Edition No. 61* | March 1, 2024

Hey,

I wrote something this week

— Brief aside: Have you ever thought about how differently we view spaces like Twitter or other social platforms, denoting “I tweeted this or that” when the reality of what you’re doing is just writing sentences (sometimes paragraphs) that a lot of other people can easily find? We think of it as being other, when it’s really just … writing. —

Anyway, I wrote something this week about how Ian Poulter is the only golfer in Masters history to make a 1-2-3-4 in Round 1-2-3-4 of a Masters on the same hole in succession (i.e. a 1 in Round 1 on the 16th, a 2 in Round 2 on the 16th … and so on). Here’s how a reader responded: Too much time with too little to do.

Unfortunately for this reader, this is not the insult he or she thinks it is. Making time to explore the golf slice of the internet and find ridiculous, absurd, amazing things is one of my favorite parts of the job.

Psychologist Amos Tversky has a great quote on this: “The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”

I love that. I think it’s aspirational.

Here are a few thoughts on golf this week.

15 Golf-ish Thoughts This Week

1. What if I would have told you after Anthony Kim withdrew from Quail Hollow in May 2012 the next time you would see him in public, he would be wearing a t-shirt and playing golf in King Abdullah Economic City exclusively on the CW app (the CW app!!) against Sebastian Munoz of Torque and Jason Kokrak of Smash?

Oh, and that this guy would be the reason all of it happened, and that the logo he’s wearing would be on its second iteration because the league he plays in was sued by an Argentine corporation for copying its skateboarding and lifestyle apparel brand called Fallen?

(ed. note: I’m not sure they could have picked a more amusing brand name to have copied.)

AK’s return says less about him than it does about LIV. Greg Norman’s quote on it was nearly word for word something I said earlier in the week.

"LIV Golf was launched to create new opportunities for players and fans that drive this sport forward in exciting ways, and when I think of Anthony Kim, I can't imagine a more perfect fit for what we're trying to do.”

I can’t either, except I don’t mean that in the same way Norman means it.

I wrote about AK this week for CBS Sports.

2. This was probably the most questionable part of the entire rollout to me. Hello, haters. What? Literally the only reason Anthony Kim just got a big payday from LIV is because no golfer has ever been more retrospectively beloved than Anthony Kim!

It has a real “I was told Steph wasn’t a good shooter” or “people out here saying Mahomes has a weak arm, I’m here to tell you he doesn’t!” feel to it.

3. I’ve had this one in the queue for a while. I think I’m in on what seems like an insane take, especially for somebody who owns ~982 quarter zips. Best hoodie I’ve worn recently, by the way? This guy from H&B. It’s extraordinary.

4. Does the PIF want it all? It certainly seems that way. I read this good GQ piece on their dive into Cristiano Ronaldo and soccer, and there are so many parallels to LIV, I feel like you could squint and see Cristiano doing one of Brooks’ famed Smash workouts.

Then it was announced this week that the PIF and ATP (basically PGA Tour but for tennis) are embarking on a “multi-year strategic partnership.”

"Through our collaboration with ATP, PIF will be a catalyst for growth of the global tennis landscape, developing talent, fostering inclusivity and driving sustainable innovation,” said PIF head of corporate brand, Mohamed Al Sayyad.

“This strategic partnership aligns with our broader vision to enhance quality of life and drive transformation in sport both within Saudi and across the world.”

Me wading through all the buzzwords in that quote.

I’ll probably write more about this later on, but I guess the question I keep going back to over and over and over again is: What in the world does the PIF want?

Webb Simpson was asked this very thing recently in a Golfweek Q&A in which it became clear that the Tour and the Saudis have not been talking or even texting.

His answer was how I have been feeling.

“We’re not sure yet [what their end game is]. I do think Yasir loves the idea of team golf or the idea of franchises. And, you know, that’s something any good company is going to listen to its investors or potential investors and see why they want what they want. And so that’s something that we need to do. We as players, we should probably have a conversation with Yasir and figure out what it is he wants. And I think that conversation should be sooner rather than later.”

There are much easier and more efficient ways to make money than [checks notes] professional tennis and golf. There is, of course, also the sportswashing narrative. I think there’s probably some thread of truth in there, but it would be shocking to me if that was the primary aim.

While Yasir is clearly infatuated with golf and the franchise model, you have to take it beyond Yasir — look at the full breadth of their sports strategy, from F1 to UFC to tennis to soccer.

In other words, do you sign Rafa Nadal to be an ambassador for tennis in your country and try to buy every soccer player in sight if you’re simply enamored by shiny objects? There is far more planning to all of this than simply making it rain on DJ’s boat because, on a whim, you want to be in a Tiktok video with Paulina and you have the money to do so.

