The 100th and last USPGA (as we know it)

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

The USPGA this weekend will be the last played in August, as the Tour have juggled things around for next year so it will be in May (and the Players championship moved forward to March). I was initially sceptical of the switch, as it means that all the Majors will now take place in just 13 weeks from April to July. But it means August can now be exclusively for the FedEx Cup final series, and September will be just for Ryder Cups, so it means each month has a focus of its own.

This week? Spieth has another chance of completing a career Grand Slam. Rory McIlroy will want to break his now four-year wait for another major. Justin Rose can go to world number one with a win. Eduardo Molinari can emulate Nick Price and Padraig Harrington by adding the PGA to the Open. But I reckon one of the more unheralded Americans - Tony Finau, maybe, Xander Sheuffele - will come out on top. Possibly (although he looks more of a long shot with each passing major) Rickie Fowler?

[Hot Pepsi]

That's surprising that a sport so wedded to tradition and conservatism would make a change like that. That would be like tennis deciding to play the US Open in March to make more room for World Team Tennis or somesuch, wouldn't it?

One of the many things I don't understand - or perhaps I do understand it and just don't like it - about golf is why there is still so much attention on Tiger Woods. He used to be very good. Now he isn't. His decline happened earlier than most expected, but it's hardly unprecedented. It happens in all sports. Of course, unlike most sportsmen, golfers never really retire, but they do reach a point where they're not likely to trouble a major's leaderboard and therefore aren't "relevant" unless they happen to do something spectacular. Once they were past their prime, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus were no longer the lede story from any golf tournament unless they were making a run, and even then, I don't recall the press actively assuming, let alone transparently hoping, that they'd win.

And its becoming increasingly clear - there was a book out recently, I'm told - that TW is a Grade A asshole. Why would anyone trying to make money off golf want him to continue to be the face of their sport?

I understand that when he was dominant and before it was widely known that he's a prick, TV ratings were always much much higher whenever Woods was in the hunt on Sunday, and if he wasn't playing, they might as well not even put the event on TV. But that was, what, ten years ago, at least? You'd think that the TV people would stop chasing something that isn't coming back. It's like sports journalists that think interest in soccer is a fad and that what the fans really want is more coverage of boxing and horse racing. It's not coming back. Let it go.

Maybe some journalists and fans don't get it, but you'd think the people running ESPN etc would. Since they show golf sometimes - I think. At least ABC does last I checked - you'd think it would be in their interest to get fans, especially younger ones, excited about players that might actually win. ESPN.com always seems to have a headline about how Tiger Woods is doing, rather than focusing on who is actually good and I strongly suspect that the name recognition among average Americans for Tiger Woods is many times higher than it is for Justin Rose or any of the others you mention.



Or is this just a thing in the US? Maybe the coverage is different in Europe and around the world.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I think the growing demand for a Tiger redemption story is pretty ubiquitous. It's taking on added dimensions now that he's in his 40s, and all the recent major winners except Molinari have been in their 20s. It's now partly "come on Tiger, show these young whippersnappers how it used to be done". Only he and Mickelson from that age group are really still potential challengers (possibly Poulter) and golf has always been one of the few sports where a previous generation's heroes are still competitive against the next.

[ursus arctos]

It may be close to “ubiquitous” among “comfortable white guys who care about professional golf” but that’s a pretty small and seriously unrepresentative slice of the overall population.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Well I imagine "comfortable guys who care about professional golf" are also the only demographic who will be paying the slightest attention to this week's USPGA or its coverage so I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make there? Hot Pepsi asked if the Tiger coverage mania was just among US golf tv; certainly in the UK it's mirrored.

[ursus arctos]

I took Reed to be referring to the “Tigermania” wave that the likes of ESPN keep trying to make happen across a much broader population of sports fans.

Though it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you had to be over here to get that.

[Hot Pepsi]

Well I imagine "comfortable guys who care about professional golf" are also the only demographic who will be paying the slightest attention to this week's USPGA or its coverage so I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make there? Hot Pepsi asked if the Tiger coverage mania was just among US golf tv; certainly in the UK it's mirrored.

That was one of the questions. But I was also asking why the people who run professional golf as business haven't moved on from Tiger Woods. They appear to be content to just cater to the shrinking demographic of "comfortable white guys who already care about golf" when there are far more appealing stars to promote. Given that a big part of Tiger's original appeal to broadcasters, sponsors, and advertisers was that he attracted people who weren't old and white to the game, you'd think they'd see the merit of finding the "next Tiger Woods" now that the real current Tiger Woods is no longer the Tiger Woods that built an enormous fanbase.

