Golf’s regular season is ending, yet the debates are ramping up. We just finished an awesome Solheim Cup, and the Presidents Cup is a week away. Rory McIlroy came just short of an Irish Open win at one of the best venues in golf, while Jon Rahm won the LIV individual championship with the team championships this weekend in Texas.
Yet golf’s offseason also means the reignition of golf silly season, and these days that means constant reports about negotiations between the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, or rumors about which players LIV is courting now.
It felt like the perfect time to answer your questions. Thanks to all for their submissions.
Three male golfers won their second career major in 2024. If you had known this fact before the Masters, which golfers would you have picked to accomplish this? — Danny O.
Scottie Scheffler would have been the obvious one, so I suppose of the three he’s the one that’s no surprise. If anything we’re all a little surprised it’s still just two (which is equally unfair and the greatest compliment).
My second name back in January would have been Viktor Hovland. Xander Schauffele won his first and second in 2024, but if I was putting my money on someone to do that it would have absolutely been the Norwegian. Greatness in golf is so fickle, and recent form messes with our memories, so it’s easy to forget how incredible Hovland looked this time a year ago. I still deep down thought Scheffler was the best, but Hovland seemed to have that “killer” in him all of a sudden that Scheffler was not showing.
Well, nine months later, Scheffler and Schauffele have developed into killers while Hovland is lost. It’s a shame, but we shouldn’t lose sight of how cool it is seeing two young stars who were having issues closing become those kinds of closers. It’s what we plead with these guys for, and they are doing it.
As for a third golfer… I probably would have said Hideki Matsuyama. He was my pick to win that Masters (you can go back and check how irrationally confident I was!), and even before his fantastic summer he won at Riviera.
There seems to be a generational gap resulting in a dearth of Cup captains for the U.S. Tiger will be a Ryder Cup captain when he feels up to it, but here we are with a recycled Jim Furyk as Presidents Cup captain and a wild card selection in Keegan Bradley for Bethpage. Seems to be a gap of mid-40s to early-50s legitimate captain candidates. How do you see selections going for the next few cups and will we start seeing younger captains in general? — John B.
This is correct!
That generation was supposed to be held down by two dream Ryder Cup captains: Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. Mickelson was put on this Earth to be a captain at Bethpage, and he could have been the U.S. legend who captained several teams. Instead, he went to LIV (which in and of itself is not enough reason to not pick him), burned a lot of bridges and was accused of trying to gamble on the 2012 Ryder Cup. Unless there is some miraculous fence mending, it’s difficult to see him ever getting the opportunity. Meanwhile, Woods will absolutely be a captain soon — maybe even in 2027 at Adare Manor — but who knows if he’s the “let’s do this all the time” type. He’s taken on a massive role on the PGA Tour Enterprises board and has bigger fish to fry.
Go behind-the-scenes with the Captains as they unveil their six picks for Royal Montreal.
Dans les coulisses avec les Capitaines qui dévoilent leurs six choix pour Royal Montréal.#PresidentsCup pic.twitter.com/lVtuelcl2h
— Presidents Cup (@PresidentsCup) September 5, 2024
But the deeper issue is that these are simply two golfers. Woods’ domination of his era led to an entire wave of great golfers becoming labeled as sideline characters. Then, other than Mickelson, most of Woods’ actual rivals were internationals like Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and Sergio Garcia. His American counterparts were names like Furyk, David Duval or Stewart Cink who, for whatever reason, don’t have captivating personalities or beloved personas. They don’t seem right for leading a room of star golfers.
So instead of doing the “right thing” yet staying in neutral with Cink, the PGA of America went bold with Bradley. Maybe this was a desperate short-term move while waiting for Tiger. That’s totally possible. But when looking at the types of vice captains Bradley has picked (Webb Simpson, Brandt Snedeker), it signals a shift away from the norm. All new faces. Younger.
My guess is this does signal a shift toward a new era for the U.S.. If Bradley thrives? Perfect. You have a potential captain to pick when it fits for the next few decades! Then you bank on Woods in 2027, and then the hope is you have a new generation ready by 2029.
