On this addition of Ask Alan, our Alan Shipnuck takes reader questions as professional golf tries to shake off its hangover and acquire momentum in 2025.
What’s your over/underneath on the TGL flaring out? Months? Weeks? @LoopersProShop
Nah, it’s too large to fail. The hype has been fastidiously orchestrated so I anticipate the viewership for the primary season will likely be stable. The secret is the calendar: there are nearly no significant sports activities being performed on Monday and Tuesday nights in January, February and March. What else are the degenerate gamblers going to observe?! Mic’d gamers and all of the whiz-bang tech will assist have interaction the YouTube technology. I don’t suppose the TGL will likely be a blockbuster success however it’s going to be simply common sufficient to stay round and worsen traditionalists.
How will public opinion/media notion of Tiger Woods change if he makes use of a golf cart in competitors on the Senior Tour?#AskAlan @sociologysport
I don’t suppose anybody will care. Carts have been a part of that tour perpetually. Woods has repeatedly damaged his physique and if a cart prolongs his enjoying days, solely the fuddiest of duddies goes to complain. Particularly as a result of Tiger nonetheless has sufficient recreation to contend among the many previous guys. Who amongst us doesn’t need to see a red-shirted Woods unfastened a couple of last fist pumps?
Would a Tiger/Phil Senior Tour “rivalry” be the factor that we didn’t know we truly wanted if the excursions got here again collectively? @NDHickman
That might be nice enjoyable! The tour struggle has freed up each guys to cease pretending they like one another. In the event that they go face to face in a last spherical will probably be riveting theater. And the TV rankings would in all probability eclipse any non-major of the final decade.
Is the bar so excessive for Scheffler {that a} 3- or 4-win season will likely be seen as a letdown and folks questioning what’s unsuitable together with his recreation? @BradleySmith328
Is dependent upon the place he had been to snag these three or 4 wins. There’s nothing unsuitable with loading up on inexperienced jackets but it surely’s time for Scheffler to make noise on the different main championships. If he picks off one among them, thus getting midway to the profession Grand Slam, it’s mechanically an important 12 months. It’s completely arbitrary however, for me, 5 wins has at all times been my threshold for a monster season. It doesn’t occur usually. Looks like one other one is coming.
Who wins extra this 12 months: Collin Morikawa or Justin Thomas? @jack_milko
That’s straightforward: Morikawa. JT isn’t slumping; he has been misplaced for years. He blacked out on Sunday at Southern Hills and stole that PGA Championship but it surely’s his solely win in almost 4 calendar years. Morikawa made sturdy runs finally 12 months’s Masters and PGA Championship and for the season was fifth in complete Strokes Gained. Thomas ranked twenty fifth (and 174th in placing!). With seven top-five finishes in 2024, Morikawa was unfortunate to not win not less than a few instances. I believe he’s going to place collectively an enormous 12 months in ’25.
Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas want to finish winless droughts in 2025. (GETTY IMAGES/Scott Taetsch)
Why is the Arnold Palmer Invitational higher than the Gamers? @Ryanlovesgolf93
I’m pondering of an previous skateboard T-shirt I had circa 1983: “All killer no filler.” That’s the API, simply an old-school, smash-mouth event imbued with the macho heritage of its eponymous founder. In the meantime, the Gamers is probably the most overhyped, overcooked week of the 12 months throughout which the Tour’s military of vice-presidents all tear their rotator cuffs patting themselves on the again. Gimme Bay Hill each time.
When will we see the primary LIV participant tee it up in a PGA Tour sanctioned occasion? @HoselBombs
Someday in 2025. It’s completely wild {that a} 12 months and a half after the framework settlement was introduced a deal has but to be consummated. Makes me consider the Gordon Gekko speech about all of the paper being shuffled from nook workplace to nook workplace. What precisely are these folks doing? The game wants to maneuver ahead, even when meaning merely asserting that the deal is lifeless and the PIF just isn’t, actually, going to put money into PGA Tour Enterprises. Had been that to occur, I believe the Tour would nonetheless transfer to enhance its flagging product by permitting LIV golfers to just accept sponsors’ exemptions to non-Signature occasions. Bryson DeChambeau is now the largest needle-mover in golf—the Tour could be loopy to surrender on him perpetually. To say nothing of Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Tyrrell Hatton and Joaco Niemann, who’re undoubtedly among the many finest gamers on this planet.
