have this appearance of the metro-sexual fanny-pack:

Do they know people are watching?  Admittedly, only a handful for a Thursday broadcast, but still...

As for the golf, the early starters were the only ones to finish:


SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Sahith Theegala is ranked No. 22 in the Official World Golf Ranking but he may be more proud of his chess ranking.

“I’m at my all-time Blitz rating right now. Like, I don’t want to play, because I know I’m going to drop a bunch,” he said.

“It’s not often where kind of every part of the game actually kind of clicks during the course of the round,” Theegala said. “It felt like through the bag I did something good with every club.”

Theegala birdied six of his first 13 holes, including a pitch-in for birdie at No. 2.

Amusingly, Golfweek seems to be featuring photos of players exclusively on the 10th tee.... Perhaps their photographers forgot their beanies and stayed close to the clubhouse.

For some reason I find this behind the scenes look charming:

Theegala made his lone bogey of the day at No. 5 right before play was suspended due to unplayable conditions.

“I was relieved when the horn blew, yes,” said Theegala, who enjoyed lunch with his parents and played some chess puzzles during the break and then made birdie at No. 6 when play resumed.

Even more amusingly, the Face-Plant Tour™ continues: 

Valley of the Sun it was not on Thursday

On Sunday, the wind was so fierce at Pebble Beach that the final round was canceled and the
AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was shortened to 54 holes.

On Thursday, remnants of the storm made its way to the desert and a band of rain that already had dumped more than an inch of rain earlier in the week led officials to institute preferred lies on Thursday. A steady rain fell sideways, leading to multiple greens that turned into giant puddles. Play was suspended for 3 hours, 30 minutes and called for the day due to darkness at 6:10 p.m. local time, marking the third straight year the opening round of the WM Phoenix Open has been suspended due to weather and/or darkness.

The entire afternoon wave has yet to complete their round. Those players will be back in position Friday at 7:30 a.m. local time (9:30 a.m. ET).

The temperature dipped into the high 40s during the afternoon, and the morning forecast is for more chilly weather, which means there could be a frost delay Friday.

Recently I penned an Ode to Crosby Weather.... Perhaps I should have mentioned that I prefer my Crosby Weather at, yanno, the Crosby.  Perhaps it's time to sacrifice a virgin?  

Lastly, the Wasted brings out all kinds, but I'm thinking there must be a back-story here:

Wyndham, Hold My Beer - The folks justifiably struggling over whether that 60 shot at Pebble under lift, clean and cheat now have bigger issues:

The name Cristobal Del Solar might not be familiar to many golf fans, but after Thursday's performance, he'll be more known by his new title: Mr. 57.

The 30-year-old Chilean fired a 57 to set a new record for the lowest-ever score in a PGA Tour-sanctioned event. Del Solar's 13-under-par round came on Day 1 of the Korn Ferry Tour's Astara Golf Championship.

It's been my experience that a 57 will not hurt you in this game.... Shockingly, the granular details are off the charts:

You know there's a "But" coming:

OK, now to a couple points of clarification. Del Solar's round came at the Pacos Course, the easier of the two courses being used at the Country Club of Bogota in Colombia. And in addition to it being a par 70, it also was playing at 6,254 yards, which is very short for men's pro golf. And it played even shorter considering the course is located nearly 9,000 feet above sea level.

Yeah, and not only did I need to correct typos for Golf Digest in that excerpt, but shouldn't they have told us this as well?

Rainy conditions in the days leading up to the tournament meant players were permitted to lift, clean and place golf balls under preferred lie rule.

Kind of an important detail, no?

This may be the funniest bit:

Hey, Wyndham lagged his eagle putt for 59, so why not lag your putt for 56?  

Obviously 6,200 yards at 9,000 feet with a course so soft that L,C&C is necessary deserves a triple asterisk, but that 57 should still send shock waves through the game.  For some time the opponents of tightening equipment and ball regulations argued fairly that the increased distance wasn't reflected in reduced scores on professional golf tours.  With guys we've never heard of throwing up 57's, I think we can dispense with that argument going forward.

Wither LIV - Good times, right?  Lots of commentary from which we'll sample, including this shocking prediction:

Are you sure about that?  because I was reliably informed that golf could only grow if Patrick gets paid...

Joel Beall writes as if from a prior decade?  Maybe that should century?

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely this is the solution, because greed, self-preservation and entitlement are not financial issues. They are issues of the heart and soul, and no dollar sign fixes that. Eventually the sense of privilege returns because it is a demon that can never be fed. Besides, there’s another entity that holds the key to this fight, and it’s a party both sides seem brazenly obtuse to its power. For a second, put aside that the tour remains in competition with a foreign kingdom capable of sending fleets of Brink’s trucks to any golfer it wishes, or that Wednesday’s deal likely signaled peace isn’t coming anytime soon, and focus on privilege. Because for the better part of two years, the PGA Tour, LIV Golf, players and most of the constituents involved with both have taken for granted the privilege of your investment, of your attention and time and passion. It’s not capital or leverage or legacy that’s important; what makes any of this matter is you.

That may seem hard to believe, considering how sidelined and hopeless many onlookers have felt in this stupid feud. But in one collective voice it is the fans who will ultimately decide how this plays out. Fans are the ones who give what’s going on consequence and meaning, and why companies are willing to spend millions to associate themselves with an ecosystem that emits an emotional pull. That’s why LIV Golf has been a failure, because, for all its claims of disruption, by almost every metric available, it has not gained your care. It is a circus without a crowd, the most expensive member-guest ever produced. And yet, the PGA Tour and many players are just as guilty, catering to their own membership over the common man. Why the stakeholders have missed this point—why they care more about themselves rather than where their actions are taking golf as a whole—remains a point of great frustration.

Yeah, but does Joel know that chivalry is dead....  Also, the deck chairs on the Titanic have been rearranged:

The good news is there’s hope. There are a number of astute players who hear and see you, who understand as bad as this craziness has been for them it’s worse for you. Mackenzie Hughes spoke about it eloquently earlier this year. Rory McIlroy has realized that the tour needs to be taking some of its direction from those outside the ropes, too. But it is a point that needs to be hammered home, which is what Collin Morikawa did on Tuesday. Morikawa went ahead and called out the very product that gives him his way of life and did so with an ease and candor that only comes when speaking the truth.

Joel, have you been away, because Rory is now pimping for the Saudis....So?  

That was Joel Beall back on January 31st.  Here's Joel in the here and now:

The LIV Golf question that the PGA Tour must answer

I assume that Joel is not especially financially savvy, though the math isn't that difficult:

Those hoping for long-awaited unification in the professional game were likely disappointed with
last week’s announcement that the PGA Tour would be partnering with private equity. The door remains open for future rapport with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, also known as the financial backer that spurred golf’s schism, although those talks have gone cold, multiple sources have told Golf Digest. While the deal with the Strategic Sports Group was made with future PIF involvement in mind some of the tour’s player leaders are telegraphing they’re just fine if PIF—and more specifically, PIF’s LIV Golf and LIV players—remain on the outs. And that is a problem, because a schism remains a schism unless the sport is made whole.

“I don’t think that it’s needed,” said tour board member Jordan Spieth last week. “I think the positive [of a deal with PIF] would be a unification [of PGA Tour and LIV players], but I just think it's something that is almost not even worth talking about right this second. The idea is that we have a strategic partner that allows the PGA Tour to go forward the way that it's operating right now without anything else.”

Adam Scott was more blunt in his assessment: “We don’t need it purely from a financial standpoint.”

