golfweloveit

Well that explains it then. The lack of crowds, free or $1 tickets , some less than household names, injured, senior players. What they’re watching are test events, In this interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Greg Norman seems to say what we’re watching is a dress rehearsal for when they get the real thing launched next year. But they are still paying winners $4 million a tournament while they’re working it all out.

It’s concerning that they will probably be releasing the less well performing players this year as the 48 man quota has been reached, and there is demand from players to join them. Make way for the Ryder Cup Captain, the new Open Champion, it must be unsettling for the lesser known players particularly as they are being blocked at the moment from competing on the two main tours.

what is interesting about this film is how little Greg Norman knows about Women’s golf. He says to Tucker Carlson this:

Greg: The LPGA is sponsored by Aramco

Tucker: Literally?

Greg: Literally

Oops. Aramco is a main sponsor on the Ladies European Tour, not the LPGA.

The 11 players sueing the PGA Tour are seeking a jury trial. This ensures maximum drama. This film shows Greg convincing Tucker Carlson to his cause, but he really seems to mean it when he says he doesn’t care what people think. He’ll care if the Saudi Investment Fund turn off the cash flow because the product isn’t working. It’s ultimately up to the fans. If they attend and support the events and engage with whats happening in person, not behind a computer screen. If they don’t, this ultimately will be remembered as the time of existential threat.

I think this will be quite an historic film, because it captures the level of hostility in professional golf at this moment. Although it’s a professional comedian seizing the moment to make good content for his social media, he is also the spokesman for many. Including some of the families of victims of 9/11 who were protesting outside the gates.

He is confronted by a LIV security guard, like journalist Alan Shipnuck was at the first event. The fact that security guards are watching the crowd is un nerving. The atmosphere is pretty toxic at the moment.

And yesterday the news broke that 11 players, headed by Mickelson are sueing the PGA Tour, essentially for restraint of trade. Perfect timing with the FedEx Cup playoffs coming up. In the court documents there is conformation that Mickelson was suspended by the PGA Tour in February for actively recruiting players to join LIV. He applied to rejoin in June but this was denied because he played in the first LIV event in London.

When he appealed it was refused and he is now suspended from the PGA Tour until March 2024 at the earliest. And Billy Walters’ book is coming out soon, what more will that bring up about his gambling friends? How much more stress can he take? But if as I suspect, he’s ultimately headed to a career in politics, this has all been a training ground.

It was a joy to see the now silver haired Lee Buck Trevino back at St Andrews this year. He certainly cheered Tiger up at the Champions Dinner. He infused so much laughter and enthusiasm. In this country he will always be remembered not just for being a double Open and double US Open champion, but for Pro Celebrity Golf. These films are starting to resurface on You Tube. It is glorious to hear Peter Alliss and to see Bruce Forsyth, Sean Connery, Terry Wogan and many others competing in teams. This is the best golf entertainment product ever.

When I was quite young my Dad and I were at a much loved inland course here in England. I had to ask him about what I kept on seeing.

“Dad, around lots of the greens there are like grey trails of ashy stuff. Why don’t the greenkeepers sweep that up?”

My Dad looked uncomfortable, like I had asked about the facts of life. It was actually the opposite. It was the facts of death.

He told me that they were dead people. Who loved the golf club so much that they wanted their final resting place to be there after they had been cremated. Ooh, I didn’t expect that. I worried about the wind blowing them away, or dog walkers letting their dogs getting too near… Sometimes, you shouldn’t ask.

I was reminded of this when last week the rebel LIV tour had their third event at Trump Bedminster. Because, as the players went to the first tee, nearby is a brand new grave, of Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana. Indeed, there are 10 plots there for future burials of the Trump family. The area was cordoned off, a discrete plaque and flowers, but it was there for the scant crowds who paid $1 to come in to see.

Which technically makes Trump National Bedminster a cemetery rather than a golf club. Under New Jersey law if the Trump Family Trust designate the land as being used for cemetery purposes it is exempt from real estate property taxes, sales tax, income and business tax. It also cannot be sold to satisfy any court judgments. As the 45th President looks set to be the most litigated man in history, this looks like smart tax evasion. Ivana’s estate was also charged with the burial, maintenance and club membership fees.

