Does men’s pro golf really need “reunification”?

 There have been plenty of social media posts made and column inches written in the golf magazines lately on the issue of healing the rift in men’s professional golf. In a recent Golf.com article, Adam Scott is quoted as saying that a “reunification[1]” agreement whereby LIV Golf defectors[2] would be welcomed back to play PGA Tour events is one way forward. Flip-flop king Rory McIlroy has gone on record saying that reunification would be “the best thing for everyone[3]”—but does the men’s professional game really need the players who have signed on with the Saudi-backed league to come back to the mainstream fold? What is there to be gained from it?

The Saudi pick-up league, initially headed up by the perennially butt-hurt Greg Norman, lured players with promises of big paychecks, which they delivered on, and OWGR points so that LIV players could still earn their way into the four men’s majors, which they have not delivered on. This classic bait-and-switch played on the “have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too” mentality of entitled and/or desperate pro golfers, some of whom may in the near future be looking back wistfully on the good old days scrambling to make cuts and a paycheck.

Let’s look at a few of the golfers who play for LIV Golf and what they bring to professional golf. We’ll start with the chief rabble-rouser:

Phil Mickelson – Fan favorite, multiple-event winner, record-holder for the oldest ever to win a major championship, FIGJAM Phil (as he is known around the Tour) has won more money on the golf course (and lost more betting on sports, including golf) than most people would earn in a dozen lifetimes, but he has for years been at odds with the PGA Tour leadership on the subject of money. As in, why don’t the players, who provide the content, get more of the cash that the Tour rakes in from TV rights, video content, etc.?

Phil raised a storm of controversy when he phoned golf writer Alan Shipnuck in May 2022 and bared his breast concerning his decision to throw in his lot with Greg Norman in his Tour-busting alliance with the Saudi-funded LIV Golf League. The storm increased in intensity when he back-pedaled, whining that the conversation had been off the record (reader, it wasn’t–gkm). He allowed as how the Saudis were “scary motherf**kers” to work with, but he was going that route in order to gain leverage to try to squeeze more gelt out of the PGA Tour (in much the same manner, I imagine, as his bookies might have been putting the squeeze on him to settle his gambling debts.)

Aside from his record-breaking 2021 PGA Championship victory, which truly was a performance for the ages, Phil had been increasingly fading into a non-presence, last playing any non-major events on the PGA Tour in late 2021 and 2022, making only one cut out of three cut events – a T-36 finish at what was then the Fortinet Championship. He hasn’t exactly set the world on fire in his time playing LIV Golf’s team scramble format, either, carding only two Top 10 individual finishes since 2023.

So, does the PGA Tour need to bring this contentious, antagonistic, aging, over-the-hill club member back into the fold?

Dustin Johnson – DJ, as he is known, may be the quintessential laid-back, no-worries guy. Long of limb and stride, and long off the tee, Johnson was also fading in the stats when he accepted the Saudi gelt. In his last season playing non-major Tour events he managed two Top 10 finishes and eight cuts made in 10 cut events—not exactly covering himself in glory.

Other issues have clouded Johnson’s PGA Tour career, such as a six-month suspension in 2014 for drug use (marijuana, cocaine), and at the best of times it has seemed that the slow-walking, slow-talking (slow-thinking?) South Carolina native is only out there playing golf as an easy (for him…) way to make a lot of money and support a laid-back Low Country lifestyle. His LIV Golf record is no barn-burner, either, with two wins and eight Top 10 individual finishes in the first two full seasons.

Brooks Koepka – Brooks started his pro career in 2012 busting his hump on the Challenge Tour, the (then) European Tour’s equivalent of the minor leagues. He traveled so much that he had to have extra visa pages added to his passport, won several events, and in 2014 stepped up to the PGA Tour. He  enjoyed success, if somewhat focused, in the big league of golf – his nine wins include back-to-back U.S Opens in 2017 and 2018, two Phoenix Open wins (2015, 2021) and three PGA Championship titles (2018, 2019, 2023) with the last coming after he kissed Yasir Al-Rumayyan’s ring in 2022, hauled a wheelbarrow-load of money home, and put the PGA Tour in his rearview mirror.

