The Card – Volume L

by | Aug 12, 2024 | The Card

18 observations, thoughts and predictions for the week in golf…

 

  1. Lydia Ko’s gold medal performance is one of the great moments in recent years.  A past winner of a silver and bronze medal in Rio and Tokyo, Ko knew that a gold medal would gain her enshrinement in the LPGA Hall of Fame based on the point system used by the LPGA.  At 27 Ko’s career is likely closer to the end than most people understand so the opportunity in Paris was precious.  Ko will forever be one of the finest and most authentic people I’ve met covering sports my entire career.  The image of her hearing the anthem of New Zealand on the medal stand will stand up as one of the best moments in golf in 2024.  
  1. Esther Henseleit is a two-time winner on the Ladies European Tour but her silver medal performance in the Paris games is by far the biggest moment of her career so far.  Henseleit has finished in the top 10 in two majors this year, the Chevron and Evian, and her final round 66 was the round of the day at Le Golf National.  With the final major of the year in two weeks at St. Andrews, Henseleit has the opportunity to build on the Olympic experience and expect more of her in the United States in 2025.
  1. Nelly Korda’s Olympic week was a microcosm of her summer of ‘24.  Moments of very good that were undone by big numbers.  Korda expressed several key things after her week was over that rang true.  First, she was very proud to represent the United States and proud of herself for being a better player now than she was in Tokyo when she won the gold medal.  Secondly, she pointed out that her summer has been maligned by too many big mistakes.  Those big mistakes started on the third hole of the U.S. Women’s Open when she made a 10 and opened with 80.  Korda also shot 81 at the KPMG Women’s PGA.  Her shank on the 15th hole in the final round of the Olympic golf competition was the latest big number, a triple bogey, which took her out of medal contention.  Korda has won six times, including a major in 2024 but her last win came in May and her summer has been defined by blowups.  A true tale of two seasons.
  1. The two weeks of the Olympic Golf at Le Golf National was memorable, momentum building and enduring.  Players from both the men and women were overwhelmed by the atmosphere on site and all of them expressed humility being around all the other athletes.  Several players, including Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler attended other events and their appreciation for the experience bodes very well for the future of the event.  I wrote about the measurement of the achievement this past week and the overarching point is that the stage is enormous, and the viewpoints of the players will drive the value of winning the gold medal.  Time is on the side of Olympic golf.
  1. Le Golf National has now hosted a Ryder Cup and the Olympic Golf Competitions and the atmosphere has been fantastic for both.  Huge credit to the fans who gave the players everything they would hope to have for a big event.  The closing stretch is entertaining and turbulent but if given the chance I wouldn’t walk across the street to play the place now or ever.  It’s built for big events and big crowds, and it has worked.  It was not constructed for walking with a bag on your shoulder and I would imagine the golf course absent of the infrastructure for those big events has little to no charm.  Big events, I get it.  Regular everyday play, no thanks.
  1. Steph Curry’s performance in the semifinals and his late explosion in the gold medal game only reinforced what we know, he’s the greatest shooter of a basketball of all time.  It also is a great reminder that Steph’s immense popularity will only assist in his ambition to improve the landscape of golf.  The final regional stop of the Underrated Tour, Steph’s junior golf tour, was conducted at TPC San Antonio.  The top 12 boys and girls will now make their way to Ridgewood Country Club, outside NYC for the Curry Cup right after Labor Day.  Steph has already been recognized for what he’s doing for junior golfers, but this is just the beginning.  He will prove to be one of the great ambassadors for the game of golf we’ve ever seen.
  1. The purse for the Wyndham Championship was $7.9 million.  Scottie Scheffler earned $8 million this week for winning the Comcast Business Top 10.  Rewarding the top performers over the course of the regular season is fine but the purpose was to motivate players to play more to earn the bonuses from being in the top 10.  The acceleration of money into the men’s game has made many players exponentially wealthier but it’s also diminished the possibility that they will keenly chase bonuses.  The very mechanism they have used to satisfy players has simultaneously dulled their pursuit of additional riches.  Ironic.
