Five Families Make Moves To Stop Disruptor Leagues

Nice work by The Guardian’s Ewan Murray to get ahold of Official World Golf Ranking language apparently crafted with stopping small field concepts.

Documentation seen by the Guardian confirms world ranking points only apply on the basis that: “Tournaments on a tour must average fields of at least 75 players over the course of each season.” On this rule, the proposed tour clearly falls short; their 14 planned tournaments are for just 48 players.

The guidelines add: “A tour must demonstrate it has complied with the above guidelines for a period of at least one year immediately prior to being admitted to the OWGR system and must continue to comply with such guidelines following its inclusion in the OWGR system.”

The “average” language helps offset players and agents pointing to something like the Hero World Challenge’s 18-player field earning points.

Another interesting twist in the disruptor golf league world came Tuesday at Kiawah, as PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh made clear the Ryder Cup will only accept PGA of America members who get that perk through their PGA Tour membership:

“If someone wants to play on a Ryder Cup for the U.S., they’re going to need to be a member of the PGA of America, and they get that membership through being a member of the Tour,” Waugh said. “I believe the Europeans feel the same way, and so I don’t know that we can be more clear kind of than that. We don’t see that changing.”

Translation: should someone sign up for an SGL or PGL, and the PGA Tour follows through with threats to toss them off their books (with potential legal ramifications), the players would be Ryder Cup ineligible.

Whether that is enough to dissuade Americans, is unclear.

Adam Schupak filed this Golfweek with more details of Waugh’s remarks and his interesting assertion that these league conversations are healthy for the game, to a point.

“I actually think it’s healthy. You either disrupt or you get disrupted. That’s what this is,” he said. “You know, should it be a hostile takeover of the game? I think is way too far. They’ve created this conversation, which by the way isn’t new. It’s been around since 2014 in different forms, has created change. It’s created an alliance of the European Tour and the PGA Tour, which we think is really healthy for the game.”

R.I.P. Arthur Hills

The golf course architect and former ASGCA President was 91. The ASGCA’s announcement of his passing:

Arthur Hills, ASGCA Fellow, dies at 91 

BROOKFIELD, Wis. – American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA) Past President Arthur Hills, ASGCA Fellow, died May 18, 2021, in Florida. He was age 91.

A graduate of both Michigan State University (science) and the University of Michigan (landscape architecture), Hills excelled at golf as a member of the MSU Spartan golf team. He formed his golf course architecture firm in the 1960s. Today, Hills * Forrest * Smith, Golf Course Architects continues to, as their website states, “create golf course designs that stimulate the senses, display creativity, and honor the hallowed traditions of the game as they relate to strategy, shot values and aesthetic character.”

Hills designed more than 200 new golf courses around the world and renovated more than 150 other courses. His new designs include: Bonita Bay, Naples, Florida; The Golf Club of Georgia, Atlanta; Bighorn Golf Club, Palm Desert, California; Keene Trace Golf Club, Lexington, Kentucky; and Hyatt Hill Country Resort, San Antonio, Texas. Hills-designed courses have hosted a number of distinguished amateur and professional tournaments, including U.S. Opens and the Ryder Cup.

“As a kid drawing golf holes and dreaming about becoming a designer, I would read the magazines and marvel at the articles about new courses,” ASGCA President Forrest Richardson recalled. “One was Tamarron in Colorado, a new course by Art Hills set in a rugged valley with steep cliffs. Eventually I got to see it firsthand, and it inspired me with its bold greens and creative routing.

An environmental pioneer, Hills designed the first Audubon Signature Sanctuary courses in the United States, Mexico and Europe. ASGCA Past President Pete Dye dubbed Hills “the Mayor of Naples” for the number of private country club courses that he designed in and near that coastal Florida location.

ASGCA Past President Steve Forrest said, “He started the business by placing an ad in the Toledo, Ohio, Yellow Pages under ‘Golf Course Architect’ while operating a landscape contracting business. I had the great privilege of learning all aspects of golf course architecture from a distinguished professional practitioner and humble gentleman over 42 years. Arthur became a father-like figure to me who was a mentor, an instructor, exhorter and admonisher while always trying to improve his own skills and increase his personal knowledge every day.”

