Author: Marcus Hayes

It was a historic Sunday afternoon at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club in the penultimate Tour Championship in its present form, which begged the question: Why change?

With the exception of contrived, boorish, international gimmickry, golf will never be relevant after majors season ends. With apologies to the British Open, golf’s not particularly relevant after Father’s Day and the final round of the U.S. Open. This was proved again last weekend when everything was up for grabs: golf’s biggest money, its MVP trophy, a Tiger record, all swirling around the game’s biggest star.

And all most sports fans cared about was if Bill Belichick’s lousy college football team would win in Ireland (they did; ugly), how many NFL teams would keep four quarterbacks (four teams did, including the Eagles), whether Aaron Donald would unretire to join Myles Garrett with the Rams (he did; yikes), and if the Brewers and Rays are for real (TBD).

Meanwhile, golf’s most monied weekend delivered. It was a closed, $40 million tournament with mostly the same old names, but it delivered more drama than any 16-man, single-elimination tournament will deliver when the latest format begins in 2028, the year after FedEx’s deal expires with the Tour.

This is the brainchild of a panel of existing Tour stars and new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, the latest attempt of Big Golf to extend interest to compete with MLB’s stretch run, the NCAA’s kickoff frenzy, and the NFL’s annual four months of dominance. Past formats have included cumulative points systems that rendered playoff events (as many as four of them) moot, as well as a system that awarded the best players with pre-tournament handicaps that absurdly skewed the odds of winning the Cup.

Currently, players compete for FedEx Cup points to determine the field for a playoff tournament for the top 70, which winnows the next field to the top 50, which winnows the next field to the top 30, the winner of which wins the Cup and the $10 million first-place check.

It is imperfect, but it is simple, and it is elegant.

Beginning in 2028, a bifurcated series of Tour events will assign qualifying points to determine the top 90 golfers, who will compete in a stroke-play tournament to determine a top 32 in points. That group will compete for a week in round-robin, match-play in pods of four. The two top players from each pod advance to a Sweet 16, single-elimination, match-play tournament to determine a playoff winner.

The problems:

1. Match play is boring, even if it winds up at non-traditional venues like Pine Valley or Bandon Dunes. The Ryder Cup is the only exception, but that’s more about jingoism and theater than it is about golf.
2. Stroke play is a truer test of quality. There’s a very real chance that Min Woo Lee and Viktor Hovland would have been the finalists had the 2028 format been used this year. Yawn.
3. This year’s tournament absolutely delivered.

Got it right

The best golfer of his generation came from three strokes down for a three-stroke win to claim his second FedEx Cup title and surpass the winnings of the best golfer of any generation.

Scottie Scheffler passed Tiger Woods and became the all-time leading money winner in PGA Tour history.

The win, Scheffler’s third of the season, his second of the playoffs, and his 22nd of his career, surely secured his fifth straight Player of the Year award. It will be announced in December, and the five in a row ties him with Tiger. (The award has only existed since 1990, so it postdates Jack and Arnie and Gary Player, but Tiger also won it three times in a row and 11 times overall.)

Before the 30-man Tour Championship there was, incredibly, some debate over whether Scottie should win it over a handful of other players. This, even though Scheffler had a lead of more than 1,400 points over the next closest Tour Championship qualifier; had won two tournaments; and led the Tour in second-place finishes (five), top-5 finishes (13), scoring average (by nearly three-quarters of a stroke), birdie average, greens in regulation, scrambling, and, with more than $20 million in the bank, had earned more than $6 million more than his closest competitors — Matt Fitzpatrick, Wyndham Clark, and Cameron Young.

Uphill battle

At any rate, Scheffler took care of business — a business that he has dominated. Since Official World Golf Rankings began 40 years ago, his 207 weeks at No. 1 are third-most in history, including the last 172 weeks, the third-longest streak in history. He recently ended a streak of 78 consecutive cuts made, sixth-best in history.

In a world of self-promoting social media wankers, he’s about as interesting as warm skim milk.

It’s not his fault. In the midst of golf’s most divisive era, Scheffler won’t say anything controversial. In the midst of America’s most heated political climate in 60 years, Scheffler is apolitical. He’s a retiring Christian family man who tries to play the best golf he can every time he plays.

He lacks the additive abrasion of Bryson DeChambeau. He lacks the international appeal and frank assessments of Rory McIlroy, a glib Northern Irishman, or Jon Rahm, a prickly Spaniard.

Exhausted

More than anything, the Tour’s long, top-heavy schedule is its own worst enemy.

Its best tournament, the Players Championship, happens in March. Its most beloved tournament, the Masters, happens in April. Its best major tournament, The PGA Championship, now comes in May. Its toughest test, the U.S. Open, is in June. Its oldest and coolest tournament, the British Open, is played in July.

By August, all but the most rabid golf fans (hand raised) are burned out. Every other year the casuals need the eight weeks between the British and the Ryder Cup to refuel. (We’ll keep ignoring the President’s Cup until it matters.)

As LIV dies and its prodigals return, the Tour Championship in its present form only would have become better. Now, instead of being virtually assured of having DeChambeau, Rahm, LIV stud Joaquin Niemann playing against Rory and Scottie at East Lake on the final Sunday of the 2028 season, you’re guaranteed to have no more than two of them.

