The ongoing battle between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf

August 14, 2022 3:53 AM

PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf: Why the ‘nuclear’ strike option for players might be a bad idea. PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf: Why the ‘nuclear’ strike option for players might be a bad idea. (Archive)
posted by geoff. (31 comments total)

Even as somebody against golf generally, I would agree that blowing up the players with nuclear strikes is bad.
posted by solarion at 4:06 AM on August 14, 2022 [20 favorites]

(Previously)
posted by box at 4:26 AM on August 14, 2022

Reading this makes me wonder whether Kaepernick ever considered filing a suit against the NFL for the league-wide boycott he went through.
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 4:33 AM on August 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

Even as somebody against golf generally, I would agree that blowing up the players with nuclear strikes is bad.
You're going to piss off the Grounds Committee for a start.
posted by dannyboybell at 4:34 AM on August 14, 2022 [6 favorites]

And while I’m VERY sympathetic to the goal of freezing out these LIV assholes (do it for the Saudi royal family!), you could easily extend this behavior in very bad directions. Against black golfers, for example.
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 4:36 AM on August 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Even as somebody against golf generally, I would agree that blowing up the players with nuclear strikes is bad.

Correct me if I'm wrong Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers they'll lock me up and throw away the key.
posted by Literaryhero at 5:46 AM on August 14, 2022 [7 favorites]

Golf voted the worlds most boring sport. Perhaps the idea was that small nuclear explosions might make the game more interesting.
posted by The River Ivel at 5:48 AM on August 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

Reading this makes me wonder whether Kaepernick ever considered filing a suit against the NFL for the league-wide boycott he went through.

A settlement was reached but the details (and the amount paid out) are sealed.
posted by Ber at 5:53 AM on August 14, 2022 [5 favorites]

I would agree that blowing up the players with nuclear strikes is bad

Nice fast way to make new bunkers though, so there's that.
posted by flabdablet at 7:17 AM on August 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

Even as somebody against golf generally, I would agree that blowing up the players with nuclear strikes is bad.

Trump selling America's nuclear secrets to the Saudis makes the pieces all fall into place.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:20 AM on August 14, 2022 [9 favorites]

The PGA needs a gimmick to draw attention away from this new league. I believe there is an out of work hockey player who needs money to save his grandma's house from the IRS who is available to play. I also understand Bob Barker is still around and available to pitch in.
posted by fortitude25 at 8:04 AM on August 14, 2022 [5 favorites]

Meanwhile, in France (home to both an inequitable law exempting golf courses from water restrictions, a drought necessitating such restrictions, and a robust tradition of protest against inequitable laws), activists are filling the holes in golf courses with cement.

It would be a shame if such an action caught on and, being fairly simple to carry out, was copied by everyone from Maoists to New Urbanists. A real shame.
posted by acb at 9:16 AM on August 14, 2022 [21 favorites]

Reminder: Manicured grass originated as a status statement of how you have so much wealth you can afford to use land unproductively. Like someone had so much wealth they could take a huge shit of useless grass that was basically a "fuck you" to everyone else and the world itself.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:23 AM on August 14, 2022 [12 favorites]

It takes just a couple of minutes to cut new holes in golf greens.
posted by MrVisible at 9:29 AM on August 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

> It takes just a couple of minutes to cut new holes in golf greens.

I can't wait to see the excitement on the faces of golfers at my local course when I turn the first hole at the course into a full 18 hole course. Maybe 36 if no one's watching.
posted by Darkest Timeline at 10:27 AM on August 14, 2022 [6 favorites]

Vandalizing a golf course is easily felony mischief and is prosecuted pretty hard because costs can really be inflated, plus it was a popular target during the Vietnam war so they figured out how to prosecute it. Most golf courses now have a lot of security measures now that blanketing cameras everywhere is cheap, plus they're usually surrounded by housing making ingress and egress difficult.

Basically don't vandalize places that have grouchy, older, retired lawyers who know judges.
posted by geoff. at 10:48 AM on August 14, 2022 [8 favorites]

With a little luck, the organizations may fight each other until both die from their wounds.

So I'm rooting on whatever is bad for this 'sport' of environmental destruction and concentrating wealth on the rich.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:55 AM on August 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

To clarify, I wasn't suggesting people go out and cut up golf greens, I was just pointing out that filling the cups with concrete won't be much of a hassle for the courses.
posted by MrVisible at 10:55 AM on August 14, 2022

The kind of legal gymnastics required to argue that the PGA players — who are independent contractors — deciding to boycott the Tour would somehow constitute an anti-competitive action by the PGA itself… well that’s a sporting event all on its own.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:02 AM on August 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Just your usual reminder that if you're choosing to get skin cancer playing golf in an environmentally destructive manner instead of, say, playing 18 holes in the realm of the Goblin King, well, I just don't think much of your decision making skills
posted by phooky at 11:32 AM on August 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Observation: every time a golf related post pops up on the blue, there's a rush of people saying how they don't like golf, with few interactions with the actual post link (s).

