PIP Pandemonium: Phil Declares Victory, Tour Says Not So Fast, Morikawa Posts Dog Photo In Late 10th Place Play

/

As the (not secret any more) Player Impact Program hurtles toward its year one conclusion, the silly bonus pool is wrapping with a deservedly absurd finish.

Phil Mickelson declared PIP victory two days before the calendar ended the comical bonus pool. This, despite just one top 10 against the under 50’s this year—the 2021 PGA Championship—Mickelson apparently used four Champions Tour wins to accrue the magical number of Google searches, Meltwater mentions, MVP Index points, Nielsen scores and Q-rating strength to edge Tiger Woods for the $8 million first place prize.

The closest you’ll get to a PIP victory speech since it’s a private matter:

You have to give Phil credit with the late rush of Tweets and replies while playing to the angry bro mobs, a key demo for accumulating Meltwaters by stirring up some virus questions and replying to Elon Musk.

Oh, but not so fast says Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch:

Maybe Phil’s premature celebratory Tweet will ensure victory? Or will the Commissioner and his team of independent analysts who tabulate Player of the Year totals find a way to de-Meltwater Phil’s late run?

These are just the kind of ramifications one deals with when the subject is a cockamamie concoction created for all the wrong reasons. Robert Lusetich summed up the farce best here:

Imagine that, discriminating against the youth trying to grow the game. Sad.

Speaking of the next generation, dream-demo Open Championship winner and dignified user of social media Collin Morikawa reportedly will finish 11th. This means he misses out on last place’s $3 million.

But showing vision and wisdom beyond his 24 years, Morikawa made a last ditch effort with social media gold: celebrating his 11th place finish with humor (on Twitter), and birthday well wishes to his labradoodle. Sources say the indices give extra weight to dog posts—and then triple that for any doodle—so there may still be hope for young Morikawa to crack the top 10 once that independent firm digs into the numbers!

Not since Freddie Tait posed with his dog Nails has a golfer’s dog potentially played such a key role in the game.

And then there’s Jim Herman, coming home strong even as they’re breaking down the bunting, packing up the barricades and still making his valiant PIP plays:

What a time for the game!

Quadrilateral: Major(s) News & Notes, December 30th, 2021

/

Quadrilateral Exclusive: Mike & Mike's USGA Holiday Letter

/

Trump's Scotland Losses Blamed On Brexit

/

Despite £3.3m in emergency support from the UK government during 2020’s pandemic, Trump properties at Turnberry and Balmedie show the businesses lost £4.7 million. Severin Carrell reports for The Guardian.

The resorts reported heavy losses due to their enforced closure during the lockdowns: the headline loss for Turnberry was £3.4m, after a £321,000 profit in 2019, and £1.3m at Balmedie, compared to a loss of £1.1m in 2019.

The story notes that this is the ninth consecutive year that Trump International near Aberdeen has reported a loss.

Also from the filing: the Trump’s blamed also Brexit for impacting the family business, notes The Daily Beast’s Justin Rorhlich.

Three months before he won the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump gave himself a new nickname: Mr. Brexit. After the nation voted to break away from the rest of Europe, Trump appeared at Turnberry, his golf course in Scotland, and commended the Brits who “took back their country.” He later said Brexit was “a great advantage for [the] UK.” But, in true Trumpian fashion, Brexit wasn’t great for Trump personally. According to a financial disclosure filed with Scottish authorities and signed by Eric Trump, Brexit “impacted our business as supply chains have been impacted by availability of drivers and staff, reducing deliveries and availability of certain product lines.”

Turnberry has since seen higher prices, which have “increased from additional freight and import duty charges,” the filing states. “Staff availability has been a challenge from a combination of wage inflation with retail and logistics sectors increasing wages to attract staff due to increased business levels,” it says. And, it explains, “[T]he staffing pool has been reduced with lack of access to European staff for businesses in general resulting in greater demand for individuals previously available to the resort.”

Who could have seen that coming?

State Of The Game 118: Is The Sandbelt Invitational The Future Of Golf?

/

A special Sandbelt Invitational post-op analysis with co-founder Mike Clayton offers an in-depth look at the event that offered mostly young Australians the chance to play tournament conditions at some of the planet’s best.

Plus, we touched on Tiger’s return, the latest Saudi and PGA Tour moves and what we’re looking forward to in 2022.

The Apple option.

The Google option.

Brady Watt Wins The Inaugural Sandbelt Invitational

/

Golf Australia’s Jimmy Emmanuel reports on the first-ever Sandbelt Invitational hosted by Geoff Ogilvy and Mike Clayton, won by 31-year-old Brady Watt the former World No. 1 amateur and Perth native. The four-sandbelt course featured, men, women and amateurs. Grace Kim won the low woman pro title.

