Edition No. 78 | April 26, 2024

Hey,

On Thursday, I took my 10- and 7-year-old boys to a short par 3 course near our house. I told them if either of them made a 2 on the day, we would get slushees or ice cream.

So we do a couple of loops on the five-hole course — the holes are probably 30-60 yards, which is perfect for 10- and 7-year-olds who aren’t named Miles Russell — and the 10-year-old has a 15-footer for a 2 on our 13th hole of the day.

He hits it, the speed looks pretty good, and I’m thinking he has it right in the heart. He’s chasing it in, literally running after it and touches the moment off by slamming his putter down like Cat at Bay Hill.

It comes up 1 revolution short.

I’m howling. The 7-year-old is near tears. Incredible stuff.

The part I’m proud of, though, is that on the next hole he hits it to 8 feet and buries it for a 2. His brother runs out and dogpiles him. Just an amazing two-hole sequence of golf that was pretty much the opposite of most of what has been happening at the pro level of late.¹

Onto the news.

14 Golf-Adjacent Thoughts This Week

1. I had a problem with the equity that was distributed to players this week, but it’s probably not the problem you think. There was a lot — a LOT — of rhetoric around the “Tiger only plays seven rounds a year, why is he getting $100 million?” not to mention the “JT IS GETTING $30 MILLION FOR HIS LOYALTY HE HASN’T BEEN GOOD IN THREE YEARS” nonsense.

First, yeah they’re not handing out equity based on current world rankings points. There’s no possible way to hand out enough equity in the PGA Tour to ever contend with the money LIV is throwing around. If Ludvig is gonna leave, getting $75 million in equity from the Tour isn’t going to make him stay because LIV will just double it in cash. Triple it. Whatever.

The money was simply a thank you to everyone who has helped build the Tour over the last 20 or so years.

Whether you agree with that formula or not — I know some people think it should be treated more like a start-up and Ludvig, Scottie and even somebody like Gordon Sargent should be given the lion’s share of the equity to help keep them around — that’s how it was calculated. So it makes sense that JT and Spieth would get the same amount. They’ve had pretty similar careers.

Now, is Spieth more important to the actual PGA Tour product? Absolutely.

And perhaps the argument is that the payouts should have been based on Meltwater mentions and tickets sold like the PIP is. But everybody hates the PIP formula, too. So idk what the answer is.

That’s not what bothered me, though, although I did just go on a rant about it.

2. The thing that really bothered me about all of it is that this was a reminder that PGA Tour players continue to be the most powerful player-owners in all of sports.

I have no big problem with players having equity in the organization they play for. It’s different than every other league, but it’s clever and interesting and seems to align some incentives (you get better, we get better). The details are still a bit murky to me, but this is not that different from the rest of corporate America, which distributes stock to its employees on the basis of performance or longevity. 

Where it gets wonky with the Tour is that the folks receiving the benefits are the same ones making the decisions. Six current players and one former player are all on the 13-person PGA Tour board. Voting on various decisions -- including the distribution of equity -- remains a bit of a mystery.

Imagine Russell Wilson or Anthony Davis calling the shots for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angeles Lakers respectively. Or Ronald Acuña Jr. and Spencer Strider making high level management decisions for the Atlanta Braves. Or better yet … all of Major League Baseball.

If a league moved to this model, it would be considered insane. It would not be an efficient or effective way to run any of those organizations. And yet, as this equity distribution reminds us, the decision makers are also on the receiving end of those decisions.

Perhaps the argument is that this equity distribution happens in c-suites everywhere all of the time. But companies have boards for a reason.

Except the Tour’s board is run by a majority of the players.

Remember what Tiger said last November?

"I think Jay has been a part of the direction, he understands what happened [on June 6] can't happen again and won't happen again, not with the players that are involved and not with the player directors having the role that we have."

The message there is unambiguous.

But is that the right decision for a league that is try to reinvent itself into the future? And honestly … who cares as it relates to equity? I really don’t. But it highlights things I do care about. Pace of play problems. What to do with the rollback. A thousand other high-level decisions that affect the product that should not be made by people whose interests are often at odds with what is best for the fan.

3. Who is the best golfer since 2010? I threw that question out after the Masters, and there are some takes in that thread. After Scottie won RBC Heritage, I wrote some thoughts about him and this question.

I wrote these thoughts on Twitter but wanted to post them here as well for posterity. Here they are …

I don't believe Scottie is the best player since Tiger's greatest run of dominance ended (around 2008-2010). Not yet anyway.

What I do believe is that among the handful of players who are in that best-since-Tiger conversation -- DJ, Rory, Rahm, Spieth, Brooks, JT, Day, Phil etc. -- he is the most complete.

The physical gifts are obvious -- just get on Data Golf and scroll around for a bit -- and he has so many of them. He's the best iron player in the world, nearly the best driver and (one that goes underrated) somehow also has one of the best short games. In his career, he's a decent to good (but not elite) putter.

Awesome.

But it's everything else that should concern the other best players in the world. He has become excellent at managing his mental and emotional state and is probably (?) still improving in that area.

He has tremendous course discipline, which sets him apart from several on that list above. He is outrageously competitive but not overly tethered to the outcome for many reasons that have been discussed over the last two weeks. It would be difficult to draw up a better and more comprehensive modern skillset, both on and off the course.

