2022 PGA Tour

Senator Donut

post-Domer
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Apr 21, 2010
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This doesn't even make sense. Is the Saudi Tour going to implement its own rulebook? Is the kingdom notoriously lenient towards rule-breakers? I don't think so.
 

Freddy Linn

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Where it rains. No, seriously.
Phil racked up $40 million in gambling losses from 2010-2014.

Fire Pit Collective

Mickelson’s love of gambling is fundamental to understanding his style of play as a golfer. It might also explain the Saudi seduction. Based on his comments to me, he clearly enjoyed the idea of sticking it to the PGA Tour, but the real motivation was plainly the funny money being offered by the Saudis. Why was Phil so eager to cash in, at the risk of alienating so many fans and endorsement partners? The massive scale of Mickelson’s gambling losses has never before been made public, but, as noted in the book, during the Billy Walters insider trading investigation, government auditors conducted a forensic examination of Phil’s finances.

According to a source with direct access to the documents, Mickelson had gambling losses totaling more than $40 million in the four-year period (2010–14) that was scrutinized. In those prime earning years, his income was estimated to be just north of $40 million a year. That’s an obscene amount of money, but once he paid his taxes (including the California tariffs he publicly railed against), he was left with, what, low-20s? Then he had to cover his plane and mansion(s), plus his agent, caddie, pilots, chef, personal trainer, swing coaches and sundry others. Throw in all the other expenses of a big life—like an actual T. Rex skull for a birthday present—and that leaves, what, $10 million? Per the government audit, that’s roughly how much Mickelson averaged in annual gambling losses. (And we don’t know what we don’t know.) In other words, it’s quite possible he was barely breaking even, or maybe even in the red. And Mickelson’s income dropped considerably during his winless years from 2014 to ’17.
 

voidfunkt

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This doesn't even make sense. Is the Saudi Tour going to implement its own rulebook? Is the kingdom notoriously lenient towards rule-breakers? I don't think so.
I'm sure whatever rule book they've setup is heavily tilted towards whatever the founding players want.

Phil racked up $40 million in gambling losses from 2010-2014.
Everyone knows Phil has a major gambling problem... but wow. I wonder if I can get a bet with him that the Saudi tour fails?
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Oct 1, 2015
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PGA with a statement that Garcia shouldn’t have been penalized but the penalty still stands.

View: https://twitter.com/pgatourcomms/status/1522379898270236672?s=21&t=Sbem1ovh1x5wMgSCDJ8dxQ
I don't get it. The penalty shouldn't have counted, but we're going to count it anyway. Just a "whoops...refs missed the call...sorry" kind of thing? Seems like in golf of any sport, they can adjust after the fact (they do this sometimes when a player SHOULD have been penalized). Yeah it affects the final leaderboard. Oh well.
 

Senator Donut

post-Domer
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Apr 21, 2010
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But he signed his scorecard already!!!!
What’s your proposal? Should he try his best to recreate that lie Friday morning before the first group tees off 10 and have him finish the hole for potentially a score worse than par?
 

Comfortably Lomb

Koko the Monkey
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Feb 22, 2004
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The Paris of the 80s
Wait, was he assigned a penalty stroke? I think he just had to go back further and play a ball from a worse location than where his ball actually landed... which isn't fixable score-wise.

I'm not sure the Saudi Tour is going to have a magic communication strategy to prevent this sort of thing. Sometimes the wrong info gets sent along. In any event, bye Sergio.
 

cshea

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Yeah, he found the ball but since it was after the clock expiried they treated it as lost. It was in a hazard so he didn't have to go all the way back and got the two club lenghs from the red line where it entered. There's no way to recreate the hole. You can't just take away a shot because he picked the ball up and took a drop, he didn't play it from it's original lie. There's not much they can do here other than say sorry.
 