Financially they are not wrong. Adding $1.5 billion to its coffers, with another $1.5 billion in the wings, provides the tour a stability that wasn’t there just weeks ago. Although the $930 million in player equity shares will not prevent other players from eventually defecting—because greed and entitlement cannot be alleviated by any dollar amount—it should buy the tour some time.

OK, so tell me how this works, Joel.  The Tour takes in $1.5 billion large for the sole purpose of paying that sum to the players or, more accurately, the cool kid players.  That's great, but they are committed to spend at a rate far in excess of their revenues, so those famous jock-sniffers are funding losses.  Which I suppose is great for a handful of guys, but it only works until the money guys realize that jacking the revenues isn't so easy.

I do need to keep moving, but Joel sorts through the rising opposition to allowing the players back without penalty, and this is his rousing crie de coeur:

This is not PIF’s decision; for all the things money can’t buy, it can’t purchase a conscience. This is not Monahan’s decision; he put the tour in this can’t-win scenario. Ideally the fans would be
the North Star; alas, while fans will ultimately decide if golf is headed in the right way, they are not the ones behind the wheel. The choice belongs to the players who stayed on the PGA Tour. They are the ones who stayed, whose careers were and are on the line, who did what they believed was right, yet are now forced to judge those that wronged them.

Tour players may think their stance against LIV players returning is one of principle. In truth, it’s pride. Because it takes swallowing one’s pride to welcome back the prodigal son. To let others think they’ve won. To think your sacrifices were for naught. To risk the appearance of going back on what you originally stood against. But to not welcome back LIV players, to keep this war going … there’s a reason pride comes before the fall.

Everyone wants the game unified, but let's not forget that guys like Phil and Sergio went out of their way to damage the Tour.... I don't actually think a one-size fits all solution is the answer.  I don't have big problems with most of the guys, but there were some really bad actors out there.

One last bit on that PGA Tour Enterprises equity grants:

One week after announcing a landmark investment for $1.5 billion (or more), PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has updated the Tour membership on just how much equity value will be issued, and how many players will receive it.

It was one of the most pressing questions following the announcement — $930 million is great, but who is going to get it? On a players-only call last week, Monahan made clear that the number would be “near 200,” but Wednesday’s memo, which was obtained by GOLF.com, revealed more specifics: 193 players to be exact.

The lion’s share of the initial grants in PGA Tour Enterprises (a new for-profit entity) — $750 million worth, or more than 80 percent — will be going to a group of 36 players. You can comfortably assume that Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and players of similar fame and accomplishments will be part of what the memo called “Group 1.” These recipients are earning grants based on their career performance, their past five years of performance and results in the annual Player Impact Program, a system that measures positive impact on the PGA Tour.

Yeah, we know who the cool kids are, and the program is carefully designed to reward them.  There is one aspect that jumps off the page:


Oh, Joy!  The PIP program, which is little more than a slush fund for Jay to reward those that remain loyal under highly opaque parameters, will now be used to award equity stakes.  A circus without fans sounds just about right....

That's it from Utah, kids.  The weekend may have to await wrappage until Tuesday, so bear with me.  Have great weekend and I'll see you from the other side.

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Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Midweek Musings - Groundhog Day Edition

There's a rumor that Pat Perez saw his shadow, ensuring six more years of LIV.... 

LIV Ascendant - In Monday's post I somehow neglected to cover the LIV event at Mayakoba.... I know, what was I thinking?  I will concede that Joaquin Niemann had an eventful week, a 59 and a two-shot penalty was a daily-double one doesn't often see, and the "W" makes it a trifecta.  It would have been more memorable had it occurred in an actual professional golf tournament, but still notable.

Dylan Dethier seems mostly to be sensible lad, but in this week's Monday Finish he tends towards the breathless:

LIV GOLF’S DREAM WEEK

It might not mean what you think.

When LIV first announced its schedule for the 2024 season, I was shocked to see its debut event
put up against the PGA Tour’s Signature Event at Pebble Beach. It seemed like a huge gamble — and likely a mistake. Relatively few people would watch the Mayakoba event when set against the game’s most competitive field at one of its most storied venues.

But then came the rain. And the wind. And the delay. And the Sunday cancelation. You could argue it’s a mistake to play Pebble Beach in early Feb. You could argue it’s unlucky the Tour had its first 54-hole finish in eight years. You could wonder if somehow LIV had enough money in its coffers to order up a monsoon. Whatever the reason, the controversial league ended up with a dream start to its 2024 season.

Since I think it means nothing, I do hope that sub-head is a misfire.  But do go on, Dylan: 

It’s hard to overstate just how many things broke right for LIV on Sunday. But let’s try to count a few of ’em:

There was suddenly no PGA Tour event to compete with (1), but PGA Tour fans had been planning on some afternoon golf viewing (2), leaving them primed, ready and able to flip to LIV. There was no LPGA event (3), either, eliminating Golf Channel as a landing spot for alternate live tournament action. As time has gone on and the PGA Tour and LIV have broached the idea of a future together, some fans have become more open-minded to the idea of watching LIV (4) — or resigned to the idea that it’ll be part of pro golf’s future (5). There also was no NFL football for the first Sunday since early September (6), leaving sports fans jonesing for something. With LIV’s continued signings and improved depth, there was an excellent chance for a compelling leaderboard — but this went well even by those standards. With two holes to play, the trio of Sergio Garcia, Joaquin Niemann and blockbuster signee Jon Rahm were all tied (7), with the former two ultimately heading to a sudden-death playoff (8) that finished in the darkness, stretching LIV’s TV window toward primetime (9) as Niemann putted for the win, illuminated by the greenside scoreboard on 18. There have been LIV highlights before now — think Bryson DeChambeau’s 58 or Dustin Johnson‘s playoff win — but this felt like the first time LIV had a real moment all to itself (10). I’m not saying everyone who tuned in loved it. But yeah. It was a good week for LIV.

Wow, is the Earth still orbiting the sun?  Dylan does a good job of noting how the Jordan River parted for the upstarts, but those bits about folks being more open to LIV qualify as little more than unsupported supposition.  As for the absence of impediments to sports/golf fans switching to LIV, even if so inclined, they would have to know it was on and where to find, two quite serious unresolved issues for them.

We'll circle back to Dylan, who has more thoughts of interest, but you will notice that he implies a ratings home run for LIV, who stopped releasing ratings last year because, well, there weren't any.

So, Dylan, whatya say to this underwhelming performance:

Despite canceled final round at Pebble Beach (and no NFL playoffs), LIV Golf still struggles in TV ratings

Here's the skinny:

On the bright side, they seem able to draw one-quarter the audience of a meaningless February women's college basketball game, so they've got that going for them.  So, perhaps Dylan is correct that folks are more open to watching it, though I can refute that anyone is actually watching it.  I'm sure Greg Norman will be bloviating about the twelve guys that streamed the coverage, but still there isn't enough lipstick in the world for this pig.

Back to Dylan who offers an interesting thought, though first he dunks on the PGA Tours Face Plant Tour™:

It was a rough week for the PGA Tour, too. This was an event the circuit had circled on its calendar for months, leaning into the idea of its best players in contention on a football-free Sunday in primetime at one of the most iconic golf courses in the world. This was also the week the Tour announced its deal with the Strategic Sports Group (SSG), providing its top players with league equity and its new for-profit enterprise with $1.5 billion, with another $1.5b promised later. It seemed like a chance to reward its players, cement plans for the future and dunk on LIV in the process. But then it wasn’t.

Yeah, but they've all been rough weeks for the Tour....

So — now what?

