Edition No. 55 | February 13, 2024

Hey,

Thank you to all of you who reached out after my Friday newsletter. That one was obviously pretty different from (and certainly more personal than) all the others. So it was meaningful to get such encouraging responses from many of you. I’m grateful for the feedback (even when it’s critical!) and excited to continue trying to built the most unique publication of golf text + illustration in the world.

Onto the news.

Why I’m glad for LIV

I have (obviously) spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about LIV, the PGA Tour and professional golf in general over the last few years. And I realized over the weekend that in some ways I am incredibly grateful for LIV’s existence.

Wait … what?

It’s true.

I have been an advocate for a global tour for a long time now. I know this model might be worse for the American consumer of golf, and I have some empathy for that reality. It might even be worse for me, the American writer of golf things, because who wants to be up at 3 a.m. watching live golf in Tokyo?

But in terms of the creation of a global product that could thrive in ways the Tour probably would not be able to within the bubble it has been in over the last few decades?

The opportunity is extraordinary.

A global tour was never going to start in a time of peace, though. There was too much prosperity and too few reasons to do anything different. It just was not going to happen. And it still might not happen. But this level of disruption is the only shot at it.

I’ve been reading the book Same As Ever by Morgan Housel (I’ve been on a Housel kick recently, if you hadn’t followed that thread). It’s really good, really interesting. And there’s a chapter in there about the Great Depression (of all things) that reminded me of the current place we’re in with the Tour and LIV.

The premise is that the Great Depression sucked (obviously). But also because it sucked, it was also possibly the most magnificent, significant time for innovation and change in American history.

Here’s Housel.

Obviously — I hope this is crystal clear — I am not comparing the creation of a rogue golf league by a violent government to one of the saddest times in the history of our country. What I am saying, though, is that the principle can be applied. LIV has made the Tour uncomfortable, and discomfort brings about change and innovation in ways that comfort almost by definition cannot.

Will that result in the type of change and innovation that make the entire sport better and the professional version a better global product than it has ever been? I am not optimistic given who’s in charge. However, it does reframe the way I think about LIV. Doesn’t mean I like it or think it’s awesome or worthy of emulation or anything like that. But it does at least provide me some gratitude for its existence, even if we’re still in the middle of the mess.

Stat of the Week

1 — That’s how many golfers have averaged at least 2.4 strokes gained per round at Augusta National since 2015 (min. 10 rounds) and not won a green jacket (more details here).

Related …

Idea of the Week

A few weeks ago I wrote about how a group of players including Adam Scott, Webb Simpson, Peter Malnati and Maverick McNealy should not have been the four to receive exemptions into Pebble and that it’s a bad look for the Tour. The reason? The first three are player directors and McNealy was on the player advisory council last year. It’s not really about those four guys (who I like). More broadly, I don’t think there should be any exemptions at all into signature events.

That’s not really the point of this post, though. One response that came out of that is the point of this post.

Brentley Romine responded that McNealy should be exempt for Pebble because of the twirl he gave there in 2021, and one reader noted that there should be a Sauce exemption into each PGA Tour event, which is awesome and I can absolutely get behind (at the non-signature events).

Anything that will increase the willingness of pros to do things only pros would ever think to do (or would actually look cool doing). You could have a fan vote with little highlights from the week before. I’m kinda joking but also the more I write about the more I’m kinda not joking about this!

Question of the Week

I asked on Monday whether LIV or the Tour is having a better year so far. I realized I have enough LIV thoughts/ideas that I’m going to save that one to publish on Friday as part of a 10 thoughts on LIV or something like that.

Feel free to mix it up in the Twitter comments though!

Quote of the Week

Over the weekend, I stumbled across a fascinating quote from Lee Trevino from December. Here’s what he told the Palm Beach Post.

“We’re in trouble with this thing because we don’t own anything. Who owns the PGA Tour? Nobody. That’s the problem with it. It’s a nonprofit organization and nobody owns it. Here comes (LIV) with $600 billion in a kitty. They can buy a lot of stuff. I’m afraid these dominoes are lined up.

“The Wells Fargo fell over … it hasn’t hit the ground yet all the way, it hasn’t touched that other one yet. But if it touches the other one and then that one touches the other one, then we got a big problem.”

Aside from $600 billion in a kitty being a great line, this is actually a really good point. A lack of ownership means incentives are either sparse or nonexistent. In that sense, the SSG investment into the PGA Tour is a good thing, but the odd truth is that the players have also always been the owners. This relationship has been mostly invisible until now.

The Tour has set aside $1.5 billion to give out as a type of equity to players, which sounds great until you realize that players don’t really care that much about growing the entire pie as much as they do increasing the size of the piece they get.

Here’s a JT exchange from Phoenix.

“… It's not like I've said no to things in the past to where it's like, ‘Oh, I'm not doing this because it's going to benefit the Tour and it's not going to benefit me.’”

BUT …

Q. Do you think you or other guys will be more willing to do walk and talks and be mic'd and stuff like that?

“I don't know. Everybody is different. At the end of the day, I can create more equity for myself by playing better and winning more golf tournaments and majors and FedExCups, so on and so forth. If I feel that that is in my best interest to do so, then I will.

“But me personally, I don't foresee myself making a decision based off of something like that. At the end of the day, the end goal is to win and play as well as I can in golf tournaments, and that's what I need to do.”

This is not a knock on JT. When time is valuable, you’re going to gravitate toward what benefits you and those around you most. This implies — again, this is just one example and could be the exception that proves the rule — that incentives are still probably not totally aligned in terms of who owns and runs the PGA Tour (still the players!) and growing the business as a whole.

Normal Sport

There were so many this week.