It’s no longer a golf course, it’s going to be the new Graceland.

This week I have been listening, fascinated, to the audiobook of Tom Bower’s Revenge. This chronicles the relationship of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

What does this have to do with golf? You may ask.

Well Chapter 5 had my eyes on stalks, and my mouth hanging open.

It is called The Irishman.

And it talks about Meghan Markle’s relationship with – 

Rory McIlroy.

Granted it was when he was twenty five, had recently broken up with Caroline Wozniacki and was the toast of golf having won two majors in a year.

And Meghan, according to the actor reading the book who does a simpering voice when reading her reported speech, had a plan. She wanted an Englishman, and was on the hunt. The little fact of the Irish Sea between England and Ireland and his already transatlantic accent could be overlooked. 

This was all eight years ago, and thankfully Rory is now happily settled elsewhere. 

To find out more you’ll have to read the book. It is excellent and fascinating. 

What a woman she is. Unbelievable.

Ye gods. We could have had Meghan Markle on TV every week on the PGA Tour.

But a funny twist. In the interview with John Daly below, you will hear JD talk of his genuine love for the Royal Family. He says if Princess Diana was alive today, he would have been married to her.

John Daly as a father-in-law! He would definitely get her to behave!

Yes, twice!

This interview with JD shows Piers Morgan’s real talent as an interviewer, how he can inkle things out of people. Daly tells him how he begged Greg Norman for a spot on the LIV tour, but he was too old. This was a poor decision. If LIV was one particular golfer it would be John Daly. They missed their chance there.

I watched a little bit of the coverage from Trump Bedminster last week and was struck again by the size of the galleries. See how few are following Patrick Reed.

I had the odd experience last week of my phone ping, ping, pinging with over 1,200 engagements on a two line tweet I posted after spotting this in Golf Digest:

“I hear Patrick Reed got $80 million to defect. The Saudis paid him $20 million, and the PGA Tour put up the other 60.”

Someone said that’s the first LIV joke. We need to find more to laugh about this because it’s getting deadly serious.

Ben Hogan, winner of 9 major championships including, in 1953, The Masters, US Open and The Open in one calendar year, was a miracle man in the same way that Tiger is now. His return, like Tiger’s, to competitive play after an horrific automobile accident is recounted in this wonderful story written, while Hogan was alive, by Henry Longhurst. Six of Hogan’s major championship wins were after this accident.

“How strange that the toughest character I have ever met should be connected not with wartime deeds of violence and daring, nor even with the fraternity of peace, but with the sedate, pedestrian game of golf.

Ben Hogan is what is known as a “hard case” a very hard case indeed. He hails from Texas, which is the home of hard cases. He is a small man, normal weight no more than 140 pounds, height about 5 feet 9 inches with smooth black hair, wide head, wide eyes and a wide mouth which tends, when the pressure is on, to contract into a think, straight pencil line. You could see him sitting at a poker table saying, expressionless “Your thousand – and another five”. He might have four aces or a pair of twos.

Those who watched professional golf in recent times have noted that most of the current American “aces” are big husky fellows. Given the same degree of skill, a strong big ‘un will hit the ball further than a strong little ‘un. Hogan, a very little ‘un indeed, set himself to find some method by which he could keep up with the big fellows. In the end he found it. This kept him up with his rivals. How could he beat them? How could. He, as the Americans so graphically put it, “get the edge” on this hard-bitten crew?

Coldly and deliberately, he decided he would do it by superior powers of concentration.  The process took some years, but he did it. He got his mind into such a condition that nothing, neither idiotic spectators, nor unlucky breaks, nor the trembling thought of “this for $5,000” (or $500,000,000 had he been playing today on the LIV Tour…) nothing, ever, would put him off, ever. Nothing prevented him playing at crucial moments the same sort of shots he could so easily unloose on the practice ground. 

