Weekend Wrap - Era of Scottie Edition

Finally the Face Plant Tour™ delivers a keeper.... Though still can't get my head around a grown man preferring to be called Scottie..... Don't be trying that with your humble blogger.

Who Ya Got at Augusta? - You know you'll have to take someone else in your Masters pool, as we'll see odds on Scheffler shorter than we've seen since you-know-who.

But this might be a bit premature:

Players Championship: Welcome to the age of Scottie Scheffler

I'm as impressed as anyone, but perhaps we should just go ahead and hold the Masters anyway?  I mean, it seems that Scottie will never lose again, and yet.... How quickly they forget that it's still golf.

Shockingly, the Tour Confidential panel, which last week had no time for Scottie's Bay Hill rout, seems to have noticed:

Scottie Scheffler became the first back-to-back winner in Players Championship history, closing with an eight-under 64 on Sunday at TPC Sawgrass to beat Xander Schauffele, Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman by one. Battling neck issues all week, Scheffler was

seven back through 15 holes on Saturday, cut the deficit to five after 54 holes and opened his final round with a five-under 31 on the front nine. He then waited in the practice area as three stars tried to force a playoff by birdieing the 18th but failed. Was this Scheffler’s most impressive victory yet?

Zephyr Melton: I’d say yes, if only because he was battling injury for much of the week. A stiff neck might not seem like a huge deal, but it did impact his ball speed at times. Being able to perform at a high level — complete with a Sunday 64 — in spite of operating at less than 100 percent is incredibly impressive. Oh, and he gained strokes on the field with his putter. Hard to argue against this being one of the best weeks of Scottie’s career.

Ryan Barath: As they say, “Beware the injured golfer,” and in the case of Scottie Scheffler, I think his sore neck just added to his play-smart mentality, which through 72 holes made the difference. Considering the group of players in the mix on Sunday, Scottie did what Scottie did best and played to his strengths. One of the standout moments of his round was the birdie he made on the 9th after hitting the green in two. He made an aggressive run at eagle that left him just over 10 feet for birdie, and it was such a confident stroke that it went in dead center.

Josh Sens: What’s most impressive to me isn’t that he did it with a patch on his neck but as the defending champ for the second week in a row: successful title defenses, one after the other, and the first champion ever to repeat at the Players. That’s not just a physical feat. That’s some crazy mental strength and stamina.

Yeah, if Scottie is gaining strokes with his putter....  Because we know he's not giving any back with those other thirteen.

Still, easy to get ahead of ourselves:

Scheffler now has eight wins in his last 26 months, including two in 2024. With the major season just around the corner, could we be in for Scheffler’s best year yet? What’s obtainable for him?

Melton: Scottie is (finally) rolling the rock, and that’s bad news for the rest of the PGA Tour. He proved at TPC Sawgrass that last week was no fluke and again beat one of the best fields in pro golf. If he stays hot with the putter, we could be witnessing the beginning of an all-time great season.

Barath: Scottie with a hot putter is hard to beat. He gained .630 strokes on Sunday and 1.246 for the tournament, which is nothing crazy by any means and still only slightly above average. But this kind of play over the last couple of weeks can only be a confidence boost, and he’s clearly the guy to beat the rest of the year.

Sens: My colleagues have pretty much covered it. It’s gotten to the point where we can pretty much count on Scheffler contending, even when his putter is less than white hot. He’ll rightly be the favorite in every event he enters. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t win at least one major in 2024. So, yeah, I’m banking on this being his biggest season yet.

Not doing him any favors here, especially as it's only been two weeks with that new putter.  Still, he's been a good putter at every stage of his development, so it's the poor putting that might be the outlier.  But just remember, this all comes with an asterisk.....

We haven't featured much of Geoff recently (I suspect he's working on some other project because his Quad posts have been sporadic), but he compiles some impressive data:

• Sunday’s final round 64 was his 45th bogey-free round since 2020 and continues Scheffler’s 2024 streak of 27 straight under-par rounds. (I don’t care how juiced the equipment is or how magnificent the conditions are or how many players bang behind the ball to improve their lie: that’s incredible!)

• Scheffler’s 8-under-par closing 64 marked his eighth consecutive at TPC Sawgrass round of 69 or better. Pete AND Alice are spinning!

• Scheffler’s worst score this year was a how-could-he-let-this-happen third round, two-under-par-71 at Kapalua.

• His eighth career win ties Scheffler for most wins since the 2019-20 season with a former Tour member going by the initials J.R. who is currently planning Legion GC 13’s April invasion of inland Miami.

• Scheffler’s win from five back easily surpasses his previous best come-from-behind win from two strokes back.

 And these bits are eye-opening:

• He hit 55/72 greens and 45 of 56 fairways to lead the field in Strokes Gained tee-to-green.

• The putting was serviceable enough by ranking 37th in strokes gained with 280’9” of putts made.

• Scheffler had just 26 and 25 putts for the weekend rounds and was 13 of 17 scrambling from the greens he missed.

• SG: Tee-to-Green: 1st; SG: Off-the-Tee: 1st; Driving Accuracy: 1st; Greens hit: 3rd; SG: Approach: 7th.

This to me is his model, and slightly different than Bay Hill in that his putting was middle-of-the-pack stuff.  He only needs to be average with the flat blade, and it's hard to imagine he can't do that.

Geoff also had this, which manages to capture the man's footwork:

 Of course, the Tour will be declaring victory for their Signature Events Money Grabs:

Some of the Tour’s biggest names (including its last two major champs) battled it out on Sunday afternoon at TPC Sawgrass, giving the Tour some much-needed juice in its marquee event at a time when, due to LIV Golf, its fields have been weakened over the last couple of years. How important was the star power and exciting finish to boot for PGA Tour brass?

Melton: The start to the 2024 season did not go as the Tour brass likely envisioned. Through the first two months, the biggest stars were largely no-shows (save for Wyndham Clark at Pebble). These last two weeks have been a different story. That’s now two Sundays in a row that we’ve had legitimate drama on the back nine with some of the best players in the world duking it out. It’s a refreshing change of pace. Here’s hoping it continues into major season.

Barath: The PGA Tour absolutely needed this week to go well, and I don’t think they could have scripted it any better. Fantastic weather for all four days, a course that played tough but rewarded those playing well, big names showing up in a big way, and it all coming down to the 18th hole with multiple players trying to get into a playoff. If this is the kind of energy the PGA Tour and its broadcast partners can bring to the rest of the Signature Events (and even regular Tour events) the product is going to stand out in a big way.

Sens: This was a fun week, but then again, it usually is. Events like the Players represent the best leverage the Tour has over LIV: events with a history behind them, held on cool venues. But we knew that already, and a great week at Sawgrass doesn’t solve the Tour’s lingering problems, including the fact that much of its schedule has nowhere near that kind of allure.

So, everyone is patting themselves on the back over the alpha dogs actually showing up, but has anyone noticed that this is exactly what they tell us they have to avoid.  This was an actual full field event with a cut, yet players with name recognition made it to the top of the leaderboard.

This is the model guys if you care about holding actual events.  Planning to get to this ESPN piece for other reasons, but let me excerpt Viktor's telling comments are spot on here:

Monahan said it was too early to evaluate the signature events, especially after weather disrupted three of the first four. Longtime pro Lucas Glover, a two-time winner last year, called the new model of events "selfish" and a "money grab" because the reduced fields prevent many players from competing for $20 million purses.

