How’s everyone’s weekend going? Thanks for spending a portion of it with the Six.
There has not been a story in recent memory as delightfully complex as the one that came to head this week involving LIV and PGA golf.
Brief background: A couple of years ago, a Saudi-backed golf tour named LIV (not an acronym but symbol for the Roman numeral 54, the number of holes in each tournament) launched and shook up the sport. The upstart league offered nine-figure guarantee payouts to big name players like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka to leave the PGA tour and join LIV. Many did and those who didn’t––Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods to name a few––staunchly defended their decisions and stridently criticized LIV and players for taking “dirty money” from the Saudis.
Fast forward to this past week. News came out Tuesday that the PGA and LIV were merging under a joint operating agreement. Details have yet to be ironed out but other than the commissioners of both leagues, no one knew about the deal or could have predicted its culmination.
The story has all elements of great theater––money (lot and lots of it), broken relationships and geopolitical intrigue. It’s a business, sports and human interest story all rolled into one, which is why its crossed over along so many niches (what else could make the cover of the Wall Street Journal and be the lead story on SportsCenter?)
I probably fit the profile of most Americans as it pertains to professional golf––casual fan, might catch an afternoon of the Masters or U.S. Open on television, could name maybe 8-10 players but that’s about it. I enjoyed covering the sport as a media member as the perks were good––free round on media day, plentiful food spread, the players are easy going and pleasant to interview—and walking the grounds at Augusta National is a highlight of my professional life (lived and worked in Augusta, Georgia, home of The Masters tournament, for a little over a year). But for the most part, I find the sport boring and the civility amongst competitors makes it less appealing.
That changed with LIV. For the first time, even casual fans were reading up about golf. Players sniped back and forth. Corporate media chimed in with sanctimonious think pieces criticizing the Saudis for their “sports washing” and admonishing the players for their greed and immorality.
(The same writers who ripped sports leagues for playing through Covid, advocated for the banishment of athletes who refused to take The Shot and have yet to call out the NBA on their billion-dollar business relationship with The China Communist Party. These people are the worst kind of stupid––obnoxious and insufferable.)
An historical aside: Splintered groups are signposts towards American progress. All great outcomes began with invasion of industry, the status quo shook up, enterprise attempting to topple the establishment.
All parties—the old money PGA and new money Saudis––are about to jump into bed together amidst a mattress full of cash. Everyone will make a heck of a lot more money and once that’s all settled, most Americans will go back to feeling mostly indifference towards the sport.
I’m rooting for more volatility. Golf is a lot more fun with heroes and villains.
Let’s proceed with the Six.
1. Illinois Legislature Just Approved A Bunch Of Dumb Laws.
Another legislative session ended in Springfield earlier this week. What taxpayers got is further affirmation of the Illinois Way: take more and give less. Lawmakers gave themselves pay raises, took away school choice scholarships from needy families and gutted judicial review. Pop the Veuve Clicquot! From Wirepoints, some of the more dubious pieces of legislation signed into law, including revitalizing an nine-figure airlineless airport in Peotone and “cultural competency” training for medical professionals. This is what happens under one party rule, as Illinois continues to act more like a Monarch State than part of a free republic.
2. How Summer Camp Became Such A Hot Mess For Parents.
One of the more underrated pep talk movie scenes of all time is from the late 70’s Bill Murray classic film, “Meatballs.” Murray plays a counselor at the Northstar summer camp. The major plot line from the film is how every year, Northstar faces off against rival Camp Mohawk in the Olympiad competition (sort of a triathlon for campers). Sulking after taking a beating from Mohawk in day one, Murray gives his still-hilarious and socially-relevant “Just Doesn’t Matter” sermon to a menagerie of toothy-grinned teenage campers. Camp was a lot simpler for kids and parents in those days. It’s now a complicated, expensive pain-in-the-arse as this article from Bloomberg explains.
3. Harrison Ford Has Stories To Tell.
Later this month, the latest Indiana Jones film comes out. It will be the fifth in the series starring Harrison Ford as the inexhaustible archeologist Jones. Early reviews haven’t been great, but I don’t care. I’m going to go see it opening weekend because there will be something nostalgically charming about seeing Ford, 80 years old, wear that brown leather bomber jacket, the crooked outback hat, utter guttural one liners, kick ass and take names one last time. Ford is profiled by Esquire in a rare all-access super lengthy piece (and cool photo shoot). The one-time carpenter who played Han Solo and the president in an upcoming Marvel movie was in a chatty mood with the writer who asked why fans have connected with Ford’s characters over the decades: “We look for ourselves, and we look for useful information to help us navigate our fucking lives and the world that we’re living in. We don’t realize we’re looking for that. But we’re looking to pull out of a fantasy something that’s useful to us. And what’s useful to us is to emotionally participate in things outside of our own lives.”
4. Return Of The Republican Clown Car.
Remember the time, way back in 2016, when there seemed to be like 73 people running for president on the Republican ticket? History appears to be repeating itself as we roll into campaign season for 2024. Familiar faces Mike Pence and Chris Christie declared candidacies this week and so did the governor of North Dakota (is John Dutton next?) All of this confusion of course favors Donald Trump the loudest voice in any room he enters (although Friday’s indictment news adds a fresh coat of pepper into the GOP primary gumbo), “Incredibly, the same thing (as from 2016) seems poised to happen again, and even the Trump team can barely believe its luck,” writes this piece from Politico.
5. $100 Million Gone In 27 Minutes.
A $100 million heist, considered to be the highest value jewels theft in American history, occurred 11 months ago in San Mateo, California. No arrests have been made and no suspects have been named by the authorities. Wait, it gets worse: the jewelers who were wiped out by the theft are now deep in a courthouse brawl with Brink’s, arguing that the security company founded in 1859 has blocked them from receiving any insurance money. As the writer from The Intelligencer explains in this riveting piece, the jewelers “say they feel robbed twice: First by thieves, then by Brink’s refusal to pay them for what they believe is the company’s own negligence.”
6. What Is A Man?
Conservative opinionist Matt Walsh brought the national conversation over sex and gender to the cultural mainstream with his documentary “What is a Woman?” The doc didn’t quell the activist storm; if anything, it lit a flame. Leave it to The Babylon Bee to put their spin on the topic and to do so hilariously with much fewer words. All Hail The Bee!
Thanks for reading everybody and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.