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Issue No. 111 | September 13, 2024
Hey,
I have a couple of barely golf related thoughts and then I wanted to do something a bit different to get you to the weekend.
Last year, around this time, I started doing some interviews with other golf people. Mostly media members that I’m close to that other people have interest in as well. I stumbled into one of those this week that I realized more than half of you had probably never seen before. And the half that had probably forgot about it.
I posted it at the bottom of this email because I enjoyed reading back through it and learning from the content of it. I hope you enjoy it as well.
Onto the news.
1. This Mike Rosenberg piece on the PGA Tour power struggle did not get enough attention. Two things stood out. Here’s the first.
But the power struggle is real. At times, it has been contentious. A strong, savvy commissioner would get the factions under control and convince everybody they are stronger if they work together. But for the past year, Monahan has been too busy falling on his sword to do anything else.
Monahan keeps putting a positive spin on the PIF negotiations. But if they are going so well, then wouldn’t McIlroy know? He is, after all, on the transaction subcommittee. The thing about negotiating a massive deal on behalf of the players is that those players have diverse interests and different visions for what the Tour should be. That’s why the Tour needs a strong leader. Instead, it has one who is weakened but still in power. Monahan is even weaker than a lame duck, because at least a lame duck wouldn’t worry about losing his job.
The rhetoric around Monahan’s leadership behind the scenes is not great.
And I tend to believe it given, well, how little unity there seems to be in front of the scenes. It’s not really that big of a secret that Monahan is fairly weak as a commissioner, but perhaps just as big of a problem is that he is positionally weak.
You could bring Putin in as PGA Tour commissioner, and he would be weakened because that position has so little voting power and/or leverage. That’s what happens when you’re fighting for your job and start giving away seats at the table.
All of that gets at the larger issue — which I have been yelling and will continue to yell about — which is that it’s insane that the PGA Tour is run by its players.
Just nearly free rein to do mostly what they want. That’s a completely wild way to run an organization, and in times of tremendous duress it almost guarantees that there will be a lack of unity. Because different players are not only looking out for themselves personally but also the group (superstars, journeymen, whoever) they represent, and they all desire different answers to complex questions.
Here’s more from Rosenberg.
… Players need an independent group of people that listens to them and looks out for all of their best interests. They need to be confident in that group. When McIlroy gets blocked for dubious reasons, and independent directors resign because nobody is listening to them, and Spieth insists there’s nothing to see here, and McIlroy and Scheffler go rogue, and Monahan tells people what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear … how confident can they be?
These last two years have disclosed a lot of things, not least of which is the truth that a player-run organization sounds good and even is good during times of peace. But when you’re at war with other entities and trying to turn the ship in a different direction, it becomes quite obvious that you almost certainly have too many hands on the steering wheel.
2. Unrelated, but probably not unrelated!
3. Geoff Shackelford said something on this podcast with Lawrence Donegan feat. Tron Carter about the FedEx Cup Playoffs that I thought was interesting. He was talking about how fearful the PGA Tour is of its stars getting knocked out of the playoffs. His point being that if Rory gets knocked out in a hypothetical match play situation early in the playoffs, it’s big news tantamount to if the Chiefs lost in the first round of the NFL Playoffs. In other words, it’s a big deal either way.
This is true, but the Tour’s problem is that it lets too many teams (players) into the playoffs to begin with. If Rory gets knocked out by Sahith in the first round, yes, that’s a big deal and worth getting steep on. If he gets knocked out by Max Greyserman in the first round, it then becomes too obscure. Nobody has any attachment to Max Greyserman to begin with. This has always been the problem with the WGC match play event. Anybody who knows golf knows how much variance there is in 18 holes so it’s hard to get real excited about a 64-over-1 upset. The obvious answer in a season-ending playoff being … don’t let the 64 in to begin with.
This is where it’s such a bad thing that the Tour is hung up between a season long race and a playoff. With a 16-golfer playoff, everyone deserves to be there, and you should be OK with upsets. With 70 players, though? It’s too much. It’s a season long race masquerading as a playoff. Stuck between release patterns. Things of that nature.
4. This NLU tweet is a good (not perfect, but good) way to evaluate PGA Tour seasons, and I hope it gives better perspective for folks who are struggling to contextualize — or in some cases, accept! — what Scottie did in 2024.
Sometimes strokes gained can make you (and even me!) feel like this …
And it’s easy to get lost in the SG sauce. But percentage of money won is a much easier-to-digest way to say the same thing that his 3.2 SG number tells me: That Scottie is very, very good and that 2024 was one of the great years in the last quarter century. Nearly as good as the best Tiger years in that same window.
5. You want to see what a league that thinks you can buy your way to relevance looks like?
Here it is …
Q. I don't know if you guys are aware, but you guys each get a championship ring if you win, which is obviously unique to golf. It's prevalent in other sports.
I'm going to read you some information about the ring that you guys would get to take home. It has 5.78 carats of white diamonds, has 1.2 carats of natural green emeralds, has green glow-in-the-dark UV enamel detailing, has a concealed ball marker with an embossed QR code.
The QR code permalinks to the video reel of your winning moment so the winner can relive and share their victory anytime that they wish, and it also has one carat of black diamonds, 14 carat gold weight of 84.8 grams. How cool would it be to take this home?
JOAQUIN NIEMANN: Yeah, that's pretty cool. Probably my wife won't be happy knowing that my ring would have more -- (laughter). No, I feel it's pretty special. It's a little different than other trophies, so it would be pretty cool to have an extra ring.
JON RAHM: I'm trying to picture what it looks like right now, and I can't get that in my mind. It's a lot. It's definitely a lot. But honestly, who cares what it is as long as you're the one that has it. That's, I think, what most of us will be thinking.
