Is the PGA Tour

a crumbling sports dynasty?

Author

Sean Melia
November 17, 2023

Netflix Cup - Golf or Shenanigans?

This week, I left the living room while the Netflix Cup was playing on the TV. My wife came home and sat down on the couch. I had left the room, and when I returned, she had a blank look on her face.

She looked at me and said, “Is this golf or shenanigans?”

I’m still not sure how to answer. But I’m leaning toward shenanigans.

It’s another Friday, and you’ve decided to open this newsletter.

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Let’s get to it.

Crumbling Sports Dynasties

Sports dynasties rarely, if ever, end gracefully. Stretches of dominance can come to a screeching halt or peter out in fits and starts.

The Dallas Cowboys are coming up on 30 years without a Super Bowl.

Same with the San Francisco 49ers, who have bounced back after a horrendous run in the late 1990s and early 200s.

The Chicago Bulls post Michael Jordan had the Derrick Rose era ripped away from them.

The Edmonton Oilers won five Stanley Cups in the 1980s and haven’t won one since.

Manchester United is mired in mediocrity and, in the cruelest reality, their “noisy neighbor,” Manchester City, is currently in the throws over their own dynasty.

For folks in New England, this Patriots season is a reminder of the way things used to be before Drew Bledsoe and Bill Parcells slowly turned the ship around. Then Tom Brady and Bill Belichick arrived in Foxborough and turned the ship into a rocket.

As a 40-year-old, those bad Patriots teams are a hazy memory, made blurrier by the vivid images of six shiny Super Bowls.

Now, we’re paying for it. Such is sport.

This year’s team has thrown away opportunities to win games we’re used to them winning. We’ve gone from expecting Super Bowls to hoping they lose to the New York Giants to sneak past them in the draft order so they can pick the next franchise quarterback.

This week, there’s a legitimate conversation about Belichick leaving after this year (or it’s just bye-week fodder to fill radio time). The team is undisciplined, and we’re heading towards watching Bailey Zappe and Will Grier play quarterback because Mac Jones is a disaster.

Mismanagement can certainly be blamed. So can nepotism. It’s also easy to say that a 72-year-old Belichick is watching the league pass him by.

The end of a dynasty is a cocktail. Pay attention to the Golden State Warriors over the next 2-3 years, it might start to look the same as other teams whose run comes to an end.

It’s beginning to feel like the PGA Tour, which is a different entity than a team, is also struggling with the end of a dynasty.

The Tiger Dynasty.

From 1997 to 2019 the PGA Tour rode the wave of Tiger Woods. Even through scandal and injury, Tiger Woods was golf’s needle. He brought fans into the sport, he made golf cool, and he lined the pockets of many, many people. He still does this, but he’s not playing in PGA Tour events anymore. He’s just doing it for golf in general.

This week, on the 5 Clubs podcast Frank Nobilo said that PGA Tour players are overpaid, especially based on the number of people who watch the sport (a discussion for another day).

Viktor Hovland has 34 million reasons to thank Tiger Woods.

When dynasties crumble, it happens from within. People begin to feel disconnected or disenfranchised. In sports, players naturally age out or begin to want a bigger piece of the pie (the disease of more). The leadership holds onto the past for too long, unwilling to think differently or step aside for new leadership.

The PGA Tour is trying to hold onto the past by cozying up with Saudi Arabia (which seems like it’s failing) and major investment group. It’s a desperate chase to recreate the Tiger Dynasty.

The PGA Tour has redefined itself multiple times over its existence. Before Tiger came along there was a lull between those Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Some of the greatest players in the history of golf played in that 1960s-1980s window (Lee Trevino, Gary Player, Tom Watson). Then came the likes of Seve and Nick Faldo and Greg Norman and Ian Woosnam and Paul Azinger. A collection of players that managed to keep the lamp lit, but seemed marked by one hit wonders and choke jobs (see: Greg Norman).

When we look back on the Tiger Dynasty, the talent feels similar to the Jack Dynasty. Phil Mickelson and Tiger carried the load, but Ernie Els and Vijay Singh and Reteif Goosen were major factors in those early years.

Now, we have a plethora of talent in golf. That’s undeniable, but the roof is leaky and the foundation is cracked. It’s a 7-9 football team that’s a few injuries away from hoping for a top 2 draft pick and a rebuild.

Even new ventures like the TGL have hit snags, the SoFi Center in Jupiter that will host the matches literally deflated yesterday. Rory bailed from the Player Advisory Board this week. Of course, LIV Golf is just lurking in the water at all times ready to snag any unhappy player who would like more financial security.

There will never be another Tiger Woods. Just like there will never be another Tom Brady or Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretkzy, but the key for the PGA Tour, just like the Patriots, is to not hold onto the old and try to figure out the new much faster.

For the PGA Tour, there are getting close to the best stretch of golf they offer their audience each year. From January to April the golf will, hopefully, become a welcome distraction from all the other issues.

Picture of the week: The Country Club

The 11th hole at TCC

News and Notes

Rory McIlroy did exactly what so many of us want to do after sitting through a long meeting. He quit. He’ll longer be on the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Board. It makes sense, given he called Patrick Cantlay, one of the other players on the board, a dick last week in an interview. I think he’s realizing that he has four good years left, and wasting time on zoom for hours, which is not a recipe for winning majors or really doing anything well.

Max Homa earned $18,008 on the PGA Tour in 2016-2017. He made two cuts in 17 events. He won the Nedbank in South Africa last weekend and is now the fifth-ranked player in the world. Just a reminder to keep grinding and have a positive perspective. This 2019 interview on the No Laying Up podcast is dynamite.

The entire fall college golf season was played without any rankings being released. In what turned into a total farse after the NCAA tabbed SpikeMark as the new “official” scoring and ranking site, kicking GolfStat to the curb, the knot is slowly being untied and this week the first set of team and individual rankings were released. It’ll take time to sort it all out, because a lot of scores have been lost or not entered and events have been weighted oddly. Brentley Romine heard from a lot of pissed off coaches.

When I’m not golfing…

I’m gambling….(Every week, because it's now legal in Mass. I'm going to make five NFL picks and keep track of them here.)

  • Last Week: 2-3 (Season record: 27-23)

    • Lions (-7.5) over Bears

    • 49ers (-12) over Bucs

    • Chargers (-3) over Packers

    • Steelers (+1.5) over Browns

    • Cardinals (+5) over Texans

I’m reading… There Will Be Fire by Rory Carroll is about the near assassination of Margaret Thatcher by the IRA. A real “what if” kind of historical moment.

I’m listening to… boygenius is a female supergroup of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus.

I very much enjoyed this Fried Egg podcast between Andy Johnson and Roberto Castro about a slew of topics, including TGL.

I’m eating… 

I’m drinking… had a little hankering for hard cider this weekend. The crisp weather must have done it to me. Downeast Cider is my usual go-to.

I’m watching… Escaping Twin Flames is another docuseries about cults. I personally can’t get enough of this stuff.

I'm (shamelessly) plugging...

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