It suggests that a great many golf fans don't care that he's an asshole - which suggests something about their assholeishness - and really like the idea of seeing a guy crush the field by 20 strokes or whatever it was at that one US Open. And they love that idea so much that they'd rather root for it's unlikely return rather than pay attention to what's happening in the game now.

That's a problem I have with golf (and tennis and a lot of motorsports too) - the fans seem to mostly be what, in team sports, would be derisively called front-runners or gloryhunters. Most fans seem to root for players who are already number one and/or dominant. Unless you're personally connected to one of the players or they're from your hometown, there's not really any reason to feel emotionally connected to a specific player, whereas in team sports you can maintain the useful fiction that a team/club represents you. (That's why World Team Tennis is a thing) So the fans seem to mostly be just rooting for "greatness" and that feels really Ayn Randian/Master Racey and gross to me in a way I can't really articulate, but feel deeply.

Of course, a lot of fans just want to see a great match and see athletes do amazing things. I can respect that a bit more. And that is why the media try to gin-up rivalries. That sometimes works in tennis (and boxing and MMA, I suppose) but that's hard to do in golf because there are so many one-hit-wonders mucking up the storyline and even in the rare cases where the top two or three players in the world are fighting for the win coming down the back 9 on Sunday in a major, they're not actually playing "against" each other like in tennis or boxing or something like that where they're staring at each other and trying to psych each other out. Indeed, unless they were in the same pair to start the day, they're probably not even within sight of each other.

NASCAR seems to have found a way to balance it out so that on any given race, there are a lot of cars that have a realistic chance of winning, but not so many that they can't promote "stars" and invent rivalries and give fans a chance to make up reasons to support a lot of different drivers rather than everyone just supporting the front-runner. And they've messed with the season points system to make that more competitive and potentially dramatic. Still pretty damn boring to watch on TV, though.

[San Bernardhinault]

That's a problem I have with golf (and tennis and a lot of motorsports too) - the fans seem to mostly be what, in team sports, would be derisively called front-runners or gloryhunters. Most fans seem to root for players who are already number one and/or dominant. Unless you're personally connected to one of the players or they're from your hometown, there's not really any reason to feel emotionally connected to a specific player, whereas in team sports you can maintain the useful fiction that a team/club represents you. (That's why World Team Tennis is a thing) So the fans seem to mostly be just rooting for "greatness" and that feels really Ayn Randian/Master Racey and gross to me in a way I can't really articulate, but feel deeply.

There are occasional golfers who have some character, or something interesting in the way they play or look, like Bubba Watson or Andrew Johnston, and you can see why they'd attract some fans. But most of the golf tour - and certainly the new players who come on to it - is filled with what appear to be cloned players. 6 foot something, strong, lean, skinny. They all have that high-rotation Tiger-based long drive. They all spend forever over their putts because that's how they were trained in college. They all give deeply boring interviews. They all try and stay as safe as possible so as to not offend possible future sponsors. And I struggle to see the point of them.

On the other hand, old rich white guys who can spend $1000 on a driver are a great audience. You don't need many of them to be watching for it to be appealing to advertisers who sell expensive watches or brokerage services. So the entire tour is set up to appeal to the dullest, most conservative segment on the planet. And you can't scare them. You want inoffensive white guys who went to college. If you allow any "character" it has to be very restricted. If anyone is non-white, they have to be the safest, most harmless kind of non-white person. I can't imagine what would happen if you had a Kaepernick style of incident at Augusta.

[Hot Pepsi]

Yeah, that wouldn’t go over well.

[ursus arctos]

That's an interesting angle, though.

When Tiger first exploded in the scene, much of the hype outside of the traditional golf bubble (and the entire rationale of the Nike deal) was that this Black/Thai guy was going to revolutionise the sport and inspire a whole new set of people to play.

At that time, the old, rich white guys who watch the Golf Channel in country club tap rooms so that they don't have to spend time with their wives or children saw him as a threat.

Now that they know that he's to the right of Michael Jordan and that no one is asking them to play with people of colour, they are all in on his "redemption".

