When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Plenty of notes in the weekly free edition of The Quadrilateral for all the world to see.
As always, here is more on The Quadrilateral.
And The Quad’s Substack home page.
Plus, the free Substack Reader app for a reading experience minus cookie acceptance requests, pop-up ads if your finger nears the screen, random crashes and autoplay videos.
And in doing so Lawrenson notes two key points worth keeping an eye on:
The interesting thing will be if the DP World Tour follow through with their threat to prevent anyone who signs up for a Saudi event from becoming a Ryder Cup captain in the future.
It looks as if Westwood, Poulter and Garcia — three shoo-ins for the job under normal circumstances — are ready to call their bluff and see who blinks first. It would certainly damage the credibility of the Ryder Cup if all three were overlooked for the post.
That’s an understatement. It would be a stunner given how all three have seemed like locks to one day wear $1900 jumpers and drive the bright blue buggies of the DP World Team, I mean, Europe.
He also offers this reminder about all of the money talk surrounding the world of golf.
There's a war going on, people are struggling everywhere to pay their bills, and yet 48 golfers, half of whom will be journeymen at best, will play a glorified exhibition 54-hole tournament for a $4million first prize, with even last place getting $120,000.
Is it possible to conceive a worse optic for golf than that?
Final round coverage of the PGA Tour Heritage tournament averaged a 1.9 rating and 3.68 million viewers on CBS Sunday, marking the largest audience for the event since 2003. Jordan Spieth’s win, which peaked with 5.04 million viewers, increased 20% in ratings and 43% in viewership from last year. The previous 19-year mark was 3.46 million for Spieth’s previous win in 2015.
Also noted by Paulsen and this should not be underestimated: “The 19-year high for the Heritage came on the same Easter Sunday in which the NBA scored its largest opening round playoff audience in 20 years.”
CBS had the other highest-rated non-major of the year with the WM Open in February.
The two-man team Zurich Classic fared poorly for CBS despite Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele winning. According to ShowBuzzDaily.com, it drew a 1.16 final round rating on CBS, averaging just 1.8 million viewers, down from 2021’s 1.37/2.1 million avg. Saturday’s third round drew a .96/1.4 million average, a tick down from 2021.
The 2022 ratings news for NBC continues to be uninspired. But at least the Tour can go right down the Global Home hall and ask what’s going on?
Here’s guessing the World No. 2 has not heard of Tom Morris or Walter Hagen…or about 30 others.
Rahm, speaking to Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis ahead of this week’s Mexico Open, believed what Mickelson said and did shouldn’t damage his legacy.
“That guy has given his life to golf,” Rahm said about Mickelson. “A lot of what we have, a lot of people don’t know, a lot of what we have and what we are competing for right now is because of [Phil]. A lot of people focus on Tiger but he is easily one of the top 10 best players of all time. He is a Hall of Fame and we should recognise him as that. He has given his life to the public, no one has signed more autographs, no one has done more for the fans.”
Steve Loy, Co-President, Americas of SPORTFIVE, issued the issued the following statement today: pic.twitter.com/okZdMIv5P4
— SPORTFIVE (@sportfiveagency) April 25, 2022
Tiger and Phil are entered, but Mickelson’s agent issues statement suggesting his disruptor client is keeping all options open, including a possible Saudi payday.
The fountain at Trump Doral.
Bob Harig at Morning Read/SI had the news first: Trump Doral will host October’s concluding eighth event of the LIV Golf Invitational Series. The famed Blue Monster course was site of the PGA Tour’s annual Miami stop beginning in 1962 and until the PGA Tour left for Mexico City’s WGC event, now defunct.
Harig writes:
After five years away, Doral will get professional golf again under Norman’s LIV Golf banner, the $30 million Team Championship in which the four-man winning team will split $16 million.
As you may recall Commissioner Greg Norman and friends have abandoned a team concept for 7 individual events followed by this concluding tournament. Harig has also reported that 15 top 100 players have registered and may seek releases from their Tours.