Q. I'm sure your kids will love scanning the QR code and watching your winning moment.
JON RAHM: They're too young right now. I try to keep a lot of that part of my life away from them right now. They're still too young.
I’m sure your kids will love scanning the QR code.
The responses almost — almost! — make it all worth it.
6. Extremely random, but I was sitting at my desk today thinking about how insane it is that there is a service in the United States (and all countries?) that will, for a couple of quarters (I know we pay for this in taxes as well), take a letter or a package from your house and find the specific house or building (out of the hundreds of millions of them!) it needs to be delivered to in a matter of days.
I know all of this is normalized and we’re onto, like, Mars and stuff, but the idea of a postal service where you can communicate back and forth — when you actually sit down and consider it — is wild, and for some reason today, I found myself feeling grateful for it.
6. I have mentioned this, but the David Perell-Ben Thompson interview is so excellent. I’m way into Thompson, and even though I don’t agree with all of his takes, even on media, I do agree with this one about newsletter (and internet) writing.
The beauty of media on the internet is that it is perfectly scalable on the back end. I can write an article that … can theoretically reach a billion people. Do a billion people read it? No, but sometimes a million people do, which is amazing.
Media is not scalable on the front end because you have to keep writing stuff every day. That turns people off from it. It makes media often a poor investment. That’s a real challenge. That’s an opportunity for the people who ... have that generative function.
Ben Thompson on How I Write
The internet is easy to dump on. I find myself there often. But man, it is also kinda magic. The greater postal service, if you will. I will send this email at noon or so on a Friday, and by 1 p.m. it will be read by people in probably a dozen countries. Countries! That’s preposterous, and yet it has also become very normal.
I am grateful for this back end truth because the front end is actually the part I enjoy about as much as anything in my professional life. The rhythm of doing it day after day after day is, to me, a terrific delight.
8. This is one of the great tweets of our time. My wife and I were behind on the debate, and I actually never saw Trump say this because we turned it off before we got there, but the phrase, the visual, all of it is so perfect.
OK, that’s it from me. Here’s the interview I did with Rick Gehman from last year.
Rick and I have worked together for several years, and I find him to be really good at thinking about golf but also thinking about business. He has become one of my good friends in the golf world and has quietly, slowly and impressively built an entire successful business around statistics, fantasy and gambling.
I have so much admiration for his ambition, his drive and his entrepreneurial spirit, and he is someone I learn from almost every day as it relates to golf but also business and content creation. Also, his newsletter — the Rungood Rundown — is must read if you follow pro golf on a day to day basis.
1. What is one weird, quirky, normal sport-y thing about golf that amuses you right now?
Insects play a major role in golf, at least compared to any other sport. Ants could be a burrowing animal, but fire ants could also be a dangerous situation. There's a bug on my ball, there's a bug near my ball. A bee flew past my ear, that fly landed on my cap. How about reptiles? There's an endangered toad on the green so we can't play. There are countless insect/animal interactions every year in this beautiful game.
2. What is the moment over the last five years of covering golf that made you say, "I cannot believe this is happening"?
Personally, there are endless examples, looking back, that I cannot believe I get to experience. There is one that really hit me in the moment. It was at The Country Club, in Brookline, which has a special aura and history to it already. The place is claustrophobic with every hole on top of one another, including the 3rd and 4th holes basically sharing the same fairways. It was Saturday and I was inside the ropes in that fairway with Rory McIlroy.
Scottie Scheffler was a group or two behind with Jon Rahm and Collin Morikawa in the group or two ahead. There were literally thousands of people in every direction and I was basically directing traffic with the game's best. It was surreal. It was the first time I stopped to soak it all in, at that exact time, and realize how fortunate I am.
I think I also literally said "I cannot believe this is happening" when Xander left two in the fairway bunker on No. 1 at LACC on Saturday. You could literally see how fast the world was spinning for him.
I tweeted that Tiger Woods handed Justin Thomas a tampon at Riviera and then watched it on every major news network that night and stood in the room while Tiger apologized for it. Not exactly how I imagined those few days going.
3. Who or what are your entrepreneurial inspirations?
I'm sure that my mom laid the foundation for many of my entrepreneurial traits. She ran her own company from home, so growing up I was witnessing how she balanced work/life. I was able to see her wear every hat for the business and how that could be done successfully. I don't think I realized it at the time, but the normalization of being your own boss happened very early for me.
Now, it's just a matter of being great every single day but framing "greatness" through whatever lens works best. Can I make a new improvement to my website, can I learn a new skill, can I increase revenue by 15 percent or grow my email newsletter by 1,000? It's basically the only way that I get to be competitive, and setting competitions with myself is how I can keep score.
4. What made you fall in love with golf?
I love math problems, puzzles and riddles and golf is just a never-ending math problem with an infinite number of variables, equations and answers. The more you know, the less you know. The more you try to solve it, the crazier you seem. You can't run out the clock, and you can't play defense on your opponent. Then we pick it all up and do it somewhere else next week.
5. What do you think people would be surprised to discover about running your own golf media business?
You don't have to be everything to everyone. You don't need to be ESPN or GOLF or CBS Sports. You can make a very good living (and enjoy it!) by being really special to 1,000 people on the internet.
Being great at something, anything at all, is the key. Then you can find the people who care about the same things that you do. Additionally, the barrier to entry has never been so low. You are a microphone, webcam and ring light away from having a media company. It's like $300 of equipment and free editing software.
Just start and never look back.
Thank you for reading until the end.
You’re a sicko, and I’m grateful for it.
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