May we see Jon Rahm and different LIV gamers compete in a PGA Tour occasion this 12 months? (GETTY IMAGES/Richard Heathcote)
With the highest ten DP World Tour gamers going Stateside, is there a future for the European Tour or are we now only a feeder tour with our prime expertise being syphoned off by the U.S. tour? @Harry__Harlow
Over the previous couple of years, the proud European Tour has been diminished to a AAA minor league farm staff for the PGA Tour. The latest rapprochement with LIV golfers is a much-needed growth as Rahm and Sergio Garcia can now assist tournaments in Spain; Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter buoy occasions within the UK; King Louis provides a bit field workplace to the African swing; Henrik Stenson brings some juice to Scandinavian tournaments, and so forth. A bigger partnership with the Saudi Public Funding Fund, as has been mentioned behind closed doorways in latest months, could possibly be a game-changer. Throughout COVID, the European Tour needed to borrow cash to pay its working prices and purses dipped as little as $1 million. The following alliance with the PGA Tour assured purse will increase over an eight-year interval however, as a part of the cut price, Europe has at hand over its finest gamers 12 months after 12 months. It’s the golf model of prima nocta. The Euro Tour would minimize ties with the PGA Tour provided that the PIF assured large purse will increase. That might permit the highest worldwide gamers to consolidate their schedules on the European Tour and at last create an actual competitor to the PGA Tour. If the PIF walks away from the take care of PGA Tour Enterprises the world order of golf could possibly be in for one more upheaval.
Has the cost American gamers demanded for the Ryder Cup inadvertently put extra stress on them to win the Cup and can this profit the Europeans of their bid to win on U.S. soil? @EoinMurphyej1
Was it a requirement? Felt extra like a collective pout. Anyway, of the $500K every participant will obtain, $300K mechanically goes to charity and I’ve zero doubt that every one the Yanks will donate the opposite $200K, only for optics … and the tax deduction. Nonetheless, all of the nuance will likely be stripped away and this entire sordid affair will inevitably change into a rallying cry for Crew Europe: “We play for the love of the game and they play for money.” However perhaps the vitriol will assist bond Crew USA? There was an enormous stink about cash across the 1999 Ryder Cup and the associated emotion and indignation helped the People dig deep for an epic comeback. The U.S. staff performed so unhealthy in Rome they should take motivation wherever they’ll discover it.
Blondes or brunettes? #AskAlan @backwoodhaney
Why not each? I’m a fan of Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala.
Jeff Babineau and Steve DiMeglio – two losses for the PGA Tour journalism neighborhood. Ideas to you all. @AzBobbyl
Thanks. Yeah, can’t imagine we misplaced each of them a couple of weeks aside. They had been very totally different—Dimegs was quick and edgy, Babs spherical and exceedingly sort. However each had been colourful characters who enlivened each press room and introduced distinctive voices to their work. The golf beat has been contracting for 20 years due the diminishment of newspapers and magazines, craven company cost-cutting and gamers and excursions more and more creating their very own content material. However these losses hit totally different. We want persona on the beat. We want previous professionals who aren’t afraid to ask powerful questions and name it like it’s. Jeff and Steve had been all of that. I’m going to overlook them quite a bit and I do know I’m not the one one.
Prime Picture Caption: Will the PGA Tour welcome again gamers like Bryson DeChambeau on a sponsors exemption someday in 2025? Our Alan Shipnuck thinks so. (GETTY IMAGES/Kevin C. Cox)
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