I remember when Brooks was a humble, soft-spoken newbie on the PGA Tour, telling the assembled media at the 2014 Fry’s.com Open about eating horse meat in Kazakhstan, and other tales of the Challenge Tour, in between going through the shots of his tournament-leading second and third rounds. No one could have been more surprised than I was when he morphed into a brash, prickly “big name” in pro golf with a fragile ego and more major wins than regular tournament victories. Koepka has played consistently well since jumping ship, with five Top 10 finishes in 2023 and four in the 2024 season – but would PGA Tour fans (or PGA Tour members) welcome him back?

Patrick Reed – Reed has been a lightning rod for controversy over the years. He came up as a hard-scrabble Monday qualifier, playing his way into six PGA tour events in 2013 to earn his card for the 2014 season, but controversy has haunted his footsteps from the beginning. There were hints, and later outright accusations from his Augusta State teammates, of cheating and marginal off-course behavior, and both on- and off-course controversy in his years on the PGA tour. There was the “embedded ball” incident at Torrey Pines in 2021, his “Captain America” schtick at the Ryder Cup matches over the years, and his wife, Justine, ran a (then) Twitter account called @useGolfFACTS which was a badly disguised Patrick Reed propaganda account. His LIV Golf record is in the upper echelon, with five Top 10 finishes in 2023 and three in the 2024 season, but perhaps the jump to a guaranteed prize, Sunday-scramble, team golf format league has taken the shine off of his “Captain America” persona.

Bryson DeChambeau – What can I say about Bryson DeChambeau that hasn’t been said by scores?[4]Sure, he has won two U.S Opens – the first, in 2020, by dint of a show of bomb-and-gouge golf that gave the lie to the “just grow the rough really deep” school of thought when it comes to reining in modern-day bulked-up big hitters; and the second, just last year at a woefully overmatched Pinehurst #2, by playing well and waiting for Rory McIlroy to make a mistake (which, sadly, he did).

Quirky, mouthy, prone to using (and misusing) big words that most golf fans (and golf writers) don’t understand anyway, DeChambeau has always reminded me of that one nerdy only child with social-skills issues that we all knew when we were kids – the one who spent a lot of time around grownups, vying for their attention by showing off his awkward braininess. A physics major at Southern Methodist University who dropped out after his junior year[5], he was nicknamed “The Scientist” for his meticulous, technical approach to golf, but as a career mechanical engineer with an actual degree to my name I can tell you that a good 50% of the “technical content” he spouts is nonsense.

The quirky kid from Clovis, in California’s Central Valley, is a YouTube star now, embracing video sensationalism to “build his brand” as the kids say these days, and was a fan favorite while still on the PGA Tour. Fans might welcome home back to the home of real competitive golf – but does he deserve it?

Jon Rahm – Let’s wrap it up with the Big Man from Arizona State, the guy who told the world that he had made plenty of money and was staying with the PGA Tour, the organization that had made him, like it had the other players profiled above, a multi-millionaire. (By show of hands, who thinks that his representation team were negotiating with the Saudis at the very moment that he said this?) It has been reported that Rahm, whose physical size (6' 2", 220 pounds) is apparently matched by the size of his ego, has flattered himself that his jump to the Saudi golf league with a contract worth $300 million would be the impetus that would heal the schism and make men’s professional golf one big happy family again, though the last 20 months of ongoing negotiations between the Tour and LIV Golf representatives give the lie to that thought. Can the bitter taste that his “surprise” money-grab exit left in the mouths of players and fans be washed away sufficiently to allow his return?

There are a host of others, notable and not-so, who could be put up as examples, but compiling even the brief list above has left a bad taste in my mouth.

The bottom line is, does the PGA Tour really need these guys back? Like any athletic endeavor, professional golf experiences turnover as players age out of ability, or desire to play. Is the public recognition of the fading stars, pedestrian journeymen, and struggling newcomers that currently inhabit the LIV Golf roster such that losing them to the three-ring (round) circus LIV Golf tournaments will hurt the sport as played in the traditional, and more competitive, manner that it has been for decades?

I don’t think so.