The dominant reaction I saw in the wake of Sunday’s action was a renewed call for the two sides to come together. I get that thinking. More people watching LIV means more people reminded what the PGA Tour has lost with Niemann, Garcia, Rahm off to play elsewhere — not to mention Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith, Johnson, DeChambeau and others.

But I’d argue this week made quick compromise less likely, if anything.

In the offseason LIV and the PGA Tour weren’t necessarily on the same page but their trains were parked in the same station. Now? The PGA Tour is headed northeast and LIV is headed northwest and they’re each picking up speed, getting further apart every minute. LIV just got its best indication yet that it has tapped into something. The PGA Tour just secured enough funding that they feel no urgency to compromise. Playing chicken with the Saudi Public Investment Fund is a risky maneuver. But getting into business with the PIF is no guarantee of victory, either.

There are still plenty of reasons a compromise could happen. The PGA Tour doesn’t want that game of chicken. The PIF could still benefit tremendously from association with the PGA Tour. The SSG investors may be keen on connecting with a fresh source of funding. And the PIF may be keen on connecting with the SSG, opening doors to other sports leagues in the process. But it doesn’t feel like anything is happening soon.

I think the Tour's week-to-week foibles are amusing and, were anyone actually watching, would show the folly of small fields and the devastating impact on the second-tier events.   That said, the only people watching have been co-opted (Peter Malnati, call your office), so it's to no effect.

The word worth considering is that italicized "something", and here's where I do disagree.  LIV, even after signing Rahm and Hatton, remains little more than a hot mess.  And therein lies Yasir's biggest problem, because he can throw billions at it, but those billions don't anyone care.

The Patrick Cantlays of the world seem to have come to the belief that they are Golf, or at least that they are PROFESSIONAL GOLF, but in reality they matter very little.  Jon Rahm has a far better resume than a Cantlay or even a Scottie Scheffler, but we are about see that LIV with Jon Rahm is indistinguishable from LIV sans Rahmbo.

What next?

Finally, we should be careful (and it may already be too late for this column) not to overreact to one week and one data point. This coming weekend we’ll get another head-to-head showdown between the two leagues, and this time they won’t even be separated by time zone — the WM Phoenix Open is less than 300 miles from LIV’s event in Las Vegas. LIV is smart to tie its Vegas event to Super Bowl weekend, as plenty of sports fans and famous people will be in town with nothing scheduled for Saturday’s final round. But how will that compare to the biggest party in golf? We’ll see.

OK, I do agree that this week LIV has chosen an interesting gamble, though being in the same city as the Super Bowl may only serve to highlight their insignificance.  But Dylan seems not to appreciate the significance of that Saturday finish.  To wit, that two of the three rounds will not even air on TV.  Dylan thinks LIV has found that elusive something, but it's not sufficient for the CW to preempt weekday Buffy reruns.  

But I think Dylan misfires as relates to the PGA, as well:

So where does that leave us? Still stuck in limbo. And adjusting to the idea that limbo may be our new reality. The PGA Tour has its plan. It’s financially viable. It has history and habit and top broadcast channels on its side. And there are golf fans who will resist watching LIV because they don’t like the idea of shotgun starts or team golf or — this one’s probably the biggest — a sovereign wealth fund taking over their favorite sports league and using it to advance its place before the world. But LIV has doubled down on its product. While its path to profitability is murky, its funding seems, for now, secure. Coexistence is here.

I don't expect a young golf writer to be economically literate, but that V-word is a howler.  Yes, the Tour has sucked some jock-sniffers into a huge cash infusion, but said cash infusion is clearly allocated to funding large operating losses.  The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined a wonderful phrase, defining deviancy down, that pops into mind, as Dylan has defined viability down.

As I've pointed out ad nauseum, today's pampered elite player simply refuses to peg it for an amount that the golf ecosystem can generate (just scan those TV ratings above).  The gamble is that the Tour can dramatically increase its revenues to cover this shortfall, a prospect that seems dubious at best.

We haven't seen much of Alan Shipnuck lately, but he's posted an Ask Alan. so let's grab the LIV-related portions thereof:

Are guys like Joaquin Niemann really upset about not being in the majors? That’s the deal they made by going to LIV. I guess winning $4 million doesn’t mean much anymore when the first words out of his mouth is about missing majors. @amolyajnik

We’ll see how many major championships he actually misses. Niemann’s victory at the Australian Open in December earned him an exemption into the ’24 British Open, and he can play his way to Pinehurst through U.S. Open qualifying like all of the other dreamers. The Masters and PGA Championship are invitationals and their respective committees can invite Niemann if they are so inclined, no matter where he falls in the increasingly irrelevant OWGR. The PGA Championship already set a precedent last year when it gave Paul Casey an exemption, so the real intrigue surrounds the Masters, which has always coveted international audiences. Niemann is the best player from the whole of South America, and he was top 20 in the world when he went to LIV. The Masters is diminished without him in the field. But the lords of Augusta are traditionalists, and with their spot on the governing board of the OWGR they helped deny LIV’s application for recognition, so there is much intrigue as to how they will handle Niemann (and perhaps Talor Gooch if he keeps winning).

Alan may be right in his analysis, and it appears form this that Niemann played (not especially well) in all four 2023 majors.  That said, the question I typically is why should I care about a player that takes the big check and puts his major participation at risk?  If you need the guaranteed money, to me that says you're not all in on your career, so good luck to you!

And, in one of those effortless segues for which I am renown, speaking of players about whom I've lost interest:

Is there a parallel universe where Sergio Garcia wins four or five majors through sheer
ballstriking prowess and a little luck here or there? @Levi275

Easily. I’m reminded of what PGA Tour veteran Scott Harrington texted reporter Dan Rappaport after being paired with Garcia in U.S. Open qualifying last year: “Haven’t played with Tiger but have played with everybody else. Was first time with Sergio. In terms of putting the bat on the ball and shotmaking, it’s the most impressive I’ve seen.” Garcia has 24 top-10s in the major championships but only one victory. Shaky putting and emotional immaturity explains a lot, but when a player puts himself in position that many times you’d think a win or two (at least) would fall into his lap. That it’s never happened for Garcia can be described as bad luck…or karma.

After seeing his graceless exit from the two golf tours that made him fabulously wealthy, his squandered talent is more of a feature than a bug.  I'm tempted to insert the ubiquitous video of him spitting in a cup and using the "nothing but net defense", but I'm also quite lazy.

Life Is About Choices - I'm not going deep here and I certainly remain more favorably disposed towards the Spaniard than to many of those predecessors, but the juxtaposition is interesting:

‘Your feelings do change’: Jon Rahm says LIV decision hinged on 2 factors

I still hate it, but after June 6th it became clear that the issue was never the source of the money, rather it was the end destination thereof.

But:

Jon Rahm says he got 'emotional' missing his favorite West Coast events

But, hey, you get to spend more quality time with Sergio.... perhaps he can teach you his trick of spitting into the cup?

Tour Stuff - Not gonna stress myself here, but we had that Rory v. Jordan cage match that was interesting, as is this guy weighing in:

‘Definitely not’: Justin Thomas says LIV pros shouldn’t be able to rejoin PGA Tour easily

On Tuesday, Thomas revealed that while he isn’t firmly on one side or the other in terms of a PGA Tour-PIF deal, should the two sides come to an agreement, he thinks players who left for LIV should not be able to return “easily” to the PGA Tour.

“I’m not necessarily super adamant one way or the other. I want the best product and the best players,” Thomas said on Tuesday. “I would say that there’s a handful of players on LIV that would make the [PGA] Tour a better place, but I’m definitely not in the agreement that they should just be able to come back that easily.”