kenneycb

Hates Goose Island Beer; Loves Backdoor Play
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Dec 2, 2006
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Tuukka's refugee camp
What’s your proposal? Should he try his best to recreate that lie Friday morning before the first group tees off 10 and have him finish the hole for potentially a score worse than par?
I misread the above and more just wanted to mock the scorecard signing DQ that comes up once every other year.
 

jercra

No longer respects DeChambeau
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Jul 31, 2006
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I misread the above and more just wanted to mock the scorecard signing DQ that comes up once every other year.
What's to mock? There's not really another solution. The player is the only one that knows his intent and intent is really, really important to keeping score in golf. You could asses a penalty once it's discovered, but if it was a player close to the lead, his posted score would impact the way other players play their round. You'd probably play the 72nd hole differently if you thought you had a 2 stroke lead instead being tied or 1 stroke back.
 

Comfortably Lomb

Koko the Monkey
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Feb 22, 2004
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Eh, Tour players keeping their own scorecards in 2022 is kind of absurd.

Everyone watching knows every score on the course but the players need to break out their little pencil after every hole and keep tabs.
 

jercra

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Eh, Tour players keeping their own scorecards in 2022 is kind of absurd.

Everyone watching knows every score on the course but the players need to break out their little pencil after every hole and keep tabs.
Yeah, that's not true at all. Here's just one scenario. A player hits his ball into the tall grass, takes a swing and no ball comes out. Did he take a stroke at the ball? He's the only one who knows the answer to that question. There are a lot of other scenarios as well. Opposite events and 2nd/3rd courses aren't scored nearly the same way as primary PGA TOUR events. All of the scoring data is entered by a herd of volunteers. Their ability to enter data accurately is variable. What you see on TV is really only an echo of the official data and is manipulated manually for every shot shown on screen and then discarded as soon as the graphic is gone. The vast, vast majority of shots are not on TV so even if it were fed back into the scoring systems it would cover very little of a tournament.

Golf isn't like other sports. Keeping score for 156 players over 4 days across acres and acres of land with varying levels of connectivity is much harder than it looks on TV.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
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Greg Norman with a . . . take:
“This whole thing about Saudi Arabia and Khashoggi and human rights, talk about it, but also talk about the good that the country is doing in changing its culture,”
Look, we’ve all made mistakes and you just want to learn by those mistakes and how you can correct them going forward.”
“I haven’t had a personal conversation with MBS, I’ve never met the guy, but at the same time I do read that the Saudi government has made their statements and comments about it and they want to move forward,” Norman said Wednesday.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/12/sport/greg-norman-saudi-arabia-jamal-khashoggi-golf-intl-spt/index.html


My sense is that already-good golfers doing pretty well on the PGA Tour will stay there because competing with the best, blah, blah, blah.

Is LIV going to get anything other than past-their primes or not-quite-good-enoughs?
 

cshea

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It's not exactly breaking news that Norman is an asshole. In addition to his response to the Khashoggi questions, he was also pushed on Saudi Arabia's record with the LBGTQ+ community. His reply?

https://www.thewrap.com/greg-norman-ceo-saudi-liv-golf-jamal-khashoggi/

The Q&A did indeed move on, to the topic of Saudi Arabia’s treatment of the LGBTQ+ community. “I’m not sure whether I even have any gay friends, to be honest with you,” he said.
The only player who has really spoken about this is Westwood. When pushed on taking Saudi money, his response has essentially been (paraphrasing) "Formula 1 races here. They own Newcastle United. They have darts and snooker here too. Why are we the ones that catch heat?"

I think this will still go off. They'll get the pre-Champions tour guys as Rory calls it. I think they'll try and leverage the guaranteed money to entice KFT/NCAA players and hope the find a star or two. Whether it's possible for a player to become a star playing on this circuit is another story.