Emmanuel writes:

All four will leave the event and the spectacular Peninsula Kingswood extremely happy. But so will Clayton, Ogilvy and co. who have created something extremely special that has proven big names and big tents aren’t the recipe for tournament success. Quality courses and a unique learning opportunity for young players a winning combination that might draw the other sooner rather than later.

And in a follow up column, Emmanuel raved:

The four layouts that welcomed the likes of Herbert, Ogilvy, Peter Fowler, Su Oh, Grace Kim and others were the stars of the show. All four are ranked in the top-20 courses in the country and setup as if the Australian Open was finishing on the grounds the day they welcomed the field of a little over 60.

“It’s the best courses that we have, setup as well as they can be setup, with the best players we can find. What else do you need, that’s a pretty good formula,” Ogilvy said of the event to Golf Australia magazine.

Australia has been starved of big tournament golf due to COVID, but our best courses have gone wanting even longer for other reasons. And Ogilvy, Clayton and the rest of the organising crew proved the value of venue when creating something that draws attention locally and overseas, impresses the players and has people wanting more.

Here’s a nice video from the official account:

NGF: "2021 total rounds will exceed last year’s"

/

While the final numbers will not be in until January, the NGF’s Joe Beditz says that despite small declines in recent months, rounds of golf will finish up 4-5% in 2021.

He offered this thinking on the rise despite a return to the office for some.

So how do we explain rounds being up over last year? A few thoughts:

1. Lots of golfers continue to have more schedule flexibility than prior to the pandemic, and so afternoon tee sheets are still being filled

2. While the weather this year hasn’t been quite as ‘golf friendly’ as last year, it wasn’t too bad

3. We’ve hung on to many of the new and returning golfers (public and private) from last year

But the main reason rounds are going to finish up: March and April crushed it relative to the previous year. Because half of all courses were closed during those months in 2020, and others had restrictions on play, this year’s comparable rounds were bound to be way, way higher … and they were.

Quadrilateral: Major(s) News And Notes, December 23rd, 2021

/

Ratings: 2021 PNC Championship Up Big!

/

Tiger and Charlie beat 2020 Tiger and Charlie!

According to Showbuzzdaily.com, the 2021 PNC Championship final round drew a Nielsen 1.43 overnight, with an average of 2.23 million viewers and 404,000 of the cap-on-backwards demo.

The 2020 edition featuring Team Woods and 19 other teams drew a Sunday .98 rating and 1.5 million/280,000 non-AARPers.

Quadrilateral: Seth Waugh's PGA Of America Christmas Letter

/

PGA Tour Grants Saudi Releases With Draconian Conditions: Players Must Play Return To Play Pebble Beach At Least Once, Possibly Even Twice!

/

Punishment for those collecting seven and eight-figure appearance fees (Photo by Geoff Shackelford)

They weren’t bluffing down there at the Global Home regarding February’s Saudi International and preventing as many as thirty top players from playing the same week as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

Nobody messes with Jay Monahan! He is the Sheriff of all…wait, what?

The potential defectors get to abandon one of the biggest events on the PGA Tour calendar and their punishment will to play Pebble Beach-Spyglass-MPCC over the next two years? All while collecting huge appearance fees and possibly laying the groundwork for fundamentally disrupting the PGA Tour’s business?

Tony Soprano, he is not. Guess Jay’s in the holiday spirit?

Back in July Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch reported that players would be denied releases to play the event believed to be a precursor to a Saudi Golf League. But now Lynch is first to report the releases will be granted for the February 3rd-6th event but with “strings attached.” Some really, really thin strings.

Any player who has competed in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am event at least once in the past five years must commit to play at least once in the next two years (2023 and 2024). Players who have not competed at Pebble Beach in the last five years will need to do so twice in the three years until 2025.

The travesty of it all! How will they cope?

A source familiar with the names of the 30 players who applied for waivers told Golfweek that 19 of them will have to commit to one appearance at the AT&T, while the other 11 will be required to play twice.

Cracking that whip! I half-expected to read they’d be prevented from getting Spanish Bay rooms overlooking the service bay.

One source familiar with the situation told Golfweek that lower-profile players invited to compete in King Abdullah Economic City have been offered appearance fees of around $400,000, with mid-tier players receiving between $500,000 and $750,000. High-profile stars get seven-figure offers. Chartered private aircraft to and from Saudi Arabia is also provided.

Growing the game!

Meanwhile the PGA Tour Twitter account acknowledged this gruesome situation. Remarkably, the PGA Tour has yet to suggest it has any issue with how the country in question sometimes conducts its business. Psssssst: someone tell the Global Home the Fund is no longer invested in Disney and Marriott, so no need to worry about upsetting proud or semi-proud partners.