“Mr. Hills was among a handful of golf architects who subscribed to a newsletter I published about golf design in the 1970s, and he also took time to comment and contribute,” Richardson said. “While he left an incredible legacy of work across the world, for me I will always recall the kindness he showed a young aspiring student — a gift we should all pay forward.”

Hills has been inducted into both the Ohio and Michigan Golf Halls of Fame and received a lifetime achievement award from the Michigan Golf Course Owners Association.

He became an ASGCA member in 1971. Hills served as ASGCA president in 1992-93 and achieved Fellow status in 2003. He is survived by his wife Mary. They had eight children, 24 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.  

Visitation will be at Reeb Funeral Home, Sylvania, Ohio, on Sunday, May 23, from 3 p.m. – 6 p.m. Funeral Mass will be at St. Joseph Catholic Church, Sylvania, Ohio, on Monday, May 24, at 11 a.m.

Westwood On Olympic Golf: "They didn't quite get the format right or the players that play in it right and the qualification right."

Lee Westwood has an outside shot at making England’s Olympic golf team and surprised media assembled at Kiawah Island by revealing he’s already given notice of his intent to pass on Tokyo.

The reason? Too much golf at that time of year.

Many, many reasons. I have a few family commitments,and I already proved a few weeks ago that playing seven in eight weeks is not good for me. And there's already a lot of tournaments crammed in around there, Scottish Open, Open Championship. I need a couple of weeks off between there and the FedEx in Memphis. Then there's only another week off and I could be playing three FedExCup events, the PGA, a week off, then the Ryder Cup. I want to be in good shape for all of those. I think going to Japan the week before Memphis, just with all that going on, is a bad idea, especially when I can't say whether I'm in it at the moment anyway.

I'm of an age where I need to make a plan and stick to that going forward, else my game suffers.

And then he offered this on the format:

LEE WESTWOOD: I know why they brought the Olympics to golf, and I'm all for that. It's taking it to another audience, and obviously the funding from the Olympic committee feeds down through golf, which is great.I just feel like maybe they didn't quite get the format right or the players that play in it right and the qualification right.

Quadrilateral: 2021 PGA Championship Monday News And Notes

Some good stuff to read and refine your sense of what kind of week we’ll have at Kiawah. Anytime the forecast is good we’re almost assured some special moments, but throw in a refined Ocean, some key players finding their form in time and some potential (rangefinder) controversy, and we’re off to a good start.

My roundup for Quadrilateral’s generous subscribers.

Subscription info (and remember Thursday’s will be available to allow followers of the newsletter).

Discovery-Warnermedia Merger Hatched Over Golf(ish)

As if the ego maniacal types congregating at each February’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am needed inflated sense of self, the megamerger of WarnerMedia and Discovery had origins in golf.

According to the New York Times’ Edmund Lee and John Koblin, Discovery CEO David Zaslav initiated the talks and it was always only a conversation with WarnerMedia.

Mr. Zaslav expected to meet with AT&T’s chief executive, John Stankey, at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament in February, but both had stayed home because of the pandemic. Instead, Mr. Zaslav sent an email to Mr. Stankey as he was watching the golf tournament on TV to discuss a possible deal.

“You around?” Mr. Zaslav said he wrote to Mr. Stankey. “I have an idea.” He added some emoji flair to his signoff with several 🏌🏻and one 😎.

Mr. Zaslav said the note kicked off a conversation that lasted several hours. Later, the two met several times “secretly from my brownstone in Greenwich Village,” Mr. Zaslav said.

Met secretly at my home would have sufficed.

Hollywood Reporter: Will NBC Turn Its Sights On ViacomCBS?

The Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Masters speculates on ramifications of the Warnermedia-Discovery merger and floats this doozy that would have huge ramifications for golf:

Before it emerged that Discovery was in the game, the betting had been that NBCUniversal would make off with the WarnerMedia assets, including premium cabler HBO, Warner Bros. studios and Turner networks like TNT and TBS. A decision to make an offer would have been up to NBCU owner Comcast, which may have hesitated and lost out on the chance. Now sources believe NBCU will turn its sights on ViacomCBS.

Whether or not that happens, says one knowledgeable source, depends on if ViacomCBS chairman Shari Redstone is a seller (she’d have to consider it, given the state of the media world) and if the deal — which would potentially bring assets including CBS and NBC, with their various news operations, under one roof, not to mention Paramount and Universal — can pass federal antitrust scrutiny. It would be sure to face a much harder look from regulators than a Discovery combination with WarnerMedia. No doubt assets would have to be shed if such a marriage were to be attempted.

