Feature
ADDRESSING GOLF’S ILLS
he men’s professional game,
especially in the USA and Europe
is suffering from a ‘Holy Trinity,’
of systemic problems which is
driving down all-important TV
attendances, alienating instant-
grati¿ cation social media fanatics and making
sponsors think twice, although the top players
continue – for the time being at least - to
thrive with multi-million-dollar winnings, fat
appearance fees, generous endorsements and
hefty bonuses. But, as men’s professional golf
eases its way into 2019, with more money on
offer than ever before, one might be tempted to
ask, what exactly in the problem?
Bunker Mentality investigates.
With more events than ever on both sides
of the Atlantic, existing and emerging stars
winning vast sums of money unimaginable
before the Tiger Woods-fuelled ‘dollar-fest’
generation, the great man is back, short-term
one suspects, to somewhere approaching his
best, TV ratings when he plays and especially
when he’s is in contention are back to their
best, sponsors, perhaps seeing a false dawn,
continuing to invest, but not as before. Last
year, sponsorship agency ESP Properties, a
subsidiary of global advertising giant WPP
reported that 58% of golf sponsors were
looking to drop a deal before its renewal was
due, up 13% on the previous year, citing their
changing priorities – and golf’s inability to
deliver them – as the primary reason. Hence,
the addressing the Holy Trinity of professional
golf’s main ills are crucial in not only halting
that trend, but reversing it and delivering
growth for the game, contemporary bene¿ ts
for its commercial backers and present-day and
future players and followers.
First, ensure top talent comes out to
play.
Take last October’s WGC HSBC Champions in
Shanghai, Asia’s so-called, ‘Major,’ US$10m
in prize money, the same said to be on offer
in appearance fees to entice the world’s best
out east, yet two of the generation’s most
iconic stars, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson,
both comfortably eligible in the Top-50 of the
OWGR were absent without leave. Preparing,
no doubt, for their tawdry US$9m winner-
takes-all head-to-head- appropriately in Las
Vegas – over Thanksgiving, the PGA TOUR
and its puppet, the surely WGC needs to do
more to ensure that, barring an injury or illness
certi¿ cate, if the Top-50 is eligible, then the
Top-50 plays. Also missing in action, PGA
TOUR aristocracy, Justin Thomas, Rickie
Fowler, Patrick Reed and Jordan Spieth,
marquee names like Henrik Stenson and Sergio
García, not one with a sick note, presumably
absent by choice.
But it takes a great deal of dedication and
no little talent to get into the Top-50 of the
OWGR (arguably somewhat less to stay in it
once there) and entry to the upper echelon of
the game is an honour and a privilege, but it
also comes with responsibility, and if you are in
it, you commit contractually to play any and all
those WGC events you are eligible for during
that time, an end to picking-and-choosing.
Second, halting – indeed reversing – the
scourge of slow play.
One somewhat outspoken observer recently
– and ludicrously - suggested that players
dispense altogether with the services of their
‘On the Clock - Phil Mickelson is
one of the faster players on tour’
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F E BRUARY
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caddies, or limit their role, in an effort to help
speed-up play, an interesting, if extreme and
entirely unworkable ‘solution,’ which could
arguably slow things up even more as players
cart their own clubs around the course. But,
unless ¿ ve-hour-plus rounds can be eradicated,
men’s professional golf, in this age of superfast
communications and instant media grati¿ cation
is sounding its own death knell.
And, it’s easily overcome; all it takes –
and the GPS technology already exists – is for
the PGA TOUR and its European counterpart
(average times on the Asian Tour are more
acceptable, although the LPGA has arguably
the worst times posted in the professional
game) to invest in, ‘Track and Time’ systems,
enforcing existing rules, not once or twice a
season but against each and every infraction,
with time-and-place evidence to back it up
and meaningful sanctions to match. That way,
those mollycoddled professionals, routinely
racking-up ¿ ve hour rounds with impunity,
with the occasional has-been or wannabee
singled-out and meekly punished, when most
of us playing our own version of the game have
great dif¿ culty playing the Sunday fourball in
more than four hours.
That way, they, the great and the good
would soon get the message, cheating – which
is what slow play is - outlawed, shots docked,
a totting-up system leading to the dreaded DQ,
end of story for the European Tour’s feeble
attempt to remind players of their responsibility
to keep things moving, the Shot Clock Masters.
And third, persuade professional players to
engage more, reveal more of themselves and
their personalities, show their emotions, before
but especially during tournaments; they are
in the sports entertainment industry after all.
This Bunker Mentality correspondent recalls
witnessing the delayed denouement of the
2015 Open Championship at the Home of
Golf, St. Andrews, the citadel of the game,
watched by record Monday galleries following
a rain-delayed weekend.
An unexpected Monday attendance of
35,370 - many said to be new to the game