Car LIV, Where Are You?

Now that the Fedex Cup has been completed (how did that handicap to Scottie Scheffler work out, by the way?)and the hubbub surrounding the Saudi Golf League a/k/a LIV Golf,  has ridden a flop shot over to the judicial system, it’s worth assessing the damage so far. What damage, you say. As LIVer-in-chief Phil Mickelson generally observed in a recent Sports Illustrated phone interview, the upstart league has been good for both the Saudi golfers and the PGA.  In response to the massive swag offered their members to defect to the Saudi League, the PGA has committed north of $160 million dollars to the coming year’s purses on the PGA Tour, as well as doubling the kitty of the ludicrous Player Impact Program (PIP), which will award $100 million to the top 20 players who help generate interest in the game. (Hilarious. Are there even 20 golfers who generate interest in the game? Not for me.) The PGA’s  new Earnings Assurance Program will also create a league minimum salary of $500,000 for fully exempt members, while also helping with travel expenses. As mentioned in the prior post on this subject, Gordon Gekko is smiling somewhere.

So the burning questions remains, what does the name “LIV Golf “ represent? Well, the "LIV" in the LIV Golf Tour's name isn't an acronym. It is the Roman numeral for the Arabic numeral 54.

What does that mean in the context of the LIV Golf Tour? Greg Norman, LIV's CEO and commissioner, explained in a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, “54 is the lowest score you could shoot if you were to birdie every hole on a par-72 course, so there is an aspirational aspect to the thinking. It is also the number of holes to be played in each LIV event.” (One might be forgiven if she thought that 54 is also the average age of LIV golfers so far, although Champion of the Year Cameron Smith’s defection does bring the average LIV golfer’s age down a tad.) Indeed, LIV Golf players will play just 54 holes in total, as the start-up's tournaments are only three days long. Of course, most events and tournaments on the PGA Tour last four days and 72 holes. (and no, there will be no jokes about the LIVers allowed to use walkers on the course in their upcoming tournaments, not in this blog.)  So, while the LIV Golf Tour may look like a strange name on paper, there sappers, at least on paper, to be a somewhat defensible reason they chose it. And it's less revealing than the descriptive (and off-putting to many golf fans and others) "Saudi Golf League" moniker.

The term “54” serves as another reference for us more mature linksters. Growing up, there was  an American sitcom that aired on NBC from September 1961 to April 1963 called Car 54, Where Are You? The Wikipedia article describes the show as follows:

Filmed in black-and-white, the series starred Joe E. Ross and Fred Gwynne as Gunther Toody and Francis Muldoon, two mismatched New York City police officers who patrol the fictional 53rd precinct in the Bronx. Car 54 was their patrol car. Much of the series is set in the station house, with commanding officer Captain Block ordering his men to answer neighborhood police calls, or investigate baffling cases that have stymied the force at large. Toody and Muldoon often blunder into these cases, encountering the criminals accidentally and proceeding on a wrong assumption. By sheer perseverance, inadvertence, and luck, Toody and Muldoon bring each case to a successful conclusion.

 

 

The lyrics to the Car 54 theme song provides some perspective to the uninitiated (no need to parody these lyrics, by the way; their silliness - and outdated references (Khruschev? Idlewild?), speaks for themselves):

There's a holdup in the Bronx,
Brooklyn's broken out in fights;
There's a traffic jam in Harlem
That's backed up to Jackson Heights;
There's a Scout troop short a child,
Khruschev's due at Idlewild;
Car 54, Where Are You??

The term Mutt and Jeff might be the way to describe Toody and Muldoon, who were the odd couple before The Odd Couple. Toody was short, stocky, nosy, and not very bright. College-educated Muldoon, on the other hand, is quite  tall, quiet, and more intellectual. These opposite qualities between Toody and Muldoon were the basis of the comedic structure of the show. To this young viewer, the show was hilarious. Fred Gwynn went on to star in stage, television and cinema. His last, and perhaps most memorable movie role was Judge Chamberlain Haller in the classic movie  My Cousin Vinny (his attempts to comprehend the New York accent of Joe Pesci, as recently-graduated lawyer Vinny Gambini, are the stuff of which cinematic masterpieces are made.)