[Hot Pepsi]

I don't know if they saw him as a threat so much as they didn't like what he was supposedly bringing with him - kids in sneakers and t-shirts on their course, large and diverse crowds at the tournaments, etc. - and they rejected the movement to make golf more inclusive. (Trump specifically said that he thinks golf should be exclusive. At least he's transparent.) But now that all of that hype has died down and, as you say, Tiger Woods himself has turned out to be a typical right-wing dickhead, they're happy to support him.

Of course, not everyone who plays golf is like that. There are lots of public courses and non-exclusive clubs that are just happy to have players*. But maintaining a golf course, even a not very fancy one, is inherently expensive so greens fees - let alone coaching, equipment, etc. - will always be a barrier to entry (Especially in big cities. The fees at public courses are a lot lower out here and I know a number of people of moderate means who play).

Sometimes they have no choice. There's been a major market correction in the last few decades.

We think of golf as being dominated by older white men and more than a few older white women, but the clubs need younger people to play too, not only to make up the numbers but because people's lifetime social habits and hobbies tend to be formed in their 20s and 30s. So if they don't get into it and join the club before 40, they're a lot less likely to do it when their kids have moved away and/or they retire. But that's also when people are busiest with their jobs and families, and I suspect - and I have a lot of anecdotal evidence to back this up - that men of my generation and younger generations are much less inclined to routinely burn an afternoon of their precious free time/family time, not to mention the money, to hang out with "the guys" than men of earlier generations. It's just not done. Of course, golf is increasingly open to women and kids, so it can be a family thing, but kids are so overprogrammed now that unless they pick golf as "their sport" they're probably not going to have any time or energy to pick it up casually. Because even if you're just doing it for fun, you have to play fairly often to maintain some skills. Otherwise it's just endless frustration.

[Hot Pepsi]

Case in point. TW is currently tied for 35th and yet his "comeback" from a terrible start is currently the lede story on ESPN.com. Not just their golf page, but the main page.

[Gangster Octopus]

And on the Beeb's website.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Whatever happens in the PGA this weekend won't be seen live by anyone in Britain or Ireland - it's exclusively on a pay per view online abomination called "Eleven" that I understand is something to do with whoever owns Leeds United now. I sincerely hope it disappears up the same demonic orifice that they do.

Anyway, on the public access v gentlemen's club nature of golf. It's definitely changed in Lancashire at least. A few of my mates play golf on what would once have been viewed as exclusive courses and they're as rough as arseholes (my mates, not the courses). And I seriously can envisage golf taking on the increasing problem of longer and longer courses by simply taking the driver out of the game. If all the top players can simply bang the ball 300 yards up the fairway without worrying, just forget it. Just start the holes from there. Pitch and putt (or, well, long iron and putt). Lots of people enjoy pitch and putt more anyway. Sounds horrific and impossible but everyone said that about limited overs cricket before it took over.

[San Bernardhinault]

I've noticed that, with increasingly rare exceptions (and mostly those are in Britain), golf courses are getting less and less snotty about the trivial things like choice of footwear or whether you have a collar on your shirt.

[Hot Pepsi]

Whatever happens in the PGA this weekend won't be seen live by anyone in Britain or Ireland - it's exclusively on a pay per view online abomination called "Eleven" that I understand is something to do with whoever owns Leeds United now. I sincerely hope it disappears up the same demonic orifice that they do.

Anyway, on the public access v gentlemen's club nature of golf. It's definitely changed in Lancashire at least. A few of my mates play golf on what would once have been viewed as exclusive courses and they're as rough as arseholes (my mates, not the courses). And I seriously can envisage golf taking on the increasing problem of longer and longer courses by simply taking the driver out of the game. If all the top players can simply bang the ball 300 yards up the fairway without worrying, just forget it. Just start the holes from there. Pitch and putt (or, well, long iron and putt). Lots of people enjoy pitch and putt more anyway. Sounds horrific and impossible but everyone said that about limited overs cricket before it took over.

I think what you’re referring to is called a Par 3 course in the US (because most, if not all of the holes are par 3). It is more fun, as I recall, and less frustrating, but I don’t know if there are any “serious” competitions in that format.

On the other hand, a lot of people like the driving range. I haven’t been in a while, but I recall enjoying that more than actual golf. Hitting ball after ball is a lot more interesting and fun than chasing and searching for balls.

[WOM]

I've noticed that, with increasingly rare exceptions (and mostly those are in Britain), golf courses are getting less and less snotty about the trivial things like choice of footwear or whether you have a collar on your shirt.