Either way, expect former President Donald Trump to add to October’s spectacle, whatever format is used to give out $30 million of Public Investment Fund money. It should be fun.
When Doral was dumped by the Tour, he said…
"I just heard that the PGA Tour is taking their tournament out of Miami and moving it to Mexico," Trump said in an interview with Fox News in May of 2016. "It's at Doral ... they used one of my places. They're moving their tournament; it's the Cadillac World Golf Championship. And Cadillac's been a great sponsor, but they're moving it to Mexico. They're moving it to Mexico City which, by the way, I hope they have kidnapping insurance.
"But they're moving it to Mexico City. And I'm saying, you know, what's going on here? It is so sad when you look at what's going on with our country."
Well it’s back and funded by folks who’ve done a little kidnapping and slaughtering themselves. It comes full circle.
Reader GP was miffed at reports out of New Orleans of Jay Haas becoming the oldest player to make a PGA Tour cut. While there might be some recency bias and general silliness to a team event counting the same as an individual tournament, it’s still nice that the Haas’ competed, made the cut and acknowledged Sam Snead.
Adam Schupak handled the “record” well in this story and as you’d expect for a class act like Jay Haas who knows the history of the pro game, he said just what you’d hope after making a key putt to get to the weekend.
That included becoming the oldest player to make a cut on the PGA Tour at 68 years, 4 months, 20 days, edging past Sam Snead, who made the cut at the 1979 Manufacturers Hanover Westchester Classic at 67 years, 2 months and 23 days.
“I don’t think it should (count) because Sam Snead did it on his own and all that, but anything that I’m even remotely close to Sam Snead on would be very special,” said Haas, of Snead, who was in the field when he made his Tour debut at the 1973 Wyndham Championship.
In a lot of ways, these records or near records are more impressive for Haas:
Haas is making his 799th Tour start, second on the all-time list behind Mark Brooks (803). Among his other achievements he counts leading the record books with 591 made cuts. And Jay, who captained the 2015 U.S. Presidents Cup team, was no slouch in his prime, winning nine times on Tour and another 18 times on PGA Tour Champions, where he remains active.
It was another fun week at Wilshire Country Club where Nasa Hataoka dominated and set herself up as a U.S. Women’s Open favorite with her DIO Implant LA Open victory.
The L.A. Times editorial board weighted in on the latest attempt by assemblymember Cristina Garcia to help fast track conversion of some California golf courses into affordable housing and in doing so, inadvertently highlighted how bizarre the proposal is.
It’s a sign of how desperate our housing shortage is that lawmakers and some cities are even considering converting golf courses to housing. This should be a last resort given the paucity of open space in many communities. Empty shopping malls and other unused commercial space should be the first places to look.
Yes they should.
Then there is this:
There are 960 golf courses in California, according to the National Golf Foundation, a trade association for the golf industry, but only about 200 are owned by local cities and counties.
Some municipal courses are financially struggling and have to be subsidized by the local government. That could make them candidates for conversion — especially in a community that would rather have housing and open space than a golf course.
It’d be fascinating to hear who many courses right now are being subsidized—as opposed to doing the Parks and Rec subsidizing that so many golf departments do—and how many fall into the category of being in crowded communities eager to convert open space to “affordable housing”.
Conversion to parks maybe, but not more housing that brings more density and traffic. It feels like that would be a very short list.
And there’s this catch on the whole affordable case, too.
Under this bill, developers would be required to make at least 25% of the units affordable to low-income renters or buyers and set aside at least 15% of the land for publicly accessible open space.
So all of this for just 25% falling into the affordable category? And we know developers will not go higher than the minimum.
There’s no question that golf courses are ideal, even idyllic, swaths of real estate as large as 100 acres or more. Even with the requirements for open space, that kind of land could hold a lot of housing.
But there are a lot of issues to keep in mind. Public golf courses are already offering something affordable — golf. The average price nationally for an 18-hole round of golf at a course open to the public was $38 last year, according to the National Golf Foundation. That includes all courses — public and privately owned — that are publicly accessible. That’s a deal compared with private clubs with expensive membership fees.