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[1] (Meaning a common competition pool for all men’s professional golf’s players across different tours or leagues, not necessarily a conjoining of the tours themselves.)

[2] (My descriptor, not his.)

[3] (By “everyone” I think he means his bank account.) 

[4] (Gold stars for those of you who recognize the reference.)

[5] (Because recruiting violations by the football staff brought a lockout of ALL SMU athletics teams from national championships for a year.)

Money talks – Rory McIlroy flips his stance on PGA Tour–LIV Golf standoff

Rory McIlroy, who became the first invertebrate[1] winner of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am a couple of weeks ago, has totally flipped, in more ways than one, from PGA Tour crusader to LIV-accepting, bootlicking Donald Trump sycophant. According to a pair of articles penned by unabashed Rory fanboy Josh Schrock at Golf.com (‘Get over it’: Rory McIlroy says PGA Tour-LIV unification works only in 1 way; ‘On the Tour’s side:’ Rory McIlroy thinks Donald Trump can help PGA Tour-PIF negotiations), McIlroy has shed his guise as stalwart defender of the PGA Tour, not only adopting a “can’t we all just get along” attitude with respect to the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league, but sucking up to the convicted felon who lied and hoodwinked his way into the White House for a second term (to our nation’s shame), saying that the convicted felon, failed businessman, and oligarch suck-up can help with negotiations between the PGA Tour and the LIV Golf league.

With the exception of the reigning U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau (and just typing that made me throw up in my mouth a little) few, if any, of the defectors were or are still players in the top tier of the game—and I say good riddance to them all.

The greedy pros who ditched the PGA Tour to join LIV signed on with an outfit whose goal was to destroy the tour that had, in many cases, made them multi-millionaires, joining a league that is funded by a blood-soaked, misogynistic, religio-authoritarian monarchy with one foot in the Middle Ages who see it as a way to put a good face on their heinous government by participating in international sports[2].

Rory and other LIV apologists on the PGA Tour are caving in because the Tour leadership panicked at the loss of a few big names to LIV and instituted changes that will open the way to making players who stuck with the PGA Tour even richer. (Rory himself has benefitted from these changes: as the winner of the Signature event at Pebble Beach two weeks ago, McIlroy banked a $3.6 million paycheck thanks to the now-$20 million total purse for those select events.)

And now McIlroy is sucking up to the heinous grifter and convicted felon who lied his way into the White House, again, in hopes of cementing an agreement that will put the PGA Tour in bed with not one but two criminal regimes—the Saudis and the current U.S. administration—all in the interests of padding his own already-over-stuffed bank account[3].

Some in the golf media see this attitude shift as personal “growth” on Rory’s part, viz the following quote:

“Everyone sees things through their own lens. McIlroy has  changed his opinion on a multitude of things, but that’s a sign of growth and evolution in any person. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with how the stance has changed or that the contradictions can’t be addressed.”

– Josh Schrock, Golf.com

Others, like myself, see it as giving up in the face of the realization that you are going to make a butt-ton of money no matter what happens, so why bother to push back any more?

Any number of the LIV defectors have shown a similar lack of character, notably Spaniard Jon Rahm, who very publicly declared that he was “playing for legacy, not money” and pledged to remain a PGA Tour player, until the Saudis waved a contract under his nose that has been reported[4] to be worth $300 million over several years. In a press conference after his 2022 win in the Open Championship at St Andrews, Aussie Cam Smith waved away questions about a possible move to the Saudi-backed golf league, saying that he just played golf, his “team” worries about that stuff:

Q. Cam, apologies for having to bring this up in these circumstances, but your name continues to be mentioned, has been mentioned to me this week about LIV golf. What's your position? Are you interested? Is there any truth to suggestions that you might be signing?
CAMERON SMITH: I just won the British Open, and you're asking about that. I think that’s pretty not that good.
Q. I appreciate that, but the question is still there. Are you interested at all? Is there any truth in that?
CAMERON SMITH: I don't know, mate. My team around me worries about all that stuff. I'm here to win golf tournaments.

But Cam is the one signing on the dotted line and banking all that Saudi gelt.

