LIV Golf (Saudi PIF), "Mergers," and More

[Flipped]

Brooks Koepka: ‘F–k those country club kids’ who judged $130 million LIV Golf move

[ChetlovesMer]

On 7/7/2023 at 9:40 PM, Vinsk said:

I’m sure Brooks thinks this is just waaaay cool! FFS. Just embarrassing.

WTF!!!!!

Who's idea was this? Are we supposed to believe this is a spontaneous thing that "just happened"? ... WTF?????
I am truly embarrassed for these people. So much so that I'm tempted to stop making fun of people who wear white belts and start making fun of anyone who thinks this is a good idea. 

In all seriousness.... WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!

[boogielicious]

9 hours ago, ChetlovesMer said:

WTF!!!!!

Who's idea was this? Are we supposed to believe this is a spontaneous thing that "just happened"? ... WTF?????
I am truly embarrassed for these people. So much so that I'm tempted to stop making fun of people who wear white belts and start making fun of anyone who thinks this is a good idea. 

In all seriousness.... WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!

How about a flash mob all wearing white belts?

[ChetlovesMer]

9 hours ago, boogielicious said:

How about a flash mob all wearing white belts?

Last night I woke up screaming in the middle of night. 
This was my nightmare. 

[Zeph]

On 10/5/2023 at 3:07 AM, ChetlovesMer said:

WTF!!!!!

Who's idea was this? Are we supposed to believe this is a spontaneous thing that "just happened"? ... WTF?????
I am truly embarrassed for these people. So much so that I'm tempted to stop making fun of people who wear white belts and start making fun of anyone who thinks this is a good idea. 

In all seriousness.... WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!

No. Flash mobs has never spontaneously just happened. They have obviously planned and rehearsed this. 

[snapfade]

I remember when flashing was when your wore a trench coat and was butt naked underneath. 

[boogielicious]

11 hours ago, snapfade said:

I remember when flashing was when your wore a trench coat and was butt naked underneath. 

Brings back fond memories does it?😜

[dennyjones]

11 hours ago, snapfade said:

I remember when flashing was when your wore a trench coat and was butt naked underneath.   

That's dating yourself!

Edited October 7, 2023 by dennyjones

[turtleback]

On 10/4/2023 at 3:06 PM, Flipped said:

Brooks Koepka: ‘F–k those country club kids’ who judged $130 million LIV Golf move

Gee, maybe this tool's attitude was the reason for the problem in the team room, not Cantlay's hat.

[iacas]

LIV Golf denied World Ranking points | Golf News and Tour Information | GolfDigest.com

LIV Golf’s application to receive Official World Golf Ranking points has been denied, according to reports from the Associated Press and Global Golf Post.

The OWGR board sent LIV Golf officials, including LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman, the notice Tuesday morning. Sources had originally told Golf Digest that the Saudi-backed league had faced questions over its “competitive integrity,” and it appears those questions remain. According to GGP, the OWGR cited two broad areas for its decision: The 54-hole, no-cut format of 48-player fields, and both the limited access for players to join LIV and limited relegation for players who underperform.

It's worth reading the whole article, though.

[StuM]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

LIV Golf denied World Ranking points | Golf News and Tour Information | GolfDigest.com

LIV Golf’s application to receive Official World Golf Ranking points has been denied, according to reports from the Associated Press and Global Golf Post.

The OWGR board sent LIV Golf officials, including LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman, the notice Tuesday morning. Sources had originally told Golf Digest that the Saudi-backed league had faced questions over its “competitive integrity,” and it appears those questions remain. According to GGP, the OWGR cited two broad areas for its decision: The 54-hole, no-cut format of 48-player fields, and both the limited access for players to join LIV and limited relegation for players who underperform.

It's worth reading the whole article, though.

I like the way they worded it "can they be ranked equitably with other tours" given the limited field, no cut line & only 54 holes.  To me the main issue is the limited field, only LIV Players, means that a whole lot of very good golfers are not in any of the events.  Basically, you can be the big fish in a small pond but that does not make you a true big fish.  "Strength of Field" is relevant for OWGR points which is why the majors get more points that other tournaments and LIV simply cannot offer the strength of field.