He went on to explain that the “sacrifices” PGA Tour pros made to turn down LIV’s big-money offers makes it difficult for those players to stomach the idea of LIV pros rejoining the Tour, especially without some kind of system to address their initial decision to leave.

“I totally understand that things are changing and things are getting better, but it just would — I would have a hard time with it,” Thomas said, “and I think a lot of guys would have a hard time with it, and I’m sure we don’t need to convince you why we would have a hard time with it.”

JT's opinion is interesting only because of his bromance with a certain Player Director.   But how do I see this playing out in the event of a deal with PIF?  As is often said in the context of the Democratic Part, you don't have to fall in love, you just have to fall in line.

I'm just going to riff the remainder of Alan's mailbag feature, and then focus on the snow continuing to fall:

Does Wyndham Clark’s 60 get an asterisk? @adamkommers

Nah, he doesn’t make the rules and he can only play the course that is presented to him. The guy was nails from start to finish. But I’m glad Clark didn’t shoot 59 under lift, clean and place because *that* would have demanded an asterisk.

It's at best an interesting distinction, but he seems to want to force an asterisk upon Al Geiberger.

What is preventing the Tour from moving the Pebble event to the summer when it can run in prime time? Nobody wants to watch guys sweating through their Dockers in Memphis in late July/August. Play Riviera and Pebble Beach when players would love California summer and fans get evening golf! @LivingItUpPod

It’s a great idea but the Pebble Beach Co. doesn’t want to give up those long summer days when the tee sheet is packed with hundreds of golfers and the cash registers are ringing. Pebble is also hosting three U.S. Opens in June between now and 2037 so a summertime Clambake would be redundant. Alas, we’re stuck with Crosby weather forever.

I frequently speak of the Tour s******g on its own history, but does it really want to give up that valuable piece of intellectual property known as Crosby Weather™? 

Alan's answer is fine, I would just add that the only rationale for taking majors to Tour venues such as Pebble and Torrey, is that the conditions are so different (and more challenging) in the summer.  There's also some geographic logic since the Tour in February is in the 'hood.

Alan does reasonably OK on this issue that I've covered:

How does “player equity” work when the roster is continually moving with new players coming and going all the time? @votehimoutinnov

Short answer is timing is everything: card-carrying PGA Tour member in 2024 are lucky mofos! They will reap most of the benefits of a century of toil by their predecessors. I’d love for PGA Tour Enterprises to break off some dough for all the old-timers. How about every living pro golfer over 40 gets $1,000 for every start that he made on Tour? It would be a symbolic thank you to the old dogs and the journeymen who helped build this thing. Or, let’s add another zero to that if we’re feeling generous. But the vast majority of the money will be dispensed right away to reward top players who didn’t jump to LIV and discourage any who are currently contemplating. If the PIF walks away from the framework agreement in the next few months, and the Tour is again in a fierce battle to keep its players, pretty much all the equity will be burned up this year.

I'll just remind that the bonecutters were willing to put $1 billion large to cover Patrick's sense of entitlement....

Equity is just one of those ideas that sounds great and will prove ineffective, but also tie their hands in the future.  But the important thing to acknowledge is that professional golf did not exist before this current group of players.

But isn't this a really good question:

Hi Alan, I’ve asked this one three times on past “Ask Alan’s”: Why wasn’t the private equity path pursued from the start versus going to PIF last summer? Seems so logical. @Michaelarinewma

Clearly I’m susceptible to guilt trips—well done, Mike! But you’ve kind of answered your own
question: it was too logical. PE money had been circling professional golf for years. After all, Raine Capital had pledged $500 million to the upstart Premier Golf League and Raine had been in deep negotiations with the European Tour, too. Jay Monahan knew all of this and still he decided to try to compete with the Saudis’ $750 billion war chest by…checks notes…squeezing his wary corporate sponsors for an extra million or two. Oy.

On some level, I don’t blame Jay. He has day-to-day oversight of a massive bureaucracy and has to fret about everything from Bernhard Langer anchoring his putter to finding sponsors for the Latinoamérica Tour to his direct-reports having flings with subordinates (allegedly). But what about his army of Vice Presidents—shouldn’t they be gaming every possible scenario? What about the supposed corporate whiz kids on the PGA Tour board—aren’t they supposed to be big, strategic thinkers? It’s easy to blame Jay but the slow, reactive, ineffectual response to LIV’s gathering storm was a massive institutional failing, and the mistakes keep compounding.

Ummm, perhaps because Jay was too depressed to actually do his job?

I think this is actually multiple questions, first why it wasn't pursued pre-LIV, but also why it wasn't part of the original LIV defense strategy.  In any case, it doesn't speak well of our Jay.

Gotta run.  I'll catch you further down the road....

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Monday, February 5, 2024

Weekend Wrap - Golfus Interruptus Edition

Apparently, in an effort to compete with Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, the PGA Tour has conceived and is rolling out its Face Plant Tour.  It's gonna be HUUUGE!

Revenge of Crosby Weather - In all the commentary I've seen, nobody has characterized it as the revenge of Der Bingle.... 

The grim news:

The 2024 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is already over.

Despite initially postponing the final round of the $20 million Signature Event to Monday due to inclement weather, the PGA Tour made an about-face late Sunday night and said “out of an abundance of caution for the safety of all constituents” play would be canceled Monday. The tournament results through 54 holes are now final.

The Pebble Beach area is under Shelter in Place order by Monterey County until early Monday and after consulting with county emergency authorities, the PGA Tour announced the cancelation of the final round in a statement Sunday night.

They didn't have any good options, but in many ways the Tour had this coming, if only Karmically.  Why?  Well, this is the Tour's explanation of its Signature Events:

PGA TOUR Signature Events are limited-field events offering increased purses and FedExCup points. The fields, which will range from roughly 70-80 players in size

OK, that's at least transparent.  But your humble blogger has been known to fixate on obscure details, and I've noticed a prevalence of bits like this:

These circumstances have brought us to Pebble Beach, where the best players in the world are gathered for the first full-field Signature Event of the 2024 season, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

Sloppy journalists, or has the Tour quietly suggested that usage to its sycophantic, jock-sniffing scribes.  Personally, under these circumstances, I'll embrace the healing power of the ampersand.... 

Have we featured this guy ever?

“Irony is wasted on the stupid”

― Oscar Wilde

How perfect that, as the Tour is trying to present eighty players as a full field, that they're precluded from playing the full complement of golf.  One of initial confusions from the LIV mess was that, at first, there was no disparagement of the LIV events as "Exhibitions", (excluding, of course, these pages).  Then the light bulb went off over my head, as I realized that the Tour's top players were jealous of those LIV field sizes.... 

The Tour Confidential panel has hardly distinguished itself recently, and it's another odd week in that regard.  For instance, this:

5. Although this year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was only 54 holes, there were some big changes as the historic stop after it received Signature Event status this year. That meant one less course, less amateurs and only two rounds of the pro-am portion. Was the new format an improvement?

Wall: Count me as a fan of the changes. The previous Pro-Am format was a slog that kept fans from watching until the final round. Being forced to watch a bunch of amateurs hack it around for three days was excessive. I think two rounds makes everyone happy and keeps the focus on the improved field and venue. Now if only we could see more golf shots…

Melton: Definitely an improvement from years past. There’s nothing better than getting the best of the best together on one of golf’s premier courses. I’m certainly a fan of how things played out.

Berhow: It was an improvement. Despite the rich history of the pro-am, previous editions felt more like a silly-season event. I liked it.