Numerous golfers of diverse backgrounds — in terms of income, ethnicity, age and gender — learned on public courses and still play there. Golf long ago stopped being the exclusive purview of rich white people. That’s partly because people from varied backgrounds found an accessible public course and a youth program or golf league they could join there.
And while making the case for how asinine Garcia’s effort appears to be with so little upside, also note the image included with the editorial shows Canada geese—migrating birds—enjoying a stopover at a course. Taking these valuable habitats away will run afoul of laws and “understandings” designed to protect the beautiful and innocent creatures of the sky.
Although the bill is supported by housing advocacy groups and builders of affordable housing (such as AIDS Healthcare Foundation), it is opposed by dozens of golf clubs, the National Golf Foundation, and the nonprofit Southern California Golf Assn.
No city is going to sell off popular or fabled public golf courses. Rancho Park in Los Angeles, Torrey Pines in San Diego come to mind. Nor is the author of the bill, Assembly member Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), trying to kill off public golf courses — particularly the ones that communities want to keep.
“Let’s have a conversation,” Garcia said. “Is this the best use of this land? Do we want to use this property in a different way?”
Ultimately, someone here really doesn’t like golf and in a funny way, the editorial helps point out what a reach Garcia’s effort appears to be with such a small upside for affordable housing well, well down the road unless all environmental laws are kicked aside.
In reporting on Warner Bros. Discovery’s sudden shuttering of CNN+, the New York Times’ Michael Grynbaum and John Koblin obtained a staff meeting audio recording where executives explained the decision.
JB Perrette, Discovery’s global head of streaming, explained the struggle his company has had with streaming launches. This includes GolfTV, which is paying $2 billion over 12 years for PGA Tour international streaming rights.
To the left of Mr. Licht sat Mr. Perrette of Discovery. He invoked tweets that called the service “CNN Minus,” because it did not include any programming from CNN’s cable network, “the global calling card of this new organization,” he said. (CNN+ carried only unique programming to avoid running afoul of CNN’s agreements with cable carriers.)
Mr. Perrette also referred to Discovery’s own “painful” history of starting niche streaming services — focused on cars, food and golf — and said they were costly to market and ended up with few subscribers.
“We have failed almost at every turn launching these products,” he said, according to the recording.
The “failed” launch started in 2019 after Discovery CEO David Zaslav said would be a "golf Netflix” and Tiger Woods declared would bring “new youngness” to the game.
Adam Schupak reports on the rebranding of the longtime club operator as “Invited”, and while you might think this sounds like something a cruise line would do after a series of awful virus outbreaks, the company formerly known as ClubCorp says it’s just who they are. With a name that cheesy they could be right.
“Invited is not just a name. It’s everything we are,” Invited CEO David Pillsbury said in a press release. “We are Invited because, from the golf courses to the tennis courts, from fine dining to family hang time, we connect and create communities attracting members from diverse backgrounds that share similar passions and pursuits. We create clubs and experiences that combine exceptional amenities and unmatched service with a friendly and welcoming spirit. We want our members, guests and team members to know that Invited is where they belong.”
The Dallas Morning News says ClubCorp owner Apollo Global Management is looking to take the company public (again) after spending $1.1 billion for the company in 2017.
And they are dreaming of a big valuation. Perfect Putt’s Jared Doerfler notes this:
ClubCorp is reported to be evaluating an IPO for $4.5 billion.
— Jared Doerfler (@DoerflerJared) April 21, 2022
ClubCorp was public before it sold to Apollo - a PE firm in 2017.
Apollo's purchase price in 2017?
$1.1 billion.
$4.5 billion today would make ClubCorp larger in market cap than Callaway and Acushnet.
Mike Keiser has teamed with Stephen Goodwin to pen a golf memoir now due in June (previous listings said May but the book business is dealing with supply chain issues, too).
Golf Digest has posted a lengthy excerpt worth checking out here.