  1. The PGA Tour announced this week that Truist is the new sponsor for the Signature series event at Quail Hollow in Charlotte.  The event will be conducted in 2025 at Philadelphia Cricket Club while Quail Hollow plays host to the PGA Championship.  The tour values few markets and clubs more than they do Charlotte and Quail Hollow.  The secondary sponsorship market, the hospitality market and the fanbase in Charlotte is outstanding.  The club, under the direction and vision of Johnny Harris, is a model for what you need in a partner.  Harris lives by the adage his dear friend Arnold Palmer abided by, “success is always under construction”.  Charlotte is a great pro golf town.
  1. Phil Mickelson shared some thoughts on his own future and the future of LIV golf’s media rights this past week.  Mickelson suggested his event-to-event presence for his team the HiFlyers is going to diminish if his play continues to lag.  He also spoke on the digital and linear broadcast rights of LIV golf events.  What he didn’t say is what is the most interesting part of it all because one way or the other you will get to watch the LIV events. The bigger question is will he transition into the lead analyst role for the televised product.  Phil was the most coveted player to become the lead analyst for any network.  His presence in the booth sharing his righteous opinions would be the most value he can give to LIV in 2025 and beyond.
  1. Rianne Malixi became the fourth woman to win multiple USGA championships in the same year.  Malixi is a Duke University signee who is already a global player.  The Philippines product defeated Asterisk Talley in both the U.S. girls junior and the U.S. Women’s amateur and completed a 12-0 record in USGA match play for 2024.  Two players who are not even eligible for college golf for another year making it to the final of two USGA championships proves again that preparedness is evident at every level in the game.
  1. Jordan Spieth missed the cut at the Wyndham Championship, and he will play in the first playoff event, but his season is likely to come to an end next Sunday.  A season that showed promise on the west coast with two top 6 finishes but his disqualification at the Genesis Invitational which coincided with a lingering left wrist issue sent his season in the wrong direction.  Spieth’s best result in a major was T25 at the Open championship which was also his best result from April 7th to the end of the regular season.  Here’s hoping Spieth gets his wrist repaired and 2025 is a reminder, to some degree, of who he was ten years.  2015 was one of the great season’s this century and he had magic.  
  1. My surprises outside the playoffs for 2024.  Keith Mitchell, Lucas Glover, Sam Stevens, Rickie Fowler, J.J. Spaun and Adam Schenk.
  1. Luke Clanton had a very good summer of amateur/professional golf.  He made the cut in five of six professional events including a T2 at the John Deere and another great finish at the Wyndham Championship.  Clanton returns to Florida State and launches himself to the top of the returning players on campus and his NIL personal collective just tripled.
  1. Victor Perez had the dream week at the Paris Olympics and immediately jetted to Greensboro, North Carolina to try to secure his place in the FedEx cup playoffs starting the week as the bubble boy at 70.  Four rounds in the 60’s with a 36-hole final day and Perez made a sinister 6-footer on the last hole to secure his spot in Memphis.  Golf can be exhausting, and Perez has to be gassed but he is not only a wealthier player as a result of the last two weeks, but he’s also a better player.
  1. The women enter a glorious two weeks off the Olympic competition.  First the Scottish Open at Dundonald and then onto the Women’s Open at St. Andrews.  The women win the scheduling face off with any tour over the next couple weeks and it’s a great opportunity to showcase the women’s ground game if they can get firm and fast conditions.
  1. CBS wrapped up their golf season with the Wyndham Championship after experiencing real change a couple years ago with the departure of Peter Kostis and Gary McCord and the retirement of Lance Barrow.  With Sellers Shy producing and a broadcast roster with defined roles CBS had an excellent year.  Trevor Immelman is respected, and he’s plugged in with players and gives his opinion and Nantz is the voice of the TV show that is professional golf.
  1. Max Greyserman stood on the 14th tee coming off a hole out eagle on the 13th and in possession of a four shot lead.  He proceeded to go 8-4-4 which included a tee shot out of bounds and a four putt.  It epitomized the year of leads lost late which included Rory McIlroy at the U.S. Open and Jon Rahm at the Olympics.
  1. Aaron Rai has earned what he’s received in the game of golf, and he’s done it all with immense gratitude.  He has never lost sight of valuing people and possessions and he built all year to his breakthrough win on the PGA Tour.  Well done.

