"It’s not every day professional golfers play courses the equal of these four Melbourne classics."

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In this Golf Australia story, Mike Clayton explains how the Sandbelt Invitational came together and the thinking he and Geoff Ogilvy have for the four-course event to include pros and amateurs just before Christmas. It’s a continuation of the Australian traditions of mentoring players.

Geoff started his foundation with the simple aim of older players mentoring and playing with the younger ones and during the year we played at least a dozen single day events which came to be known as ‘The Game’. It put the best men and women together in a competitive environment for a whole lot of players who usually would have been travelling the world honing their games.

It’s the traditional way Australia has developed players going all the way back to Norman Von Nida helping a young Peter Thomson on his way in Britain. Thomson in turn advised generations of players including Graham Marsh, Stewart Ginn and Ian Baker-Finch.

This is not a tournament reliant on who is playing or how much money is in the purse. Rather it’s a tournament played on four amazing courses with players happy to be playing in front of crowds appreciative of good, competitive golf.

Quadrilateral: Major(s) News And Notes, October 21, 2021

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It’s a long one for this week’s free Quadrilateral with a wide range of topics covering the major championship spectrum. So sign on up if you haven’t already.

Today I’m wrapping up the 46-inch local rule ramifications with a succinct statement about what went down and what’s next. Plus, an array of venue news and notes, a new golf film about the 1976 Open's rogue qualifier, another post-op Augusta aerial, Reads and a couple of podcasts to put in the queue.

Here’s more on The Quadrilateral, though as the year ends I’ll be updating the explanatory site in anticipation of evolving the newsletter in 2022. The current price you pay is the one you keep so if you’re tempted this is the time to sign up.

Rory's CJ Cup Win Draws A Small And Annoyed Audience

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The fall wraparound schedule’s dismal ratings were predicted from the outset and remain awful even after the addition of FedExCup points. As if anyone besides family and friends care. Even that is debatable.

The tiny audiences are even manageable if sponsors are willing to pay millions for the privilege of a pro-am round or in the case of the CJ Cup in normal times, bringing the PGA Tour to Korea. But with all sports returning to normal and golf having given viewers more than enough “product” over the last 18 months, something extraordinary must happen to draw a decent audience when going against college football, the NFL, MLB playoffs, WNBA playoffs, NHL and Premier League soccer.

Theoretically, such a rare event occurred at the CJ Cup, where Rickie Fowler led through 54-holes in his quest to win again after a quiet two years. Add Rory McIlroy and reigning Open Champion Collin Morikawa into the mix of pursuers, and this one had something.

But as we now know, the Champions Tour ran 39 minutes late and without a reliable online feed or PGA Tour Live Featured Group coverage, momentum stalled and the day will remembered more for the struggle to actually see any of these young stars play golf.

As Showbuzzdaily.com notes, golf was again at the bottom of the weekend sports ratings by a lot, with the Champions not making the list of discernable audiences. The CJ Cup, with its 5 pm ET scheduled start, at least drew an average audience of 648,000, with just 92,000 of those in the coveted demo.

That was good enough, however, to beat out the 9:05 ET Air Force-Boise State game for non-cataracts-dotted eyeballs.

The 2020 CJ Cup was also played in Las Vegas and drew a 589,000/105,000 for a .36). The Champions also drew ratings last year, unlike 2021.

There is happy ending: executives at the PGA Tour and Golf Channel have reached out to fans, media and sponsors to ensure this scheduling fiasco does not happen again. After all, mistakes do happen who knew the Champions would take that long and…wait, wrong people. My bad. They haven’t said a peep.

Wouldn’t you love to make six or seven figures and not give a hoot about the product you sell or the customers you want to reach?

The Sandbelt Invitational Steps In After Australian Open Cancellations

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Royal Melbourne

Exciting news from Down Under: Geoff Ogilvy and Mike Clayton are teaming up to create The Sandbelt Invitational just before Christmas, December 20-23, 2021. The four course event will feature Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath, Yarra Yarra and Peninsula Kingswood with men and women, pros and amateurs.

As the feature below lays out, the event has been created to give Australian pros an opportunity to compete after losing this year’s Australian Opens.

My favorite part in this clip? Seeing “Tournament Director” under Mike Clayton’s name!