Ever since two big sea-change events in the world of men’s professional golf—the immense popularity of Arnold Palmer (which coincided with the advent of television coverage of golf and the influx of that sweet TV money), and the arrival of Tiger Woods on the scene, which brought step-changes in both endorsement deals and tournament purses—the game has been a road to generational wealth for those at the top of the heap. No one is saying that it’s easy—golf is still a difficult game to play well, consistently, and fields are deep, but the money is there. Not everyone achieves multi-million dollar status, of course, but a damned good living can be made by those who make it into the pro ranks, and can stay. As middle-tier pro Kevin Kisner said in an interview back in January, 2021[5], “They give away a lot of money for 20th.”

(My favorite quote on the subject of making money in professional golf comes from the great Dan Jenkins, speaking through his character Kenny Lee Puckett in his 1974 golf novel, Dead Solid Perfect: “Compared to your basic millionaire like Jack Nicklaus, I’m nobody. But I can win myself about $200,000[6] a year if I can just manage to thump the ball around with my dick.”)

The ranks of men’s professional golf have become increasingly stratified in recent years—especially in the last couple of years, as the PGA Tour’s response to the emergence of LIV Golf has been to create the Signature Events mentioned above, limited-field no-cut events with purses bumped to $20 million from the measly $9 million paid out at run-of-the-mill Tour events. Rory McIlroy and some other inhabitants of the upper tiers of the game are pushing for more separation between the Haves and the (relatively speaking) Have-Nots in the game, greedily seeking entry into the One-Percenters Club on the back of their ability to knock a little white ball into a small hole in the ground starting from hundreds of yards away, doing so in fewer strokes than can those of us who play the game for recreation.

My final word on this subject again comes from the typewriter of Dan Jenkins, speaking as Kenny Lee Puckett:

“Now if you ask me why so many people want to put up so much money for us to compete for, I can’t give you a sensible answer. There’s no law that says there has to be a golf tour. 

If all the sponsors got together and decided they were weary of seeing us every year, it would be all over. Most of us would have to sit down on the curb and learn to play the harmonica, or something.”

[1] (That is to say, spineless.)

[2] (Also known as “sportswashing”.)

[3] (Rory’s current net worth is estimated at around US $170M.)

[4] (Jon Rahm LIV Golf contract, explained: How much money does he make from LIV deal in 2024?)

[5] Kevin Kisner had a hilarious response when asked if he can win anywhere on tour, https://www.golfwrx.com/644924/kevin-kisner-had-a-hilarious-response-when-asked-if-he-can-win-anywhere-on-tour/ Jan. 14, 2021.

[6] (Quote is from the 1999 edition of the book; that number is chump change these days.)

Adventures in putter-building: Frankenstein III

If you have been following my posts here for long enough you will have read (I hope…) several columns on the subject of putting, from why putting is hard, to how counterweighting your putter can help you make more putts, and how a graphite putter shaft can help (but not for the reasons generally touted by the folks who sell them.)

Like most golfers with something of an equipment addiction I own several putters, and consistent with my education and experience as a mechanical design engineer, I like to tinker with them. The five putters which I actually play (I have two or three more which are essentially antiques, of value only as curiosities) have all been bent more upright (within USGA limits, of course), tweaked as to loft (I prefer minimal to slightly negative loft – here’s why) and counterweighted for better balance and therefore better speed control.

The most recent addition to my stable is a self-built putter based on a Ben Hogan Golf BHB-01 plumber’s neck blade putter head. I installed the shaft that came with my Odyssey Golf Tank Cruiser 1 putter—which was re-shafted, for a while, with an early version of the BGT Stability Shaft (about which more here)—and my preferred Odyssey White Hot pistol-style grip. I drilled out the threaded fitting in the butt end of the Odyssey shaft to allow me more options for counterweighting than just the 15- and 30-gram counterweights that came in the Odyssey’s weight kit, and opened up a hole in the end of the Odyssey grip to allow the fitting of one of the range of Super Stroke Counter Core counterweights (25-gram, 50-gram, or 75-gram). I also filed an alignment mark on the top line and filled it with white paint.