The Company You Keep

by | Aug 10, 2024 | Blog

There can be pride in association.  In sports, venues are part of the dream.  It’s not only who you want to compete against its also where.  Elite golfers know how much of an affinity elite athletes have for the game of golf.  Babe Ruth went to the 1929 U.S. Open at Winged Foot to watch Bobby Jones.  Michael Jordan started attending Ryder Cups in 1997 in Spain when he was still the best basketball player in the world, and he’s been to every one of them since.  When you live in the golf silo it’s not uncommon to get whisked away in the moment of golf’s big events and they are big relatively speaking.  Pro golf is niche but so are most of the disciplines and sports showcased on the Olympic stage.  The difference is that Olympic achievement in table tennis, judo, and volleyball are inarguably the zenith of accomplishment in those pursuits and in golf it’s not.  It doesn’t mean the weightiness of Olympic medals in golf is modest, it simply means that time collaborates the gravity of the achievement.

Weirdly, as the proliferation of sports globally has created enormous wealth for athletes and valuations of sports franchises have exponentially increased the prism with which too many fans view achievements has shrunk.  Winning division titles in college and professional football, basketball and baseball has been marginalized.  Individual sports value most wins less, like tennis and golf and quantify the merits of athletes more and more on the most elusive titles.  Majors and grand slams titles, not to mention Super Bowls and World Series titles separate the best into the most pristine category of athletic achievement but it shouldn’t be at the cost of so many important benchmarks.  Golf’s modern grand slam was a quasi-marketing tool spontaneously ignited after Arnold Palmer won the U.S. Open in 1960 at Cherry Hills.  The tired debate about whether the Players is the 5th major falls flat with that very narrative.  It’s either a major or it isn’t.  It’s not slotted as 3rd or 5th and its neither.  It’s not a major, it’s the Players and it’s a huge notch.  

It was a very different time when Gene Sarazen won the 1935 Masters, which wasn’t even called the Masters in 1935.  Brandel Chamblee quipped years ago on his podcast with Jaime Diaz that Sarazen won what was akin to the Hero World Challenge.  It wasn’t to diminish the win.  It was an accurate opinion on the modesty of the accomplishment at that time.  Like the Hero World Challenge conducted by Tiger Woods, the 1935 Augusta National Invitation Tournament was a gathering of Bob Jones’ friends.  Time has been very kind to Sarazen because the Masters has become the most famous golf tournament in the world.  He had no idea he had completed the career grand slam because there was no such thing, but retroactively, he joined that elusive club, and it doesn’t make the accomplishment less significant.  It’s simply context of the achievement.  Time is on the side of Olympic golf primarily because of the players.  While they will not extoll the premise that a gold medal is equivalent to a major championship victory, they are all amplifying the enormity of the experience and its impact on them as athletes.  So, while they can’t proclaim that winning a gold medal is the biggest thing in their sport like wrestlers, pole vaulters and equestrian riders do, they now are sharing what all Olympic athletes convey about getting to the Olympics.  It’s the biggest sporting stage in the world, and for golfers, who are athletes, it’s an authentic validation of that fact.  

Seeing table tennis players on the USA boat during the opening ceremony interfacing with Steph Curry was a sweet moment for those young female athletes who live an athletic life of relative anonymity, but it was also an illuminating moment for Steph in his first Olympics.  Steph Curry knows the road to greatness can take many different paths and he’s aware of the razor thin margins that separate athletes in moments and over time so shaking the hand of fellow Americans competing in table tennis was also a sign of immense appreciation.  Appreciation for the pursuit. Golfers are Olympic athletes and the crowds in Paris gave them a thorough and exhilarating appreciation of the Olympic stage.  The refrain for a team component will grow louder and it should but golfers are experiencing what all Olympic athletes do, they are beaming with the pride of association.  Olympic golfers are proclaiming the grandiosity of being a part of it.  Scottie Scheffler’s tears were not over a FedEx Cup bonus, it was from the human condition of wearing a gold medal and hearing his national anthem.  People who love professional golf know how damn hard it is just to make a living at it but too many of those same people pass over the various benchmarks in the sport to look almost exclusively at major totals.  Yes, they separate players from awfully good to great but there is other bold type that players can put on their resumes of achievement. Olympic gold is one of them and keeping the company of the greatest athletes from all over the globe, some of whom came to watch the golf competition, is great for the game now and the weightiness of winning a medal is only going to grow.