GHIN
I was walking through the airport in Chicago this morning and was thinking about Growing The Game.
What sparked this was seeing a 70-something man pass the other direction wearing a golf hat that simply said “THE NETFLIX CUP.” (I know this guy was not evangelizing for this one-off golf streaming event. Older guys love free hats, a fact and feeling I’m empathizing with and embracing more with each passing day.) But, for whatever reason, the hat just laid bare to me how silly, disposable and hollow each harebrained GTG initiative ends up feeling when Scottie Scheffler and Nelly Korda are doing what they’re doing.
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The two may seem unrelated (and I’m sure they mostly are), but to me it speaks to the massive gulf between an industry trying desperately to attract new viewers and the things that those of us who eat, sleep and breathe the game actually love most about it.
Golf is exploding for all kinds of different reasons and it’s sincerely great that there are people trying new things and creating all kinds of different pathways to try to make the game more modern and approachable. But for those of us who have been on the couch every Sunday of the post-Tiger era – who, sadly, appreciate and love golf because of its pace and rules and nuance and dorkiness instead of in spite of them – Scottie and Nelly are exactly what we’ve been waiting 15 years for.
I’m more excited to watch week-to-week pro golf now than I have been since Jordan Spieth’s ascension in 2015. And what I personally think is so funny and refreshing about this phenomenon is that it doesn’t involve any tricks. There are no gimmicks or #collabs or press releases or limited product drops doing the heavy lifting. It’s nothing more than generational excellence at the stupid thing I love watching and thinking about. Ass kickings. It’s the highest possible expression of something we all consider an art form for reasons we can’t really explain to our significant others.
Of course, The Product needs to improve. But the last two months have been a reminder to me of just how great watching pro golf can be when the game is blessed with a center of gravity. (And in this case, two.) For the first time in far too long, what happens on the course is markedly more interesting than what’s going on in Ponte Vedra board rooms.
I don’t know if this will result in more people tuning in to pro golf. I hope so, but I’m too excited to really care. I know I’ll be watching more. And I suspect everyone who treats golf like a high-level competitive sport instead of the world’s most boring reality show probably will, too.
After years of non-stop discussion about whether changing the product was necessary (my own hand WAY up here), there’s some cosmic humor in watching the product throw it back in our faces. And with the golf world having these centers of gravity on the men’s and women’s side, it might even take pressure off the networks who are likely feeling like they are drinking from the firehose and trying to make 200 players into stars. Maybe that makes progress on the rest of the product even easier.
I’m excited.
By the way, this whole take makes me feel so old. If you have any free hats, please send them to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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This past weekend, I officially kicked off my Wisconsin golf season by joining 60ish NLU listeners and Roost members at the fourth annual “Burban” at Spring Valley “Country Club.” The event is a battle between the Langford Lancers and the Moreau Marauders that is held in honor of a dead horse that was buried behind the 14th tee sometime in the 50s.