"You're getting the best players to play, the top guys to show up, but the fields are more competitive when you have bigger field sizes," reigning FedEx Cup champion Viktor Hovland said. "I think that's just the fact. There's a reason why we're playing the Players Championship with 144 guys.

It's a pretty simple question, methinks.  Should the best events have the best fields?  Or are we holding exhibitions?

Viktor went on to add this:

"But at the end of the day, I don't know what the fans want to watch. Do they want to watch these limited field sizes or do they want to watch the bigger sizes? I really don't know. So, yeah, I just don't know what trajectory we're on."

I've been reliably informed that fans just want to see Patrick get paid....

Geoff has a succinct take on those also-rans:

Pursuers Clark and Schauffele still have plenty to be proud of in defeat.

Harman? He just takes too bloody long to be worth our time.

Can't argue with that last bit, for sure.... Still on the fence about X-man, though his ties to a certain hatless wonder ensure that I'll be rooting against him whenever he's in contention.   

Schauffele’s recent move to Florida still has the San Diego native in the early stages of a coaching switch to Chris Como while keeping der loopy pater ensconced in California. The talent remains there for the Olympic gold medalist to win majors and who seems to be once again setting himself up for a big year (even if the range session after Saturday’s round seemed excessively technical for a guy who was two strokes off the 54-hole TPC Sawgrass scoring record).

Anyway, Sunday’s inability to keep up with Scheffler also moved Schauffele’s career 54-hole lead/co-lead record to 2-for-7.

Christophe Powers was a tad harsh as well:

But my goodness, none of that makes it any less maddening to watch Schauffele come up

painfully short again. He shouldn't have, either. He had six feet for birdie at the iconic 17th hole to match Scheffler's 20-under total, only to miss the putt. And he left an eagle putt two feet short, right in the heart, at the par-5 16th minutes earlier. There was also a missed nine-footer for a must-have par at the 15th hole, his second straight bogey at the worst possible time. It was right there for the taking. Schauffele had it.

Schauffele, unfortunately, has a habit of "having it" and then letting it slip right through his fingers all too often. Sunday's tie for second marked his 13th runner-up finish on the PGA Tour, and this one somehow felt like the most painful of all. Outside of Scheffler, who became the first back-to-back winner in the history of the Players, Schauffele would have been right up there as one of the tour's dream winners as the the LIV v. Tour saga continues to play out. It would have been his biggest win to date, bigger than the 2018 Tour Championship and bigger than his 2021 Olympic gold medal (though that's depending on who you ask).

Chris, do you notice something about those allegedly big wins?   Both feature comically small fields.....

But the bigger issue about the X-man, and the reason my eyes involuntarily roll every time an announcer talks about all his high finishes in big events is:

Of course, one could argue that Schauffele has had more painful gut punches before. He was tied for the 54-hole lead at the 2018 Open Championship at Carnoustie and shot three over to tie for second. At the 2019 Masters, Tiger Woods clipped Schauffele, as well as Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, by one stroke. Two years later, Schauffele stood on the 16th tee at Augusta National having just cut Hideki Matsuyama's lead to two strokes with four straight birdies. He promptly made a triple and wound up tied for third. The man knows pain.

But the pain has often been self-inflicted.....

But at least he gest off a good line:

Instead, the "Xander can't close" narrative will continue. The haters will be out in full force on social media. Schauffele, taking this one like a champ, as always, says he'll be joining them.

"I'm going to lick my wounds," he said. "I'll probably join them in the Haterade at this moment. It is what it is."

Closing is the hardest thing in the game, especially when you're expected to win.  Still, watch this space.

This Week In The PGA Tour/PIF Dance - It's quite the two step, as this ESPN piece notes:

Answering remaining questions about PGA Tour-Saudi PIF alliance

Starting here:

Why does the PGA Tour need to get a deal done with the PIF?

While there might not be as much urgency for the PGA Tour to strike a deal after it received a $1.5 billion investment from Strategic Sports Group, a consortium of billionaire sports team owners, athletes and others, getting an agreement finalized is probably the best thing for the future health of the sport -- and the tour.

The simple answer is that if the PGA Tour doesn't strike a deal with the PIF, the Saudis will keep poaching its best players. Reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm is the latest star to defect, signing a contract worth more than $300 million in December.

Sure, that's a continuing risk, but it seems to this observer that the Tour has a bigger existential challenge.  We've been reliably informed that the investment of $1.5 billion large solves their problems, though no one seems particularly interested in the issue of where that return on that investment will come from.

The our needs to dramatically ramp up its revenues, quite a challenge when more than half of said revenues are locked down until 2030 (and those rights holders are undoubtedly put off by the declining viewership numbers).  SSG's investment in the short-term will fund operating losses, and that's a problem you can put off for only so long.

Why does the PIF need to strike a deal with the PGA Tour?

For all the money the PIF has spent, and all the noise it has made with its unique format that includes shotgun starts, team and individual competitions, and 54 holes, the league is still struggling to get a foothold in the U.S.

Rahm's new team created some buzz in the offseason, and the return of former Ryder Cup star Anthony Kim from a nearly 12-year hiatus garnered headlines. For the most part, however, LIV Golf's TV ratings in the U.S. haven't improved.

According to data obtained by ESPN, the final round of the LIV Golf tournament in Saudi Arabia on March 1-3 averaged 208,000 viewers in the U.S. There was a seven-hour time difference, and TV coverage in the U.S. started at 3:05 a.m. ET. The final round of the Cognizant Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, which Austin Eckroat won for his first PGA Tour victory, averaged 1.362 million.

Again, missing the forest for the trees.  For all the happy talk about revolutionizing golf, LIV simply doesn't.  That doesn't mean that they can't keep shoveling billions into it, but there is no path to viability.   The Rahm signing was a shock, perhaps, but what did it accomplish for LIV?  There simply isn't enough lipstick for that pig.

My own sense is that you ignore competitive legitimacy at your own peril, as Jay & Co. are experiencing themselves.  

No doubt you've heard of today's confab:

Six sources told Golfweek that the Tour’s player-directors are being strongly encouraged to meet Yasir Al-Rumayyan and that it could happen within days. Two sources said a meeting is

tentatively scheduled for Monday at a private residence in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The Players Championship concludes on Sunday at nearby TPC Sawgrass. Details of the meeting are being closely guarded and several insiders caution that it’s still unclear if the powerful Saudi investment chief will commit to attending or cancel at the last minute.

Five of the six player-directors on the Tour’s Policy Board — all of whom now also serve on the board of the new for-profit entity, PGA Tour Enterprises — are in the field at the Players: Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth, Adam Scott, Peter Malnati and Webb Simpson. Only Tiger Woods is not competing. Joe Ogilvie, a retired veteran who was added to both boards last week as a liaison to player-directors, plans to arrive in Ponte Vedra Beach Sunday in advance of an Enterprises board meeting scheduled for Tuesday at Tour headquarters.

A meeting between Al-Rumayyan and the players would be intended as an informal ice-breaker in a bid to advance negotiations between the Tour and the PIF, talks which have been largely stalled since the June 6 announcement of a Framework Agreement between the parties. A faction of player-directors remains angered about the secretive process leading to that agreement and are known to be skeptical of a deal with the Saudis, who have poured billions of dollars into LIV Golf.

Patrick Cantlay has confirmed said meeting, and amusingly uses it to attempt to burnish his credentials as a man of the people:

Patrick Cantlay, a player director on the PGA Tour policy board, confirmed the meeting with Sports Illustrated on Sunday and tabbed the event as a meet-and-greet.