There's quite a bit going on here, so shall we parse it?  Wall and the others are quite right that the full-field Pro-Am has degenerated into six-hour rounds and many players therefore gave it a pass, rendering it a mid-level Tour event, buoyed mostly by the venues and the star power.  Anyone remember this (and Peter Jacobson's recounting of Lemon's next shot was certainly something I didn't remember):

What's gone sideways for this event?  The unforced error was removing Cypress Point from the rota.  Who cares if the rounds take seven hours, if those hours are spent on Cypress.  The obvious second point to make is this event was conceived for Bing and the Rat Pack, and stars such as Clint Eastwood and Jack Lemon sustained it.  Ray Romano?  Yeah, not so much, and the Tour further erred in allowing CBS to co-opt the event to plug its lame sitcom stars.  Can't blame the Tour, though, for starts not being what they used to be....

Interestingly, none of the writers mentioned one of the more substantial changes made this year, which is the defenestration of high-handicap amateurs.  If you thought professional athletes from other sports were the only amateurs invited, you weren't far off.  You lose something of the history of this event in that manner, but there were those inevitable six-hour rounds...

But, while Zephyr is agog at getting the best of the best together, this was the final leaderboard:


They're not exactly producing those head-to-head duels among the top players, are they?  Why?  because golf stubbornly remains golf, so all they've accomplished is to create a series of exhibitions of dubious merit.

But the bigger issue is this new bifurcation of events.  AT&T obviously had the resources to compete, though let's not forget that they walked away from sponsorship of the Byron Nelson.  Pebble got the cool kids to show up, but the ramifications will be felt at other events, witness the dreadfully weak field at Torrey last week.

The TC gang also weighed in on this conundrum:

4. Wyndham Clark set a Pebble Beach course record with a 12-under 60 on Saturday,
which vaulted him atop the leaderboard after three rounds (and was good enough for the win, after the event was deemed final after 54 holes). One debate that broke out on social media, however, was about how “official” the record should be since soggy conditions meant the field played “lift, clean and place,” when in the short stuff. What say you? Should there be an asterisk here?

Wall: Normally I’d say it should have an asterisk, but the guy set a ShotLink record with 150-plus feet of made putts over 9 holes on Saturday. It’s not like he was hitting everything to tap-in range with lift, clean and place. It’s still an impressive round no matter how you look at it.

This from gearhead Jonathan Wall might be one of the stupidest comments we've featured.  Shockingly, a guy shooting 60 made miles of putts.  Geez, who coulda seen that coming?  Problem is, without lift, clean and cheat in place, he might have had to make 300 feet of putts to shoot 60.

Melton: The rest of the field had the benefit of preferred lies, too, and no one else came within three shots of matching Wyndham’s feat. It’s hard to frame his round as anything other than a historic round at a historic track.

Let me see if I follow your logic.  The 60 is legit because no one else shot better than 63?  I'm old enough to remember when 63 was a pretty good day....

Berhow: It should 100 percent stand as the course record at Pebble Beach, but I also don’t necessarily think it takes anything away from it by simply stating, as a fact, that it was played using preferred lies. That’s just context, people. As Zephyr said, he wasn’t the only one who played by those rules. And it’s not like you get to fluff up your ball if you hit it 40 yards offline in the rough — you still need to hit the shots. Interestingly, I knew the PGA Tour counted lift, clean and place scores as records, but was unaware the DP World Tour does not. (Across the pond, the game’s inventors thumb their nose at the elements.)

There is no good answer here, though it's amusing that folks seem to feel they need to assert that it was a hell of a good round.  Yeah, I'll go way out on a limb and opine that a sixty will never hurt you.  The question is, how do you compare it to a 61 or 62 where that other guy isn't allowed to touch his ball?

What seems to get lost in the shuffle is an understanding of the conditions that require L,C&C.  We're talking wet, soft golf course, and soft conditions are exactly when these guy light it up.  Now soft conditions usually result in wet golf balls or mudballs, but then we take those offsetting conditions off the table..... It's just a completely different test, so I don't know what you do with it if you're hung up on records.

Geoff had some interesting stuff on this, including these metrics for Clark's round:

  • Clark hit 9/14 fairways. Hit 16/18 greens. Hit 23 putts. Averaged 289.7 yards on all drives and 308.7 on the two measuring holes. Did I mention the balls were hitting and bouncing backwards?
  • Three of his nine birdies were made on holes where Clark missed the fairway.
  • Breaks the Pebble Beach course record by two with a 12-under 60 (62: Matthias Schwab/2022, Patrick Cantlay/2021, David Duval/1997, Tom Kite/1983).
  • Clark’s left dead-center putts just short at the 16th, 17th and 18th. He was within inches of a 57. With a bogey on the card.
  • It’s the 54th 60 in PGA Tour history, just two weeks after Nick Dunlap shot the same score at La Quinta CC.
  • Clark’s opening 28 tied the lowest score held by three others for Pebble Beach’s front nine and at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
  • He made 189 feet, 9 inches of putts. His previous career best was 156 feet, 6 inches at the Shriner’s.
  • The likely record—Shotlink unconfirmed—for length of putts in a round belongs to Cameron Smith at the 2022 Open Championship. Smith’s 255 feet of putts to Clark’s 190 feet Saturday came at the Old Course. Its double greens average over 22,000 square feet. Pebble Beach’s 18 putting surfaces average just 3,500 square feet.
Those putts left short at Nos. 16 and 17 were agonizing, though we all heard how they gradually slowed the greens in anticipation of Sunday's heavy winds.  The eagle putt on No. 18, though, was more interesting, as per this:

With weather shortening the 2024 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Wyndham Clark’s decision to cautiously strike his 18th hole eagle putt looks pretty brilliant. Even if eagle would have meant a 59, an excessively-aggressive three-putt would have meant a tie with Ludvig Aberg.

And what would the Tour have done if there were a tie at the top?  Can you say face plant?

But Geoff also has breaking news from 1977:

Alright, alright I’ve put it off long enough: the 60 came on a day when preferred lies were in place. As with Al Geiberger’s historic 59, lift, clean and place produces an inevitable debate.

Did you know that?  Google confirms:

There were 28 rounds shot in the 60s that fateful Friday, when temperatures inched up near 100 degrees and a parking-lot fire burned up a handful of cars. Raymond Floyd's 65 was the next best thing to the magic conjured up by Geiberger, the 1966 PGA champion. Preferred lies were in effect at Colonial owing to a rough winter and drought, but Geiberger has always maintained that lift, clean and place had little to do with his record score.

FWIW, he beat the next best score by six shots.... Take that, Zephyr.

I'll segue out with this video of No. 18 yesterday morning:

You're gonna want to play your second out to the right side of the fairway, just to avoid the tsunami....

Wither Professional Golf? -  Another fine mess you've gotten us into, Ollie.  Jerry Tarde has been around our game forever, and takes a shot at how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  But the part I liked most was this involving rose-colored glasses:

Ever since World War II, pro golf built its foundation on five principles: (1) The top players like Arnie and Jack always put the game above themselves. (2) Golfers are accountable to their performance—nothing's guaranteed. (3) The pro tours are kept in check and balance by the four independent governing bodies controlling the major championships and acting in the best interests of the game. (4) Pro golf is underpinned by charity; that's why hundreds of volunteers show up every week to help run the tournaments. (5) The game’s leaders—not always, but generally—have used the time-honored Masters strategy of leaving money on the table in exchange for control and sustainability.

OK, thanks for the trip back to the 1960's, but I regret to inform you that Arnie has left the building....

But I'm a fan of unexpected appeals to authority:

The PGA Tour and the LIV Golf League fell into what historians have called Thucydides Trap. "It was the rise of Athens and the fear it instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable," wrote the Ancient Greek general Thucydides. When a newcomer threatens authority, war is only averted with deft statecraft. Curiously given the short-game touch of its stars, the PGA Tour doesn’t do deft.