I play golf, and my daughter was on her HS's golf team. I learned to play on a 9 hole course cut out of a field near my public junior high in Alamogordo, NM in the early 90s. Golf is supposed to be you versus the course, with weather conditions as a major factor. I'm very aware of how much water and other inputs go into maintaining golf courses, but we're a smart species in the collective, surely there are people looking into more environmentally friendly ways of building and maintaining courses and reusing abandoned courses. I'd love it if golf had a more welcoming reputation, and less of a snobby one. If you walk the course, you get over 10k steps, fresh air, and with the use of good sunblock applied every two hours, a reduced risk of skin cancer. The golf carts are mostly electric (I have experienced one course with a lawnmower type engine in their carts. Noisier than the electric ones.)

LIV is Saudi backed, yes, and it has Greg Norman involved, who has had some issues with how the PGA runs things. They're also changing the rules which aren't in sync with the others: only playing 54 holes instead of 72: 3 rounds instead of 4 rounds. All the various tours (not just the PGA) have agreed to the format, so it is easier to compare scores by different people on the same course.

That being said, PGA's also not the innocent party either, it has a lot of valid issues with how they do things. Their diversity, the stubbornness about adjusting for the fact that Tiger Woods isn't as healthy as he had been, and the question of if they are a monopoly or not.

I'm more of an LPGA girl myself, and wish they could pay the women players more on par with the men and hype them as much as they did Tiger.

I think most of the issue is also how much Trump is involved with LIV (they have events played or planned for a few of his golf courses) and the whole mess of issues there. I strongly disliked how much he was involved with golf, and how much money he stole from the taxpayers by playing it on his courses, charging the SS to stay in the hotels. And of course all the other crimes he's done.

I do believe the PGA needs to change a few things (or a lot, they have history to atone for in how they treated black and POC players and caddies in general.) And I'm not a fan of the players who signed with LIV, for the fact they wanted lots of money for not working very hard. (Three rounds is easier than four rounds, for example, and fewer events on the schedule overall.)
posted by tlwright at 12:49 PM on August 14, 2022 [13 favorites]

I know an eccentric artist and golfer who got kicked out of the local golf club for reasons. He went to an empty side of the lakeshore and built a 9 hole course using the natural environment. No lawns, no irrigation. At most removing some weeds and cleaning up the natural sand bunkers. He posted a sign “People’s Golf Course of $LOCATION” and started giving free classes and renting old clubs for like 20 pesos a day.

Well, the course became very popular, volunteers entended it to 18 holes. Fruit and drink vendors started showing up followed by food carts.

He has held tournaments and some ‘proper’ golfers play there once in a while. This being a natural course by a lake, it changes throughout the seasons, and I hear that the muddy season tournament is a lot of fun.

He now moved to the sierra and is building another course in an old growth forest crisscrossed by creeks and full of interesting rock formations.

Golf as an activity can be very fun and healthy. Walking in nature, socializing, and hitting stuff with a stick and throwing hard little things at targets far away. Nothing more paleo (i.e. fundamentally juman). I had to exercise my cognitive disonante to the max to enjoy the typical golf course, but these People’s Golf Courses are great.

What I am saying is let’s reclaim golf for the people.
posted by Dr. Curare at 1:46 PM on August 14, 2022 [17 favorites]

I'd love it if golf had a more welcoming reputation, and less of a snobby one.

It's called disc golf. It can be played in any kind of natural terrain without water intensive grass, the equipment costs a lot less, there are no greens or course fees, you generally walk more and through more varied terrain, it's friendlier and less elitist, it coexists with other recreational parkland uses like hiking, biking and even horse riding.

And no one is going to look at you funny if you light up a joint or you bring a couple of of your own cold beers from home in your disc bag.

I might dislike golf a lot less if they still played it the original way as the Scots invented it over rough, unimproved terrain and more or less whacking rocks with sticks before it devolved into the ultra-manicured and easier courses it uses today. You want a real sport and challenge? Try putting across gravel or tufts of wild grasses and chipping out of a peat bog or a strid.

Shoot I might even watch golf tournaments if the PGA held one as some kind of endurance marathon in the middle of Death Valley where the players had to haul all their own water and equipment without outside support.

But Your Childhood Pet Rock has it right, above. The problem of golf being snobby is a huge part of its enduring appeal to the wealthy and elite, and that aspect is inherently and historically tied to the acute costs of maintaining that much land and lawn and how that's an open and ostentatious display of wealth.

Take that appeal away and I bet golf would just dry up and blow away. The wealthy elite would find something else to do or play for their back room wheeling and dealing. They'd probably go back to Court Tennis aka Real Tennis or something equally weird and arcane. Maybe Pétanque.

There's a local golf course smack dab in the middle of my little town that's sitting on massive chunk of prime real estate in the middle of a major housing crisis, and one of the often repeated pro-golf counter arguments for its continued existence is how much of an opportunity it is - ostensibly for younger people - for networking and hobnobbing with the local elite as if that restricted "opportunity" is an inherently good thing for the general public.
posted by loquacious at 1:51 PM on August 14, 2022

I know an eccentric artist and golfer who got kicked out of the local golf club for reasons. He went to an empty side of the lakeshore and built a 9 hole course using the natural environment.