“Well, I’ve gotta hear out what they have to say, and I will always do my best to represent the entire membership whenever I am in a meeting in that capacity,” Cantlay told SI after his final round at the Players Championship. “I think more information is always better.”

Sure, if you call those money grabs representing the entire membership.....  Somehow excluding Tour rabbits from the most important events is helping them.  I'm sure they totally get that the only way to grow golf is by paying Patrick...

Amazingly, that's far from the stupidest thing anyone has said about this meeting.  I mean, Rory, have you been into the Kool-Aid?

McIlroy wants players to understand that Al-Rumayyan “wants to do the right thing” with his investment in golf and that he wants to be involved “in a productive way.”

“I think I’ve said this before, I have spent time with Yasir and his. … the people that have represented him in LIV I think have done him a disservice, so Norman and those guys,” McIlroy said of his perception of the difference between the PIF and LIV. “I see the two entities, and I think there’s a big, I actually think there’s a really big disconnect between PIF and LIV. I think you got PIF over here and LIV are sort of over here doing their own thing. So the closer that we can get to Yasir, PIF and hopefully finalize that investment, I think that will be a really good thing.”

I mean, WTF!  Pay no attention to those kidnapping allegations or mass beheadings, Yasir is all about growing our game.... Seriously, Rory, it's long past time for you to go away.

Which reminds of nothing so much as this meme:

‘If only Stalin knew’

Yeah, Rory, if only Yasir knew what was being done in his name..... Good luck with that distinction between good bonecutters and bad....

On that note I shall release you and focus on my ski day.  Catch you again midweek...

Friday Fragments - Jay Walking Edition

Back in Utah for The Last Dance of 2024.  Of larger import is that I played nine holes on Wednesday.  OK, just took a seven iron and played mostly to temporary greens, but it's all in front of us.

The Players - Some golf was played, although that's of less interest than a couple of other bits from the week.  Funny but it's hard to get a simple game story these days, this being as close as I could get:

Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele card 65s to share early lead at the Players Championship

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The opening round of the 50th Players Championship turned into a birdie-fest, and no one made more than Rory McIlroy. The Northern Irishman carded 10 birdies in

all but tugged two drives into the water that resulted in a 7-under 65 and dashed his hopes of a course-record tying round at the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass on Thursday.

“It would’ve been nice to shoot 62 and not hit two in the water,” McIlroy said.

His score was matched by Xander Schauffele, who managed a few heroics of his own to keep bogey off the card and shoot a 7-under 65 to share the early lead at the PGA Tour’s flagship event.

No hurry to update things at Golfweek, as Wyndham Clark matched those 65's in the afternoon wave.  I guess Golfweek just assumed it was a Signature Event with no afternoon wave....

Rory's round was it's own Rorschach test.  You can either laud that he shot 65 with two water balls, or note that he made ten birdies and only shot 65.

But about those water balls.... Wow, that was interesting.  And maybe just a little concerning....

The first thing to note is that Christian Powers at Golf Digest should be playing the lottery, as on Monday he posted this reminder of an incident from two years ago:

The Breakdown: Daniel Berger's controversial drop at the 2022 Players Championship

Now, if you know Pete Dye, you'll not be surprised that Sawgrass seems to have been designed to exacerbate this very weakness in our game.  The design is all about angles, and when a ball finds the water 300 yards away determining those angles is the crux of the matter, but nothing looks the same when you get out there.

I remember blogging this and thinking the guys had pretty much done what they're supposed to do, but it's the cast of characters that's of interest:

And few of those rules snafus garnered more social media attention than one involving Daniel Berger, Viktor Hovland and Joel Dahmen at the 2022 Players Championship. The back-and-forth, particularly between Berger and Hovland, went mega viral thanks to some well-placed microphones and cameras on PGA Tour Live.  

Actually, my immediate reaction to Powers' piece was, "Great, now do Tiger's 2014 drop on No. 14".  As if....

But Viktor, huh?

Then came McIlroy’s ninth hole of the day, the par-4 18th.

The tee shot at Sawgrass’ par-4 closer, where a lake guards the entirety of the left side of the

fairway, is among the most daunting in golf, even for the game’s most talented driver. McIlroy could have played it safe and hit a 3-wood or even an iron, but he has been swinging the longest club in his bag with such swagger of late that you couldn’t fault him for playing aggressively.

You know where this is going. McIlroy’s blast started on the edge of the lake line and never left it.

Kerplunk.

After seeing the fate of his ball, McIlroy turned to his caddie, Harry Diamond, and said, “Did it cross?”

As in, did his ball cross into the water well up the fairway, or was the point that his ball last covered terra firma just beyond the tee box? The former spot would result in a drop that would allow McIlroy to get home with his third shot; the latter would not. Trouble was, the appropriate drop wasn’t obvious, either to McIlroy or his playing partners, Viktor Hovland and Jordan Spieth. But among them it was their duty to make a call.

As Mark Twain allegedly said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes".

There's video at that link and it's worth watching to see how these three alpha players interact, the exchange between Spieth and Rory verging on the heated.  But I'll give a spoiler and tell you that it's Rory's aggressiveness that has folks reacting, and even he admits to it:

“I think Jordan was just trying to make sure that I was doing the right thing,” McIlroy said. “I mean, I was pretty sure that my ball had crossed where I was sort of dropping it. It’s so hard, right, because there was no TV evidence. I was adamant. But I think, again, he was just trying to make sure that I was going to do the right thing. If anything, I was being conservative with it. I think at the end of the day we’re all trying to protect ourselves, protect the field, as well. I wouldn’t say it was needless. I think he was just trying to make sure that what happened was the right thing.”

Well, yeah, but you kinda stop short of the fundamental issue, the logical implication is that he thought your "right thing" wasn't his "right thing".   

But.... first, this wasn't one awkward drop, but rather two, the first on No. 18 (his ninth hole of the day).  Here's one reaction of note:

Rory’s put his playing partners in tough spots twice today.

For what it’s worth, I was standing right there on 7 and am 99% sure it did not land above the red line.

He ultimately dropped in a fair spot, but very surprised how hard he lobbied Viktor and Jordan.

— No Laying Up (@NoLayingUp) March 14, 2024

Yeah, I think most of us reacted in a similar fashion....  And, as some politician once noted, when you're explaining, you're losing"

Why Rory McIlroy invoked ‘karma’ and ‘conscience’ after 2 awkward drops

Yeah, next thing he'll be telling us it isn't about the money....

Joel Beall tells us that it shouldn't be this way:

Players 2024: Rory McIlroy's rules controversies could've been avoided

 Do tell:

That doesn’t make McIlroy infallible, but to have McIlroy called out not once but twice for potentially iffy drops was counter to everything we know about McIlroy.

Reputations in golf are a fickle thing, and to compromise them for what may or may not have happened hundreds of yards away is an avoidable gamble. Perhaps McIlroy should have been more open to what his opponents were saying, yet there’s a case that he shouldn’t have had to defend himself in the first place; that should have fallen to a rules official. And the current system isn’t just failing the player whose score is in question. It shouldn’t be on opponents to police the field, for that responsibility can put them in awkward, uncomfortable positions that can simultaneously put them in an unfavorable light.

Much of the conversation this week has been about the tour product, specifically, how it can be enhanced and refined. But the tour’s primary product is its players, and what the tour wants to improve also needs to be protected. In this case, that means protecting them from themselves. As Thursday showed, all it takes is five minutes to make something so valuable so vulnerable.

