In this installment of Ask Alan, our own Alan Shipnuck takes readers’ questions as professional golf tries to shake off the hangover and gain momentum in 2025.
What is your over/under for TGL ignition? month? Week? @LoopersProShop
Well, it’s too big to fail. The hype has been carefully orchestrated, so I expect viewership for the first season to be solid. The key is the calendar: There is almost no meaningful sport played on Monday and Tuesday nights in January, February and March. What else will degenerate gamblers watch?! Mic’d players and all the whiz-bang technology will help engage the YouTube generation. I don’t think TGL will be a blockbuster, but it will be popular enough to stick around and piss off the traditionalists.
How will the public/media perception of Tiger Woods change if he uses a golf cart in the Senior Tour?#AskAlan @sociologysport
I don’t think anyone will care. Carts have been a part of that tour forever. Woods has broken his body repeatedly, and if a wheelchair prolongs his playing days, only cheaters will complain. Especially because Tiger still has plenty of game to contend with among the old boys. Who among us doesn’t want to see a redshirted Woods throw a few final punches?
Would it be a Tiger/Phil senior tournament “rivalry” that we didn’t know we needed if the tournaments were to come back together? @NDHickman
That would be great fun! The tournament fight has freed both boys from pretending to like each other. If they go head-to-head in a final round, it will be gripping theatre. And the TV ratings would probably eclipse any non-majors of the last decade.
Is the bar so high for Scheffler that a 3 or 4 win season will be seen as a failure and people wonder what is wrong with his game? @BradleySmith328
It depends on where those three or four wins would go. There’s nothing wrong with loading up on green jackets, but it’s time for Scheffler to make some noise in the other majors. If he picks one of them, thus getting halfway to a career Grand Slam, it’s automatically a great year. It’s completely arbitrary, but, for me, five wins has always been my threshold for a monster season. It doesn’t happen often. It feels like another one is coming.
Who earns more this year: Collin Morikawa or Justin Thomas? @jack_milko
That’s easy: Morikawa. JT is not falling; he has been lost for years. He closed 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 Championships and for the season was fifth in strokes gained. Thomas was ranked 25th (and 174th in placement!). With seven top-five finishes in 2024, Morikawa was unlucky not to win at least a few times. I think he’s going to have 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 around 1983: “All killer no filler.” This is API, just plain old school tourney, steeped in the macho legacy of its eponymous founder. The Players, meanwhile, is the most overwrought and overcooked week of the year during which the tournament’s army of VPs all rip off the shackles of rotation while patting themselves on the back. Gimme Bay Hill every time.
When do we see the first LIV player to make it to a PGA Tour sanctioned event? @HoselBombs
Sometime in 2025. This is absolutely wild a year and a half after the announcement of the framework agreement an agreement has not yet been reached. It makes me think of Gordon Gekko’s speech about all the paper being shuffled from corner office to corner office. What exactly are these people doing? The sport must move on, even if that means simply announcing that the deal is over and the PIF will not, in fact, invest in PGA Tour Enterprises. If that were to happen, I think the Tour would continue to improve its flagship product by allowing LIV players to accept sponsor exemptions for non-signature events. Bryson DeChambeau is now the greatest needle mover in golf– The tournament would be crazy to give him up forever. To say nothing of Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Tyrrell Hatton and Joaco Niemann, who are arguably among the best players in the world.
With the top ten DP World Tour players heading to the States, is there a future for the European Tour or are we now just a feeder tour with our top talent being concentrated by the US Tour? @Harry__Harlow
Over the past few years, the proud European Tour has been reduced to a minor league AAA farm team for the PGA Tour. The recent rapprochement with LIV players is a much-needed development as Rahm and Sergio Garcia can now support tournaments in Spain; Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter events in the UK; King Louis adds some treble to the African beat; Henrik Stenson brings some juice to Scandinavian tours, etc. A greater 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 were reduced to $1 million. The resulting alliance with the PGA Tour’s guaranteed purse grows over an eight-year period but, as part of the bargain, Europe must deliver its best players year after year. It’s the golf version of the first night. The Euro Tour would only cut ties with the PGA Tour if the PIF guaranteed major purse increases. This would allow the top international players to consolidate their schedules on the European Tour and finally create a true contender for the PGA Tour. If the PIF walks away from its 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 quest to win on American soil? @EoinMurphyej1
Was it a request? It felt more like a collective mold. Anyway, of the $500k each player will get, $300k automatically goes to charity, and I have no doubt all the Yanks will donate the other $200k, just for the optics…and the tax deduction . However, all nuances will be removed 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 an air of money around the 1999 Ryder Cup, and the excitement and outrage surrounding it helped Americans dig deep for an epic comeback. The American team played so poorly in Rome that it must take motivation wherever it can find it.
Blonde or brunette? #AskAlan @backwoodhaney
Why not both? I’m a fan of Will Zalatoris AND Sahith Theegala.
Jeff Babineau and Steve DiMeglio – two losses to the PGA Tour journalism community. Thoughts to all of you. @AzBobbyl
thank you Yeah, I can’t believe we lost both within weeks of each other. They were very different – Dimegs was short and nervous, Babs round and extremely kind. But both were colorful characters who enlivened any newsroom and brought distinctive voices to their work. Golf has been in decline for two decades due to shrinking newspapers and magazines, the desire to cut costs by corporations and players and tournaments increasingly creating their own content. But these losses are hit differently. We need personality in the beat. We need seasoned professionals who aren’t afraid to ask the tough questions and call it what it is. Jeff and Steve were all of that. I will miss them dearly and I know I am not the only one.
Main photo caption: Will the PGA Tour welcome players like Bryson DeChambeau with a sponsor exemption sometime in 2025? So thinks our own Alan Shipnuck. (GETTY IMAGES/Kevin C. Cox)
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