Oh they know how to shed!

The story goes on to detail some golf stuff related to Jeff Zucker and AT&T Chief John Stankey.

Chris Powell's MacKenzie Reclamation Is Featured By The NY Times, Golf.com

During the coronavirus pandemic Chris Powell became obsessed with restoring a lost Alister MacKenzie design in Wales and mowed enough down to play it…for a day.

Josh Sens at Golf filed this take on the wild story, with a definite bent toward golfers who will enjoy the details.

And in Sunday’s New York Times, Jack Williams filed a similar feature with photos by Phil Hatcher-Moore.

While others in Britain spent the past year or so navigating coronavirus lockdowns and picking up indoor hobbies, Powell estimated that he had spent roughly 1,000 hours roaming this land that was once his town’s local golf course — a site that closed more than five decades ago and has slowly been melding into the landscape ever since.

Thanks to Powell’s dedication to discovery and his skills as a one-man renovation team, he managed not only to identify all of the previous tees and greens, hidden among the hills and foliage, but also to repair the course to a playable state. There were surprises along the way, too — like the discovery of ties to a certain course in Augusta, Ga. — and now he and the group were ready to tackle the Rhayader Golf Links once more.

Anyway, both are super reads about a pretty fun story.

Golf Waits To See Who Would Run Discovery-Warnermedia

Bloomberg broke the Sunday stunner: barring a last minute issue, AT&T will spin off its Warnermedia empire and merge with Discovery.

While most of the hardcore golfers have moved on from the ranks of AT&T leadership, Discovery’s David Zaslav is the brains behind the PGA Tour-GolfTV partnership and his company owns Golf Digest.

It remains unclear who will lead the new combined company, but Zaslav seems the likely candidate and his role as CEO would certainly help the cause of a few golf partnerships.

**Axios reports that Zaslav will oversee the company and Jeff Zucker may hang around to keep running CNN and the Turner sports empire.

Trump Ferry Point Situation May Become A Long Saga

AP’s Bernard Condon considers the possibility that New York City may not be able to break its contract with Trump Golf over the former President’s January 6th role.

The city intends for November 14th to be the last day of Trump Golf’s management deal. Eric Trump says the organization should be paid $30 million to go away.

Condon writes:

In response to questions from The Associated Press, the city referred to legal filings insisting Trump’s actions leading up to the riot caused a “plain and irrefutable” breach of the contract and that the Trump Organization’s last day running the course will be Nov. 14.

Area landscaper and sometime Trump course golfer Sean DeBartolo, who often drives past the hillside sign spelling out “TRUMP LINKS” in giant stones, says he could offer a temporary solution: Fill in those letters with sod and wait for tempers to cool.

“Worst-case scenario, it’s only going to cost a couple of thousand,” says the owner of DeBartolo Landscaping in nearby New Rochelle. “It’d be three guys and it’d be done in a day.”

David Coggins Q&A And Other Sunday PGA Notes

The Quad will be going out daily to paid subscribers all week with followers getting a free live look-in Thursday, but today I wrap up the PGA preview coverage with more insights on Charleston courtesy of author David Coggins, plus a few notes.

Shots Recreated: Seve at The Belfry

I remember it clear as day and still have no idea how Seve Ballesteros cut a shot into The Belfry’s bizarro 10th green. That was the 1989 Ryder Cup and it turns out, he also did it 1985 (embed below).

For this week’s Betfred British Masters, host Danny Willett was joined by Pablo Larrazabal & Renato Paratore in trying to recreate one of the most iconic shots in course history.

The yardage: 265 yards. The trio used replicas of Seve’s persimmon driver.

I won’t spoil too much but you might guess, it took a while to get adjusted to the old clubs. Extra kudos for the creativity, effort and cheap entertainment.

"Transgender woman wins Florida mini-tour event, sets sights squarely on LPGA"

Beth Ann Nichols does a superb job telling Hailey Davidson’s story, who works in social media but is dreaming of an LPGA career. She just won her first mini-tour event and is awaiting word on potential LPGA eligibility.