Just because this is how golf has always done it doesn’t mean this is the way it should be. It’s a change easier said than done, one that requires more rules officials and more cameras, two resources that are not in plentiful supply. But this week the PGA Tour is returning its Every Shot At broadcast option and its new television center opens up a world of possibility for how the tour is watched … and in some cases, reviewed.

Wow!  I wonder if Joel is aware of Rory's tortured history with the rules, including his petulant observation at some Middle East event that he's too busy to read the rulebook.

I guess Joel pictures rules officials lining the course, presumably all in striped shirts.  The message here is that there will always be spots on the course where the combination of cameras and officials can't help...

But Joel's message is one that has Nurse Ratched cackling in the background, at least in your humble blogger's mind.  Finchem, as you'll recall, started the policy of not disclosing Tour disciplinary actions so we would continue to assume that these guys are all gentlemen.  

What Joel is positing is that we can't allow the players to adjudicate their rules issues because they might inadvertently reveal who they are in that process, and that might hurt the product.  Wow!  And you though I was cynical!  Most of us would say that was an extremely interesting video that shows us another side of an actual competition, but heaven forfend that we see something that's actually real.

Good news, Joel, Tiger's simulator league won't have any of these issues....

State of The Jay - Jay gave his first presser since East Lake, and shared about as much as he did then.  You'll note a slightly different takes in these two reports:

Players 2024: Jay Monahan didn't say much, but what he said says a lot

It's Joel Beall again, presumably still under the effects of the Kool-Aid:

Speaking Tuesday at his tour’s flagship event, the Players Championship, there were two things of substance from his remarks, and those comments were notable in who and what they addressed.

The first was the who, as Monahan professed his attention to the group that’s been sidelined during the sport’s existential crisis. “Our business thrives when together we're all laser-focused on delivering for our fans. If we fail on that front, we fail on every front,” Monahan said. “They're tired of hearing about conflict, money and who is getting what. They want to watch the world's best golfers compete in tournaments with history, meaning, and legacies on the line at venues they recognize and love.”

Monahan later said fans are his “most important constituent,” and he’s right. The power does not lie with him or the players, the Strategic Sport Groups or Saudi Arabia. The fans will ultimately decide who “wins” the game's currently existential crisis, but their patience is dwindling. There is palpable fatigue from those inside the game and out regarding professional golf’s hostilities; people just want peace. But that’s not easy to come by; how it is achieved is fraught with hard examinations. It will require selling tour membership on LIV forgiveness, or more specifically, that the consequences the tour promised would come for taking tens of millions of guaranteed money will not be enforced. (Never mind that some LIV players may not wish to return.) There’s also the fallout from partnering with a regime accused of numerous human-rights atrocities. Those are heavy considerations, yet allowing this fight to continue without end is a reality no one wants to accept.

Joel seems to be a little ahead of himself, presuming the outcome of those negotiations.  That said, Joel taking Jay's commitment to the fans as genuine seems a tad credulous to this observer.....

Shockingly, Eamon Lynch was a more critical observer:

Lynch: Jay Monahan faced the media. What he didn’t say was much more interesting than what he did

 I'll get to his typically amusing framing in a second, but he has this rebuttal to Joel Beall:

The commissioner manages a lengthy list of constituencies, the ranking of their importance changing depending on who is calling. A rough priority list would look something like this: star players, investment partners, rank-and-file members, sponsors, broadcast partners, tournament organizers. Fans fit in there too, somewhere. Tuesday, Monahan was at pains to suggest they’re near the top.

Do they fit in somewhere?  To this observer, we only hear them acknowledge the fans when they use them to justify that which they want to do anyway.  Because I've never heard a fan consumed with the issue of getting Patrick paid.... I must hang with a bad crowd.

But let's let Eamon have his fun:

Had he not expired 40-odd years ago, Will Durant would have enjoyed Jay Monahan’s performance Tuesday at TPC Sawgrass in advance of the 2024 Players Championship. “To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy,” the historian once observed, and the PGA Tour commissioner gave an artful demonstration of that in his first press conference since saying, well, not much, at the Tour Championship more than six months ago.

That's good, especially when this kind of bit follows:

There were, however, a couple questions that Hockey Jay skated around. One involved what a return on investment would look like for Strategic Sports Group, which recently poured $1.5 billion into the Tour’s new for-profit entity. This was Monahan’s response: “The more that we can do to increase fandom, to bring our product forward in a way that is consistent with the way fans want to consume product and a better job and the more steps we can take to dimensionalize our great athletes, those are all steps that we can take to grow fandom. And when you grow fandom, ultimately that drives your commercial success.”

I think we can all agree that that needed to be said....

Shockingly, Eamon had this in his second 'graph:

There’s a subtle difference between not being expansive in one’s answers and being evasive, and Monahan wasn’t the latter.

You sure about that?

How are talks going with the Saudis? “Accelerating,” he said.

Anything more specific? Nope.

How about what happens with LIV players? Nope.

Worried about more players jumping? Next!

All Monahan would acknowledge is that he anticipates a “positive outcome for the PGA Tour” — identical to the language he used during his last press briefing in August. Another thing he didn’t say and didn’t need to: among the Tour’s players, board members and fans, there are irreconcilably competing ideas of what that positive outcome should be. The art of diplomacy, indeed.

I get that you can't be entirely candid in the middle of a negotiation, but how is that word salad not evasive? 

Naturally, folks are curious:

Jay Monahan’s job security has the golf world whispering

When it makes a Golf.com header, it's probably more than whispering....

You know where the preeminent peckers will be on this issue:

And then consider player director Patrick Cantlay’s intentionally indirect tapdance around

offering his support for Monahan.

“I think it’s really important that we’re all rowing in the same direction,” Cantlay said without ever mentioning Monahan’s name. “I think with this PGA Tour Enterprises board, I think it’s really exciting that we do have a chance to kind of start with something new and all move together in the right direction.”

Cantlay’s good buddy and Ryder Cup partner Xander Schauffele — who has been clear about his disaffection for the commissioner — offered a similarly icy reaction on Tuesday afternoon.

“Trust is something that’s pretty tender, so words are words, and I would say in my book he’s got a long way to go,” Schauffele said, reiterating a point he’s made a few times since the PIF blindside of June 6. “He could be the guy, but in my book, he’s got a long way to go to gain the trust of the membership.”

There are some players far more supportive, surprisingly including Rory.  It really remind s me of a classic Casey Stengel line.  Acknowledging that on any baseball team  you'd have five guys that love you and a similar number that hate you, he said that the key to success is keeping those five that hate you away from the fifteen that haven't made up their minds.

The most interesting piece on Jay is this from Keith Van Valkenburg:

The Inexplicable Survival of Jay Monahan

Let's dive in:

When Jay Monahan spoke with the media Tuesday at the Players Championship about the current state of PGA Tour Enterprises and the future of professional golf, something crystallized for me in a way it had not previously. That it took me this long to clearly see the chessboard may be evidence of my own naivete, but at least I got there eventually.

Every faction within the PGA Tour is essentially at war.

Some people are trying to survive, some people are trying to gain territory, and some people are losing territory and desperately trying to protect it. No one wants to be deposed, everyone wants to save face, and everyone wants to stay rich.

