PGA Tour Commish Issues Memo To Reign In The Lunatic Fringe
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I was starting to wonder if PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan enjoyed seeing his players bash the governing bodies over the new rules given his public stance against the R&A and USGA over distance. A position which has added to the disharmony as it suggested to players that the governing bodies are looking to take your hard-earned distance and hard-earned endorsement dollars away.
Maybe he saw Charl Schwartzel unnecessarily berating a PGA Tour official at the Honda or read some of the absurd player comments directed at the new rules.
Maybe he read Eamon Lynch’s Golfweek column on what a bad look it is for the pros to be whining about rules that do not effect 99.9% of the population or rules that were enacted with good intentions to help the pro game. Sure, some things really stink like the drop rule, but as Lynch writes…
The problem is that Tour players seem less interested in providing insight than in shifting blame.
Maybe it was Justin Thomas’s Twitter exchange with the USGA.
Maybe Michael Bamberger’s admonishment of all involved did the trick.
Just ask yourself, before you open your mouth or Twitter account: Are you about to make the game better? Are you putting the game first, or yourself? Fowler failed on Thursday. The USGA failed on Saturday. It was all so inane it makes you want to scream.
Maybe the accountants finally delivered an updated estimate on Foster and Partner’s new PGA Tour HQ building and realized there’s nothing left to administer the rules, much less enforce them?
Maybe Monahan was touched by R&A Ambassador Padraig Harrington’s defense of his friends in the rules world or the comments of Thomas Bjorn, a Ryder Cup winning captain who knows everything after guiding Europe to victory.
Maybe he saw this fight among grown men in flip-flops at a South African course over cheating and realized it looks a little like his players squabbling with the governing bodies?
Or maybe he read the absolute gibberish being churned out by some of his players on Twitter.
Matthew Fitzpatrick, for instance:
I believe Matthew is saying PGA Tour referees are supposed to ignore the rules as written. What could go wrong!
And this exchange involving Patton Kizzire, followed up by some particularly odd logic from Andrew Landry, could have done the trick:
Yes, Patton not getting in the U.S. Open is exactly the reason to throw out the new rules! Brilliant!
Whatever it was, Monahan issued a memo to PGA Tour players reported on by GolfChannel.com’s Rex Hoggard essentially telling the lunatics in the asylum to pipe down.
This should quiet things, assuming the players actually read the memo:
“[The Tour] put forward a lengthy list of recommendations to improve the rules in many ways, including the removal of numerous penalties, and virtually all our suggestions were incorporated,” the memo from Monahan read. “We also had the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed rules prior to implementation, which resulted in modifications for the final version.”
The full document Tweeted by Hoggard:
