A Rogue Golf Thought

There’s an interesting phenomenon in golf fan and media circles—and maybe sports circles generally— where there’s kind of a collective pressure to wipe any larger context from our brains the minute someone pens a piece that suits our ideals. If the Sunday publication of Pravda said the Holodomor was being greatly exaggerated—truly a nightmare scenario for the 3+ million that died in the 1930’s man-made famine in the Ukrainian region of the USSR — there would be a contingent of conveniently aligned journalists yelling at you for even suggesting that Pravda, a state-owned publication, can’t be blindly trusted.

For those who might have been thinking about their golf swing during that lesson of history class, in the 1920s and early 1930s the Ukrainian region of the USSR was undergoing a revolution where a large contingent of elites were seeking independence in pursuit of improved quality of life. This movement was referred to as “Ukrainization”, and the USSR saw Ukrainization as a threat. They saw this region as a strategic asset and deployed a multifaceted plan designed to maintain their control through horrific means. They seized land, controlled production, set unrealistic quotas for farmers, purged elites, and more. These measures would lead to the Ukrainian famine, a famine so bad that no one knows how many died, but conservative estimates have it somewhere between 3 and 10 million.

On the flip side of this, the USSR was utilizing one of their best assets to control the narrative and cover up these atrocities, their very own state-owned media. This regime employed journalists that they knew were viewed as credible, manipulated foreign visitors by granting them privileged and amplifying their positive portrayals of their experiences, and attacked those that independently told the truth and painted them as propagandists.

In a smaller scope—I am not comparing any golf journalist or seemingly independent golf media to those employed or utilized by the USSR in the 1930’s and I am definitely not comparing any golf tour to the USSR—this all played out over the last few years as LIV Golf emerged as a global golf tour and challenged the PGA Tour. Cards on the table, I understand the need for the PGA Tour to fight against LIV Golf at some levels. LIV Golf threatened what was seen as the security blanket of the PGA Tour, control of the professional golf world.

However, I also reserve the right to point out that this control extends far beyond the players. I reserve the right to point out that much of what’s written in mainstream media comes from outlets that are in many ways controlled by the PGA Tour. I reserve the right to point out that Golf Digest, where Anthony Kim was definitely not compared to Josef Stalin, is the Official Golf Publication of the PGA Tour. I reserve the right to point out that Skratch Golf, where upon Brooks Koepka’s return to the PGA Tour they advised him to “not enter any embassies”, is partially owned by the PGA Tour and operates out of their headquarters. I reserve the right to point out that much of what you see from other seemingly independent outlets (like podcast No Laying Up, where LIV Golf was referred to as the “Trump Tour”, players were criticized in now-deleted tweets saying they took “blood money”, and it was suggested that a LIV player winning The Masters could be as bad of a look as a convicted abuser of women Angel Cabrera winning) is filtered through a PGA Tour friendly lens as to not upset any sponsors as the USSR PGA Tour has made it clear that you work with them or you work with us.

Their work will certainly resonate with some people, that’s never going to change and I don’t necessarily think it’s entirely the fault of the writers themselves. They’ve built their careers, curated friend groups, and mingled with stars based on their PGA Tour friendly coverage. Writing pieces that aren’t aligned with the group could mean risking some or all of that. That’s great for them. But people like me who acknowledge that while also pointing out that what they’re writing shouldn’t just be blindly trusted? That these anti-LIV Golf or pro PGA Tour/TGL puff pieces shouldn’t be read without understanding and appreciating the full context of where they’re coming from? That’s allowed too!

It’s a complex puzzle out there but there’s an important piece of it worth mentioning: Not all of this is done with malice. Like many of us, those that write about golf full time began as diehard fans, wide-eyed and enamored by the game’s magic. And golf fans are, to a fault at times, some of the most impressionable and trusting people out there. You can see this in every facet of the game. Go to a professional event and you’ll hear grown men swooning over the sound of the impact when Bryson DeChambeau or Rory McIlroy hit a driver. In that moment they’ll truly believe they can do that too if they have the same driver, or the same ball. There’s instructional videos with millions of views on YouTube, many of which we all know come from a lost soul in the middle of the night typing “slice fix” and just clicking the first thing that pops up. Watch a high-handicapper ask questions of a good player, their eyes will be as wide as can be as they seek to absorb as much information as possible, never once thinking that it may not be exactly what they need to hear.

The game is so full of trust, so full of belief, and so full of admiration of those that are perceived as better or higher up than yourself. So when the PGA Tour, what was once (essentially) the only game in town for these writers, tell you that LIV Golf is the enemy, or that LIV Golf is below them, many truly believe that. They frame their thinking around this. They believe that the players on LIV Golf truly want the PGA Tour to fail, they believe that LIV Golf’s existence poses a genuine threat to their livelihoods, to the relationships they’ve built, so it must be treated as such.

It’s not completely black and white and there’s certainly a portion of what’s written about LIV Golf that comes from the mindset of “I hope they fail and will say what’s necessary to help with that”, but more of it probably comes from a mindset that’s a result of leveraging what’s most unique about golf fans (and those that cover the game), their trust.

We owe it to the game to question why certain things are spun the way they are and to seek out diverse voices. We all reserve—and should exercise— the right to think for ourselves, critically analyze what we’re reading and where it’s coming from, lest we repeat history’s mistakes.