The PGA Tour Policy Board can’t agree on how to finalize a deal with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia because they can’t agree on how their own house should be run. The players are locked in a class war with each other. The board of directors and the Tour’s new investors think the players are mostly rubes and naifs in matters of business. The money people want everyone to wake up and start figuring out ways to earn a return on the billions they invested in a flawed product.

In the middle of that war is Monahan, a man who — despite making a litany of mistakes over the last several years, which he again copped to on Tuesday — still somehow managed to earn a promotion amidst all this.

Yeah, it is quite the hot mess, no?  Though the guys that matter don't seem to need to worry about staying rich, they also don't seem especially happy about being so wealthy.

But Keith is definitely on to something here:

If you’re a consumer of pop culture (as I am), it might sound like a season of Succession. But everything we’ve gathered, after talking to dozens of people, suggests the boardroom squabbling on Tour has far more in common with the plotlines on Veep. Much like with modern politics, the clash of egos and everyone’s thirst for power ultimately creates a stalemate, and in turn protects the status quo. Monahan hasn’t needed to be successful to keep his job, he’s just needed to keep players divided into various factions, insulating himself from being removed.

 Can't even imagine what that succession battle could look like...

This was a particularly bad moment for Jay in the presser:

When Monahan was asked by Adam Schupak of Golfweek how he felt about Jon Rahm saying he’d lost some faith in leadership, and that was part of what led to his departure to LIV, Monahan was both curt and dismissive, refusing to even say Rahm’s name.

“I'm focused on every single member of the PGA Tour,” Monahan said. “I'm focused on The PLAYERS Championship this week. I'm focused on the great season that we have ahead, and we have made tremendous progress with the SSG agreement that we have, putting ourselves in a position to invest back in our Tour, invest back in our fans, and I'm going to focus on the things that I control and we are as an organization and we are as a leadership team and we are as a board, so that's when I'm focused on.”

When Schupak tried to follow up, asking for clarification, Monahan was noticeably annoyed.

“I just answered your question about what my focus is,” he said.

It was the most tense moment of the morning and left the most pressing question unanswered: What is stopping other players from joining LIV? It’s certainly not their confidence in the commissioner.

The answer to that last bit hasn't really changed, except that the stigma has been removed.  Though I think Keith falls into the same trap as many here:

It’s hard to talk about Monahan’s job performance without acknowledging the tangled web of relationships that exist at the corporate level of the PGA Tour.

SSG, the new investor in PGA Tour Enterprises, is fronted by The Fenway Sports Group. Monahan was an executive vice president at The Fenway Sports Group before he was named commissioner of the PGA Tour in 2017. (He’d also worked at the Tour in various capacities, including as the executive director of The Players Championship.) He was recommended for the job by Seth Waugh, who was at the time the CEO of Deutsche Bank, but is now the CEO of the PGA of America. He went to Trinity College with Sam Kennedy, the CEO of The Fenway Sports Group and president of the Boston Red Sox. The PGA Tour’s vice president ranks are also rife with various Fenway Sports Group alums.

Without seeking player input, Monahan worked with Jimmy Dunne and Ed Herlihy to negotiate a framework agreement with Yasir Al-Rumayyan and the PIF, and Dunne and Herlihy, in addition to being PGA Tour Policy Board members, are two extremely influential members at Augusta National. Some players have been starting to wonder: What are Dunne’s and Herlihy’s motivations in all this?

Even if every decision made during the past year was done in the best interests of the PGA Tour membership, it’s hard not to wonder about the conflicts of interest, and what role they play.

Anytime anyone speaks of the Tour membership as some kind of unified group, alarms should go off.   Especially, since above he noted that everyone is at war, in this case what's being benefits a handful of elite players, pitting Rabbits v. Studs.

The player directors may have wanted different leadership. All signs, public and private, indicate that they did. But they couldn’t outmaneuver him, and now they have to find a way to work with him. Monahan’s one unquestionable strength — cultivating relationships with other powerful people — means he’s going to be in charge for the foreseeable future. If this mess is going to get cleaned up, he’s ultimately going to be the guy who has to do it.

“I am the right person to lead us forward,” Monahan said. “I know that. I believe that in my heart, and I'm determined to do exactly that.”

Judging by how the past two years have gone, it’s difficult to feel optimistic.

I'm certainly nodding my head at that last bit.  But since I characterize the last two years as a coup by the elite players, I think they're at this point comfortable that they can get what they want from a figurehead Jay.  So, why take the heat for ousting him?

Favorite Tour Wife -  All you need to see is the header:

Adam Hadwin tomahawks club into water left of 18th hole at Players Championship, wife approves

And here's why Jessica Hadwin is my favorite WAG:

I have seen the moment in question. If I’m going simply on the aesthetic of the toss….10/10

— Jessica Hadwin (@jessicahadwin) March 14, 2024

It's simple, she makes me laugh.

Enjoy The Players and we'll wrap it on Monday. 

Tuesday Trifles - Catch-Up Edition

Yesterday's premature ending is matched by a delayed arrival at the keyboard this morning....  But let's get to that which we left hanging yesterday.

Let's Hold A Rent Party - Sportico has updated it's listing of compensation of athletes and it turns out that those underpaid professional golfers remain frightfully over-compensated.  The whole premise of Phil and Sergio's anger is that they've been disrespected in only being billionaires, notwithstanding the inconvenient fact that their game is merely a niche sport.

Your humble blogger is an odd bird because, when I hear Phil mewling about his subsistence-level compensation, I expect to see some data to back up the claim.  I previously blogged the original Sportico story and have subsequently referred to it many times since, because it is not at all what you'll expect.  In fact, it's rather embarrassing for Phil & Company, exposing one humongous lie.

The basic premise jammed down our throats is that Tiger has been dramatically under-compensated, and people just accept that this has to be true.  Again, trust the science, kids:

Does he look underpaid to you?  The big lie is that they focus exclusively on tournament purses, excluding the bifurcation of golf's compensation system.  Professional golfers have always made more money from their endorsements, as the juice in our game comes from recreational golfers, as opposed to TV contracts.  

Buried in my pictures folder is this from my original blogging of Sportico's work, significant because it goes just beyond that top ten to capture a formerly familiar name:

We've gotten lots of further information on that guy in 11th place, from the Shipnuck biography to those Billy Walter revelations, bt this might be the most damning.  Before anyone could spell LIV, Mickelson was the 11th highest compensated athlete of all time, yet burned with a white-hot anger at his treatment.  Tells us a lot about the man, methinks, none of it favorable...  Notwithstanding that billion dollars in compensation, he was ready to burn it all down....

Golfers, at least those at the top of the food chain, have done pretty damn well:

Golfers represent the next biggest contingent with eight entries in the Top 50, including Tiger Woods (No. 2, $2.66 billion), Arnold Palmer (No. 4, $1.76 billion) and Phil Mickelson (No. 11, $1.43 billion). Like Jordan, their biggest paydays have been off the course; Woods has made $121 million in PGA Tour prize money, and Palmer made just $3.6 million on the PGA and Champions tours; Mickelson benefits from a nine-figure payout from LIV.

Can we dispense with the assumption that these guys have been underpaid?   That doesn't change our current situation, for sure, and I'm not at all questioning that the only way to grow our game is to get Patrick Cantlay paid....

He's Back - It's only one round, kids, but commence the overreaction:

5. Anthony Kim made five back-nine birdies and shot 65 on Sunday at LIV Hong Kong, recording by far the best round of his six since he returned to pro golf. He now heads to Macau to compete in the International Series on the Asian Tour. Does this Sunday surge change your thoughts regarding his prospects going forward?