This is great:
As I tried to educate myself about the game’s design and history, the questions kept multiplying. As is often the case, the conventional wisdom was misleading at best, a convenient justification for doing things the same old way. I became convinced that the heavily engineered courses in the United States weren’t designed for golfers like me and my friends. To play them successfully, you had to be able to hit shots that were beyond our abilities—long, straight drives and high, precise approaches. You had to be able to recover from deep bunkers and putt on surfaces as slick as the hood of a car. And yes, you had to stay out of the accursed water hazards. The only people who could manage these feats were pros and a tiny fraction of top amateurs. Why design courses for them? Why inflict misery on everyone else? Who had decreed that a round of golf should be an examination, and the architect should be an examiner intent on exposing the student’s every flaw?
Steph Curry is expanding his “Underrated” outreach program to golf where a lucky 24 boys and girls play in regional events. They’ll ultimately compete for the Curry Cup as part of our season-ending UNDERRATED Tour Championship.
Golf is one of the most inaccessible sports for underrepresented individuals across the globe, which is why Stephen and his team are expanding the brand beyond basketball. UNDERRATED Golf is a purpose-driven business endeavor with the overarching commitment to provide equity, access and opportunity to student-athletes from every community by balancing participation in the sport to truly reflect our society. With a mission to increase the participation numbers amongst competitive golfers from diverse communities, UNDERRATED Golf will have players compete hand-in-hand with their peers who currently represent the vast majority of today's golfers.
"I created UNDERRATED back in 2019 with the goal of celebrating the underdog," said Stephen Curry. "UNDERRATED is a mindset, a motivation, a calling, a compliment. With this inspiration, I am excited to expand the brand into UNDERRATED Golf, which happens to be one of the most inaccessible sports for underrepresented individuals across the globe. UNDERRATED Golf will provide equity, access and opportunity, recognizing the instrumental role the sport plays as one of the greatest vehicles and connectors for life successes."
UNDERRATED Golf's vision of the sport better reflects and balances the diversity of our society and most of all provides access to the countless opportunities that the game brings both on and off the course. This new venture will also allow young golfers to play on courses that they would never have access to, all the while addressing the gender inequity within the sport of golf and beyond, ensuring young female players are given the same opportunities as their male counterparts. Furthermore, UNDERRATED Golf will prioritize workforce development, bringing greater awareness, training opportunities and programming to individuals, while fostering an understanding of the many career paths made possible by way of the sport.
Through an ongoing series of special speakers, networking events and learning tools with brands and corporations, players will understand what it means to build a successful career. UNDERRATED Golf will also be used as a recruitment tool for their brands and corporations to hire the future leaders who will help enact change locally, regionally, nationally and globally.
They just keep on locking up venues without still confirming 2028 at Winged Foot or 2031 that’ll be coming to a bit of a surprise course already pretty booked up with big time events in the next six years. No one ever said the USGA was original.
Whether this increased use of familiar places on a more regular basis takes some bite out of U.S. Open excitement, remains to be seen.
Of course, locking in these venues years from now mostly seems to remind us of our mortality instead of serving as causes for celebration.
For Immediate Release:
LIBERTY CORNER, N.J. (April 20, 2022) – Building upon a nearly century-long relationship, the United States Golf Association and Pebble Beach have forged a landmark partnership that seeks to benefit the game of golf for generations to come.
As part of today’s announcement, Pebble Beach will now host four future U.S. Opens (2027, 2032, 2037 and 2044) as well as four future U.S. Women’s Opens Presented by ProMedica, including its first one next year (2023, 2035, 2040 and 2048). These additional championships fulfill a common goal to ensure that both men and women have the opportunity to compete at the highest level on this iconic course. In addition, for the first time ever, the U.S. Senior Open and U.S. Senior Women’s Open will be staged back-to-back at the same location in 2030, with the resort’s Spyglass Hill Golf Course serving as the host site.
