I see what you did there.

I would give her the best 8 seconds of her life.

Yummy

[ Edit ] PGA Championship 2022 starts this ( tomorrow ) morning, featured group teeing off 8:11 am

Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth.

Hey Skully……I think the PGA starts tomorrow on ESPN.  

I was wondering why the leaderboard wouldn't up-date

and ugh….Joe Buck is there doing his awful announcing.  I miss Mike Tirico, he’s so good at every sports venue he’s doing.

Yeeehaaaa Rory in the lead -5 under, Tiger +4

@Blair Kiel...
IIRC, Mrs. Kiel had some sort of association with the PGA Tour, so I'm hoping you/her can explain (in layman's terms) the crap that is going on with the Tour and that LIV/Saudi stuff.

Good thing or bad?
For the players?
For the Tour and/or tournaments?

Thanks!

Bad…bad…bad.

It threatens to fracture the current structure of professional golf. The PGA TOUR was actually a group of players way back when who broke away from the PGA of America in order to control their ability to make money.

Current players sit on the board of directors, so it’s more of a collective than other pro sports.

Problem is….greed. Guys like Phil and Dustin Johnson aren’t paid on the Tour commensurate to their potential. Jesus, Tiger could have left the Tour long ago and made billions. But whatever his faults, he stayed loyal to the organization.

Now the Saudi’s come in with unlimited cash and several guys say, “Fuck who they are…and we know who they are…I’m taking the increased guarantees.

Bear in mind, the Saudi’s don’t have to worry about placating sponsors or developing young players (The Tour runs the Kornferry Tour for up and coming guys)

Pure and simple it’s a money grab by guys who’s loyalty is more to themselves than the originization  that had layed the groundwork for their success .

it actually has a very real impact on Mrs. Keel as she had announced her retirement as of January of next year. We had to make a decision on her pension as to whether to take a lump sum or take a lifetime annuity. That decision has been made for us because who the hell knows what kind of health the tour will be in in five or 10 years.Bear  in mind the PGA tour does not run the major tournaments like the British Open the masters the PGA championship or the US open so those entities will need to make their own decisions on whether they will allow these players who’ve left the tour to compete in there tournaments. The US open has the name implies has already decided that they need to keep their tournament open and I guess I can’t quite blame them for that since the term is in their name.

Greed? You wanted Phil to turn down $200 million? 😂😂😂 You are a liberal in elephants clothing.

I can cite several examples of times in my life that I have taken less money to keep my morals, my loyalty,  my ethics and my word intact.

100 million, maybe, but 200? Cmon!

Maybe I was just never offered enough though.😀

I would sue if I were you. It’s the American way.😊

I ended up seated next to a semi-retired PGA tour player on a trans-Atlantic flight in the mid 2000s. He had taken a bunch of high-rollers over to Scotland for a tour of golf courses and had been bumped from first class back to economy because the airline ran out of first-class seats (and he didn't want to make one of his paying customers sit in back instead of him).

Keep in mind this is 2005. He had a few drinks and told me stories about how Tiger had a different woman in every city he visited (among other sordid tales). How Tom Watson was a terrible alcoholic and that was part of why he couldn't hit short putts (his hands shook too much). How Arnold Palmer was basically a sexual predator. I thought he was just BSing on a long flight, but everything he said about Tiger turned out to be true.

What he said about Mickelson might still be relevant to the LIV tour. He said that Mickelson had a huge gambling problem and that he constantly was under water with some guys you don't want to owe money too. He also said Mickelson had knocked up a stripper in Ohio which is why he didn't play golf in Ohio for a couple of  years (to avoid being served papers before they could work out a settlement). This is why skipped Nicklaus' Memorial tour a couple of times.

Maybe Mickelson has now made so much more money it doesn't matter, but I guess he was legendary for heavy, heavy gambling. It's hard to turn down 200 million no matter what, but he may need it more than we think.

Apparently the Arnold stories make Tiger look like a choir boy.

@Blair Kiel posted:

Apparently the Arnold stories make Tiger look like a choir boy.

That's exactly what this tour pro said in 2005. He also said the biggest problem Tiger had was that he wasn't that he was necessarily a horrible guy to start with (like Palmer apparently could be), but that Tiger started hanging around Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley too much. I guess those two made everyone else look tame in comparison.

At least one soccer player thinks LIV golf sucks:

https://www.espn.com/soccer/so...arabian-club-sources

@Goalline posted:

At least one soccer player thinks LIV golf sucks:

https://www.espn.com/soccer/so...arabian-club-sources

That didn’t age well.