So you're saying that it's really only nine holes?

Zak: I think so? It wasn’t the best round of the day, nor the second best. But it was fifth best out of 54! Which is really good, and inspires some hope that this won’t be a sad state of affairs by,

say, LIV Houston. But there are truly thousands of pros who could shoot that score in one out of six LIV events. It’s about doing it more than once and doing it with more than a hot putter. Kim made just about everything he looked at Sunday, which is good. His stroke looks great! But his ball-striking has been pretty horrible since his return started, and that’s where the majority of your successes lie in pro golf. He’ll need to straighten it out if he wants to shoot more rounds in the 60s.

Piastowski: I’m kinda thinking we shouldn’t have drawn conclusions after his tournament last week — and I’m kinda thinking we shouldn’t draw conclusions after one good round. But since you asked, yeah, let’s be encouraged. I like the idea of someone on the comeback trail tapping into what previously made them great. That’s why we like sports, right?

Colgan: Awesome story, and I’m pumped for AK personally, but I’ll reserve judgment until he does it on a course longer than 6,700 yards.

Fair enough, but what the guys don't mention is that Kim took the easy way back.  Guaranteed money and guaranteed tee times doesn't indicate a strong belief in his own game....  The good news is that he's playing in the LIV Cone of Silence, so we don't have to pay it any mind.

Tour Confidential Wrap - In yesterday's rush I didn't get to this week's edition (linked above), a staple of Monday Wrappage.  I've been critical at times about their Tiger sycophancy, but this week they have me laughing for other reasons.  As you might have noticed, the top-ranked player in the world had been mired in a putting miasma, at least until this most recent event.  Given his other-worldly ball-striking and with the Masters looming, wouldn't you think that would be of interest to a golf roundtable?  But no, there is not a Scheffler or Bay Hill question to be found.... I just can't decide if that's a bigger dis to Scottie or to Jay?

Here's some of what they thought more important (including Anthony Kim, who they apparently feel is more important than Scottie Scheffler):

1. The PGA Tour’s marquee event, the Players Championship, kicks off Thursday at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., although it will be without a couple of big names, among them Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, who were the latest batch of PGA Tour players who jumped to LIV over the past year. Long thought of as “the fifth major” with its stacked field and iconic golf course, is there any tournament that’s been hurt more over the past few years due to golf’s PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf battle than the Players?

Sean Zak: Yes. I’d argue that a number of the Signature Events have been hurt more, in part

because they’ve been forced into smaller fields with the promise of the best players in the world competing. And while that has largely been the case, a number of them have still pivoted to LIV Golf. The Genesis Invitational’s defending champion the past two years has been missing. The RBC Heritage made more headlines last year for Rory McIlroy missing it than for those who showed up. I’ve believed the Signature Events have been a good and important step for the Tour’s structure, but the Players still has a 144-person field. Scottie Scheffler is the defending champ. Justin Thomas is going to win this year. It’s still a damn good tournament, even with Tyrrell Hatton’s departure.

Nick Piastowski: Yes, I’d say it’s the Players. It had hung its hat on having “the best in field in golf” — where now, it’s essentially a Signature Event with a bigger field. It’s not as distinguishable as it once was when compared to events like the Travelers, the Wells Fargo and RBC Heritage, all elevated in the PGA Tour’s new world order. That being said, with more players than those events, the Players will have more storylines and the chance for an unknown champion — but that thought takes us further down the rabbit hole (golf hole?) and it’s probably a whole other Tour Confidential question. And I guess we could talk about whether this all kills the idea of the Players becoming the fifth major. Clearly a lot going on here.

James Colgan: Man, what about all the Non-Signature Events that lost their star power when the Tour shifted to this model? The Players has been hurt by its marketing strategy, but it remains relevant on the golf calendar. Not sure you can say that about some of the other Tour events.

Thank you, James.  At least one guy has noticed that the Tour has undermined some three-quarters of its own schedule....

And here's their thoughts on the guy who thinks he hasn't wreaked enough damage:

2. Rory McIlroy said he has no problem with the PGA Tour’s Signature Events being limited to smaller fields (69 players competed at Bay Hill) and added he’s all for “less players and less Tour cards.” Asked to expand on how many Tour cards the PGA Tour should award, McIlroy said, “I just feel like there’s a lot of categories on Tour that people are sort of still benefiting off what they did like five or 10 years ago. I feel like the most competitive professional golf tour in the world, you should have to come out and prove yourself year after year after year.” Do you agree with McIlroy?

Zak: Yes, I do. McIlroy really isn’t trying to chop down the total number of PGA Tour players by a lot. He’s just trying to thin the herd slightly (maybe 10-15 percent) and ultimately create an elite Tour that rests above the 40-week schedule that needs to cater to hundreds. He’s dreamed up a Champions League-style access to a Tour that covers the globe. That goes hand-in-hand with highlighting the best up-and-coming talent much more than players holding on to status from a victory they nabbed in 2019.

Piastowski: I do too. The most in-form players, and the guy above me here in the responses wonderfully broke down what that means, and you can read that here. Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch also tackled the subject, with this thought: If you’re going to be cutthroat, what exactly do you do with that Tiger guy, who hasn’t won in a while? That’s a helluva question, and you can read that story here.

Colgan: I think you let Tiger do whatever he wants, because he’s Tiger freaking Woods, and you cut the fields elsewhere. Golf’s pursuit of a meritocracy died the day they took $3 billion from the SSG — now it’s about finding where the big $$$ is hiding.

Because, yanno, we haven't destroyed things sufficiently for Rory yet.... Rory gets a Woodie every time he thinks of the Premiere League, because he apparently hasn't noticed that golf isn't football.  The want to cut the fields further, yet also allow room for all the up-and-comers and all the old has-beens.... you can't do that in a 69-player field.

Rory is now in Patrick mode, where everything he suggests gets him paid more.  Thanks for your service, Rory.  

Maybe they'll do better on LIV v. OWGR?

4. LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman told LIV players that the league has withdrawn its application for accreditation from the Official World Golf Ranking, meaning LIV players will no longer have that avenue to qualify for major championships if they aren’t already exempt. “It is now clear that the best way forward for LIV as a league and you as LIV golfers is not through the current ranking system,” Norman said. “A resolution which protects the accuracy, credibility, and integrity of the OWGR rankings no longer exists.” Are you surprised Norman ended this battle? And with LIV Golf adding more talent (like Rahm), shouldn’t there be more pressure on the OWGR board to find a way to incorporate LIV? Or on the organizations that host majors?

Zak: Norman and his LIV golfers were incessantly whining about this and weren’t being taken seriously, so I’m not super surprised that he gave up. It wasn’t a good look! As for the pressure the OWGR should face, they’ve been pretty transparent about the formatting issues that LIV Golf has for its events and its seasonal turnover, so I think there should always have been more pressure on LIV to come to the table with a stronger presentation than a largely closed shop of 54-hole tournaments. I think the organizations that host majors could probably kick a few more invites LIV’s way, but it’s completely subjective and up to them. If, say, the PGA of America doesn’t love that Talor Gooch started his LIV career by openly mocking the Ryder Cup, they might feel right to consider that when assessing his ranking by an independent-analysis group such as DataGolf. LIV Golf was unprecedented, and I think the organizations were OK to treat it accordingly. (Keep in mind the lingering fact that all governing bodies were being brought into a frivolous lawsuit or investigations via LIV Golf less than a year ago.)

