Monthly Archives: June 2023

Los Angeles Country Club’s Rules

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As I’m sure you know, the year’s third professional golf major championship, the (dis)United States Open, is underway at Los Angeles Country Club.

What a great course. Bonus points for being a stones throw from the world’s greatest university.

I was about to submit my application when I learned no shorts are allowed. Some of the other rules are a bit onerous too. Guess I’ll stick with Tumwater Valley GC.

Some of LACC’s rules.

  • No shorts while playing golf (tailored pants only).
  • Men must wear a sport coat in the clubhouse after 6 pm.
  • No changing shoes in the parking lot.
  • No clogs or flip-flops.
  • No headphones or earbuds.
  • No athletic clothes or apparel with slogans.
  • No photos or videos of the club on social media.
  • Members are responsible for all charges their guests incur.
  • No using cash on the property outside of paying the caddies (no tipping).
  • Phone calls can only be made from parked cars or the enclosed phone booth in the locker room.

Human Decency Not a Prerequisite

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Thought I’d highlight this New York Times update from Instagram just in case you aren’t following the Republican’s presumptive favorite Presidential candidate.

“On Instagram on Saturday morning, Mr. Trump posted a mash-up video of himself swinging a golf club on the course and an animation of a golf ball hitting President Biden in the head, superimposed with footage of Mr. Biden falling at a public event in recent days after he tripped over something onstage.”

Robertson’s Legacy continued

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Spent hours in the car listening to podcasts yesterday. In this one, I learned the following about Pat Robertson.

  • He said a man whose wife has Alzheimers and doesn’t recognize him should divorce her and find somebody else.
  • He said adopted children might bring demons into the homes where they lived.
  • He said people with Aids in San Fransisco were wearing rings that had little knife edges on them so they could infect other people.

Imagine a Legacy Like This

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The New York Times on the life of Pat Robertson.

“He suggested. . . that Americans’ sinfulness had brought on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, and that the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010 was divine retribution for a promise that Haitians had made to serve the Devil in return for his help in securing the country’s independence from France in 1804.

He said that liberal Protestants embodied “the spirit of the Antichrist” and that feminism drove women to witchcraft. He called for the assassination of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. He maintained that his prayers had averted hurricanes. And he condemned homosexuality as “an abomination,” linking it at one point it to the rise of Hitler and declaring that it provokes God’s wrath, as manifested in natural disasters and even the death and destruction of 9/11.”

Golf Armageddon

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It’s common knowledge that Pressing Pause is the place to go to make sense of all things professional golf. Apologies to RZ, DDTM, and the legion of other regulars who have just about lost all their patience with me.

First, James Colgan and Sean Zak did a nice job detailing Rose Zhang’s arrival on their most recent Drop Zone podcast. If you don’t know this RZ (what are the odds of two famous golf RZ’s?), you will soon enough.

Zhang, in two years at Stanford, played in 20 tournaments and won 12 of them. That’s absurd. Then, last week she won her first professional tournament becoming the first pro to do that since 1951. Smart, personable, seemingly immune to pressure. The “future of women’s golf”.

For as thoughtful as they are, Colgan and Zak dropped the ball (Drop Zone pun intended) by not pointing out that Zhang won $412,500 versus Viktor Hovland’s $3.6m check he earned an hour earlier at Nicklaus’s Memorial tournament. For those keeping score at home, Zhang’s victory earned her 11.5% of Hovland’s.

That’s a woefully underreported scandal in professional golf. Critics of this discrepancy always say that’s because of the vast differences in commercial sponsorships, meaning eyeballs, but that begs the question of how/when is that calculus ever going to change. Maybe I should be the LPGA commish.

Tangent. Hovland deserves major props for cashing his check on Sunday and then caddying for his college teammate at a US Open qualifier on Monday. The young Norwegian carried his boy’s bag. That’s class personified.

Alright, are we warmed up now? When one of my golf besties texted me about the LIV/PGA merger, I texted back, “Is this for real?” I thought someone might have been punking us.

All I’ll say is some decisions are so bad—Chris Licht amplifying Donald Trump’s bullshit, everything Elon Musk has done at Twitter since buying it, dismembering a dissenting journalist—that there’s no coming back from them. Licht is out at CNN. Twitter’s ad revenue has cratered and the value of the company has fallen by two-thirds. And yet, Musk and MBS are so wealthy it looks like they can survive anything, thanks to the likes of PGA commissioner Jay Monahan.

Jay Monahan won’t survive though. “Hypocrisy” isn’t a strong enough word for his double dealing with LIV’s Saudi’s funders, we need another. One Pressing Pauser asked me “If the PGA supports dismemberment now?”

It appears so, at least a few of the most influential suits. I went cold turkey on CNN post Trump “town hall” vowing to never watch it again. Professional golf’s future is still as murky as the New York City skyline. Sadly though, my golf sickness is far too advanced for me to go full CNN on the PGA.

Go ahead, call me a sad (sick) sellout. Probably fits.

Humanity’s Great Triumph

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According to Nicholas Kristof.

“One of the misimpressions people have about the world is that it’s going to hell.

Perhaps that’s because humanity’s great triumph over the last half-century — huge reductions in poverty, disease and early death — goes largely unacknowledged. Just about the worst thing that can happen to anyone is to lose a child, and historically, almost half of children died before reaching adulthood. We happen to live in a transformational era in which 96 percent of the world’s children now survive until adulthood.”

I concur.