Scheffler right now is basically a less maniacal (could also be read: sociopathic) Tiger who is not as good of a putter but seems to have more balance and contentment, which often leads to sustained success in the long term.

Things change. Usually quickly in golf. And he has a bit to accomplish (mostly a few more major wins) until he's the best since Tiger.

But the trajectory right now is certainly historic.

I also thought this was a good response/follow up.

4. KVV posted a response this week to a reader asking about the difference between the way top pros hit the golf ball and the way [gestures at the other 8 billion people] hit the golf ball. He invoked the famous David Foster Wallace essay on Federer as religious experience.

Here’s the snippet KVV referenced, which he noted is a bit crass. I’m jumping into it in the middle of a really long section in which he’s describing a bonkers winner Fed hit against Andre Agassi.

It is a bit crass, but it also speaks volumes about a lot of different things. Anyway, I thought KVV was right, that that last part is a good way to describe the difference between the way the +3 you know hits the ball and the way Brooks Koepka hits the ball.

Also, read the piece on Fed. It’s an all-timer.

5. I recently asked what this man does for a living, and boy the responses did not disappoint.

@Skulledwedge: This man has opened numerous plastic surgery clinics across the US (they kept getting shut down) and can no longer return to the US because of the warrants for practicing medicine without a license.

@ronlee75: Front of house host at Fogo de Chao.

@shaggy_allstar: Looks like he just accepted the award for the best tequila distillery in Mexico.

@obykram: Rolls cigars while parking cars at the same time.

6. Greg Norman talked about his Masters experience this week from Adelaide after he was asked the following question.

Q. Greg, you were at the Masters last week. What was it like being back as a former pro and a golf fan? I saw you on 11 green sadly near the 1987 chip-in, but what were the golf memories like being back there?

You can read more of his answer here, but I thought Dylan’s take was the most humorous one.

7. I missed this earlier this year, but a “bunch of questions with Spieth and Greller” is everything you want it to be. Greller tells a story about Spieth driving him and his wife back to Pebble from Spyglass in a rental car one year. Greller had to get out of the car for something, and Spieth just drove away with Greller’s wife and made Greller literally hitchhike back to Pebble, where they were staying. It’s a story that’s very ha ha ha ha ha wait he did what?!

8. Twice as many people (18.9 million) watched the women's national championship game between Iowa and South Carolina as watched the final round of the Masters (9.6 million). I have no idea what to do with this information, other than I’m almost positive the following numbers are not sustainable.

Caitlin Clark multi-year contract: $338K
Tyrrell Hatton multi-year contract: $63M

9. I once compared Scottie to Manu. I think I may have had the wrong Spur.

10. Another Scottie comp I made recently that I would officially like to double down on …

I’m not sure why this one came to me, and I don’t even know if it’s a good one, but I keep considering it. Obviously Fed was elegant (see DFW article above) in ways Scottie is not, and so I am not talking about their games.

Rather, I think it’s the way they both carry themselves. They are both so … unimpressed with their own success and in love with their craft for the sake of being in love with their craft. They both seem pretty Not Online and more interested in greatness than glory. It’s a dispositional comp more than it is one of the way they play the sport. “Aw shucks” champions intrigue me, especially when they’re as competitive as those two. I’ll keep monitoring.

11. With all the talk of slow play in golf, we found this article about somebody breaking 100 in speed golf (where your score is shots + minutes it takes to play) refreshing. So refreshing that Jason whipped up an illustration depicting both last week’s results in both the regular professional podiums and also the speed golf ones.

12. I was listening to the MFM Pod this week, and Shaan said something that hit me upside the head. He was talking about the five levels of how a company talks about itself (i.e. marketing).

His thesis is that the best companies live in the 3-4-5 range and skip 1 and maybe even 2 altogether.

1. You sell a product.

2. You sell a solution.

3. You sell a lifestyle.

4. You sell a feeling.

5. You sell an identity.

He asked a consultant for some advice on how to improve his own products (podcast, other businesses he owns). Here’s what the consultant said.

“You make content … [the successful people or companies] give out a feeling. Any content creator, you are the merchant of feelings. If you give someone a feeling more consistently and more powerfully than anybody else, that's what makes you box office.”

The merchant of feelings is a world class phrase, and definitely something this newsletter aspires to.

13. You guys know I’ve been obsessed with the LeBron-JJ Redick pod so it delighted me that Jay Caspian Kang wrote about it as it relates to the future of sportswriting for the New Yorker.

The first sentence made me chuckle (mostly because it’s true).

14. This article on KD is pretty incredible. A confession: KD is probably my favorite basketball player ever. I know he’s Way Too Online and very insecure and probably shouldn’t have left OKC, but I think so much of what he does is relatable to how normal people feel. And I’m absolutely in love with his game.

Here are the two quotes that stand out.

Here’s the second.

This is true. You can’t fake it. I wrote about this on Tuesday. Tiger, Rory, Scottie. You cannot fake a deep love for the game.

Any game. Golf. Hoops. Writing. Whatever it is, you can fake it for a bit, but to be great over the long arc of a career, it has to stir you. You have to love it.

Actually I think, maybe, like those around KD intimate, you have to love it.

Thanks for reading until the end.

You’re a sicko, and I’m grateful for it.