In this edition of Ask Alan, our Alan Shipnuck takes reader questions as pro golf tries to shake off its hangover and gain momentum in 2025.
What’s your over/under on the TGL flaring out? Months? Weeks? @LoopersProShop
Nah, it’s too big to fail. The hype has been carefully orchestrated so I expect the viewership for the first season will be solid. The key is the calendar: there are almost no meaningful sports being played on Monday and Tuesday nights in January, February and March. What else are the degenerate gamblers going to watch?! Mic’d players and all the whiz-bang tech will help engage the YouTube generation. I don’t think the TGL will be a blockbuster success but it is going to be just popular enough to stick around and aggravate traditionalists.
How will public opinion/media perception of Tiger Woods change if he uses a golf cart in competition on the Senior Tour?#AskAlan @sociologysport
I don’t think anyone will care. Carts have been part of that tour forever. Woods has repeatedly broken his body and if a cart prolongs his playing days, only the fuddiest of duddies is going to complain. Especially because Tiger still has enough game to contend among the old guys. Who among us doesn’t want to see a red-shirted Woods loose a few final fist pumps?
Would a Tiger/Phil Senior Tour “rivalry” be the thing that we didn’t know we actually needed if the tours came back together? @NDHickman
That would be great fun! The tour war has freed up both guys to stop pretending they like each other. If they go head to head in a final round it will be riveting theater. And the TV ratings would probably eclipse any non-major of the last decade.
Is the bar so high for Scheffler that a 3- or 4-win season will be seen as a letdown and people questioning what’s wrong with his game? @BradleySmith328
Depends on where he were to snag those three or four wins. There’s nothing wrong with loading up on green jackets but it’s time for Scheffler to make noise at the other major championships. If he picks off one of them, thus getting halfway to the career Grand Slam, it’s automatically a great year. It’s totally arbitrary but, for me, five wins has always been my threshold for a monster season. It doesn’t happen often. Feels like another one is coming.
Who wins more this year: Collin Morikawa or Justin Thomas? @jack_milko
That’s easy: Morikawa. JT isn’t slumping; he has been lost for years. He blacked out on Sunday at Southern Hills and stole that PGA Championship but it’s his only win in nearly four calendar years. Morikawa made strong runs at last year’s Masters and PGA Championship and for the season was fifth in total Strokes Gained. Thomas ranked 25th (and 174th in putting!). With seven top-five finishes in 2024, Morikawa was unlucky not to win at least a couple of times. I think he’s going to put together a big year in ’25.
Why is the Arnold Palmer Invitational better than the Players? @Ryanlovesgolf93
I’m thinking of an old skateboard T-shirt I had circa 1983: “All killer no filler.” That’s the API, just an old-school, smash-mouth tournament imbued with the macho heritage of its eponymous founder. Meanwhile, the Players is the most overhyped, overcooked week of the year during which the Tour’s army of vice-presidents all tear their rotator cuffs patting themselves on the back. Gimme Bay Hill every time.
When do we see the first LIV player tee it up in a PGA Tour sanctioned event? @HoselBombs
Sometime in 2025. It’s absolutely wild that a year and a half after the framework agreement was announced a deal has yet to be consummated. Makes me think of the Gordon Gekko speech about all the paper being shuffled from corner office to corner office. What exactly are these people doing? The sport needs to move forward, even if that means simply announcing that the deal is dead and the PIF is not, in fact, going to invest in PGA Tour Enterprises. Were that to happen, I think the Tour would still move to improve its flagging product by allowing LIV golfers to accept sponsors’ exemptions to non-Signature events. Bryson DeChambeau is now the biggest needle-mover in golf—the Tour would be crazy to give up on him forever. To say nothing of Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Tyrrell Hatton and Joaco Niemann, who are undoubtedly among the best players in the world.
With the top ten DP World Tour players going Stateside, is there a future for the European Tour or are we now just a feeder tour with our top talent being syphoned off by the U.S. tour? @Harry__Harlow
Over the last few years, the proud European Tour has been reduced to a AAA minor league farm team for the PGA Tour. The recent rapprochement with LIV golfers is a much-needed development as Rahm and Sergio Garcia can now support tournaments in Spain; Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter buoy events in the UK; King Louis adds a little box office to the African swing; Henrik Stenson brings some juice to Scandinavian tournaments, etc. A larger partnership with the Saudi Public Investment Fund, as has been discussed behind closed doors in recent months, could be a game-changer. During COVID, the European Tour had to borrow money to pay its operating costs and purses dipped as low as $1 million. The ensuing alliance with the PGA Tour guaranteed purse increases over an eight-year period but, as part of the bargain, Europe has to hand over its best players year after year. It is the golf version of prima nocta. The Euro Tour would cut ties with the PGA Tour only if the PIF guaranteed huge purse increases. That would allow the top international players to consolidate their schedules on the European Tour and finally create a real competitor to the PGA Tour. If the PIF walks away from the deal with PGA Tour Enterprises the world order of golf could be in for another upheaval.
Has the payment American players demanded for the Ryder Cup inadvertently put more pressure on them to win the Cup and will this benefit the Europeans in their bid to win on U.S. soil? @EoinMurphyej1
Was it a demand? Felt more like a collective pout. Anyway, of the $500K each player will receive, $300K automatically goes to charity and I have zero doubt that all the Yanks will donate the other $200K, just for optics … and the tax deduction. Still, all the nuance will be stripped away and this whole sordid affair will inevitably become a rallying cry for Team Europe: “We play for the love of the game and they play for money.” But maybe the vitriol will help bond Team USA? There was a big stink about money around the 1999 Ryder Cup and the related emotion and indignation helped the Americans dig deep for an epic comeback. The U.S. team played so bad in Rome they need to take motivation wherever they can find it.
Blondes or brunettes? #AskAlan @backwoodhaney
Why not both? I’m a fan of Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala.
Jeff Babineau and Steve DiMeglio – two losses for the PGA Tour journalism community. Thoughts to you all. @AzBobbyl
Thank you. Yeah, can’t believe we lost both of them a few weeks apart. They were very different—Dimegs was short and edgy, Babs round and exceedingly kind. But both were colorful characters who enlivened every press room and brought distinctive voices to their work. The golf beat has been contracting for two decades due the diminishment of newspapers and magazines, craven corporate cost-cutting and players and tours increasingly creating their own content. But these losses hit different. We need personality on the beat. We need old pros who aren’t afraid to ask tough questions and call it like it is. Jeff and Steve were all of that. I’m going to miss them a lot and I know I’m not the only one.
Top Photo Caption: Will the PGA Tour welcome back players like Bryson DeChambeau on a sponsors exemption sometime in 2025? Our Alan Shipnuck thinks so. (GETTY IMAGES/Kevin C. Cox)
mg
2 months ago
Jeff was a club Champion at Dennis Pines on Cape Cod. RIP my friend.