We are accustomed to Steve Ballmer wanting an NBA team and then buying an NBA team. A toy. A project. We are not accustomed to multi-pronged efforts across a broad range of industries that seemingly have some sort of common thread. That is the part that has been extremely difficult to figure out.

And not only difficult to figure out but also frustrating to absorb. Incentives rule the world, and the PIF is good at incentivizing people and organizations in the direction they want them to go. That reality has obliterated the sport I cover and the sport so many of us love.

And because pro golf was already pretty fractured among the five families (PGA Tour, PGA, USGA, ANGC and R&A), we are left to pick up the pieces while the PIF just keeps adding industries to its portfolio.

I think that has been one of the most difficult things about all of this. Golf is soulful — maybe the most soulful — but to the PIF it is simply another percentage of the pie in the latest version of its Vision 2030 powerpoint presentation.

5. Also, if you think golf is broken …..

6. Speaking of golf broadcasts, I thought Dan had maybe the best idea of the week. Ostensibly, he described what TGL was (is?) supposed to be. But I think the packaged product works great for The Match as well.

The only reason to air sports live is because there is a thrill to not knowing who won. It captivates audiences. However, with The Match, I don’t even care who wins, and I suspect the other folks tuning in don’t either. It’s not a value prop of the actual product.

The upside of a packaged show is that you invest less time and get more of the good stuff on a per-minute basis than you get when it’s live. Basically YouTube golf but with pros. This is so much higher than the downside, which is that you might find out out who won before it airs and (more obviously) you don’t get as much unfiltered, off-the-cuff DJ Khaled as you would have in a live broadcast.

Also, I’ve been thinking about this tweet all week. I howl every time!

7. I heard a great story on the My First Million podcast recently.

Here is an extremely condensed version of it.

One of the hosts, Sam Parr, told story about his mother in law. The premise was that she started a sewing business in her 50s that began thriving, and he was trying to get her to scale it up. Buy more ads on Google and Facebook, hire more people, upsell other products, things of that nature.

She told him “no,” and that she was satisfied with the workload.

His co-host, Shaan Puri, in a moment of terrific wisdom, responded by saying something like, Good for her for staying in the mix and not counting herself out into her 50s, but what’s even more remarkable is that she has done something that’s harder than starting a business. 

When Sam asked what that was, Shaan said, It’s being content with the business that you start.

That one hit me pretty good. It reminded me of the parable of the Mexican fisherman and the American MBA (a story that many current professional golfers should maybe take a look at).

8. I wanted to give a formal shout out to the Course Record podcast guys. You’ve probably heard of Roberto Castro but maybe not his co-host, Dan Ferreira. They do a really good job talking about the business of pro golf, and unlike some of us other sociopaths, they don’t post something every week.

A great pod to add to the rota.

9. I think my brain has been broken by The Open to the point that I don’t use the word “rotation” any longer when describing an alternating series of events.

10. One thing I have been thinking about is how the PGA Tour, as it currently stands, is tantamount to a software company that has been around for too long.

Have you ever seen the priority list for who gets into PGA Tour tournaments? It is completely insane. It’s just years of code written to fix very specific problems without the previous code being cleared out or amended. Not unlike, say, Wordpress or something similar.

You would never ever ever ever ever structure a league in such a complicated way if you were starting from scratch in 2024 (or, I guess, 2022), which is part of what makes Rick Gehman’s World Golf Tour (WGT) so compelling. I have some tweaks and quibbles here and there with Rick’s proposal, but broadly it’s simple and easy to understand, which the PGA Tour is … not.

[googles ‘Steve Sands FedEx Cup white board … no images found]

11. A great Paul Graham quote that I identify with: “Ideas can feel complete. It’s only when you try to put them into words that you discover they’re not.” One thousand percent true.

12. I wrote recently about how the majors are the big winners of the PGA Tour-LIV nonsense, and a reader responded that he wasn’t so sure about that. Here’s what he said (which I thought was brilliant): “If we become disinterested in the ‘regular season,’ do we have sufficient context and excitement for the majors? I’m finding myself totally uninterested whereas I was very engaged last year.”

13. I loved this quote from a book I read recently. Loved it so much. An artist is a sort of emotional historian. How good is that?

14. I’ve said this before, but I think obsession is fascinating. So this Titleist series with a bunch of sickos trying to describe what it’s like to find the center of the center is my wheelhouse. If the lede is Spieth saying, “It’s really hard to explain,” you know you’re in for a treat.

15. I thought this video of somebody opening a big and legit card shop in ATL was pretty inspirational. I’ve enjoyed getting back into baseball cards with my kids, and I enjoyed the entire video. The guy who started it has an interesting entrepreneurial background.

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