The Odyssey Tank Cruiser, meanwhile, had the BGT Stability Shaft replaced with a $15 standard steel shaft. To reduce toe hang I removed the weight from the toe port in the sole, replacing it with cork, and installed a 20-gram weight in the heel port. I installed an Odyssey White Hot pistol-style grip, and opened up the hole in the butt end to take a Super Stroke counterweight. 

While the Ben Hogan-based putter is a “bitsa” build—put together from “bits of this and bits of that”—the real Frankenstein’s monster in my putter stable is the continuously evolving build that started out as a $17 new-old-stock Tight Lies blade putter that I purchased online. This putter, in one of its several modified iterations, was the one that I had in my bag in May 2019 when I played Pebble Beach during the USGA’s media day for the U.S. Open. It was a day that had its ups and downs, but one in which I had a great round on the greens, with eleven two-putt greens, and four one-putts.

Aside from a bit of tweaking for lie and loft, the first big change for this putter was the installation of the stock Odyssey shaft (with the 30-gram counterweight) when my Odyssey Tank Cruiser was getting fitted with the BGT Stability Shaft. From there I went to a more radical change, cutting down and transplanting a graphite shaft into the Tight Lies head—the shaft, an Aldila 350, came from a donor club: the driver that was part of my first set of garage-sale used clubs. As I explain in my column about the benefits of a graphite putter shaft, removing mass from the middle of the length of the club increases stability and improves speed control; “Frankenstein”, as I have dubbed the Tight Lies putter, was my first test bed for the benefits of this concept.

This putter went through several subsequent iterations that involved increasing amounts of lead tape on the head, with corresponding increases in counterweighting, all intended to bring it up to the same overall mass and swing weight as the modified Odyssey Tank. Damage to the shaft that occurred during a bout of loft/lie adjustment spelled the end of that particular experiment, so I decided to take it a step further.

Enter the latest iteration of the Tight Lies putter, dubbed Frankenstein III. It now incorporates a brand new graphite shaft, this time a Mitsubishi Rayon KURO KAGE Black Parallel iron shaft, stiff flex, .370 tip, cut down to yield my preferred 35-inch total length. To make the installation of a butt-end counterweight cleaner I sacrificed a Super Stroke grip for the threaded fitting which takes the Counter Core family of weights. Previous grip modifications to accommodate a grip weight involved drilling a hole in the butt end of the grip to a size that allowed the threads on the counterweight to bite into the rubber of the grip; gluing in the plastic threaded fitting from a Super Stroke grip makes the installation a bit tidier.

Frankenstein III, in all its glory

Shiny-new stiff-flex graphite shaft

Logo partly covered by the grip
shows that the shaft has been cut down

To complete the build I installed a 75-gram Super Stroke Counter Core weight. With a head weight of 391.8 grams, a shaft weight of 56.2 grams (less than half the weight, and at $29.95 less than 1/6 the cost, of the BGT Stability shaft), a grip weight of 67.2 grams, and an actual 74.0 grams of counterweight (plus a smidge for grip tape and adhesive) yields an all-up weight of 592.2 grams, or about 1 lb 5 oz. Thanks to the lack of the added lead tape that had previously been wrapped around the shaft of the 75-gram counterweight, this is about 20 grams shy of the weight of the previous iteration, and that of the modified Odyssey Tank. Loft remains at -1º, and the lie angle is 1º shy of the USGA limit, at 79º.

The 75-gram counterweight installed
in my preferred Odyssey putter grip

The swing weight of “Frankenstein III” is E5, making it a touch more head-heavy than its previous iteration at E4, and considerably more so than the modified Odyssey Tank, at D4, and the Hogan BHB-01 build, at D0. The new build feels well-balanced, and I have found it to be consistent and controllable when practicing on my office carpet (which stimps at about 13–14); I can’t wait for our current bout of rainy weather to end so that I can go try it out on real greens.

Playing around with putters is considerably easier and less critical than building or rebuilding full-swing clubs; because of the lower forces experienced by a putter during use you don’t have to worry so much about whether you got the crucial head-to-shaft bond exactly right. Even if you don’t go so far as to re-shaft a putter, a little bit of tinkering with counterweights in the grip and lead tape on the head may surprise you with the benefits that are derived from improving the balance of your “flat stick”.