 

 

I think of LIV golf as the equivalent of Car 54. Putting aside the Toody and Muldoon comparisons (you figure it out), the Saudi Golf League appears to be stumbling to limited success due to perseverance,  inadvertence, and luck, with a heavy dose of chutzpah and moolah (and now, lawyers.) Certainly, LIV CEO Greg Norman has been pursuing his dream of establishing a competing golf tour for decades, and, as luck would have it, the Saudis have ample means to engage in sportswashing with a sport that has interest to golf fans around the world. However, two clouds appear on the immediate horizon: Rory says no to LIV golfers representing Europe in the next Ryder Cup, and the WGHOF is not counting LIV results in its player rankings. Both stances, if maintained, could deal a stinging blow to the perceived success of the Saudi Golf Tour. In fact, if it’s luck runs out, the Saudi Golf Tour could end up being backed up to Jackson Heights.

 

© 2012-22 R.E. Kelly

AMDG

Gordon Gekko Was Right (For Now)

 Greed is good. That’s the quote from Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie "Wall Street”. Specifically, Douglas said “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." Doubling up, Gekko went on to say that  greed “in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind."

Greed has been good for those professional golfers who have abandoned their respective golf tours to follow the money and join the Saudi Golf League, self-dubbed the LIV Golf Tour. (LIV is not an acronym; it is the roman numeral for the number 54 (L = 50, V = 5, I = I; placement of the I before the V acts to subtract one from 5, resulting in 4.) (More on the meaning of 54 later.)

While Gekko’s statement reflected the zeitgeist of the day in 1987, a more time-honored position reflects the opposite sentiment. The New Testament in 1 Timothy 6:10 (NASB) holds that “the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

Both sentiments apply to the golfers who have left the PGA and DP tours. They have left for the money, plain and simple. Mickelson, an inveterate gambler whose debts have been documented both in this blog (here), by Alan Shipnuck in his recent Mickelson biography,  and by Mickelson himself  here, purportedly left the PGA Tour the LIV for an astounding $200 million, according to the Golf Channel and other outlets.  Dustin Johnson, he of 24 PGA tour victories and two majors championships, reportedly abandoned the PGA Tour for $120 million, according to press reports. And the list goes on.

Even if the source of the LIV money was somehow less morally repugnant, and the concomitant “sportswashing” effort less transparent, the pure greed involved in the creation and operation of the Saudi Golf League would still repulse. Not that we expected anything less from the solipsistic, mirthless, old and tired band of LIV golfers that once roamed the PGA Tour. Certainly, as Timothy remarked, those former PGA Tour golfers, by grabbing for the gold, have wandered away from the PGA faith and its faithful fans. Greed has been good for them so far.  It remains to be seen if they have pierced themselves with many griefs.   

© 2012-22 R.E. Kelly

AMDG

A Five-Jerk Is, Well, To Be Admired

I've written previously about a four-jerk (i.e., taking four putts on one green) not being cool.  See here.  The provenance of the term can be understood thusly:

It’s so special that, like many other facets of the game of golf, there is a special term for that gaggle of missed putts on one hole in the golf lexicon.  As the eminent sportswriter  Rick Reilly wrote in a Sports Illustrated piece in 1988:

Spring is here, the Masters approaches, and something strange and wonderful came in the mail the other day: an invitation to play in my first big pro-am golf tournament. I was nervous about it, so I found the guy at my course who has played in even more pro-ams than Gerald Ford and Tip O'Neill put together—Ned (Two-Dollar) Nassau…. "First thing you've got to know," Two-Dollar said, "is how to talk. You've got to sound like you know what you're doing. Like when you hit it into the rough, you say, 'Damn. Spinach.' "

"Spinach?"

"Right. Now, a three-putt is a 'three-jerk.' And don't ever call the green the green. It's 'the moss.' Out of bounds is 'O'Brien.' And 'juice' is when you get backspin on the ball."