We're more into the mass beheading stage of life.....

The entire piece is worth your time, though not because Jerry delivers on his header:

Pro golf is broken. How are we going to put it back together?

 In fact, this is as close as Jerry gets, and can you say hopeless naivete?

The view here then is that the amateurs will help bail out the pros. The new tour can expect years of disruption, but the five original principles that guided the professional game since WWII will prevail. I think it was Churchill who said, “You can always count on golfers to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.”

I totally trust Phil to do the right thing, as long as he's paid a king's ransom to do so....  I mean, has Jerry been paying attention the last two years?

What else is going on?  Well, there's a debate raging on those LIV defectors:

PGA Tour players divided on LIV defectors' punishments should PIF deal work out

 Useful idiot Rory McIlroy kicked this off:

The burning question, of course, is this: Just how accepting are players who have remained loyal to the PGA Tour to the idea of welcoming back LIV defectors? Rory McIlroy made it a point on Tuesday to say he’s had a change of heart and LIV defectors should be allowed to return to the tour without repercussions, financial or otherwise.

I'm working towards my favorite story of the day, one in which Rory further beclowns himself.  But pushback ensued:

Rickie begs to differ:

“I’m probably not in the same spot that Rory is,” Rickie Fowler said. “Maybe we started in a
similar area, but I think there's been a little rollercoaster ride on his part. … Yeah, as far as decisions to go elsewhere and just welcome [LIV players] back, I don't think it's a direct road. They made decisions and there has to be something for it. Whether how small or big, that's not up to me.”

And Adam Scott, a man with some influence as one of five player-directors, wants to have it both ways:

“That’s probably not where I’d be starting,” Scott, another member of the policy board, said. “My first reaction is not that. It’s very complicated. We could throw around ideas here forever and not get to a really good outcome. The first thing I think of when I hear, ‘Just bring them all back,’ is well, they want to play on LIV. They don't want to play here. Or if they don't want to come back and play, so what happens then? So it's very hard to know exactly how that all pans out.”

 Gee, thanks for clarifying....

What's missing in these admittedly fragmented responses is any sense of what loading the LIVsters back in would do to our Tour Rabbit class, already excluded from those Signature Events Money Grabs.

But perhaps the most interesting comment came from Jordan Spieth, another guy with a vote (amusingly, Rory's vote):

Jordan Spieth, a member of the PGA Tour Policy Board that approved the agreement with SSG,
flatly said on Wednesday at Pebble Beach Golf Links, “I don’t think that it’s needed,” referring to a deal with PIF.

“I think the positive [of a deal with PIF] would be a unification [of PGA Tour and LIV players], but I just think it's something that is almost not even worth talking about right this second,” said Spieth, who assumed a seat on the board vacated late last year by Rory McIlroy. “The idea is that we have a strategic partner that allows the PGA Tour to go forward the way that it's operating right now without anything else.”

Take that, Yasir!

But here's what has your humble blogger chuckling.  Not only did Rory get himself played by Jay et. al., but apparently he's undergone a deathbed conversion and is now all-in on the Saudis.  Not only that, but he's also incredibly thin-skinned, featuring rabbit ears that put to shame Colin Montgomerie's best in class status:

It is understood that McIlroy removed himself from a WhatsApp group involving several PGA Tour players soon after Policy Board member Spieth’s comments were published, prompting his fellow former world No.1 to phone him for a clear-the-air chat.

He's like a college student that thinks he can get through life without a dissenting opinion being heard.... Rory, please go away, you've effed this up enough already.

Apparently Jordan tried to do the right thing:

Rory McIlroy has revealed he and Jordan Spieth had a “tense” conversation on the phone last week after comments made by the latter about Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

“I talked to him about his comments and we had a pretty frank discussion,” the Irishman told Sports Illustrated.

Yeah, I'll bet it was.... But Rory seems especially clueless these days:

“They are still sitting out there with hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, that they’re gonna pour it into sport. And I know what Jordan was saying, I absolutely know what he was saying and what he was trying to say. But if I were PIF and I was hearing that coming from here, the day after doing this SSG deal, it wouldn’t have made me too happy, I guess?”

McIlroy, once LIV Golf’s biggest critic, added: “Having PIF as your partner as opposed to not having them as your partner, I don’t think is an option for the game of golf.

“I think they’re committed to investing in golf and in the wider world of sport and if you can get them to invest their money the right way to unify the game of golf.”

Where was Rory when Phil and Jay were pissing at each other over leverage.... I don't know if Jordan is expressing his won thoughts, but it also may be that telegraphing the message that you don't need them is helpful in the difficult discussions with the recalcitrant Saudis....

But the man who first spoke of his concern about the source of the money, is now all in on the bonecutters... He accomplished the impossible, tying himself to the loathsome Wahabis without actually cashing their check.  Well played!

On Equity - Giving players equity in their Tour is one of those things that sounds good, but is actually somewhere between silly and counter-productive, calcifying a moment in time.  Brandel Chamblee is about the only guy I saw try to take this issue on:

The idea of paying current players for their loyalty and giving them equity is, in my opinion, blind to what the PGA Tour is. It is an entity that is the sum of the toil of players, executives, sponsors and volunteers over the course of more than a century. Each one was a part of something that predated their participation and it was their responsibility to try to make it better and pass it on. Paying current players for their loyalty and giving them equity ignores the very legacy the PGA Tour claims to want to protect and in essence gives false credit for the creation of something today’s players merely contributed to.

The Saudis in their ignorance have merely bought a moment in time, but the tour has something they cannot buy, a pipeline of players that will replace those poached. Just the ones who’ve come out in the last year can likely beat 9/10ths of the LIV tour. The PGA Tour needs to stop playing the Saudis game of buying players and get back to playing their game of producing great players and stories. The PGA Tour may not be able to compete when it comes to buying players (although the SSG could mitigate this in creative ways) but the Saudis can’t even come close to producing them.

Yeah!  It calcifies the Tour, just like the limited fields in the money grabs do, to the benefit of a handful of historically insignificant players.  But Brandel left good stuff on the table, because while extolling the development of the next generation of players, he fails to connect the dots to those limited fields, which impedes the development of young players by denying access.  The Tour was its own cycle of life, with older players fading into the sunset and new talent emerging.  Now we've stopped the music, and all the PGA Tour cares about is satisfyingly the insatiable demands of six guys..... 

And Rory, who just ironically received the Arnie Award, is now determined to be the anti-Arnie, and he's going to get his.

I said at the beginning of this that we would end up hating them all.....  Did I nail it or what?

That's all for today.  I won't be able to blog tomorrow, but would expect to see your shining faces on Wednesday.

  
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Friday, February 2, 2024

Thursday Threads - Brave New World Edition

That sound you hear in the background is Bobby Jones spinning in his grave.  I know it's all gonna work out, because when have they ever lied to us?

No doubt you've seen the headlines:

PGA Tour closes up to $3 billion investment from Strategic Sports Group

We know this is great, because Tiger is telling us its great:

Looking for a silver lining—because you know how I never start a day without reading at least three chapters of Norman Vincent Peale—Tiger Woods reportedly spoke on the rollout call and drove home what mattered in this deal for him.

“Golf is an amazing sport,” Woods said. “It has allowed communities to heal and grow. And we, as a team, are going to offer that according to what we believe is the true compensation and meritocracy that our sport has been built upon for all these years.