I'm surprised I haven't heard of more people doing this.

When I was a kid we used to play "rock golf" where instead of using clubs you just selected a good throwing rock, and then holes and courses were more or less randomly chosen and you just kind of went on a meandering hike through some natural area throwing rocks at other rocks.


Wild tangent: I have a dumb but amusing little psychological game or test I like to play - throwing rocks at things when hanging out with a mixed crowd and seeing what happens.

If I'm ever hanging out on a beach, lakeshore, campsite or other natural area and there's rocks and some safe target like a floating log or old pier piling or even another large rock, I'll throw some rocks at it. Almost invariably every guy - and it's almost always guys who react first, young or old - will also start picking up rocks and trying to throw them at the same target. Some women may join in but in my experience it's almost entirely AMAB/masc people who feel compelled to also start throwing rocks at the same target as some kind of unspoken contest of skills.

I have a feeling this is how golf was invented in the first place.
posted by loquacious at 2:02 PM on August 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

My dad's been playing golf most of his life. He'd go down to the municipal golf course, join up with a couple of other guys, and play 18 holes. It can be a nice social, low exercise hobby that gets you out. It doesn't have to be snooty.
posted by Spike Glee at 2:49 PM on August 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

I played golf as a teenager. (It was an allowed school sport, and I found that shlepping a bag of rusty clubs to and from school once a week was preferable to wrestling in mud with 10 other boys on the football field or whatever, especially since I got a pleasant walk for my troubles. My handicap was atrociously bad and never improved.) Having said that, there are better ways of having a pleasant walk, and I accept that golfing facilities are overprovisioned and should be reclaimed for housing/general-purpose recreation/public sex forests/whatever.

Golf has an image problem. Unfortunately for it, the image problem is a correction.
posted by acb at 3:08 PM on August 14, 2022

This Oaklandside article about Black golf mentors helped make golf seem a little less snooty to me.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:16 PM on August 14, 2022

The "home" course for my daughter's HS is a local golf course at a retirement development. Not Tellico Villages, but Rarity Bay. The houses all look the same, and in the span of four years, I've seen them work on the same building to fix various bits from the cheap construction. A lot of the retirees are down South from up North with their pensions and I think the houses would have been better for the people who work at the industrial park that's about 3-5 miles from the entrance to Rarity Bay, with a grocery store and a space for a doctor clinic, daycare, bank, and other services, much like what Rarity Bay has. The people who work at the industrial park live all over the county, and probably a few are from adjoining counties, and I think the commute is an issue for some with many of the job ads specifying must have RELIABLE TRANSPORTATION. Set up shuttles from the Rarity Bay area to the industrial park, and a mix of apartments and houses, and bam, a nice place to live close to jobs and transit. And of course paying the employees more. The minimum livable wage in the county should be around $22-$25/hr, and that would cover rent and a car, plus groceries, childcare and utilities.

The Rarity Bay residents are comparatively the rich folk in the county, but their houses are cheaply built and ugly. There was one pretty house on the course, and it was a pale yellow stucco, standing out from the beige. They all look French Country/vaguely Europeanish and have huge roofs with steep peaks.

Disc golf would be interesting to try. I'm not in the best state of fitness, and walking and swinging a lightweight stick at a small ball is the most athletic I want to be. I'd like to try the ancient way of golf too. In fact, that's what sparked my interest. I read about golf in a historical romance book set in late twelfth century Scotland, and it sounded so fun walking around in the hills and by the lakes and see if you can get your ball in the goal area.

We do have public golf courses. Bear Trace is a group of three courses designed by Jack Nicklaus, and the closest one is in Harrison Bay State Park. Run by the state for public access, with decently priced green and cart fees, with a great view. There's deer nearby, and the lake just off a few holes. Chattanooga has around three municipal ones, that I'm aware of.
posted by tlwright at 3:26 PM on August 14, 2022

Reading this makes me wonder whether Kaepernick ever considered filing a suit against the NFL for the league-wide boycott he went through.

He did and the case was settled out of court. Rumor has it somewhat less than $10 million; but it was a confidential settlement so who knows.
posted by interogative mood at 6:31 PM on August 14, 2022

The PGA Tour has quite a few defenses as I understand it and it is going to be hard for the lawyers for the affected players to get around them. It's a private membership organization and generally those entities are free to choose their members and hold events that are exclusive to their members. It is also a kind of labor union for the player-members and unions have a lot of exemptions under anti-trust law. Finally it is a sports organization and courts have ruled that some things that would be a restraint of trade are allowed under anti-trust law because of the "rule of reasonableness test" e.g. if the teams don't come together to make common rules, schedule, team size, salary cap, union agreement, etc then there isn't really a viable business for any team. Note: these are limited exceptions, only Major League Baseball has a full exemption to anti-trust laws.

I'm not a lawyer though and my understanding of this is based on just reading random articles on the Internet and sports tv shows probably mostly put together by non-lawyers.
posted by interogative mood at 7:46 PM on August 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Release the moles and gophers!
posted by a humble nudibranch at 6:09 AM on August 15, 2022