A three-jerk is somewhat pedestrian in my circle, and the pros have been known to three-putt on occasion, but a four-jerk is truly special. However, a five-jerk, well, that stands alone in the golfing performance hierarchy (unless you are Rory McIlroy - google it.) Yesterday at the Masters, Kevin Na hit his tee shot to the front edge of the green at Redbud, otherwise known to the golfing world as the 16th hole. His long par putt ran 12 feet past the hole. What followed was disastrous.  See here  Na walked off Redbud with his dignity intact but his red score as the third round began merely a distant memory after his triple-bogey. 

 

So, Reilly might call someone like Na a Freddie Fivejerk, but Na should just remember, deep inside he is a Cool Jerk cat.  Let me hear some bass with those eighty-eights.  Ah, you’re smoking!

FIVE JERK       

(Cool Jerk - Words and music by Donald Storball

Trio Music Company, Publishers

Copyright The Hudson Bay Music Company and

Carlin Music Corporation

McLaughlin Publishing Company)

Five-jerk, Five-jerk, Five-jerk, Five-jerk

This cat they're talking about

I know it must be me

'Cause I know I'm the worst putter yet

The worst putter that you ever did see

When you see me stabbing on the green

And they laughing and they scream

All the trash talk they wish to dis me with

But they know I'm the king of the five-jerks

Ah ha ha

Look at them guys looking at me like I'm a fool

Ah but deep down inside they know five putts rule

I said now,

I said now the moment of truth has finally come

When I was gonna do some, some of that five-jerk

All right, now I want to hear a little bit

of the drums by the caddie here

All right, now I want to hear a little bit of

bass with those double snowmen

All right, now let's hear the caddiemaster fall in

All right now everybody, I see you blastin’

Ah you're cooking, you're smoking

Come on people can you sink it?

Copyright R.E.Kelly 2012-2022

AMDG

 

Sing along here: 

 

 

 

For Auld Lang Syne

I have posted about this special topic before, but forgive me if I beg your indulgence once again. It bears repeating as we leave another horrible year  behind and move forward to a new, more hopeful one.  And as the words urge, please remember to take a cup of kindness while you are it; our society sorely needs it.

Whether the world knows it or not, a large swath of humanity pays homage to Robert Burns, the poet laureate of Scotland, when celebrating the New Year.  His poem and song, Auld Lang Syne, written in 1788, was sung at midnight by hundreds of millions of people around the globe, and I would guess that only a minuscule percentage of those revelers will know who wrote it and what it means. (The phrase Auld Lang Syne can be roughly translated as “old times” or “days gone by”.)

While I could find no reference to Robert Burns playing golf during a quick trip through the Internet, I believe he was a sportsman, as he was a member of the Royal Company of Archers in 1792.  And Burns was born in Ayrshire, home of several of the world’s greatest courses (Royal Troon, Turnberry and Prestwick Golf Club, the home of the first Open Championship).  

The best-laid schemes...

While the game of golf predates Auld Lang Syne by centuries (the first documented mention of golf in Scotland appears in a 1457 Act of the Scottish Parliament, an edict issued by King James II of Scotland prohibiting the playing of the games of golf and football  as these were a distraction from archery practice for military purposes) it’s hard to imagine a true Scotsman who does not (and for many centuries did not) have golf in his blood.  So give a passing thought to Rabbie (not Rabbi) Burns after  you drunkenly warble his melancholy tribute to days gone by at midnight on New Year's Eve, and dream later of making memories in the future from rounds of golf shared with family and friends.

Here are the original words to perhaps the world’s most famous poem (translation not provided; easy to find on the Internet, or simply use your imagination):

 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne.?

 

CHORUS:

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

 

And surely ye'll be your pint-stoup!
and surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak' a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

 

CHORUS

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
sin' auld lang syne.

 

CHORUS

We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
sin' auld lang syne.

Happy New Year!!

Copyright R.E. Kelly 2012-2022

AMDG