1. A buddy texted me on Friday and noted that some players were scheduled to tee off after sundown. Literally scheduled to play a sports event at a time when it is impossible to play it. Amazing.

2. Let he who has not worn a wedding dress while in golf shoes and meandered around a golf course with a canned Miller Light cast the first stone.

3. A year after the first edition of the Normal Sporter in 2023 included giraffes walking down the fairway at the Magical Kenya Ladies open, the same thing happened once again in 2024. If there were giraffes on the field in Vegas on Sunday, it would have been the most viewed clip in sports history. Also, who could forget the stuffed giraffe outside of Royal Liverpool in 2006?

4. Remember when James Hahn doing the Gangnam Style dance during Phoenix Open week was the biggest controversy of Phoenix Open week? The following sentences are somehow about golf …

The kingdom’s Public Investment Fund sued its advisers in a Saudi court in November in order to prevent them from submitting information to the US Senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs. Violating the court order could lead the kingdom to imprison executives and their staffers for 20 years, according to veteran investment banker Michael Klein, one of the top advisers to the fund.

Meme of the Week

I’m not sure there’s ever been a more evergreen meme than this one. Like, if you missed golf for the last 18 months and just reappeared wondering what happened, these two screenshots basically sum it all up.

Crooked Golf Media

👉️ Shane Ryan dove deep on Andy Gardiner of the PGL (which was kinda stolen by the PIF) and how he’s on the outside looking in at his own idea. It’s not a pod that breaks any huge news, but I found it so helpful in remembering and understanding how we got to this point.

👉️ This Taylor Swift-NFL video from ESPN is sweet and fun, and KVV talking about his daughters and the passage of time is 1. Who KVV is and 2. Inspiring and encouraging. You should watch it.

👉️ “The problem in media isn’t the business model. The problem is that most of the content sucks.” -Austin Rief on failing subscription sites. I’m not sure I agree with this completely, but I appreciate where he’s coming from given that he started an extremely successful media company (Morning Brew)

👉️ Enjoyed this on the origins of Holderness & Bourne (who you might be seeing more of in this space 👀).

👉️ This by Alex Miceli is good, and I especially agreed with the closing statement quite a bit.

👉️ Per the clip below, are these private equity groups (including PIF) going to start buying things like the Ryder Cup or Bandon Dunes?

Also, why would a PE company that is trying to get into golf not buy NLU or TFE? That’s the play, right? This has happened a lot in other industries where a company with money merges with a company with media reach to help pull in deals. Maybe that’s unnecessary for PE at this level, but also that might be undervaluing the draw of a NLU or TFE.

👉️ I don’t even know what to do with this ZJ clip. Feels like it, along with the associated interview afterwards, needs its own 10 thoughts.

Super Bowl Stuff

A couple of golf-y thoughts and notes on the Super Bowl.

1. The Super Bowl contextualizes everything in professional football. It’s what everything else — the draft, coaching hires, front office changes, preseason roster moves, QB debates — is aimed toward. This is a problem in golf where there is no clear hierarchy. Despite what LIV’s lawyers tried to get us to believe, there is no Super Bowl in golf.

And the Super Bowls that do exist in golf are run by different organizations than the ones that run 95 percent of what we actually see. This is a problem because it removes context. When you follow anything in the NFL, you know it is being done (and you can interpret it) with the Super Bowl in mind. It doesn’t even matter whether you enjoy the Super Bowl (I think it’s fine and probably a bit overrated), only that its existence makes everything else work the way it should.

2. Brock Purdy and Denny McCarthy? Brothers to one another and sons of Lee Harvey? I actually think McCarthy looks more like Lee than Purdy does.

3. I take the QB-golfer comp too far a lot of times, but the one I couldn’t help thinking of on Sunday was Koepka and Mahomes. It’s not perfect, because Mahomes is actually good in the regular season and seems a bit more likable than Brooks. But the reason I thought of it is because, when it’s close late and nobody can breathe, I don’t know that there’s anybody you want to have the ball more than either of those two guys.

4. I found the following fairly amusing …

I think I agree with Jemele, but i also think the word “better” needs to be defined. There is a performative aspect to all of this. Aesthetically, Mahomes is more of a delight than Brady (or Manning or maybe anyone ever) just as Tiger is more of a delight than Nicklaus was.

Whether you believe that should or should not matter is not at all the point. The point is that it does matter. Because when somebody is making 35-yard throws across his body to the other side of the field on the best and fastest defenders on earth, you will be able to talk yourself into him being better than the guy who dumped little screens or tossed short hitches repeatedly even if that guy has two more rings.

It’s the same thing in golf. It’s easy to talk yourself into the guy hitting 2-iron stingers that hold the wind at the Old Course because, Buddy, it’s not that I don’t think Jack had that ball flight, it’s that I don’t think anybody has ever even imagined that ball flight. Even if that guy has three fewer majors than the guy who played 30 years before him. Aesthetics matter. I don’t know if they should, but they definitely do.

How is This App Free?

Here are some finds from this week.

• This is an incredible tweet.

• This also got me so good.

• The Keith Mitchell report! Viktor Conte!

• I’m convinced that if Taylor (Swift) entered the golf world, Claire might be the first golf person with 1M followers.

• Yes. A reminder of one of the great short videos of last year.

Love Your Work

This on what to do when you have writer's block is pretty fascinating.

Here’s a snippet.

I feel grateful that I get to write what is actually inside me in this newsletter. The only thing I would add to the idea: What’s inside you is partly a function of what you’re consuming. Don’t like what comes out even if it’s honest to what’s inside? I have found that changing my inputs — what I consume — helps affect this. Maybe not comprehensively but enough that I can tell a difference.