In one tournament he stood pondering over a shot, cigarette midway between thin pursed lips. Then he flipped the cigarette to the ground, coldly drew out a club rather as a dentist picks an instrument from his tray, and hit the ball a colossal clout to the middle of the green. He did the same at the next, in each case about 10 yards from the hole, the sort of distance from which ordinary mortals hear small voices whispering “three putts”.  It was clear, however, that any voice that might whisper to Hogan at such moments would talk more in terms of “one putt?”  He took great pains in examining the line, picking up tiny obstructions and such-like, and then, again flipping away the cigarette, whose smoke curled silently up beside him in the still summer afternoon, he hit the ball firmly at the hole. Up and up it came “right between the eyes’ as it were, and at the last moment faded off amid the groans of the gallery to lie two inches awa.  He tied, of course, and then won the play off. Looking. Back, I realised from the moment I set eyes on him it never occurred to me that he wouldn’t win.  Thus Hogan reached the top, qualifying for a place among those whose names have become legends in the annals of sport.

Then in February 1949, Hogan and his wife Valerie, a pretty, dark, understanding woman who supported him on the tournament trail, drove off one sunny morning from the border Texas town of El Paso for the next tournament.  A little way out they ran into a patch of ground mist.  Fifteen seconds later they were lying in a tangled mass of metal on the roadside, given up for dead.

A bus had come out of the mist, bearing down on them in overtaking another car.  Hogan threw himself to his wife’s side and the steering column passed through the seat in which he had been sitting.  He was badly mangled about the hips and legs. As to the driver of the bus, without even returning to the car he telephoned the police that two people had been killed.

Such was the story Hogan told (to Henry Longhurst) on board the Queen Mary on his way to Britain later.  For some weeks he had lain pretty well at death’s door, and when at last a few intimate friends were admitted to his bedside they were hard put to keep from their expressions the shock they felt upon seeing the pale, gaunt little figure now diminished to 110 pounds.

Largely due to the mental powers he had developed on the golf course, Hogan won his battle for life and was eventually taken home.  Seven months later he was on his way to Britain as captain of the American Ryder Cup team. He was still wearing full-length elastic stockings and could walk only for about half an hour at a time. One talked of his being “temporarily out of the game” and so on, but I think there was only one man in the world who at the time thought Hogan might seriously play golf again, and that was Hogan.

It was in December that one of those highly coloured, pinch of salt American news agency reports filtered through to the effect that Hogan had not only played a round of golf, but he had holed the Colonial Club’s course at his home town of Fort Worth, Texas in 71 strokes.

Telephone calls poured in. Hogan’s reply was “Nonsense! He had hardly hit any long shots and had used a cart to get about on.  They were “only newspaper scores” he said. Then, just a yar after his accident, the news went out that Ben Hogan was to try his hand once again in the Los Angeles Open.

Nine thousand people turned up to give the little man a sympathetic and emotional cheer. The other 128 players, said an American writer “roamed the course unmolested”. They included Sam Snead who had jumped to the top as Hogan, literally, fell by the wayside.

Right at the start there was trouble.  Sharp words with the photographers seemed to show that Hogan’s steely control was no longer what it had been.  For a while stewards carried a sign “No cameras, please – player’s request”, but the irate photographers prevailed and the sign was withdrawn.  Pursued by his vast gallery, and seating himself between shots on a shooting stick.  Hogan got round in 73, well down the field.

Next day he shot 69 and his position improved.  On the final day bigger crowds than ever swarmed over the course.  Hole by hole, as he kept up the 4’s and 3’s, the tension increased.  Another 69.  One more like this and he might not only finish once more with the leaders.  He might even win.

Golf, perhaps through its very slowness, can reach the most extraordinary heights of tenseness and drama. Of all the great rounds ever played I would as soon have watched this last one of Hogan’s.  After a dozen holes he was well in the hunt, still shock-proof as ever but now clearly close to physical exhaustion.  Overweight at over 150lbs and hitting the ball less far than before, he was under pressure from all sides.  I can see him so well – the tightening of the lips, the discarded cigarette, and one more shot dispatched on its way.  Amid scenes of excitement unusual on a golf course, Ben Hogan finished once more in 69 for a total of 280.

As the day wore on, only Snead, the man who had stepped into his shoes, had a remote chance to catch him. At the 17^th hole he holed a very long putt.  On the 18^th he sank an even longer one, this time almost semi circular to tie.  Snead won the playoff, of course, but that was an anti climax no one cared about.  The glory was Hogan’s, for what is perhaps one of the most stirring comebacks in sporting history.