Piastowski: Whew. A lot here. First, I encourage you to read here what our Dylan Dethier wrote about the subject, and I very much agree with the points there. Am I surprised LIV punted? Can I say yes and no? They need the points for major invites, and there’s only one group that hands out points — and now you’re not applying anymore? Odd. Then again, would they have to change their format? Yeah, probably. Would the points they eventually get be small, simply because their players have tumbled down the rankings as this process has unfolded? Yeah, probably. So they moved on. Drew a line in the bunker sand. I now have a feeling there’s going to be a campaign on the majors. A lot more pitches like Talor Gooch’s, where he thought future Masters winners should get asterisks because not all of the best pros were included. Who knows where this goes. Can all the majors agree on an independent ranking and/or a somewhat unified way on how to treat LIV? Or do they believe their events are fine without? Stay tuned.

Colgan: I’m surprised he ended the battle because major championship eligibility still matters deeply to LIV. That said, it seems remarkably stupid to me that something called the Official World Golf Ranking could be leaving out the dudes playing in LIV. I understand the nuance and logistics required, and I do not think that LIV should be just “allowed in” on merit. But there has to be a solution to properly weight everything to allow LIV to be included. Feels like we’re losing the forest for the trees here.

James, it's you who are focused don the bark.... Who ya calling stupid here?  It's closed shop that keeps guys hanging on and clogging up their fields.... It's actually quite amusing because, responding the Rory's question, they extol the virtues of the Signature events grabbing the young talent and hot hands.  Yet, when they get to LIV, they completely forget that that's exactly what's wrong with the LIV format.

Should have put this above, but Eamon doesn't really need to worry about that slot for Tiger, as he's apparently retired:

Tiger Woods out of the 2024 Players Championship

As someone joked, when he told us he might play once a month, we didn't realize that the March event would be the Seminole Member-Pro.

Gonna leave you there and we'll pick up on the Players Championship as the week progresses.  It's possible that that won't be until Friday, so bear with me.

Weekend Wrap - Proof of Life Edition

Hope everyone had a good weekend.  We have some other issues to get to, time permitting, but for once  the actual golf is of interest.  Kind of an off-message week for the Face Plant Tour™.

That Magic Wand - With the Oscars as the off-field event, I was able to see all of yesterday's final round, and it's been quite some time since I've been that impressed with a round of golf.  Recency bias is a thing and we'll see folks calling him unbeatable, and we'll poke our usual fun at them for that bit of levity.  But it's also true that, if Scottie Scheffler can putt, he's going to be a force out there.

To wit:

Shockingly, it had been 51 weeks since Scottie Scheffler last won a golf tournament.

In the time since Scheffler triumphed at the Players Championship, the World No. 1 racked up boatloads of top-10s, brought dozens of courses to their knees with his ball striking and dazzled

with his touch around the greens.

But he just couldn’t get his putts to fall.

Scheffler came to Bay Hill, armed with a new, mallet-style putter, and while he didn’t get the results he wanted in a first-round 70, he caught fire on the weekend. He one-putted his first two greens Sunday to cap a career-long streak of nine consecutive one-putts and made every putt inside 15 feet.

He was in cruise control as he fired a final-round 66 Sunday to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational by five strokes over Wyndham Clark. It’s the largest margin of victory at the event since 2012 and it’s Scheffler’s second career victory at “Arnie’s Place” after he won there in 2022 in the lead-up to his Masters title that year.

First and foremost, he must be awfully relieved....  At every level of his development he was a perfectly adequate putter, but the last year has been ugly for sure.  Obviously he's unlikely to putt quite this well going forward, but that five-stroke win indicates he's got some wiggle room.

The only asterisk (see what I did there?) comes from the fact that he only had to beat sixty-eight other guys.... so, borderline exhibition match.  Hopefully we'll see him putt that well in an actual competition soon.

My primary takeaway from the weekend, however, casts a far more unfavorable light on our Tour and it's rules enforcement, because WTF!

Did Wyndham Clark's ball "move" here?

I'm not even sure of anything anymore.

"He needed to be a bit more careful." - Luke Donald pic.twitter.com/OgGYE6AxEF

— Jack Hirsh (@JR_HIRSHey) March 9, 2024

We'll dive deep into the long grass here, but don't these guys understand what a God-awful look this is?  They spend all week telling us what a challenging venue Bay Hill is, in part because of its punishing rough.  How significant is the rough if they're allowed to move it out of the way?

Here's what they tell us matters:

Did Clark break a rule? Observers wondered that. To note, rule 8.1b (4) states that players are allowed to, “ground the club lightly right in front of or right behind the ball,” with “ground the club lightly” meaning, “allowing the weight of the club to be supported by the grass, soil, sand or other material on or above the ground surface.” Also, the rules of golf define “move” this way: “When a ball at rest has left its original spot and come to rest on any other spot, and this can be seen by the naked eye (whether or not anyone actually sees it do so). This applies whether the ball has gone up, down or horizontally in any direction away from its original spot. If the ball only wobbles (sometimes referred to as oscillating) and stays on or returns to its original spot, the ball has not moved.”

I'm not a rules official, but I do know my Orwell:

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

― George Orwell, 1984

Nothing to see here, kids.  The Party has instructed us that these guys are all gentlemen and would call a penalty on themselves if appropriate.  But gee, was this guy a gentleman as well:

Am I the only one tired of this crap?

First, and all of the major golf sites have similar accountings of this incident, all citing that same rule that a guy can ground his club without penalty, and focused on whether the ball "moved."  And all try to divert our gaze elsewhere....

The first thing you probably noticed is that the description of "grounding" doesn't remotely capture what we see Clark doing. The weight of the club isn't "supported" by the rough... Clark is aggressively pushing the club into the rough, which moves the grass.  Perhaps Mark Dusbabek is correct and the ball doesn't move, though I'm far less convinced that he is.  But is that the only metric on which we can measure this?

Of course not, because improving one's lie is also a violation of the rules, but note the aggressive disinterest in that rule (and their disinterest in whether grass was moved).  I know what I want toss and I suspect that you'll have the same question, what did the lie look like before Clark got his ball, and was it the same lie after he pounded down the grass.

Funny story, that's a side-by-side that no one wants to show.  Because it sure looks to me like we saw a whole lot more white after he was done giving the rough a nip and tuck.  

I know I've said it already, but their assurances that no rules were broken come in a transparent tissue of lies, including citing a definition of grounding that we see him wantonly violating.  I'm far from alone here.  First, Dusbabek himself brings up other areas of concern, only to suddenly lose interest therein:

“I know, Dan, that it looks bad, that maybe he’s trying to improve the area of his intended swing,” Dusbabek said. “It doesn’t look like there’s enough there. It’s just hard to say. A player is allowed to ground his club with the weight of the club against the ground. So, that’s basically what he’s doing right there.

Really, because your description didn't even convince the guy sitting next to you:

Dusbabek was referencing rule 8.1b (4) which states that players are allowed to, “ground the club lightly right in front of or right behind the ball,” with “ground the club lightly” meaning, “allowing the weight of the club to be supported by the grass, soil, sand or other material on or above the ground surface.”

But analyst Brad Faxon challenged that Clark was only using the weight of the club.

“There was definitely pressure pushing down there,” Faxon said. “It certainly wasn’t good-looking.”

Are these the same guys that called the 2020 riots "mostly peaceful"?  