More than likely, you’ll have none of them.

The only thing more disappointing about the slow and weak response by the principals in the Good Good Golf YouTube channel scandal was its utter predictability.

There should have been immediate distancing and disassociation from Callaway Golf and Good Good Golf after they aired an outrageous commercial that endorsed violence against women. Instead, it took almost a week.

Why?

Because corporate America, the foundational structure for the golf industry, hoped it would all blow over.

It did not.

Last Friday, an ad aired online in which Good Good Golf co-founder Garrett Clark rushes across a tee box and levels a female golfer who is looking in his bag, then stands over her, points at her on the ground, and says, “Do not touch my new driver.”

Who thought this was acceptable? Who thought this was funny? Who thought this was anything but horrific?

Good Good, that’s who. Of course they did.

It’s a frat bro content creator and apparel company with more than 2 million subscribers to its YouTube channel, making goofy videos. It also sells ugly hats and even uglier shirts. When you hear some idiot on TV scream, “Get in the hole!” when a pro golfer tees off on a par-5, dollars to doughnuts he’s wearing Good Good gear, hat on backward, shirt untucked.

Then, the commercial.

There was, appropriately, immediate backlash that convinced Good Good to delete the ad. The backlash snowballed into international outrage, with resounding consequences.

Cool. It took far too long.

The ad aired Friday.

By Saturday night the PGA Tour, Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, Callaway, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Golf Galaxy, and Golf Channel all should have cut ties with Good Good. The fact that none did until they were forced by public sentiment tells you everything to need to know about these folks and how they view women.

In case anyone wants to argue that this commercial was not an endorsement of violence against women, know that Callaway, as penance, on Thursday committed $1 million to support initiatives that combat violence against women.

The club in question was a driver made by Callaway in collaboration with the new hip-and-with-it brand. The ad was vetted by both Callaway and Good Good. Incredibly, it raised no alarms at either place, with anyone, until social media began its cycle of outrage.

The irony is few brands had done as much to promote women in golf than Callaway, which has perhaps the most potent brand-to-athlete recognition relationship in the women’s game, the one-time face of women’s golf, Annika Sorenstam. She condemned the ad but, sadly, did not condemn either Callaway or its leadership.

This comes at the height of the Caitlin Clark era, when women’s sports are surging like never before. She’s a basketball player, but she loves to golf.

Her involvement in the game might have helped spur the biggest growth spurt women’s golf has ever seen. The COVID-19 lockdown triggered massive growth in the golf industry in the United States, and the segment that has grown the most by both percentage and raw numbers is women’s golf, up 45% and 2.5 million golfers compared to 12% and 2.3 million for men, according to the National Golf Federation.

Callaway just scored the worst own-goal in sports marketing history.

More than 8 million women now play golf, but the chairmen of all of the entities in question — the Tour, Callaway, Dick’s, and Golf Channel — all are men. Which might explain the slowness and gradualness of the only acceptable responses.

So we had the scramble, and the admonitions, and the apologies, and the disassociations. The problem with all of it is, nobody wanted to do the right thing unless they had to. Everybody wanted to try to ride it out. Which means they are all as guilty as they could possibly be.

That includes the Tour, which, on Thursday, announced that Good Good would no longer be the title sponsor of a tournament in Texas in November.

That includes Golf Channel, which needed four days to decide to not air the Good Good edition of “Big Break,” which was due to begin Tuesday but, after sponsor Golf Galaxy pulled out, was initially pushed back a week and has since been canceled altogether.

That includes Dick’s Sporting Goods and Golf Galaxy, which needed five days to decide to pull Good Good merchandise from its shelves.

That includes Rolapp, who only responded to the commercial’s misogyny when he was questioned at a press conference four days after the incident, then landed this stinging indictment: “I think what we saw was concerning.”

Rolapp’s milquetoast response was a resounding reminder that, before moving to the PGA Tour last year, Rolapp spent more than two decades working for the NFL, America’s most notorious sports league when it comes to ignoring issues like domestic violence and sexual harassment in the workplace.

That includes Callaway, whose executive roster looks like President Donald Trump’s cabinet. After one day, Callaway issued a chastisement … of Good Good. After three days, Callaway pulled the driver from its website. After six days, as its stock continued to lose value, Callaway finally cut ties with Good Good.

Callaway’s abrupt about-face, after partnering with Good Good for three years, might have been prompted by Callaway being threatened with exclusion by huge retailers like Costco, which apparently removed access to Callaway products Thursday, at least temporarily.

And, of course, there is Good Good.

Clark is the general manager.

He should resign.

He should have resigned Saturday morning.

Instead, five days after the commercial aired, as Dick’s, Golf Galaxy, and the PGA Tour Superstores began pulling Good Good stock from their shelves, Clark issued a rambling, 8½-minute “apology.” In it, he explains the process of the production of the ad, and insists that the woman was not injured, and that Good Good is women-friendly — as if any of this matters.

At all.

It does not.

The obtuse and embarrassing statement just paints Clark and Good Good as defensive, tone-deaf, and completely uncomprehending of the gravity of the moment.

As tone-deaf as Rolapp, the PGA Tour, Callaway, Golf Channel, and Dick’s/Golf Galaxy.

All of them did the right thing, eventually, when forced to do so.

But none of them did the right thing for the right reasons in the right time frame.