Iss. #235 | A Champion Golf Logo Has Been Crowned

Iss. #235 | A Champion Golf Logo Has Been Crowned

"If all the stars aligned, right now, it feels like a pretty good exit point: April 14, 2036." - Jim Nantz calling his retirement shot in 11 years at the 100th Masters or... me hopping on the bandwagon and retiring decades earlier than I'd expected at the same Masters tourney. That'll be a really special moment for Jim and I.

 

My God he did it! 

IT ONLY TOOK ONE YEAR?!
I'll start this week with a massive congratulations to one of my most pleasant TikTok follows of the past year. Tim from the account Cheeky Golf Club has been on a quest to play golf every day until he make 18 pars in a row—starting it all a little over one year ago as a high double digit handicap.
 
My obvious follow up, how??? What a carefree life of little to no responsibility. But I digress.
 
After a brief rest around the one year mark, he found himself on Day 382 at his favorite local track with a one footer on 18 to lock in his incredible six under, bogey-free round. A moment where I caught myself feeling unreasonably excited to see him finally achieve his goal.
 
The downside to his feat, however, is it's defeated the entire purpose of his quite substantial TikTok account. But life finds a way...
 
Keeping it alive, Tim passes the torch to his two buddies who have popped in and out of his videos over the past year and will now attempt to make 18 pars in a row themselves. So if you weren't following @CheekyGolfClub already, get in and ride along. They spend most of their time at this nine hole track that may or may not be located on the in-field of a horse racing track somewhere in England.
 
It's a slow burn, relaxing watch.
 
10/10 recommend.

 

LIV continues to run laps around PGA on innovations

IT'S GIVING—THE CHALLENGE ON MTV
In a fun twist of fate, after I joked last week that anything PGA can do, LIV can do worse—as it related to their champions dinner featuring only two champions—LIV absolutely buries the PGA's Creator Classic format with their made for YouTube event called The Duels.
 
You can argue all you want (and I do) that the embarrassingly low TV ratings for LIV is evidence enough that they still have a LOT of work to do to establish themselves as a true golf tour alternative.
 
But this promises to be one of the better content products they've produced to date. The concept is simple, two man teams pairing a LIV pro with a YouTube star. The format is a scramble and it's only nine holes. 
 
The real differentiator though is that this will be a pre-taped event that's cut and released on Grant Horvat's YouTube channel on April 5th. I am certainly not the first or only person to make the observation that what holds events like the PGA's Creator Classic back is the fact that it's a full live broadcast. Thus putting talent that are used to filming and editing pre-recorded content for distribution on YouTube in the precarious position of being "on" all the time—live.
 
This way, creators can do what they do best and the pros can be edited in and out as needed. Plus, we will get some of the Have A Day fellas as commentators ensuring the comedy is up to par.
 
I will watch this. And I'm curious, especially since it's airing on Grant's channel, if this doesn't get some of the biggest "ratings" to date.
 
Kudos where it's due, nice work here LIV—now stick the landing.
 
P.S. here are the teams
  • Sergio Garcia and George Bryan
  • Bubba Watson and Luke Kwon
  • Joaquin Niemann and Rick Shiels
  • Phil Mickelson and Grant Horvat
  • Dustin Johnson and Wesley Bryan
  • Cameron Smith and Fat Perez
I bet Phil and Grant cooked this up and pitched it to LIV—and I bet they win.

 

Which would you have taking it home?

MARCH MADNESS BUT MAKE IT GOLF
What's caught my eye on golf social over the past week or two is a logo bracket created by AE Golf News. What's AE Golf News? Honestly, great question. AE appears to stand for Alex Elias who may or may not be a Director of Strategic Accounts at Safety NetAccess or he's a junior golfer from Colorado.
 
Either way, they specialize in course reviews and they just completed a 64 course bracket on their IG account in honor of March Madness—crowning the best logo in the country.
 
Pictured above is your Final Four
 
Sleepy Hollow Country Club
Winged Foot Golf Club
The Stanwich Club
Maidstone Club
 
Three of the four were 1 seeds in their region with only The Stanwich Club breaking ranks as a 3 seed.
 
My money would've been on Sleepy Hollow to take down the banners—but the Cinderella story goes to the flagstick riding witch from Stanwich.
 
Hopefully this is a nice omen for what's to come in real March Madness where I am a touch over-invested in the 3-seed Texas Tech Red Raiders to make the Final Four...

 

Come. Watch with me.

FULL SWING S3: EPISODE 5 THOUGHTS
My much-anticipated Min Woo Lee episode—never really makes it past a simmer.
 
EPISODE TITLE:
Two Tickets to Paris
 
TAKEAWAY 1—MIN WOO:
Sad to say, I had way too high of hopes for his episode. I was looking for more on his fame and the fan circus that follows him. We got a bit when he talked about the pressure of wanting to live up to expectations and break the image of him as "just" a social media star. But otherwise, it felt like an aside.
 
He was pretty subdued in his interviews and outside a clip or two we never really saw the personality flash like it does on social.
 
Even the stuff with his sister didn't go all that deep—give me some family in Paris for the Olympics footage. Mom and dad crying as they appreciate the INSANELY impressive feat of having two kids who both made the friggin' Olympics in golf.
 
The only moment I loved was the archival footage of Min Woo as a teen ripping a drive with Jason Day's driver—the boys were buzzzzzing!!
 
Was awesome to see the mentorship there and reminds me how much we take being American for granted when it comes to athletics. Like Australia has four (five? I don't know why we didn't see Adam Scott mentioned) golfers who were relevant enough for the Olympics. The US had four in the top 10...
 
There's something endearing to the idea of only having so many athletes to root for—so when one of them really hits it big, the entire country gets behind them.
 
TAKEAWAY 2—WYNDHAM:
Quite a boring follow up to one of the better plot lines from last season. Wyndham was so transparent with his struggles the year before but all we got this year was watching him flounder around for most of the Tour.
 
A little Mark Wahlberg sighting—and that's about it.
 
It read more as an ad for Municipal than an actual profile of Clark. Fun fact, I used to work at the same coworking space as the Municipal team in Carlsbad. No real insights, just a fun fact.
 

TAKEAWAY 3—ON-SITE FITNESS CENTERS:

They seem to be about as busy as your standard Holiday Inn Express fitness center. For the amount of shots we see in Full Swing of these guys in the fitness center, they're often in there with at MOST one other player and trainer.  

Does this mean what I think it means and reenforce the stereotypes of golfers not really being athletes because they just play golf and don't really do much in the way of physical fitness?

Do they have scheduled times so it never gets too busy? 

Is it the Netflix cameras that scare away others?

Whatever the reason, they're ghost towns and I feel like I've seen about 38 different Tour stops' fitness areas now.

EPISODE GRADE:

C-

The Olympics framing was fun and at least kept it interesting enough. But with only two episodes left, I worry that the season I hoped for is not going to come...
— Scott Fluhler
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