Looks like the PGA caved to the Saudis……hope they negotiated more barrels per day pumped by the cartel.

Looks like the PGA tour hung guys like Rory McIlroy out to dry. Although McIlroy started deflecting questions about the LIV tour recently, so maybe he was given a heads up. It looks like a lot of players found out today when it was announced on social media.

https://nesn.com/2023/06/golf-...-liv-golf-agreement/

If there is one thing I've learned in my life, is that no matter how much money some people have, many of these people never have enough money. There's always a bigger yacht to buy or a 5th or 6th vacation home. Or in Mickelson's case, another gambling debt to pay off.

Mrs.Kiel retired from the Tour last October, but has been working for them on the coveted “consulting gig” since. She talks to a dozen employees a week. This came entirely out of left field.

@Blair Kiel posted:

Mrs.Kiel retired from the Tour last October, but has been working for them on the coveted “consulting gig” since. She talks to a dozen employees a week. This came entirely out of left field.

There was some discussion on social media that the PGA wanted to avoid the discovery process for any trials at all costs. But, yikes, this is from the Tiger Woods school of crisis management following his accident in 2008.

Tiger turned down 800 million and they merged anyway? McIlroy turned down north of 400 million and they sold him out?

There's a lot worse gamblers than Michelson. I had him on a dice game a few time and he's not a big player. Maybe he bets sports big through a bookie. MJ fires it up at $75K a hand on a Bacc table. He had Charles Oakley with him and he dumped about $300K shooting craps. The next week, at 41 years old, he signed a 10 day contract with the Rockets.  I think MJ made a call for him so he could pay the markers.

@PackerRick posted:

There's a lot worse gamblers than Michelson. I had him on a dice game a few time and he's not a big player. Maybe he bets sports big through a bookie. MJ fires it up at $75K a hand on a Bacc table. He had Charles Oakley with him and he dumped about $300K shooting craps. The next week, at 41 years old, he signed a 10 day contract with the Rockets.  I think MJ made a call for him so he could pay the markers.

I ended up on a Trans-atlantic flight back in 2005 seated next to a former PGA tour player. He had taken a group of high-rollers over for a personal tour to Scotland to play St. Andrews, Carnoustie, etc. They had overbooked first class so he got bumped to coach (rather than make one of his clients move back there).

He got several drinks in him and started talking - a lot. He told me stories about Tiger Woods that I thought had to be made up (this was three years before the car accident on Thanksgiving 2008). They were all spot on. He went on a long discussion about how Mickelson was the biggest phony out there and that he would run up huge debts with the sports books and was often below sea level with some unsavory people. Another story about Mickelson having a secret kid in Ohio and how Phil would skip events in Ohio to avoid being served for lawsuits related to that. How Arnold Palmer was a serial sexual harrasser/predator. How Tom Watson had an enormous drinking problem which was why he struggled to putt well.

I thought he was making it all up until the Tiger stuff hit the tabloids in 2008/9 and then I wondered how much of the other stuff was true.

@PackerRick posted:

There's a lot worse gamblers than Michelson. I had him on a dice game a few time and he's not a big player. Maybe he bets sports big through a bookie. MJ fires it up at $75K a hand on a Bacc table. He had Charles Oakley with him and he dumped about $300K shooting craps. The next week, at 41 years old, he signed a 10 day contract with the Rockets.  I think MJ made a call for him so he could pay the markers.

That's also consistent with what this PGA tour player told me in 2005. He told all the stories about Tiger, but he then said Tiger's real problem was that he started hanging around Jordan and Barkley in the exclusive clubs in Vegas and started to think he could keep up with them. The hookers and the parties and the gambling. He said that a lot of guys think they can live that lifestyle, but that Jordan is several levels about most of them.

@Blair Kiel posted:

Mrs.Kiel retired from the Tour last October, but has been working for them on the coveted “consulting gig” since. She talks to a dozen employees a week. This came entirely out of left field.

So can we expect MBS to hand out the Wanamaker trophy to the champion at Valhalla next year?

@MichiganPacker posted:

I ended up on a Trans-atlantic flight back in 2005 seated next to a former PGA tour player. He had taken a group of high-rollers over for a personal tour to Scotland to play St. Andrews, Carnoustie, etc. They had overbooked first class so he got bumped to coach (rather than make one of his clients move back there).