Really? I can't even imagine trying to get onto a course in an un-collared shirt. I do virtually everything in a t-shirt and even I wouldn't try to golf in one.

[WOM]

I think what you’re referring to is called a Par 3 course in the US (because most, if not all of the holes are par 3). It is more fun, as I recall, and less frustrating, but I don’t know if there are any “serious” competitions in that format.

Golf is dying on its ass. No amount of executive/Par3/pitch and putt or Bermuda Golf or soccer golf is going to save it. It's too expense, a round takes too long, and it's exclusionary by design. Mission accomplished.

[San Bernardhinault]

They're much more relaxed about women's clothing than men's, of course. But, basically, the cheaper and crappier the course, the less they care.

I think the most ridiculous thing is tucking shirts in - I've only been asked to do it once in the US, at a TPC course in Connecticut. But watching a little bit of the current tournament on TNT (why are TNT showing golf?) every single one of the players has shirts tucked in, like they're desperately trying to be business casual but don't quite know what it means. It looks very stupid.

[ursus arctos]

WOM, that’s because you still live in an uptight Presbyterian hellhole when it comes to the sport

[insert smiley thing]

Public courses here wouldn’t look twice if you showed up in T-shirt, shorts and ratty trainers, and I’ve been on Par 3 courses where that would be considered dressing up.

[ursus arctos]

The future of golf in the US, such as it is, is as a centrepiece for gated communities full of Trump acolytes.

[WOM]

WOM, that’s because you still live in an uptight Presbyterian hellhole when it comes to the sport

[insert smiley thing]

Public courses here wouldn’t look twice if you showed up in T-shirt, shorts and ratty trainers, and I’ve been on Par 3 courses where that would be considered dressing up.

Sorry...language issue...but do you mean 'municipal' courses or just courses open to the public? I can see golfing in a t at a City of Toronto course, but never even at a par-3 public (non-membership) course.

[Hot Pepsi]

I've noticed that, with increasingly rare exceptions (and mostly those are in Britain), golf courses are getting less and less snotty about the trivial things like choice of footwear or whether you have a collar on your shirt.

Probably, but I think they are going to be among the last bastions of that kind of thing.

A family friend of ours teaches a short class at Penn State on traditional manners and etiquette, and the reason they have that class is because PSU has a golf course management major as well as one of the world’s top turfgrass science programs and, to get and keep jobs in the golf industry, those people need to learn how to behave at a country club.

That’s also a particularly southern thing. A disproportionate number of golfers and American golf traditions are from the south.

The only places I’ve ever been to - or even heard of - in the US that require men to wear a blazer/jacket/sport coat in the dining room are in the south, especially areas where old money abuts Appalachia, like Charlottesville. (But perhaps not Florida, which has its own aesthetic).

People of means - white and black - in places like that are especially inclinded to distinguish themselves from the hoi polloi.

It’s not just about manners and decorum, it’s about money and breeding, old sport.

No doubt all of that is declining, but it’s still a region where over half of the white people seem to think America was “greater” in the 1950s, so it’s not going to go away soon.

[WOM]

I think the most ridiculous thing is tucking shirts in - I've only been asked to do it once in the US

We golfed at a place in Florida this year - one of those places where the homes back onto all the fairways, and most of the players are owners - and the guy we golfed with had gotten into a fist-fight with a 'course elder' over having his shirt tucked in. He owns a fleet limo company out of Boston and seemed like the kind of guy who'd fight you over being told to tuck his shirt in, but yeah, it's stupid.

[San Bernardhinault]

The future of golf in the US, such as it is, is as a centrepiece for gated communities full of Trump acolytes.

I'm not as pessimistic as you, but I do think there's a big split between the West coast and the rest of the US on this. Courses in California are generally not struggling much and usually have full(ish) tee sheets. If I'm on a road trip in Middle America, I can usually rock up to any (non-private) course, anywhere, and get a tee-time on the spot.

There are innovations in play that might help, particularly speeding up the game - they're finally changing rules for amateurs next year where there's no penalty if you don't take the pin out, and you don't have to be so fussy about how you take drops, recommending players to putt out once they've started putting, and so on. And trying to encourage people to play 9 in the evenings rather than play 18. If it's taking up 90 minutes of your evening, it's much less of a barrier than taking up 5 and a half hours in the middle of the day.