“This relationship with Pebble Beach, long considered a national treasure, is a historic step forward for golf,” said USGA CEO Mike Whan. “In addition to elevating our Open championships, the USGA and Pebble Beach are committed to working together to ensure a more diverse, welcoming and accessible game. We couldn’t be more thankful for their collaboration and like-minded vision.”
“We are honored to deepen our long-standing partnership with the USGA, which will benefit the game of golf for years to come,” said Pebble Beach Company CEO David Stivers. “We are proud that Pebble Beach Golf Links was the first public golf course to host a U.S. Open in 1972, and that golfers around the world have the opportunity to play Pebble Beach and walk in the footsteps of champions. This partnership ensures that the legacy of championship golf on this historic course will continue long into the future and leave a lasting impact on the game.”
The long-term nature of the championship agreement allows the USGA and Pebble Beach Resorts to invest and collaborate in new and innovative ways to enhance the player, fan, partner and media experience.
The relationship between the USGA and Pebble Beach began in 1929 with the 33rd U.S. Amateur Championship, and the resort has played host to 13 USGA championships during its first 100 years of existence, including six U.S. Opens, five U.S. Amateurs and two U.S. Women’s Amateurs, with another 10 championships to come over the next 25 years.
U.S. Opens through the years at Pebble Beach have matched the dramatic setting. In 1972, Jack Nicklaus hit the flagstick with a 1-iron shot on No. 17 to ensure victory; in 1982, Tom Watson denied Jack a record-breaking fifth title with his pitch-in birdie on the same hole; in 1992, veteran Tom Kite rode a pitch-in birdie on No. 7 to a wind-buffeted win; in 2000, Tiger Woods authored the most dominant victory in major-championship history in the 100th U.S. Open; in 2010, Graeme McDowell outlasted a trio of major champions, including Woods; and in 2019, Gary Woodland’s heroic 3-wood second shot on No. 14 helped him hold off Brooks Koepka’s bid for a third consecutive U.S. Open title. The 2019 championship marked Pebble Beach’s 100th anniversary.
Beyond the future championships, the USGA and Pebble Beach are developing community-based programs to create internships and other career opportunities for the next generation of industry leaders. The expanded relationship also includes a joint initiative with the USGA’s Green Section to invest in turfgrass and water conservation research, contributing to the entities’ shared goal of creating enjoyable golf experiences that are environmentally and economically sustainable.
“Through this relationship, we aim to foster opportunities for future greats of the game, to nurture golf’s next generation of leaders and to develop new technologies for a sustainable future, all while crowning champions who will follow the legends who walked these hallowed grounds before them,” said Whan.
“Supporting youth education is a pillar of our community outreach and this partnership will greatly expand opportunities for young people to pursue a career in this industry,” said Stivers. “For over 30 years, Pebble Beach and its neighboring golf courses have operated the most successful water reclamation project on California’s Central Coast. The USGA Green Section will provide powerful new technology and research to help pioneer new innovations in water conservation.”
In an effort to return to venues with deep and meaningful USGA championship history every five to six years, Pebble Beach Resorts joins Pinehurst Resort & Country Club and Oakmont Country Club as a U.S. Open anchor site. Here is the complete list of future USGA championships at Pebble Beach:
Wilshire’s 18th hole for the DIO Implant LA Open
They’ve traded in one kind of implant company for another but the LPGA’s LA Open remains a premier event on the schedule thanks to another return to charming Wilshire CC.
The mid-city Norman MacBeth design is easily the LPGA Tour’s best non-major venue and a chance for 17 of the world top 25 to shine in ET prime time. Plus, the biggest payday and even in women’s golf is just 43 days away, so he LA Open commences the run-up to Pine Needles.
Brooke Henderson defends.
TV TIMES (all times Eastern on Golf Channel)
Thursday, April 21 – 6:30-9:30 p.m.
Friday, April 22 – 6:30-9:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 23 – 7-9:30 p.m.
Sunday, April 24 – 7-9:30 p.m.
For a good teaser, here is The Fried Egg’s drone view appraisal of the course:
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
