Gooch gets a chance at Valhalla
Better make the most free pass, Talor; Derby outdraws golf; Dunlap wins for the aged
Talor Gooch will get to play at least one major in 2024 (Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)
So after all that whining …
Talor Gooch said he would not attempt to qualify for the U.S. Open or the Open Championship, yet after all that hand-wringing on both sides weighing in on either the unfairness of it all or the absurdness of his decision to opt out … the PGA of America is giving him an exemption?
Yes, Gooch said via social media on Monday that he’d received an invite for next week’s PGA Championship at Valhalla. Unless he changes his mind about the Open — or wins the PGA Championship — it’ll be his only major championship start this year.
https://x.com/TalorGooch/status/1787543406597816633
Gooch is annoyed — as are the LIV supporters — that his No. 1 points standing in the 2023 LIV Golf standings has come with virtually no acknowledgement from the golf authorities. Well, until the PGA decided to extend an olive branch, one that it also gave to another LIV golfer, David Puig, who made far more effort that Gooch to get noticed.
The full field for next week’s PGA Championship has yet to be announced, but expect to see Patrick Reed also get an invite and perhaps even Louis Oosthuizen and Dean Burmester.
LIV expects — has almost demanded — that the majors acknowledge its players through direct exemptions. So far, that has not happened and with the Official World Golf Ranking denying the league’s bid for accreditation, it should come as little surprise.
The OWGR and the Masters have said that the LIV Golf format is not worthy of points or direct access. Bob Harig dived into this subject for Sports Illustrated. And it’s a complicated issue because Gooch has been beating players on LIV who are getting in majors.
Adding to the angst is what happened to Gooch last year. The USGA changed its exemption criteria for the 2023 U.S. Open by tweaking wording that would have otherwise seen him exempt for the tournament at Los Angeles Country Club. He elected not to qualify, then missed the cut at the Open and appeared as if he’d be in no majors this year.
That changed on Monday and Gooch now has a chance at redemption. The PGA is expected to announce its remaining exemptions on Tuesday. It’s a lifeline opportunity that would behoove Gooch to take advantage of since he doesn’t seem inclined to make the effort to qualify.
Mystik Dan not only beat Derby field, he beat golf ratings (Rob Carr/Getty Images)
Horses over courses? Derby delivers perspective
It took a cluster of horses running around an oval track to finally get NBC some decent ratings.
Saturday’s broadcast of the Kentucky Derby had an average audience of 16.7 million on NBC Sports platforms, which according to Front Office Sports is a 13 percent increase from last year’s event that was marred by seven horses dying on Derby weekend.
How quickly fans forget.
Anyways, not since the NFL divisional playoffs in January has the Peacock network seen such numbers and that includes all that compelling golf that NBC showed in February and March.
And for just a little whipped cream on top of those numbers, the 20.1 million peak viewership figure is the most ever in NBC Sports coverage of the Derby.
So, what are odds that an 18-1 shot in Mystik Dan — who ran a race in 2 minutes, 3.34 seconds — would be more compelling than hours upon hours of an 18-hole stroke play event?
At the start of the year if you would have said the No. 1 player in the world, winning big events on the PGA Tour like the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Players Championship and Masters, could not outdraw an unheralded 18-1 no-name horse, you would have laughed so hard to split a gut.
But what the Kentucky Derby showed is that horses who many fans have never heard of — and have no ties or emotional attachment to — drew more viewership than the Players Championship, a flagship event on the PGA Tour.
Coverage on Peacock started at 2:30 p.m. EDT for a 6:57 p.m. post time that was on NBC, so it was a pre-race show of more than four hours — no racing action, just hype before the bell rang.
What can golf learn from that?
You keep hearing about pleasing the fans from the new PGA Tour Enterprises investment group Strategic Sports Group. Even PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has sung a similar tune.
So, what does golf do? Because it never gets these types of numbers and now seems to struggle to meet the bare minimum.
At the same time in a recent story in Golf Digest by Dave Shedloski, NBC seems to have lost the plot on how to cover a golf tournament and slowly is pulling back on technology and personnel in favor of lower ratings and less expenditures. NBC did finally release it’s team for the U.S. Open at Pinehurst in June, which will include a return of Roger Maltbie and Gary Koch and put Brandel Chamblee and Brad Faxon in the lead analyst chair opposite Dan Hicks and Mike Tirico.
It’s likely that golf needs to tear down its golf coverage and reinvent the product to generate more interest from casual sports fan.
We would all think it matters that golf is one of the winners out of the pandemic with courses full and new players added to the ranks, but playing golf and watching golf are two different things.
You can be assured that there aren’t people beating down paddock doors around the U.S. to learn how to ride, but yet their numbers and interest won out this weekend.
It’s time for golf to step up and figure out what will draw the casual fan.
Dunlap surprises himself at 60
Scott Dunlap is the official definition of a journeyman.
He played one event in 1992 on the PGA Tour and didn’t get his card until 1996. Dunlap only played full time for seven years in a 20-year span from 1992 to 2012.
With three top-three finishes (1996 Bell Canadian Open; 1999 Doral Ryder Open and the 2000 Players Championship) in 204 events and $2,930,471 in earnings, Dunlap fits all the journeyman requirements.
Ironically, on Sunday at the Insperity Invitational at The Woodlands, Texas, outside of Houston, Dunlap didn’t hit a shot due to weather cancelling the final round. But the 60-year-old won his second PGA Tour Champions event and a whopping $405,000, his largest paycheck of his career by $105,000.
“You had to hold out hope,” Dunlap said on Sunday after the cancellation. “I mean, I just knew I could do better than I was doing and so, you just don’t know how much better and what that means.”
Since his last win at the 2014 Boeing Classic in a playoff win over Mark Brooks, Dunlap has played in 198 events on the senior tour with chances at times, the last coming at the 2018 Cologuard Classic.
After a tie for second in Tucson in 2018, Dunlap has not been in the hunt and even in 2024 his best finish in his first five starts was a T21 at the Chubb Classic in February.
That’s a lot of disappointment.
With 36 holes required on Saturday due to weather cancelling play on Friday, Dunlap would bogey his last hole of the day, but his two-shot lead over Joe Durant and Stuart Appleby made the victory by a slim one shot.
“The tour has only gotten tougher since I’ve turned 50,” Dunlap said. “Some really great quality players have turned 50 since I’ve been out here so it only got harder. So, I knew that I could be better, but I didn’t know if that meant that I could beat these guys again. There is still a nice living to be made playing golf, but you do play to win. Did I think I could win? Maybe. But I wasn’t sure.”