This from Dusbabek I think sums it perfectly:

“I feel his ball didn’t move, and I feel like he did nothing to affect the stroke.”

Without analyzing the lie before and after, we're left with nothing more that your feelings.....  But we all saw it and it's a horrible look for the game and the Tour, but they'd rather hide behind equivocations.

This is a horrible look for the Tour and the governing bodies.  You either want to protect the integrity of the game, or you want to protect your feed lot.  I think we've figured out which need dominates.

Did Someone Mention Feed Lots - Rory, you've really ruined things quite enough already... You might want to consider keeping that pie hole closed:

Rory McIlroy wants more ‘cutthroat’ PGA Tour with fewer competitors

Obviously, the boy is quite confused, because fewer competitors makes golf easier, not more difficult (or, in his terminology, cutthroat).

“No, I mean, I’m all for making it more cutthroat, more competitive,’’ McIlroy said, as covered by Sports Illustrated. “Probably won’t be very popular for saying this but I’m all for less players and less Tour cards, and the best of the best.’’

So, you've gone full Patrick?  Lovely, carve out all the riffraff so more for me...

How's that world working out, Rory?

In nine PGA Tour events in 2024, six of the winners entered the tournament with odds of at least 100-to-1 at the Las Vegas SuperBook.

Chris Kirk kicked things off, winning The Sentry at 200-to-1.

Then, Grayson Murray won the Sony Open as an astounding 400-to-1 shot.

This was followed by Nick Dunlap winning The American Express with 300-to-1 odds.

Matthieu Pavon and Nick Taylor both had 125-to-1 odds when they won the Farmers Insurance Open and the Waste Management Phoenix Open, respectively.

Finally, Austin Eckroat had 100-to-1 odds before he won the Cognizant Classic in Palm Beaches Garden, Fla.

The shortest odds of anyone who has won a PGA Tour event this year was Jake Knapp, who won the Mexico Open at Vidanta Vallarta after entering with 40-to-1 odds.

Which is exactly why they need to be excluded, because they threaten Rory and Patrick's feed lot.... Yanno who's not on that list?  Yeah, Rory and Patrick, so obviously the fields are too big.

Care for some dissenting opinions?  

Lucas Glover doesn’t have to worry about qualifying for the PGA Tour’s Signature Events this season.

But that doesn’t make him a fan of the PGA Tour’s new model.

Speaking with Golfweek at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Glover, a two-time PGA Tour winner last season, laid into the Tour’s series of eight, limited-field, $20 million events.

“I don’t like the idea at all,” he said. “It’s selfish and it’s a money grab.”

“Nothing that has happened in the last two years in golf, in my opinion, that will help the game,” the six-time PGA Tour winner said. “I’ve yet to figure out what’s so bad out here that we had to do all the things we’ve done.

I'm sorry, Lucas, but you're the selfish one.  It's an established fact that we can only grow this game if Patrick gets paid,. and now you want to stand in the way of that.

Eamon Lynch has a couple of pieces that speak to this, beginning here:

While far short of a constitutional crisis for King Jay, quibbles about the cut speak to a broader dilemma with how the signature events are structured and marketed. Tournaments billed as all-

star showcases are an automatic loss in the eyes of many if those all-stars don’t show up, which for the most part they haven’t in 2024. Since individual form is beyond the control of Commissioner Monahan, he might consider the words of business theorist W. Edwards Deming: “Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and processes rather than the employee.”

And signature events rely on a formula designed to artificially engineer outcomes that simply cannot be guaranteed.

That's an odd framing, given that it's the employees that presumably designed the system....  But get a load of the accompanying photo.  I don't know if Eamon himself specified the telegenic Aussie, but it highlights the depravity of the system Jay oversees.  We're gonna make sure that Patrick gets paid, but we'll take care of our friend Adam behind everyone's back..... Could they be more transparently in it for themselves?

This is a valid point, though not perhaps the most important one:

Building tournaments around Goliaths while trying to exclude most of the Davids isn’t indefensible, but it does have consequences, because every little reduction in competitiveness dilutes what makes things compelling for fans. At 9:30 a.m. on the morning of the second round, the practice range on Tour is usually a hive of comings and goings, pure tournament theater. Friday morning at Bay Hill, there were six players preparing for their rounds. Spectators in the stands behind them must have felt like they came for a feast but found a famine. One metric that matters for fans can’t actually be quantified: the vibe. You know it when you feel it, you know when you’re not feeling it. And not many are feeling it this week, in part because of the size of the field.

The field might be nominally stronger in that a greater percentage is made up of the Tour’s best players, but there’s simply less activity around the grounds, less action to follow, less spectacle to absorb. Just less, period. A tee sheet of 69 does no favors for the tournament, for fans or for the PGA Tour. If the old standard for the invitationals on the schedule (120) is thought too many, then why not 100? And if there’s no appetite to spread the purse among that many – which is the real reason for small, lucrative events – then dispense with the customary formula for distributing the prize fund and pay less for mediocre finishes. This ain’t LIV Golf.

Well, Eamon, it actually is LIV Golf.  Patrick was jealous and this is exactly what he wanted, LIV without the moral ramifications....

But what Eamon seems to ignore is that, while the bifurcation of Tour events will create a concentration of top line talent in those events, those are appearances that are taken away from other Tour events.  It's mostly a zero sum game.

But get a load of Eamon's coda:

The Tour’s top stars have spent two years telling us they deserve greater rewards and the sport’s economy has been distorted to grant that request. Surely it’s not too much to ask that they play better, and play better against a few more guys.

Did you not hear Rory's comments, Eamon?  That is very much too big an ask.,... In fact, he wants smaller fields.  

But I did mention a second piece from the Ulsterman, one that reacts to Rory's profundity in quite the amusing fashion?

Lynch: Rory McIlroy wants a more cutthroat PGA Tour. So, um, who’s gonna cut the GOAT's throat?

You see where he's going with this, right?  Though I have to start with a major quibble:

Rory McIlroy was asked Friday whether he has misgivings about there being just 69 players in the field at the API. He does not. “I’m all for making it more cutthroat, more competitive,” he said. “Probably won’t be very popular for saying this, but I’m all for less players and less Tour cards, and the best of the best.”

It’s a defensible argument.

I don't actually think it is defensible, given the nature of our game.  The current generation of PGA Tour promos included the assertion that it's where the best golf is played.  The logic of that is the best events will be the best events, meaning those where the best golf is played.  So, riddle me this, Batman... Do you get better golf from a 69 player field or from a 156 player field?  Not a hard question is it?

In case the dots need connecting, that's exactly my Lucas Glover calls it a selfish money grab....

But shall w elet Eamon have his fun?

But a desire for a more competitively focused and streamlined Tour—a view McIlroy is far from alone in holding among top players—is incompatible with eligibility carve-outs for sentimental favorites. Like Woods. But who is going to cut the GOAT’s throat? Who will tell fans and sponsors that Tiger hasn’t earned a spot?

Don't forget Adam Scott!  They need his vote so he'll always have a tee time....

I'm not over the moon over Eamon's treatment of the trade-offs, mostly because there's no discussion of the bifurcated compensation system in golf, whereby Tiger gets compensated for being Tiger from Nike, as opposed to from Jay.  

Unfortunately, I'm not sure where the time went, as I didn't even get a chance to discuss Anthony Kim, the second half of that header reference.  perhaps we'll get to it tomorrow, but I must leave you here.  I'll try to pick this up tomorrow.