The silver lining in all of this is the current generation has a group of great future candidates. Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas were born to be captains. Shoot, Spieth might captain three teams. Rickie Fowler might not be the best Ryder Cup player, but a team would run through a TIO for him. That might take you through the 2030s, and by the 2040s you have Scheffler and who knows who else.
But I can’t help but raise the age-old question: Do we place way, way, way too much meaning to Ryder Cup captains? Absolutely.
Is men’s professional golf sustainable in its current iteration? Assuming LIV funds are indeed unlimited, can’t LIV just continue to stand pat, forcing the PGAT to continually spend more and more money beyond its means, risking sponsor and fan fatigue and lower TV revenue, which spirals into a disaster scenario? Are we headed to Premier League in golf, with relegations for Michael Thorbjornsen and Pat Perez? — Danny P.
Is it sustainable? Nope!
The PGA Tour already lost some big sponsors like Wells Fargo. The purses are not sustainable, and it’s unclear if or how the Strategic Sports Group billions actually affect this problem. Even if I find TV ratings discourse to be the lowest level of rational discussion, it’s clear tournaments are losing eyeballs. We got another good question from Scott S. about getting everyone back together for big events besides majors, but the dark truth nobody admits is the PGA Tour never was able to get all the best players together often enough. In some eras half the best players played on the European Tour. And before the LIV departures, it was still really difficult to know which players were playing what events. Maybe the Players. Maybe the Genesis and the FedEx Cup. But there’s a reason the signature event model was such a big deal. We finally got the best players together — only after some of those best players were gone!
Anybody claiming to know what happens is full of it, but I do think a deal gets done. Scheffler and Rory McIlroy reaching across the aisle to do a TV match with Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau is a strong message toward the tour to make a deal. McIlroy said Wednesday the U.S. Department of Justice and half the players still not wanting a deal are barriers to a deal. That makes sense.
But the biggest and more complicated wrinkle is what “unification” even looks like. A large chunk of the tour has no interest in welcoming back a bunch of players who accepted millions — in some cases hundreds of millions — to disrupt their league. Several LIV golfers sued the PGA Tour. Others rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. And if that wasn’t an issue, do they all just immediately get PGA Tour cards? No. Maybe 15 or so current LIV golfers would have qualified for tour cards in a normal season. Do certain players have the flexibility to play certain big PGA Tour events like the Players and the Genesis? OK, how in the world is that regulated or decided?
My guess is so much of this is really about the details and what the actual systems will be for bringing the game back together. So much got messed up, and large factions will be livid no matter what happens.
The buzz word is “global.” From Mickelson to McIlroy, there’s a steady suggestion that the best solution is making a worldwide golf tour, something like a Champions League in soccer where the top teams in each European league meet for a continental league. My problem is I don’t think they’re anywhere near having a plan or the support for that.
Do you think they will ever make the Presidents Cup a mixed event? — Ryan K.
The quick answer is no. I’d love it. I’m also all for mixing the Olympics, too. But my gut says no. It’s easy to forget the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup are not part of the same organization. The Ryder Cup is run by the DP World Tour and the PGA of America. The Presidents Cup is a PGA Tour event. So while I’ll admit I naturally find myself viewing it as Ryder Cup-lite and suggest things like using it as a breeding ground for young players, the PGA Tour still views it as its big event. I can’t see them doing that, even if it would be awesome.
Have you ever met a LIV golf fan in the wild (i.e. off Twitter)? — Matthew C.
No, I have not. But what I have found is a ton of friends who just love golf and have a LIV event in their city and go. I’m always surprised for a quick moment to see it on their Instagram story, but then I take a step back and remember the actual lesson from this whole saga:
Most golf fans are just fans of golf. Very few have actual strong opinions on LIV or the PGA Tour politics. They don’t care about negotiations or media rights distributions. But when Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau are in town, they want to see them play.
It’s not all that complicated.
(Top photo of Jon Rahm: Quinn Harris / Getty Images)