Edit: Also, the legal battle on the horizon now that the Tour officially rejected the players release waivers will determine how LIV Golf goes.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
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I think this will still go off. They'll get the pre-Champions tour guys as Rory calls it. I think they'll try and leverage the guaranteed money to entice KFT/NCAA players and hope the find a star or two. Whether it's possible for a player to become a star playing on this circuit is another story.
Wont become a star. Will become wildly rich. I won't pretend that I would not be tempted if I was an LIV target.
 

jercra

No longer respects DeChambeau
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I think this will still go off. They'll get the pre-Champions tour guys as Rory calls it. I think they'll try and leverage the guaranteed money to entice KFT/NCAA players and hope the find a star or two. Whether it's possible for a player to become a star playing on this circuit is another story.
It's going to be hard to become a star beating Westwood, Poulter, Kaymer, Garrigus and fringe KFT players every couple of weeks. I'm sure there are some really good athletes playing Canadian football, but I'm not sure any of them are "stars".
 

E5 Yaz

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Just wanted to vent at Golf Channel for leaving the Euro Tour playoff to go to their pregame show. It only went one more hole and was won on the latest in a string of fabulous putts by the champion. I might be the only one who gives a crap about this, but it was frustrating.
 

E5 Yaz

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HV3 just seems destined never to win on the PGA Tour. It sucks because he seems like a great guy
 

E5 Yaz

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I’m with you. Seems like a real good dude, I always pull for him when he is in the mix. Could be way off on the LIV stuff but he did win the Saudi tourney this year.
I wonder how much of his triple was caused by waiting forever for Stallings. I mean, I know he mucked up before that wait, but it couldn't have helped
 

cshea

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Certainly possible. When he melts down though he makes it count. He does make a bogey he makes a bunch of others. He had the 89 or whatever at Bethpage, he melted down at Riviera a few years ago and now this.
 

johnmd20

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Varner was -10 after 11.

He walked to the 18th tee at -1. And he put his tee shot on the 18th in the water.

Has a player ever been -10 on the back nine and finished above par?
 

E5 Yaz

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Varner shoots a standard 39-39-78 on Sunday and it's no big deal ... he fell off the board. But he shot 33-45, which seems really difficult to do
 
Varner shoots a standard 39-39-78 on Sunday and it's no big deal ... he fell off the board. But he shot 33-45, which seems really difficult to do
I once shot 38-57-95 in a tournament round. (Downwind going out, into the wind coming back.) But then, I'm not a PGA Tour pro...I wonder how much (if any) scar tissue that round is going to leave on Varner going forward.
 

johnmd20

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I once shot 38-57-95 in a tournament round. (Downwind going out, into the wind coming back.) But then, I'm not a PGA Tour pro...I wonder how much (if any) scar tissue that round is going to leave on Varner going forward.
A lot of tissue. Varner has had a lot of these types of collapses over the past few years. Yesterday was definitely the worst one, of course. He was leading and then he was not in the Top 10 in 2 holes. He's a great player but his closing ability is poor at the present time.
 

E5 Yaz

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He was leading and then he was not in the Top 10 in 2 holes. He's a great player but his closing ability is poor at the present time.
So you're saying he's a lot like Marcus Smart ... taking too many shots when it counts?
 
I was listening to this week's No Laying Up podcast this morning, and the guys were describing a wild situation from Thursday or Friday that I'd not heard anything about. Dylan Frittelli airmailed the 12th green into a bush with his second shot, and it sounds like he then played his third shot out of anyone's vision. The story is that apparently everyone heard a "thwack" sound, and then 3-4 seconds later there was a second "thwack", after which the ball appeared. Frittelli took two more shots to get down from there, and his marker (Zach Johnson) wrote his score down as a five...but the third player in the group, Ian Poulter, was NOT happy. At the end of the round, Poulter and Frittelli remained at the scorer's table for *90 minutes* arguing about whether he'd taken two swings at the ball from the bush (Poulter's contention) or whether the first noise was from a practice swing (Frittelli's contention). The NLU guys were onsite at Colonial, and one of them did have a word after the fact with Poulter, who smiled and jovially said that he couldn't comment about it; Frittelli did wind up getting credited with a 5 on the hole, and ironically he went on to finish exactly one shot ahead of Poulter after 72 holes.