“As has been described earlier, as the Tour grows, we grow. So the more we invest into the Tour, the more we get the benefits of it. Which has never been—it’s never happened in sports history. So we’re the first. Exciting for me to be able to be part of that.”

OK, so just out of curiosity, how much are you personally "investing"?  Say what?  Suddenly a little quiet over there....

One of the ways we know we're being lied to is when language is perverted to mean, typically, the opposite of its actual meaning.   I could rattle off countless examples from politics, but let's just deal with Tiger's sense of "investment":

Why did the PGA Tour decide to take the investment?

The cash infusion from the SSG serves to shore up the Tour’s bank accounts after a bruising, expensive battle with the Saudi-backed PIF, and promises to keep those players who have
remained loyal to the Tour financially satisfied to the tune of some $1.5 billion in performance-based incentives over the next 5 years.

The money gives the Tour access to a deep Rolodex of sports business professionals whose stated goal is to help the Tour (and its players) make more money. Perhaps most important, though, the investment gives the PGA Tour a runway while negotiations for an additional investment with the Saudi Public Investment Fund (or PIF) drag through regulatory approval.

The first lie is actually the $3 billion number being bandied about, because at this point SSG is only committed to $1.5 billion.  And as we see above, that's an investment in the sense that Tiger and Patrick will get paid.  Can you feel the game growing?

I have some family business to deal with, so we're going to riff on an emergency Ask Alan column that just popped up in my Twitter feed.

Is anyone aware of how much they have hilariously overvalued the sport of professional golf? @KPNYJ

Rory is! Following his presser on Tuesday afternoon at the Crosby Clambake, McIlroy scrummed with a half-dozen scribes for about 20 minutes. It was the most candid and relaxed I’ve seen him since LIV made the scene. Among the things he said: “Guys want to be paid like an NFL quarterback, but we don’t create the same value. The ratings for the final round of the Sentry was one million and for the AFC Championship game it was 50 million. If that’s not a wakeup call, I don’t know what is.”

Golf has always been a niche sport. Peak Tiger tricked a lot of folks into believing that the game had gone mainstream, but he was a once-in-a-century attraction. Ever since Woods ran over the fire hydrant, professional golf has slowly, inexorably been returning to its traditional place on the fringe of the sports world. That LIV was willing to massively overpay for players does not change the natural order of things. Which leads us to:

Yes, but that's why (and, credit where credit is due, our Federal government has been playing this game for a long time) it's necessary to call payments to the players "investments."  But to believe this is sustainable, you have to believe that the Tour can substantially increase this "value," but good luck with that.

Billion dollar question: What does the Strategic Sports Group get out of this? How do they get a return on the investment? @Joecattle101

I appreciated the analysis of Max Homa and others who said that that the news investors are not doing this out of benevolence but because they want a profit and thus the Tour is going to have to
innovate to create a better product to generate more fan interest and more value. One problem with this thinking: golf is not a normal investment. There are a lot easier ways to make money than pouring it into a nebulous new Tour that has lost many of its biggest stars and potentially faces a competitor with a helluva lot more money. The fact is, really rich guys like shiny things, and many are jock-sniffers. They try to buy their way into every sport because they dream of Jim Nantz addressing them as “Mr.” live on national TV. Add in the fact that many/most private equity bros love golf and it’s easy to see that they’re investing in the Tour with their heart, not their head. I mean, look at how many very successful people threw money at the TGL and it was a turkey from day one. These guys will do anything to get Tiger to say hi to them on the range at Medalist.

All that said, the new investors will have a big voice on the board of the new PGA Tour Enterprises and they will want to shake things up, just to justify their existence. The first order of business in the PE world is usually layoffs, so I expect the army of VPs in Ponte Vedra Beach are quite nervous these days. A lot of money and manpower goes into running the Senior Tour and very few fans pay attention—it could be vulnerable to downsizing, if not an outright shuttering. The Tour schedule is so bloated it makes a ton of sense to lop off a dozen or so of the worst-performing events. But cutting costs isn’t enough. How to generate more revenue? The real bonanza is in media rights but the Tour’s deals are locked in until 2030. Squeezing disaffected fans for a few more bucks to subscribe to streaming services would be a horrible idea. On the day that everything changed—June 6, 2023—Monahan tipped his hand on Squawk Box: “sports betting.” Golf is an ideal sport for gambling because it runs four days a week, dawn til dusk, with 150 or so players doing all kinds of things simultaneously, all it creating copious amounts of data. I think the new Tour is going to go all in on gambling—are you ready for the DraftKings Open at Riviera? The FanDuel Pro-Am at Pebble Beach? The Tour has always kept gaming at arm’s length but in this brave new world it’s all about the money and this is by far the biggest and easiest revenue stream the Tour can tap into.

So the battle lines form and it's the sportswashers against the jock sniffers....  

I think Alan gest the big stuff right there, though there is a nit or two capturing my eye.... I've been laughing since first seeing this piece from James Colgan, under this promising header:

Collin Morikawa has a 4-word solution for changing golf’s TV woes

Spoiler alert, here are those four words:

show more golf shots

An idea so crazy it just might work..... 

But back here on Planet Earth, Colgan at the very least pushes back against the prevailing economic illiteracy:

The problem with being leveraged is that, unlike the Saudis, the Tour does not presently have access to nearly $1 trillion worth of slush money — ethically questionable or otherwise — which means it needs to resort to the typical laws of economics to come up with some extra cash. An influx of private equity money, like the SSG agreement that came down on Wednesday, can help solve the issue in the short term, but in the long term the PGA Tour needs to make more money if it is going to continue to exist. And how does a professional sports league make more money?

It's slightly mangled, but way better than most golf writers.  What he's trying to say is that Tour has assumed debt to fund current operating losses, and logically requires a dramatic increase in revenues for this all to work out.  But Colgan swings and misses here:

The TV rights deals, which account for roughly half of the Tour’s annual revenue and are one of the Tour’s few viable paths to legitimate exponential growth, have been the first thing on people’s minds.

“Look, golf’s not going to be as high speed, you know, body contact, people tackling. Like that’s just [not] golf, right?” Morikawa said. “But I think most fans understand that, and I’m not going to go dance down the fairway or celebrate differently on a birdie putt on the sixth hole on Friday.”

Of course, no conversation about the economic future of professional sports is complete without an adjacent conversation on the future of sports television, which is currently in the midst of what nearly all TV executives agree will one day be called “the good old days.”

The PGA Tour, with its more than $700 million in annual rights fees, is no slouch. But the commercialization of its product has affected television viewers in a way that other sports’ efforts at profitability have not. Fans are routinely enraged by the onslaught of interruptions to coverage, by the editorial decisions that lead to those interruptions, and by the failures of the networks and governing bodies to address either of the aforementioned issues.

He goes on and on without informing his readers that these rights fees are locked in through the end of the decade....  I'm sure the Tour and SSG convinced themselves that nonsense like the TGL would add to their cash flow, but gambling, as Alan notes, has to be the crux of their projected revenue spike.

But Alan's assessment of the Tour's operations masks a whole lot of bad choices.  Of course the organization is hopelessly bloated, as is the schedule.  That said, you want to cut playing opportunities at the same time mid-level Tour talent isn't welcome at the only events that matter?  Wow, not a good stretch for Tour Rabbit Americans....