Among his comments in an interview afterward with Joe Williams of the New York World Telegram was: “This much I can tell you for sure, Joe.  There’s nothing about death that will ever frighten me again..”

In the meantime, as they say, he had settled with the bus company for $250,000 (around $6 million today) free of tax. 

And if that doesn’t prove he is a hard case, nothing does!”

After missing the cut at The Open Mickelson did not go home but instead went on a trip to Rwanda to visit a gorilla sanctuary (gorillas’s foot shown behind him).

He appeared on social media for the first time since February, in an official LIV video to welcome the newest recruit to their stable, broadcaster David Feherty. Gary McCord is also tipped to join him which will no doubt be a riot. This shows to me, in choosing those two to showcase the tournaments that LIV Golf is above all an entertainment product. It’s like winning thoroughbred racehorses being sold off to be show ponies performing tricks in a circus.

It’s interesting that Rwanda, one of the most dangerous places on earth, was chosen for this trip. My friend Angela took a year’s posting out there to be paid three times what she earnt in London, but she had to have two bodyguards with her everytime she wanted to go anywhere. I digress. The thought was I wonder what security he had in and around the gorilla sanctuary.

Looks like he and Prince Harry have swopped lives this week. As Prince Harry sits in California and Phil has gone to Africa where Harry did so much good.

Hopefully being with the gorillas has given some perspective. He dealt with hostility Open week, not least from the galleries. On the 14th tee on Friday someone shouted to his tee shot “go in the bunker!” to general concurrence from the rest of the spectators.

Social media has been aflame this week with arguments over LIV, particularly hostile on Ian Poulter’s Fan page. This is deep felt and angry, particularly about Henrik Stenson being stripped of the European Ryder Cup captaincy. What is needed perhaps is more humour e.g.

“Patrick Reed was reportedly paid $80,000,000 to join LIV.

They put up $20 million and the PGA Tour supplied the other $60 million”

Henrik Stenson is due to join LIV golf imminently. Disappointing and bewildering decision that he agreed to take on the Ryder Cup Captaincy, knowing that he had been approached by the Saudi Investment Funded LIV Tour and was seriously considering it.

He should have declined the captaincy and not have made a two year commitment to the event. This has made a serious dent on European morale and caused damage. If he has decided that the money is the most important thing then it’s his decision, he should go. But to have agreed to have taken on the captaincy knowing that this was going to be a serious option, was not right.

How depressing and disappointing this week is going to be, after a magnificent Open Championship.

In the film Field of Dreams there was a saying “If you build it, they will come”. 

LIV golf are building their cast and are banking on the public coming and supporting their tournaments. 

But at the moment there is no proper broadcaster, and having attended a LIV event, I personally felt that the structure of the tournament was half-baked, not properly developed. They are depending on the public getting behind the teams. So much money has been thrown at this to secure the players for what at the moment looks like an immature product, brassily presented.  It may well attract a certain kind of fan – the ones who shout out “mashed potatoes’, “light the candle’ and “you’re the man”. LIV golf are welcome to them. In time these elite athletes will tire of playing in front a certain kind of fan. 

The journalism surrounding this this week has been biting.

Raith Al-Samarri

“What an astonishing mess this has become. LIV did not want Stenson, the once brilliant golfer who more recently has missed cuts in seven of the last nine majors.

They wanted a Ryder Cup captain as a means of weakening one of the great institutions of a sport they are taking over with vindictive cunning”.Despite contractual protections and assurances the Saudis got their man because disruption and destruction are their modus operandi. They have so far shot a dirty business equivalent of a round of 59″.

What this is is a destructive force of nature which is beginning to decimate the top of the European Tour in particular. But what happens if LIV golf fails to take off? The players won’t give back the money, they’ll just go off into the sunset. Perhaps this is how this whole sad civil war should be looked at. That there is a lot of work to be done to make this a worldwide viable product. Buying the players first has caused huge upset and disruption, but everyone is making a huge gamble here.

You may have built it. But the fans may not come.