Davidson, 28, works in social media for NBC’s Peacock division under the Golf Channel umbrella but has dreams of competing on the LPGA. In January, Davidson underwent gender reassignment surgery, a six-hour procedure. She’s been undergoing hormone treatments since Sept. 24, 2015, a date that’s tattooed on her right forearm.

“We are currently reviewing Hailey’s application to participate in LPGA Tour events under the LPGA’s gender policy,” said Heather Daly-Donofrio, the LPGA’s chief tour operations officer. “The policy is designed to be a private and confidential process between the LPGA and the athlete.”

In 2010, the LPGA voted to eliminate its requirement that players be “female at birth” not long after a transgender woman filed a lawsuit against the tour.

Earlier this year, the USGA changed its Gender Policy to shorten the length of time transgender athletes had to wait to compete. Under the previous policy, a player must have undergone gender reassignment surgery at least two years prior to the entry deadline.

478 Starts Later, Richard Bland Is A European Tour Winner

Richard Bland’s Betfred British Masters win made for an extra-gratifying Saturday viewing experience, as the ultimate journeyman captured win one in 478 European Tour appearances.

The 48-year-old overcame Italian Guido Migliozzi’s best effort—including a huge par at the difficult (well, maybe goofy) 18th—to win a sudden-death playoff.

The win was noticed and celebrated all over the world.

While it won’t earn him a spot in next week’s PGA, he is lining up for a U.S. Open spot should he desire. From the European Tour notes:

The victory also puts him in pole position for a chance to earn a place in the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in June. The top ten aggregate Race to Dubai points earners (not otherwise exempt) at the Betfred British Masters hosted by Danny Willett, Made in HimmerLand presented by FREJA and Porsche European Open will earn a place in the third Major Championship of the year.

Bland sunk this long birdie putt to ultimately land in a playoff against Migliozzi:

What a way to finish! 👏👏👏@blandy73 // #BetfredBritishMasterspic.twitter.com/6brTREgx3j

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) May 15, 2021

Even the consummate pro interviewer (and Bland’s instructor) Tim Barter let his guard down and had a discernible throat lump. A teaser of the interview below, which can be viewed in full here including an wonderful video chat with his parents.

"I've done it."

In his 478th event on the @EuropeanTour, @blandy73 made his dream a reality. 🙌 pic.twitter.com/r0KDrweleN

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) May 15, 2021

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tim Barter (@timbartergolf)

Guardian: "Authoritarianism for golfers? 'How big is the cheque?'"

The Guardian’s Ewan Murray wonders why the Golf Saudi-backed Super Golf League is not dying the same quick death as the European Super League:

Mickelson, DeChambeau and others can apparently entertain offers from the Saudis of eye-watering sums of money without anyone focusing on why they might associate with such a controversial – or abhorrent, depending on one’s level of background reading – regime. Authoritarianism for golfers? “How big is the cheque?”

When the European Super League crashed around the ears of the very executives who thought they had devised the perfect closed shop, it was against the backdrop of fury from supporters. There is no golf equivalent of that; save the Ryder Cup, which takes place once every two years, this really is not a tribal environment. Another key difference is that football clubs had already committed to their lucrative breakaway. Golfers have thus far only been in lengthy negotiations over a plan that would result in the PGA and European Tours losing players to a 14-event global environment where team and individual elements combine.

Given that the money is definitely from the Crown Prince’s Golf Saudi and not entirely sexy from a fan perspective—given reports of a Middle East-heavy schedule—it is odd the Premier Golf League ripoff is lingering.

Padraig: Court Cases Loom If Saudi's Offer 10-12 Events

Padraig Harrington shared his views of the proposed Super Golf League backed by Golf Saudi, including possible Ryder Cup ramifications.

But this comment to The Telegraph’s James Corrigan was even more intriguing, implying possible “defectors” believe they can still dip in to the existing Tours on sponsor invites.

Harrington fears that if the Saudis do keep pushing on, the issue could end in court, particularly as the SGL seems only to be planning for 10-12 events a year and not the 18-20 first mooted. “It is interesting because you could see somebody playing the SGL’s 12 tournaments and also playing 15 Tour events to satisfy their membership regulations,” the Irishman said.

That’s a big schedule for today’s stars who are, in part (after the money), intrigued by these proposed concepts because they reduce the schedule and theoretically work around the majors.