Satellite Images Of Trump Aberdeen Show Dramatic Changes To Dunes System

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Business Insider’s Thomas Colson looks at Maxar aerials from 2010 and 2021 to spot changes in the dunes system. At the time Donald Trump vowed stabilize the dunes system but scientists now say they’ve been damaged by the introduction of golf:

Despite warnings in 2008 that the construction of an 18-hole course would destroy the sand dunes around it, Trump had pressed ahead, saying: "We will stabilize the dunes. They will be there forever. This will be environmentally better after it [the course] is built than it is before."

But as conservationists predicted, the part of the highly sensitive ecosystem on which Trump International Golf Links was built was largely ruined. Officials announced in December 2020 that the coastal sand dunes Trump's the resort would lose their status as a protected environmental site because they had been partially destroyed.

You can see more images and close-ups at the story link.

The New Look Of Amateur Status: Stanford Golfer Announces Agent For NIL Deals

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With name, image and likeness opportunities now available to college golfers, it’s not a surprise to see golfers landing agents or deals.

The first I’ve seen to go public in announcing an agent signing: Stanford’s Rachel Heck, class of 2024 and joining the Excel stable of golf clients that includes Tiger Woods, Justin Rose and Gary Woodland. Heck notes her agent contact bio in her Twitter bio as any good NIL pursuer would, but it’s still surreal to see amateur golfers open for business for any number of reasons. Starting with the inconsistency of non-collegiate elite amateur golfers not able to similarly benefit, merely because they do not go to an NCAA institution.

Meanwhile, Heck has competition on the already loaded Stanford women’s team. Freshman Rose Zhang has won the individual title in her first three starts, reports Ryan Herrington, who shares some wild stats from Zhang’s blazing start.

European Tour: The Fastest Hole of Golf, 2021 Guinness World Record Try

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With 27.88 seconds to beat, Sean Crocker, Nicolai Højgaard, Wilco Nienaber and Min Woo Lee were challenged to break the Guinness World Record for the Fastest hole of golf by a team of four.  In a European Tour production. On Earth. As with the last effort, some fun moments and creative production values. And no chance the PGA Tour’s finest would do this!

Rory Wins His 20th PGA Tour Title And Viewers Even Got To See Some Of It!

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The CJ Cup relocated to a Fazio built near where Blue Origin lands rockets and despite The Summit offering up his usual insipid design, somehow attracted a stellar leaderboard.

Rickie Fowler wanted back in the winner’s circle but Colin Morikawa and then eventual winner Rory McIlroy passed him down the stretch for his 20th PGA Tour win. And we barely got to see it. At least, by modern golf TV standards.

A predictable confluence of issues arose to deprive American fans of seeing the leaders until their 9th hole when the action started to dull. The PGA Tour Champions’ SAS Championship ran long and then into a sudden death playoff. This cut the first 15 minutes out of the CJ Cup’s three-hour allotted window before Golf Channel tried a split screen that didn’t soothe angry viewers who’d already missed most of the front nine. Soon, the Champions took priority with Bernhard Langer taking his sweet time and Miguel Angel Jimenez trying to pass Lee Janzen. Eventually, the playoff ended, Janzen gave an emotional interview following a winning birdie putt, and those all-important Schwab Cup standings were shown.

The coverage ran 39 minutes late.

What went wrong?

The first groups of the SAS Championship did not tee off until 9:45 am ET, with the leaders going at 11:55 a.m. ET. Apparently the geezers needed their beauty rest?

Also, the Champions played in threesomes. Breaking five hours is out of the question on any tour playing threesomes, meaning the leaders were bound to finish at the CJ Cup’s 5 p.m. ET start. To account for the withering Schwab Cup race pressure and the possibility of a playoff, the Champions should have teed off a least 45 minutes earlier.

Making all of this worse: the Golf Channel app did not work for those attempting to stream the CJ Cup and there is no PGA Tour Live coverage option to run a stream of the coverage. The Comcast-ravaged operation appears to be running out the clock until a new media deal starts in January 2022, one where the PGA Tour takes more control (though they already have a foot in the door when it comes to programming and scheduling, so this weekend’s fiasco is largely a Global Home-based screw-up).

Perhaps in the future the Tour will find a place for this coverage or use other networks when increasingly longer rounds are running into each other? Of course, NBC is also folding their namesake sports channel soon, so that’s one less option. If they care, a major question at this point.

Ultimately this was just bizarre combo platter of bad scheduling, bad tee time math, slow play, a playoff and the leadership worrying about everything but putting out a good product. And boy did they hear about it.