Back to Alan:

What’s the likelihood of PIF investing in this, and what incentive would there be for them doing so? @KOnocomment

The incentive is the same as when the PIF pledged $500 million to the Premier Golf League, as when the PIF tried to partner with the European Tour and when the PIF sought to invest in the PGA Tour in 2021: for the Saudis, golf is the ultimate vehicle for acceptance in the Western world and access to the global ruling class. And for a golf-nut like Yasir Al-Rumayyan, it also means he gets to play in every pro-am and party with DJ on the yacht—LIV is a glorified fantasy camp for His Excellency. He’d love to be embraced in the same way by the PGA Tour firmament. You can call it sportswashing, networking or disrupting but the goal is the same: to present a different narrative of Saudi Arabia, to bring big-time sporting events to the Kingdom, to forge relationships with the decision makers at multinational corporations. Spending a few more billions on golf is not a big deal to the PIF if it can secure investment and partnership from blue-chip corporations as Saudi Arabia remakes its economy and society. Two of the pillars of MBS’s Vision 2030 are sport and tourism and golf can fuel both. So the PIF’s investment in golf has never been about a traditional ROI.

As for the likelihood of the PIF coming in, it hinges on a familiar question: what does Yasir want? The PIF doesn’t like to play second fiddle on its deals; it wants a dominant position. This would argue for the PIF backing out of the framework agreement and the buzz around Pebble Beach this week is that a deal between the Tour and the PIF is now on life support. But after all the fanfare on June 6, failing to buy his way into the Tour would be a political setback for Yasir. Does he want to lose that much face? A talking point in the wake of the SSG deal has been that PIF investment faces regulatory hurdles and that explains the delays in consummating a deal, but that’s just a smokescreen—all the American money that has now poured into PGA Tour Enterprises makes it easier for the Saudis to come in as just another minority investor, since their influence and equity has been diluted. Yasir does not want to have to defer to the John Henrys of the world. I think he walks. Which leads us to:

I think that's a reasonable precis of Yasir's Choice, but I would just add that, not only do the Saudis not like being in the second seat, it seems clear that that wasn't on the table on June 6th.

How would another pissing contest with the PIF ever be a good decision?@RedHarrington44

Keeping the PIF in this deal is the key to some sort of reunification of the sport. It certainly is in the best interests of the Tour, as it could suck up more billions of dollars in investment and turn LIV from a competitor into an awkward partner. But by signing on with SSG, the Tour has forced Yasir’s hand. If/when the deal falls apart, he’s going to be pissed…and he still has the biggest checkbook in sports. If LIV can buy Jon Rahm, every other golfer is in play, too. The pissing contest in the fall of 2024 could be epic. Which brings us to:

The issue I think Alan elides is, notwithstanding their ability to write checks, what is the path to success for LIV?   It's a train wreck, and grabbing Jon Rahm doesn't really change that.  They'll still be streaming their Friday coverage, and their CW weekend coverage will be watched by approximately no one.  

That said, the Tour declaring war on its non-signature sponsors is kinda painful to watch:

Watching the Torrey Pines event this weekend and barley recognizing anyone on the leaderboard, I really don’t see past how the PGA sustains the current model if LIV continues to reward big-name players with huge amounts of cash. Any thoughts? @LaBeets50

Even if the the Tour and the PIF can’t get a deal done, Monahan and his loyalists can declare victory: the June 6th armistice ended the brutally expensive lawsuits; the players are making more money than they ever dreamed of and now can trumpet being the first athletes to own a piece of their league; the Signature Events are a massive upgrade to the schedule; and now, with SSG, the Tour has reshaped its outdated business model and is in the strongest financial position in its history. Only one problem: the PGA Tour’s players are dreadfully boring. Lotsa nice guys who are more or less interchangeable. LIV has taken all the rascals, antiheroes, muckrakers, shit-talkers, pot-stirrers and oversized personalities. McIlroy and Jordan Spieth are the only Tour guys who move the needle and they haven’t won a major in a decade and have only two wins over the last six and a half years, respectively.

There is a very easy solution: the Tour needs to let LIV golfers play in its events. Allow them seven sponsor’s exemptions per season as nonmembers. The LIV’ers would not be eligible for equity, the FedEx Cup or the retirement plan money. But their presence would be a massive boost to Tour events and the corresponding TV coverage. For the LIV golfers, they would have access to valuable World Ranking points and maybe new endorsement deals. Win-win.

Let's agree that the non-signature events are going to suffer greatly.  The space-time continuum seems to mystify the Rory's of the world, who while shouting the importance of knowing when he and the cool kids will play, seems not to understand that they're also telegraphing when the elites will NOT play, see, for example, the Farmers.  See also, for example, Farmers not renewing their sponsorship commitment.

But that last 'graph is bold new ground.  I wonder how the LIV contracts are structured and whether they're exclusive.  Obviously the guys are free to play in the majors and they've been allowed to play in Euro Tour events, but it seems a bridge too far, at least until the next shoe drops.

How long before Jay leaves? @NDHickman

I’d put the over/under on this autumn. The LIV epoch has been so an acrimonious and chaotic for the PGA Tour it simply wasn’t feasible to even consider finding a new commissioner while things were moving so fast. And Monahan had the support of the two most powerful members of the Tour board, Jimmy Dunne and Ed Herlihy, so he wasn’t going to get moved out against his will. Monahan is feisty and prideful—he will want to see this through to the bitter end, and the much remains unsettled in regards to the PIF. But that will be done and dusted by the end of this season, making it a natural time for the reconstituted Tour to move forward with new leadership. How much longer does Monahan want to remain in his foxhole? He went from Covid to fending off the PGL and now the endless war with LIV, a relentless four years of strife. He’s already had one major health scare. Presumably he’s been socking away much of his $15 million salary. If I was Monahan, I’d take a nice retirement package, accept my green jacket and let someone else deal with Patrick Cantlay.

Nobody seems to want to deal with that perfect penis, though Jay's future sinecures are the least of my concerns.

What will the equity splits be like? Rory 10% and 150th guy 0.001%? That’d probably be ‘fair’ in terms of equity value generated but I imagine it wouldn’t make too many Tour players happy? @Blulinski

The details remain hazy, by design. The Tour wants everyone to pretend to be happy and postpone the bitching for as long as possible. No doubt the equity payouts will be modeled after the PIP distribution: shadowy algorithms and mysterious metrics but ultimately Monahan and his cabal slicing up the pie in whatever way keeps Tiger, Rory and other top players happy.

The equity model strikes me as the ultimate red herring.  The Tour was, or at least, should have been run for the benefit of the members, so why do we need to award them equity?

More importantly, it will inevitably reflect a static assessment of who matters now.  But, what have we discovered in all this?  None of them matter at least to the extent of moving the needle.... But Patrick will get his equity, the squeaky wheels always do.  The long-term implications be damned....

The big question: what happens to the charitable nonprofit commitment of the Tour? @StephenFDiamond

What an adorable question! So quaint, so old-fashioned. But Stephen, it’s not 1968 and Dean Beman ain’t walking through that door. More like Gordon Gekko.

The charitable giving was always a bit of a smokescreen, but the implications of running their tournament schedule as a for-profit undertaking, including the need to provide an ROI to their investors, has been under-analyzed for sure.

The real issue might be at the local event level, where sponsors are being dramatically squeezed for greater rights fees at the same time the Tour is driving the best players away from their events.

What most surprises me is that Alan wasn't asked and didn't offer any assessment of what happens to LIV should a deal be struck with the PIF.  How do you unwind it, or turn into something not competitive to the Tour.  Obviously the team component has captured attention and is supposed to be Yasir's passion, but team events are a yawn when placed in the context of stroke play events.  The talk is of doing something in the Fall, which has a logic to it, but even LIV is smart enough to not compete with the NFL.  Stay tuned, dear readers.

I'm going to leave you here and pick up things on Monday morning.  Enjoy the views from Pebble, but perhaps you can spare a prayer for snow in the Wasatch Range.  

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