Stray Shots: Gary (up), Greg (out?), greed
Woodland's revival, Norman's potential demotion positives; RC tickets revisited
Gary Woodland’s game on the upswing a year after brain surgery (David Becker/Getty Images)
1. Gary Woodland. Such a great story. The 40-year old Woodland has always been a popular player on the PGA Tour, and one of its best athletes. He went to college on a basketball scholarship, then transferred to Kansas to play golf. A tremendously long hitter, he has won four times on tour and made a slew of major championship but only one top-five — his victory in the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, saving us from a Brooks Koepka three-peat. He reached No. 12 in the OWGR after that, his peak.
That year he also had a T8 in the PGA Championship, but since then his majors record has been desultory indeed — one top-10 and the rest being a combination of missed cuts or finishing the tournaments where he made cuts before Sunday TV coverage began.
But his story took a turn last year, when doctors had to cut a hole in the side of his skull the size of a baseball to remove most of a benign tumor on the part of his brain that controlled fear. That’s a tough deal for anyone, of course. How do you come back as a world class athlete from that at any age, much less 40?
The Daily Drive is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Yet at the Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas, Woodland bagged a top-10. This after netting a T16 in his previous start at the Sanderson Farms. What a tremendous accomplishment for Woodland, and all hats off.
“The last month has been really good,” Woodland said. “I just hit a year couple weeks ago so that’s exciting. It’s all coming together. I’m feeling better and the game is coming around, which makes a lot of sense.”
2. Greg Norman. Word on the street is that consideration may be underway to replace the LIV commissioner. If the Sports Business Journal report is true, this might be the most promising sign that PIF-PGA negotiations are trending towards a positive conclusion.
Norman has long been a thorn in the side of the PGA Tour, dating back decades when he jousted with former commissioner Tim Finchem over Norman seeking to start a competing World Tour. (Perhaps had that been handled better all around today’s contretemps between PIF and tour might have been ameliorated, or even avoided.)
Norman’s behavior since the onset of LIV can fairly be viewed as, in material part, pursuit of a long-standing personal vendetta against the tour.
We here have never understood how commissioners Norman and Jay Monahan can really be part of a consensual solution, given the former’s longstanding confrontational relationship with the tour and the latter’s handling of the issue not exactly fodder for a Harvard Business School case study about how to deal with a corporate crisis. It’s seems unclear who is really running either tour these days.
Replacing Norman, who allegedly has not been part of PIF-PGA Tour negotiations to date, would be a clear signal that PIF recognizes his lightning-rod proclivities were useful at the outset but cannot be part of a consensual solution going forward.
3. Ryder Cup gouging. There are a couple of big issues here with the release of the ticket prices for next year’s matches at Bethpage Black — expense and the fact players on neither team are being compensated. Both of those issues were well-addressed in the Daily Drive on Monday. The pricing bears a trifle more attention, however.
Yes, the tickets are expensive at $750 per day. Yes it’s true the Ryder Cup is on U.S. soil only every four years. Yes it’s also fair to say those prices are not exactly a grow-the-game initiative.
However … Masters tickets on the secondary market next April are about $1,700 today. And just try to get tickets to the Yankees-Dodgers World Series games. They range from $1,500 on up, so far. And the World Series is a more prominent sporting event than is the Ryder Cup, except to the far smaller golf world.
Taylor Swift concert tix have people paying up to $10K per concert on the secondary market, and she seems to be performing nightly. Plenty of live events are beyond expensive, and even college football match-ups are not immune — according to Stubhub, the cheapest ticket for Texas A&M vs. Texas next month is $700.
Just like we do not understand why PGA Tour players are supposed to lead the fight for human rights when the U.S. Government and scads of U.S. businesses merrily trade with the Saudis, we also do not understand why the Ryder Cup should be criticized for being practicing capitalists. If the PGA of American can bag $45+ million over three days just for admission, without needing to pay their performers a cent, that’s pretty impressive economic stuff.
All that noted, Ryder Cup ticket pricing should be re-thought to carve out a swath of passes for kids, Youth on Course, First Tee and related organizations — non-transferable in order to actually take steps to indeed “grow the game” and not just the current PGA of America coffers. Perhaps look at it like an investment in your own future audience.
Maybe even subsidize the proposed cheap tickets for kids by (gulp) raising prices a little more on everyone else. In context, it’s not really egregious. Perhaps sad, but not egregious.
Scheffler headlines Hero field
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is in, but Nos. 2, 3 and 4 take pass at Hero World Challenge.
Following the commitment deadline, initial player commitments for the 2024 Hero World Challenge hosted by Tiger Woods were announced Tuesday. The 2024 edition of the tournament returns to Albany, Bahamas, December 5-8.
This year’s field features five of the top 10 players in the world (as of the eligibility date) but only two of the top five. Scheffler, the tournament’s defending champion who won Olympic gold in Paris in August, and 2016 event champion Hideki Matsuyama are committed. Nine members of the United States’ victorious 2024 Presidents Cup team and three members of the International team (Matsuyama, Sungjae Im and Tom Kim) will compete at Albany.
Six players will make their Hero World Challenge debuts — Ludvig Åberg, Sahith Theegala, Russell Henley, Robert MacIntyre, Aaron Rai and Matthieu Pavon. The 2024 field represents golfers from seven different countries (U.S., South Korea, Japan, England, Scotland, France and Sweden).
The field features five golfers who have combined to win six majors — Scheffler (2022 and 2024 Masters), Matsuyama (2021 Masters), Wyndham Clark (2023 U.S. Open), Brian Harman (2023 Open Championship) and Keegan Bradley (2011 PGA Championship).
The remainder of the field will be announced at a later date.