He got several drinks in him and started talking - a lot. He told me stories about Tiger Woods that I thought had to be made up (this was three years before the car accident on Thanksgiving 2008). They were all spot on. He went on a long discussion about how Mickelson was the biggest phony out there and that he would run up huge debts with the sports books and was often below sea level with some unsavory people. Another story about Mickelson having a secret kid in Ohio and how Phil would skip events in Ohio to avoid being served for lawsuits related to that. How Arnold Palmer was a serial sexual harrasser/predator. How Tom Watson had an enormous drinking problem which was why he struggled to putt well.

I thought he was making it all up until the Tiger stuff hit the tabloids in 2008/9 and then I wondered how much of the other stuff was true.

Give this a read…

Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf's Most Colorful Superstar

The more I read and listen..the more disappointed I am. Mrs.Kiel had the highest regard for Monihan.-Always spoke of his integrity. Money wins again.

@MichiganPacker posted:

That's also consistent with what this PGA tour player told me in 2005. He told all the stories about Tiger, but he then said Tiger's real problem was that he started hanging around Jordan and Barkley in the exclusive clubs in Vegas and started to think he could keep up with them. The hookers and the parties and the gambling. He said that a lot of guys think they can live that lifestyle, but that Jordan is several levels about most of them.

Jordan was always an issue. He came in through the back entrances so nobody could see him with his girlfriends and he was a pain on the tables. Take $100k marker, win, immediately pay it back, lose, ask for another $100k the next hand and on and on it went. Jordan and Woods were total stiffs whereas Barkley was a gem. He would ridicule Woods on the game for not tipping.

But if you really want to meet a classic enter Dennis Rodman. He had an entourage of about 30 people and they looked like a museum that came alive.

I could go on and on.

@PackerRick posted:

Jordan was always an issue. He came in through the back entrances so nobody could see him with his girlfriends and he was a pain on the tables. Take $100k marker, win, immediately pay it back, lose, ask for another $100k the next hand and on and on it went. Jordan and Woods were total stiffs whereas Barkley was a gem. He would ridicule Woods on the game for not tipping.

But if you really want to meet a classic enter Dennis Rodman. He had an entourage of about 30 people and they looked like a museum that came alive.

I could go on and on.

Sounds like we need to meet up with you at some point and learn the real stories.

I would bet the James Harden stories that will come out after he retires will be interesting.

@MichiganPacker posted:

Sounds like we need to meet up with you at some point and learn the real stories.

I would bet the James Harden stories that will come out after he retires will be interesting.

I never had him on my game because he plays BJ. Came across as very arrogant and looking down on people. Floyd Mayweather's game of choice is Blackjack switch. Crazy. Those guys all have a bunch of hanger ons trying to leech off them.

@Blair Kiel posted:

That didn’t age well.

Benzema went for even more and now talk of Messi going for more than a Sultan’s ransom.

@Blair Kiel posted:

Mrs.Kiel retired from the Tour last October, but has been working for them on the coveted “consulting gig” since. She talks to a dozen employees a week. This came entirely out of left field.

After bashing the likes of Phil the PGA decides to cash in anyway? Shocker!

Commissioner Jay has got a lot of explaining to do.

@MichiganPacker posted:

There was some discussion on social media that the PGA wanted to avoid the discovery process for any trials at all costs. But, yikes, this is from the Tiger Woods school of crisis management following his accident in 2008.

Tiger turned down 800 million and they merged anyway? McIlroy turned down north of 400 million and they sold him out?

--------------------------

Joe Pompliano

@JoePompliano

·

1h

The PGA Tour convinced many of its players that taking Saudi money from LIV Golf was immoral. But now the PGA Tour is merging with LIV, creating a new entity with Saudi's sovereign wealth fund as the only outside investor. The players that turned down the money must be PISSED.

----------------------

priyadesai

@priyadesai

·

55m

I understand that CNBC got the exclusive on this PGA/LIV story. How about just one question on how Jay Monahan reportedly rejected a new title sponsor for the Byron Nelson tournament because of ties to Saudi Arabia less than a month ago?

------

@SethDavisHoops

·

42m

The most amazing part of this PGA/LIV merger is that the talks never leaked. PR 101 is float the trial balloon first. Now the story isn’t just what happened but the secrecy. The public is shocked, the players feel blindsided. Monahan took a bad story and somehow made it worse.

This is what happens when you listen to corporations! Do what’s best for you and your family. Loyalty to corporate interests is sheer stupidity. You think corporations are loyal to you?

I woke up pissed and disillusioned. So glad we took Mrs.Kiel’s pension via lump sum vs. lifetime payments as I would always think I was getting blood money going forward. I know there’s tons of hypocrisy in all of our investments, but the direct link between the Saudi’s and 9/11 disgusts me to no end.