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US OPEN Review

For those of you that watched the recent US Open at Pinehurst No.2, you would have seen the small margins and harsh consequences that players had to face off the tee and around the greens. Course management was crucial and plotting yourself around the course in the right areas was the recipe to success.

Martin Kaymer won the 2014 US Open at Pinehurst No.2 by eight shots. To this day, it is remembered as some of the highest quality golf that has ever been played. His ball striking and short game was relentless that week, however, he stood out from the field in one simple way, his course management. Course management is something that goes unnoticed to most golf fans but by the end of the week, it was the main reason that he was standing on the 18th green as the US Open champion!

Kaymer’s caddy, Craig Connelly, was on the bag at Pinehurst in 2014. He sure knows how to plot his way around the Donald Ross masterpiece! When talking about the course itself, Connelly commented, “You’ve got to be aggressive to conservative areas and give yourself every opportunity to make the par.”. He also added, “picking your target and hitting the right spots is very, very difficult” and you have to “have your distance control sorted and (hit the ball) in the right spot on the green because there are only small portions that you can hit too.” Kaymer executed these tactics perfectly with a final score of -9, separating himself from the rest of the field!

At this year’s US Open at Pinehurst, Bryson DeChambeau played smart and calculated golf. Off the tee, he hit a variety of shots depending on what distances he wanted in to the green to have a comfortable number to hit the areas he wanted. He knew what yardages he wanted to give himself on his approach to give him the best chance of making a par or better. His approach to the US Open 2024 was the perfect balance between risk and reward. He took risks but they were calculated and well thought out beforehand.

In amateur golf, course management is something that players don’t talk about enough. It is a crucial aspect to lowering your handicap however it’s hard to figure out on your own. The VPAR App is what you need! The app’s features include GPS, yardages, club recommendation, course maps, and course notes. By using these features, you are giving yourself the best chance of improving your golf and most importantly, enjoying it more. It will simplify your game and make every aspect of your golf more consistent. You can rely on the VPAR App just like the professionals rely on their caddies.

Why the FedEx Cup isn’t a playoff and how to improve it

The FedEx Cup was launched in 2007 to create a culmination to the PGA Tour season. The best players from that season would compete in a short series of ‘playoff’ events in order to work out the Tour champion (and hand out a boat load of cash).

The format has been fraught with issues since its inception.

The Cup’s inaugural year saw Tiger miss the first event and go on to win the end of season title. Vijay Singh in 2008 won the first two playoff events meaning that as long as he continued to breathe, he was assured of the title. Billy Horschel in 2014, won the whole thing when starting 69th on the points list.

Surely by now, in its 15th edition, the courier cup has delivered a better package (… I’m so sorry) of end of season delights..?

Unfortunately not. As recently as last year, Jon Rahm said “I don’t think it’s fair”, citing that if you don’t perform in the final ‘playoff’ event, then you won’t go home with the big prize.

What are the issues with the regular season

As a hardcore golf fan, I cannot make the connection between performance in the regular season and playoff standing. Each tournament distributes 500 FedEx Cup points – with the majors and a couple of elevated status events earning more and some opposite field tournaments earning less – which instantly confuses the fan as to what is “must watch” golf.

What the PGA Tour struggles with is that they have, quite impressively, sold $10+ million title sponsorship deals to 47 tournaments on their schedule. All of which they promise that some of the top guys will play, resulting in higher media ratings and happy Chief Marketing Officers.

However, the issue is that for a pro there is more incentive to play in weaker fields than the elevated status events. More competition equals a reduced likelihood of a strong performance, and therefore are events to be avoided. To summarise, playing the 3M Open and Rocket Mortgage classic will do you better than Riviera and Bay Hill.

The pros and the tour are therefore at loggerheads with their intentions for the FedEx Cup. Maximum points vs. the top guys at the top events.

Why the FedEx Cup it isn’t a playoff

In other season-long leagues that have playoffs, e.g. premiership rugby, NFL, NBA, MLB, the end of season battle is the zenith of the entire season.

Harlequins run in the 2021 playoffs will be remembered for ever, rather than the season itself.

In baseball there are far too many games, but the World Series is unmissable entertainment.

“Football season starts after thanksgiving” is Bill Belichick’s mantra regarding the regular and post-season.

NBA regular season games often lack the presence of superstars if they need to be rested for the playoffs.

In golf, the playoffs look like normal tournaments albeit with smaller fields and with no cut. There are 125 players for the FedEx St. Jude Classic, 70 for the BMW and 30 for the Tour Champs (in 2023 this is becoming 70, 50 and then 30 respectively).

If I turn on the PGA Tour in August I don’t know if it is a playoff event by look and feel. There is no jeopardy or finality, just convoluted hype through the commentary team. That’s before you get me started on the gross/net leaderboard at the Tour Championship…

How to improve it

In an era of long term broadcast and sponsorship deals it isn’t possible to do much of the below (cue the “do you not understand contracts bro?” guy on twitter), but from the comfort of my armchair this is what I would like to see.