I’ve seen my share of viewer-rage slaughters on social media, and even with most sports fans watching other things Sunday, there was understandable interest in this leaderboard. The rage was intense. But fans need to get used to this. Play not getting any faster as every par-5 is reachable and no one is forced to rush. Coupled with a host network that is just trying to get something on the air and a Tour focused on everything but the way its product looks, this is bound to happen again.

More of the feedback to a pinned PGA Tour Tweet announcing the Sunday start time:

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State Of The Game 116: So-Yeon Ryu

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Rod Morri, Mike Clayton and yours truly enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation with 21-time international winner and two-time major winner So-Yeon Ryu. We cover a lot, including what this former Chevron (gulp) champion thinks of the event move to an unnamed course in Houston. Warning: very little rollback talk. Apologies to those drinking and listening.

The SOG 116 page is here for all your listening options.

A Fresh Example Of A Ten-Second Rule Violation Unbeknownst To The Broadcast Team

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Here’s a public service message for those not aware of a rule seemingly known to most with a golf pulse: you cannot let the ball hang on the cup edge for longer than ten seconds in hopes it might fall. This was an easy one but because we’re in a State TV era where it must be positivity all the time, we can’t know for sure what caused the Golf Channel broadcast team to not even suggest a possible rules violation (while fans watching and Tweeting knew it right away—see replies to the video posted above.

To recap: Seonghyeon Kim obviously took way too long with his ball on the 18th hole edge and was penalized one stroke after the CJ Cup final round. On cue, the Tour’s rules staff saw the obvious breach and this news was Tweeted:

The rule:

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They did eventually acknowledge the breach, with Steve Sands suggesting the broadcast team was “worried about the time frame” but that it didn’t seem to be “much of an issue.”

Kim’s ball hung on the edge for 24 seconds.

October 17th: The Open Turns 161 Today

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Big birthday to celebrate for golf fans.

A Quadrilateral for all explains.

*The big birthday was noticed on social media…

Rahm: "I don't want to see a golf club"

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To no one’s surprise, top players are running on fumes after an 18-month window of six majors and obligations to turn up all over the world. World No. 1 Jon Rahm spoke of plans to shut it down after the best and also most dramatic stretch of his career when he captured the U.S. Open, contended regularly in majors, lost a probable title after testing positive for COVID-19 at the Memorial, and became a father.

His comments after a 78 and missed cut in Madrid, as reported by AP:

"This is the first time in my life that I don't want to see a golf club," Rahm said. "And this comes from someone who loves this sport, and after a year in which some pretty good things have happened to me."

Rahm said he needs to take a break and may not play for one month until the World Tour Championship in Dubai.

"More than my body, it is my mind that can't take it. I am going to hang up my clubs for four weeks," Rahm said. "I haven't stopped since the stoppage because of COVID. ... If we add it all up, I need to rest."

"There will be solutions but this is not that solution. What they are, we’re not sure yet, but this is not it."

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Mike Stachura covers a lot of ground on the driver length “Model Local Rule” here, including early signs of more players going longer, the supportive stance of the PGA Tour, and the overall theme of this as a proactive move instead of reactive.

If that wasn’t clear, this from the USGA’s Thomas Pagel leaves no grey area about what lies ahead.

“We’re committed to our desire to stop the cycle of increased hitting distances. We have the long-term health of the game in mind. How is the game healthy 20, 50, 100 years from now. That’s something we \remain committed to. We know elite players can achieve distance increases through using a longer club, and as an industry as we go through the critical conversation about the long-term health of the game and what role distance plays with that, we just thought it was best to cap this now while we have the rest of that discussion.”

Quadrilateral: Major(s) News And Notes, October 14th, 2021

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I had to leave a few lesser notes on the cutting room floor but there’s always next week! In the meantime, we have plenty to chew on with the 46-inch Local Rule reactions ensuring widespread adoption in 2022's majors. But Phil doesn't agree and I speculate as to why.

Plus, a cow pasture wants the '31 Ryder Cup, Masters job offerings and a whole bunch of good reads both on golf and not

This would already have landed in your inbox if you signed up. And of course, if you have and a paid subscriber you can comment and read all past issues.

R.I.P. Renton Laidlaw

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One of the game’s great voices and gentlemen has left us, with the R&A first to share the sad news of Renton Laidlaw’s passing. The voice off the European Tour until 2014, Laidlaw began his career as a writer for the Edinburgh Evening News before moving into radio and television. For American viewers he became synonymous as soundtrack to weekend mornings of European Tour events.

Brendan James has more in this remembrance for Golf Australia. I’ll post more as they appear.