 

 

[iacas]

35 minutes ago, StuM said:

I like the way they worded it "can they be ranked equitably with other tours" given the limited field, no cut line & only 54 holes.  To me the main issue is the limited field, only LIV Players, means that a whole lot of very good golfers are not in any of the events.  Basically, you can be the big fish in a small pond but that does not make you a true big fish.  "Strength of Field" is relevant for OWGR points which is why the majors get more points that other tournaments and LIV simply cannot offer the strength of field.

The fields are stale and there’s no real clear established way to get into them or fall out of them.

[StuM]

17 minutes ago, iacas said:

The fields are stale and there’s no real clear established way to get into them or fall out of them.

"Stale" is a good way to put it.  

[mdl]

I am 100% in favor of refusing to do a favor to the Saudis. But they should just say that. This reads like bullshit rationalization on top of a political decision. It wouldn't be that hard to hire someone like Broadie to leverage majors – where players from PGA, Euro, and LIV all compete – to estimate a strength and depth of field and the effects of tour and tournament structure to weight and structure WGR points per finishing position per tournament on each tour accordingly in a fair way.

Honestly that would even be better! We all know that LIV competition is a joke with a tiny number of real talents at the top and then a bunch of has beens and AAAA players. From a statistical model we'd have specific numbers to show it. You'd get a small fraction of WGR points for a LIV win versus a PGA win, and effectively zero points for finishing outside the top 3 or 7 or something like that at a LIV event. So then all LIV players who don't finish top 5-10 at every major would fall out of the top 75 or top 100 in the world and LIV would officially be a joke unless they can lure more PGA players.

[iacas]

41 minutes ago, mdl said:

This reads like bullshit rationalization on top of a political decision.

I disagree.

It’s tough to properly rank an effectively almost closed system.

[DaveP043]

49 minutes ago, mdl said:

I am 100% in favor of refusing to do a favor to the Saudis. But they should just say that. This reads like bullshit rationalization on top of a political decision.

I disagree on two points.  First, if the OWGR wants to be seen as valid, they can't pick and choose which tours to accept based on the financing of each tour, or the politics of the sources of the money.  And second, this doesn't sound political, it sounds like the OWGR organization evaluated the LIV application based on the criteria that they've had in place for at least a little while.  LIV golf chose a format and a method of selecting the players that was inconsistent with the OWGR criteria, and now complains.  The big brains behind the LIV Tour should really have known better.

[mdl]

@iacas and @DaveP043 both fair points.

To Erik's point, for sure the overlapping data – majors with only a few LIV players in each and only since LIV players started competing in majors – is not extensive. That makes estimation of relative difficulty of placing in a LIV event versus other tours more variable. But IMO it wouldn't be that hard to overcome those issues and estimate a fair set of relative points. Off the top of my head you could anchor on the world rankings distribution of LIV players when they joined versus that on other tours. Allow the estimates to drift from those implied by that relatively slowly over time as more majors data comes in. Do a separate analysis on depth of field and the effects of the different format to construct the distribution of points across the rank where a player finished a tournament. As in, a PGA tour event might give out 15, 12, 10, 8, 8, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6 points for places 1 through 10. You might estimate the total strength of field on LIV is 1/10 that of the PGA. But instead of giving the above points * 0.1, because of the week depth of field and tournament format, you give 2.5, 1.7, 1.4, 0.8, 0.7, 0.4, 0.4, 0.3, 0.2, 0.2. IOW, almost all the points go to the top finishers.

To Dave's point, I guess what I'm saying is that feels political. Like, those specs from the WGR were basically written to accommodate the various versions of format across what were recognized as legit tours at the time WGR was imagined. It feels like a technical cop out to say that a new tour with some truly top tier players doesn't fit the specs designed to fit existing tours from the time of conception. I'm advocating just doing the statistics to give them the WGR points they deserve, which would be a satisfyingly tiny number

[DaveP043]

6 minutes ago, mdl said:

I'm advocating just doing the statistics to give them the WGR points they deserve, which would be a satisfyingly tiny number

But this goes back to the first point, without some level of intermingling of players, it must be nearly impossible to develop meaningful statistical models.  LIV isn't planning to open up to players beyond the 48 they've chosen, and LIV players aren't planning to commit to the number of tournaments required to be members of other tours.  I'm not saying you can't develop some type of model, just that by developing a model without data to test it against, the model isn't very likely to be meaningful or appropriate.  Its just guesswork.  And of course, LIV will complain that their tournaments get WAY too few points, just because.