I Have A Question …

I want to spend a some time today talking about the PGA and LIV Golf.  Just so there is no misunderstanding:

• I do not play golf.
• I have never attended a golf match/tournament.
• I only watch golf on TV when it is the final weekend of a major tournament.
• I appreciate the skill shown by professional golfers but find the game less than interesting.

I think it is to some extent because of my detached view of the sport that I can look at the spitting match that is ongoing between the PGA and the Saudi folks behind the LIV Golf enterprise in a detached fashion.  I really do not care about the rectitude of either organization; it would not bother me for a millisecond if both organizations dried up and blew away on a windy day.  If someone else favors one of the antagonists here, please maintain your favoritism because I do not even care enough to try to dissuade you from your selection.

Let me review the bidding here to lead up to a question that I have related to all this:

• LIV Golf showed up with outrageously deep pockets that it used to sign up pro golfers to its tour events and then offered huge purses for those tournaments where everyone who entered got a part of the purse.
• PGA told its members that if they signed up and played in LIV events, they would forfeit their PGA membership status.
• Now there is an anti-trust lawsuit filed against the PGA that will surely take years to resolve.
• In the immediate term. Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy held a “players-only meeting” with PGA golfers urging them to stay with the PGA and told them that Woods and McElroy had a vison for expanding golf into an arena sport and that they would be seeking investors to back such a new venture.
• Soon after that meeting, the PGA announced that purses would be increased for multiple tour events and that there would be tournaments with minimum payoff guarantees for all entrants starting next year.

If I were a PGA player, my first reaction would be that this is great news as I look forward to the next couple of golf seasons.  However, here in Curmudgeon Central, the standard operating procedure is to look at situations such as this one through the other end of the telescope.  And from that perspective, here is the question all current PGA players should be asking:

• Where did all this “new money” come from?

In chemistry, there is a principle called the conservation of matter meaning that in a chemical reaction matter is neither created nor destroyed.  In economics, there is a corresponding concept about money.  It is neither created nor destroyed – – and it can only be spent once.  Ergo, since the PGA “found” this extra money to add to purses and to assure guaranteed payouts for certain tour events, the question is:

• What was that money doing before it got allocated there?

There was no new revenue stream that kicked in over the past month or two and the PGA cannot manufacture money.

• So where did this financial largesse come from?
• And more importantly from a PGA tour player perspective, what would the PGA have used that “found money” for had it not been for the threat of the LIV Golf Tour poaching players from the PGA?

Remember, I have no skin in this game; I do not care even a little bit if either side were to prevail here or if they find a way to coexist over time.  But, until someone shows me how all this extra purse money for PGA events suddenly materialized, I have to think that the PGA overseers have been holding back on the purses that they offer to their members.  So, maybe the LIV Golf folks unintentionally provided a monetary benefit even to those PGA players who chose not to jump to the LIV Tour…

Now as to the arena sport envisioned by woods and McIlroy, the idea is described as showcasing top-shelf golfers on a virtual course playing in teams of three in “tech-infused venues”.  As I said above, I do not particularly like “live golf” and until I see what this “virtual course golf” is about, I have to think it will not be very interesting to me.  My basis for this reaction is e-sports on TV; I lost interest in the first event I tried to experience in about 20 minutes and have not acquired any interest subsequently.  Maybe dedicated golf fans will take to the new game/format quickly and in great numbers.  If so, this could be a huge success; if not, this could be golf’s version of the late – but not lamented – Alliance of American Football.

Changing sports …  The Washington Nationals have the worst record in MLB this year by a 5-game deficit.  So, I was only mildly surprised to come across this stat:

• Yesterday, 28 August 2022, the Nats beat the Reds 3-2 and the Nats’ starting pitcher – Patrick Corbin – was the winning pitcher.
• The last time the Nats’ starter was the winning pitcher in a game was on 6 July 2022.
• The Nats went 43 games without a starter getting a win.
• The Nats went through 27% of an MLB schedule without a starting pitcher recording a win.

Wow!

Finally, since most of today’s rant had to do with golf, let me close with this observation about the game by humorist, Dave Barry:

“Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it’s open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………