1. Make the regular season count

Strip back the tournaments that count to the playoffs to 11: Riviera, Bay Hill, The Players, WGC match play, Memorial, the four majors and the first two playoff events.
Only these tournaments count towards the end of season order of merit. When a fan watches these, they know that they are getting the best of the best. The pros must play in them to earn FedEx Cup points.

2. Other tournaments become all about keeping their card

For the other tournaments, they still have a place in the schedule, but jack up the narrative around golfers keeping their card. The current system is so convoluted, that I have no idea who is actually going to be on the tour next year even if they are outside the coveted ‘125’.
This is primarily due to a suite of ridiculous exemption categories: major medicals, 400 starts on tour, partial status etc. etc.
Simplify this to be if you don’t play well enough, see you on the Korn Ferry Tour. A more fluid system would have seen Cameron Young and Will Zalatoris (today’s world beaters) on the scene much, much earlier.

3. Make the final playoff event match play

For the final twelve players that make it to our last playoff event, make them duel it out in knockout match play format (bottom four to have a wildcard round before QF, SF and Final).
Match play is made for television, creates rivalries and, crucially, is actually a playoff.
Whoever beats three guys is the champion. Simple.

Is women’s golf the best investment in sport right now?

Women’s sport has been having time in the sun of late.

Arguably the catalyst for this trend was the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Broadcast figures were lauded at reaching over a billion viewers – 1.12 billion to be exact – and the world’s most popular sport had finally woken up to the potential of targeting the other half of the globe’s population.

For reference, a year earlier, the men’s tournament had a viewership of 3.57 billion. Whilst at a 3x ratio, this may seem like a ginormous gap, but a billion people is still a billion people.

Cricket, slightly surprisingly, is the most watched women’s sport in the UK at 41% of the 33 million total viewership in 2021. We can likely attribute this to The Hundred’s free-to-view broadcast and as a consequence of England’s World Cup win in 2017 at Lords.

The Netball Superleague has become a case study in how to run a sports federation. In 2019, Sky Sports dedicated an entire channel to netball, and they broadcast all 60 games of the world cup held in England free on YouTube with participation numbers increasing as a result.

So where does that leave us with golf?

The headlines over the past six months have been encouraging. Prize money at the top end of the game has increased significantly.

The USGA announced that their US Women’s Open prize purse be $10 million in 2022 thanks to their presenting sponsor ProMedica. The Chevron Championship followed suit by raising theirs to $5 million as a part of their new sponsorship deal. With the PGA of America following suit, doubling their women’s purse to $9 million.

However the women’s game is still criminally under promoted and supported. The talent level is no less, and yet the commercial realities are troublesome to say the least. For a more articulate view on this I would encourage you to read some of Meg Maclaren’s written word.

Alongside the dollars and cents, the women are playing a different game at the moment. In a time of infinite data and cutting edge performance tools on the men’s side, the LPGA only starting utilising strokes gained last summer. The knock on effect is a lag for the professionals in how to improve, practice and train.

Broadcast coverage is secondary in terms of time windows and scheduling. Ultimately this is understandable from a broadcaster perspective due to the viewing figures, but is there room for innovation here? Could you play Sunday to Wednesday for some tournaments perhaps? Equally, wherever you sit on the LIV debacle, wasn’t it a huge miss not to include women in some fashion?

The women’s game does have a few aces up its sleeve to play. In a time of the golf ball going too far, the women have a distinct advantage: tournament venues. The mouth salivates in the US at the Country Club of Charleston in 2019, this year’s Pine Needles and Riviera CC in four years time. Whereas in the UK, the WBO will head to Muirfield, Walton Heath and Royal Porthcawl over the few years.

The talent level has never been higher. Jin Young Ko at the end of last year had 15 consecutive rounds in the 60s, earlier this year hit 66 consecutive greens in regulation, and also set the LPGA record for most straight sub par rounds (lol).

Couple the above with some genuine super stars at the top of the game, namely the Korda sisters, Minjee Lee, Lydia Ko’s and a dozen others, and you have yourself some real excitement to get your teeth into.

The Volvo Scandinavian Mixed tournament was a great success with long hitting Swede Linn Grant beating Open champion and compatriot Henrik Stenson by 9 shots. The vista of having the same course played by men and women, competing for the same prize pool is another step in the right direction that the LET and DPWT should be lauded for.

The green shoots of change are there. We would urge you to watch this documentary on the Stanford Women’s Golf Team for instance. The narratives created are so rich that when Rose Zhang and Rachel Heck make it out on tour, they will have a plethora of fans that should begin to solve some of the issues laid out above.

We at VPAR are bullish on Women’s Golf, and believe more should be too.