Welcome! Where are you, you ask. I’m calling this the Weekend 9. Think of it as a spot to warm you up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We’ll have thoughts. We’ll have tips. We’ll have tweets. But just nine in all, though sometimes maybe more and sometimes maybe less. As for who I am? The paragraphs below tell some of the story. I can be reached at nick.piastowski@golf.com.
Friday morning, Vijay Singh’s Instagram account posted a hype video.
It had all the trimmings, too. A song (Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.”). Some action. (Singh was shown ‘swinging’ a medicine ball.) A couple of inspirational messages. (Splashed over the video, one read: “Just a reminder for the new year … Choose process over outcome.” And in the post description, there was this: “Your habits will outweigh your resolutions.”)
He looked ready. Shoot, I felt ready after watching it.
You’d expect Singh to be. As first reported by the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson here (and further examined by GOLF’s Alan Bastable here), Singh is using a PGA Tour career-money exemption this year, meaning he could play events, plural — in his early 60s. (He’s 62 now and turns 63 next month.) Why’s he doing it? Maybe we’ll learn that, perhaps we won’t; Singh’s yet to comment on the move. But you figure he believes he’ll be competitive. While there are countless examples of athletes pushing themselves well past their primes and dimming their past heroics in the process, Singh, by most accounts, is a proud man. In short, he probably wouldn’t be doing this on a whim.
Should he be doing it? There are sides, of course. Regardless of where you can stand on the merits of the exemption, Singh is simply taking advantage of what’s given to him, and rules are rules. But that doesn’t mean you should follow them, and back and forth we go. For this space, though, I’ll leave that conversation there and note that others have opined on the matter. Just type in ‘Vijay Singh’ in X and have a look.
There are some niceties. But clearly more angst (which, yes, also says something both about the forum and the desire to complain rather than celebrate).
But what if, say, Fred Couples did this?
That question was posted in our GOLF Slack channel this week, and the reasoning behind the question is a thought in which I’ve long been fascinated — and that’s the creation of likability in athletes through how they come across to some. Couples? He appears approachable — and is almost universally adored. And Singh? For that, here’s a paragraph from a few years back that was written by well-known journalist Alan Shipnuck and published on this website:
Vijay is actually a sneaky-good interview, on the rare occasions when you can catch him in the right mood. His high-pitched giggle is one of the low-key pleasures of the golf beat. Alas, his entire career has been marked by a complicated/confrontational relationship with the press, stemming from the murky cheating incident that preceded him to the PGA Tour. (The final word on this subject will always be the John Garrity classic for which he traveled to Fiji.) Let’s face it, Vijay never exuded any warmth or charisma between the ropes. Since he wouldn’t let reporters get to know him and tell his story, it was hard for fans to have a stake in his success, or for companies to want to invest in him the kind of ad campaigns that can shift public opinion. Vijay is one of the biggest badasses to play golf. His run in the early aughts was epic. He may have earned our respect, but it’s largely his fault he has never gotten the love.
This 62-year-old is rejoining PGA Tour. Here’s the rule that enabled it
So is something else maybe playing out with the news of the exemption use? Possibly. Am I digging into this too deep? Potentially. I’ll settle on the idea being interesting then. Fan favorites occasionally get a pass. The others are a bit more scrutinized. Nothing new.
Still kinda fascinating.
Besides, the more time spent thinking about it takes away from CCR and the gym.
Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the Weekend 9.
2. Let’s go back to the court of public opinion.
This weekend, we were supposed to get the opening rounds of PGA Tour play until the Tour announced in September that it was canceling the Sentry event in Hawaii due to drought conditions — and now there are loud whispers that the Tour might not return to the island at all starting next year. While this space won’t go further into the particulars — this story here, by GOLF’s Dylan Dethier, is good for that — what I’ve found is mostly love for the tournament. Put another way, I haven’t seen or heard much celebrating that it could be erased.
Me? I’ve long liked the idea that trimming back the pro golf schedule creates anticipation, and thus added interest. Hawaii screams special, though.
And it’s in prime time.
3. A thought on the LPGA signing up for its own TGL and the Chevron Championship moving the first women’s major to Memorial Park in Houston?
I’m sorry I’m saying this.
I hate myself for typing it.
But hey, that’s Growing the Game!
Seriously, though, getting the product on TV screens is good. Playing at a muni is good. New commissioner Craig Kessler said he’d work to establish connections between the tour’s players and fans, and here’s that happening.
4. I thought the video below was good. The PGA Tour had a few pros analyze LeBron James’ swing.