Bryson Very, Very Briefly Posts Video To Confirm He's Not Using Steroids**

/

This is one of those instances where you wonder how much thought and analysis went into the conceptual phase, only to have to embarrassingly remove it within minutes of posting.

Given the camera assistance and potential spon-con play with Quest Diagnostics, there appears to have been a “team” decision for Bryson DeChambeau to debunk any rumors of steroid use. And judging by the Twitter comments posted before the video came down, DeChambeau also revealed he’s a cat person. This could be the real reason the post came down, not some a frantic call from Cult Ponte Vedra warning that the video was a terrible, terrible PIP play was he’s closing in on the same fifth place finish headquarters penciled him in for at the season’s start.

Either way, it was “uploader” deleted:

Thankfully, G.C. Digital is not taking the holiday week off and posted this description of the short-lived video:

DeChambeau said he had bloodwork and a urine sample done before the video cut to him doing an intense speed-training session. The video then transitioned to a shirtless DeChambeau scrolling through his emails on his phone at 10:30 one night during the Hero World Challenge earlier this month in the Bahamas. DeChambeau held up the email of the results on his phone, while the PDFs were also posted to the video.

"All negative," DeChambeau exclaimed, as the lab report showed a long list of negative results, including for amphetamine, methamphetamine, anabolic and masking agents, dozens of anabolic androgenic agents and growth hormone. "Nothing!"

DeChambeau then capped the video sitting next to Greg Roskopf, found of Muscle Activation Techniques, while saying, "This is better than steroids."

Subtle plug there.

As for the Twitter comments during the short time the video was up, they’re, uh, informative..

**It lives!!! Warning: this is six minutes you’ll never get back!

Today In Growing The Game: LIV Golf Investments All In on GTG

/

Just a fantastic blend of point missing and obtuseness on display here as both quotes about the Saudi Golf League’s latest hires hide behind “grow the game”. In the first sentence!

Guess they didn’t read my GTG variant warning.

For Immediate Point Missing:

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. and NEW YORK, Dec. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- LIV Golf Investments announced today that it has appointed Monica Fee and Lily Kenny as Senior Vice President, Global Head of Partnerships and Head of Strategy, respectively. The addition of Fee and Kenny bolsters the number of women serving in leadership positions within the company as both will transition into their new roles with LIV Golf Investments immediately, reporting into Chief Commercial Officer, Sean Bratches.

"I am very pleased to welcome Monica and Lily to LIV Golf Investments to help lead our company's ambitious plans to expand our global corporate presence and grow the game of golf around the world," said Sean Bratches, Chief Commercial Officer of LIV Golf Investments. "This is an exciting time for all of us as we grow our team, and the appointment of Monica and Lily is the latest show of force of how we are strengthening the commercial arm of the business."

Grow it all! And hey, they even can go to restaurants when they visit Saudi Arabia so they’ve got that going for them.

Fee previously served as a Property Sales Agent at CAA Sports, representing many of the world's top sports properties for naming rights opportunities and global sponsorship. In 2017, Fee was recognized by Adweek as one of "The Most Powerful Women in Sports." In her new role as Senior Vice President, Global Head of Partnerships, Fee will be tasked with identifying key partners that share LIV Golf Investments' vision for establishing groundbreaking platforms to grow the sport of golf across the world.

"I look forward to bringing my creativity and sponsorship expertise to the LIV Golf Investments team, helping to grow the game and link leading brands to a new global sports property," said Fee. "It is an honor to join Sean's team and be part of something truly groundbreaking in the world of sport."

Want to grow the game? Take all those millions you’re going to pay pros and put them into affordable par-3 courses, public golf and starter programs.

I feel more g word drops coming…

Kenny joins LIV Golf Investments from Amazon where she played an integral role in the company's rapidly growing entertainment space over the last five years, most recently leading the international expansion strategy and the launch of Amazon's ad supported video service, IMDb TV, in the United Kingdom. In her new role as Head of Strategy, Kenny will be responsible for advising on strategic decisions across the commercial operations within LIV Golf Investments.

"The game of golf has immense potential for growth, and I am eager to leverage my expertise and tap into the game's true potential," said Kenny. "It is an exciting time to join the LIV Golf Investments leadership team as we work to push boundaries and deliver a new experience to professional golfers and fans alike."

It’s true potential. How did we all miss it after several hundred centuries?

Cookie Jar On Bushfoot Golf Club

/

Sigh…I drove by this one in 2019 going between Portrush and Giant’s Causeway without stopping. Maybe in 2025! Bushfoot sure looks like a model 9-holer for the community as well as a nice spot for a morning or late nine if you should be so lucky to play Royal Portrush. And hit the Causeway too.

From the Cookie Jar golf team: