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Bruce Dowbiggin

Can Rory and Tiger Save The PGA Tour From Greg Norman?

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The PGA Tour season wound up with a bang for Rory McIlroy, who won US$18 million for capturing the Fed Ex Cup— and maybe Player of the Year, too. Otherwise it was, as the British say, a damp squib for the preeminent golf body in the world.

Even as the final putt dropped on the 18th hole, word had dropped of  more frontline stars defecting to the upstart LIV Golf Tour. Open Championship/ Players Championship winner Cam Smith, Marc Leishman, Cameron Tringale, Anirban Lahiri, Joaquin Niemann, Harold Varner III and possibly Mito Pereira are headed to the lucrative rival circuit. And banishment from all things PGA Tour.

In one fell swoop that could rob the World Team for the upcoming Presidents Cup of at least four stars when they tee it up at Quail Hollow on Sept. 19. Added to the other international players (Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel) who’ve already jumped to the Saudi-backed LIV it turns the showpiece event into a walkover.

Worse for the PGA Tour, it was forced by its remaining major stars into making accommodations that sound suspiciously like those that were being demanded by LIV CEO Greg Norman as far back as  the 1980s. Namely, more emphasis on the Tour stars playing together more often, innovative formats, global outreach and tons of new money.

As we foresaw on Feb. 3, 2020, “It’s not a new idea in golf. Investors using former world number one Greg Norman as their front man tried the same tactic as far back as the 1980s. But the combination of Norman’s reputation with fellow pros and the lack of a digital media marketplace  stalled the idea. This time, with integrated media and innovation in travel, it could succeed.

Rory McIlroy confirmed that he’s talked to the people behind the idea to create a league of extraordinary golfing gentlemen.  “You know, it’s a hard one. … I love the PGA Tour, but these guys have exploited a couple of holes in the system, the way golf at the highest level is nowadays and how it’s sort of transitioned from a competition tour to entertainment. Right? It’s on TV, it’s people coming out to watch. It’s definitely a different time than what it was before.”

McIlroy resisted the LIV seduction and is now one of the hardliners left on the PGA Tour. He partnered with Tiger Woods and a handful of other elite players in pressuring the PGA Tour to make big changes if it wants to survive as the preeminent Tour. The plan— it goes into effect in January 2023— means bribing the superstars into playing more than just the four majors and a handful of other prestige events.

As Sports Illustrated explains, the new template will create “Two tiers of tournaments, one of “elevated events” featuring the best players in the world and larger purses, and one for everybody else on Tour. It’s not quite that simple, and of course players can move up and down based on how they play each year. But that is the gist of it. 

The Tour also doubled its Player Impact Program payout from $50 million to $100 million. This will all be better for the best players, and the Tour had to keep the best players. But whether it is better for the sport is to be determined.”

The PIP slush fund will be based on internet searches, general awareness, golf fan awareness, media mentions and broadcast exposure. And, ending a long meritocratic tradition of no guaranteed money on the Tour, fully exempt members — Korn Ferry Tour and above — will be guaranteed a league minimum of $500,000. There will also be $5,000 to players who miss the cut.

So, after the new 20 “prestige” events— not including the RBC Canadian Open— that will leave 15 openings for other tournaments on the schedule. If The Canadian Open wishes to make it up with the big boys their sponsor RBC will likely have to pony up US $20 M in prize money.  Even that won’t guarantee the Canadian Open a good midsummer date or a respectable field. (The Canadian government has indicated it will bump up its contribution to the Open and the LPGA CP Championship.)

Now squeezed between two “elite” events players will flock to, the Open will only dream of the quality field it had in 2022 with McIlroy winning the title as St. George’s in Toronto.

Anyone  counting on the Saudis getting bored with golf and dumping LIV is likely going to wait a while. To ratchet pressure on those who choose the Bobby Hull route of changing leagues, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan declared a permanent ban from all its events for defectors like Smith Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau. The Tour will also pressure the organizers of the four majors to honour those bans. For the foreseeable future— or unless a court allows for players to mix-and-match Tours— it’s cold war. Think NHL versus WHA.

As a footnote, it would be remiss to ignore the impact of Tiger Woods in all this. The aging, injured supernova was integral in getting the Tour to adapt. He knows he still moves the needle on TV, and thus will get PIP money even if he only plays a few tournaments a year.

He and McIlroy also got the Tour to accept their new prime-time venture that will feature 18-hole events played on a virtual course across a two-hour window. The 15 regular-season matches will be contested by six three-man teams of PGA Tour golfers. Woods and McIlroy are already on board with 16 more spots to fill before the inaugural season kicks off in January 2024.

The time for talk is over. The sides are dug in. What happens next is a coin flip. But if money wins the day, place your bests ion the Saudis getting some—or all— of what they and Greg Norman want.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft YearsIn NHL History, , his new book with his son Evan, was voted the eighth best professional hockey book of by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted seventh best, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

 

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Canada Day 2025: It’s Time For Boomers To Let The Kids Lead

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So how did you spend your first Canada Day under new PM Mark Carney? If you’re CBC, freed from the clutches of Pierre Poilievere, you do a fawning  interview with ex-pat comedian Mike Myers, whose Elbows Up appearance on Saturday Night Live and whose partisan hockey sweater appearance with Carney were pivotal moments in the recent election. (Saving CBC from drastic budget cuts— not that they mentioned it.)

After Donald Trump’s bellicose 51st state comments, Myers’ nostalgic harkening to the days of Gordie Howe and Mr. Dressup pivoted Boomers’ voter preferences in Canada. Soft Quebec sovereigntists petrified by Trump abandoned the Bloc for the Liberals. Progressives ditched the NDP for the Grits. And some wobbly Conservatives moved to Carney’s side, too, after the charm offensive by Myers, who hasn’t lived in Canada since the 1980s.

The result? Liberals vaulted 20 points in the polls and barely missed a majority in their fourth consecutive election win. Boomers were exultant. Their subsidized media was joyous. And the rest of the world asked if Canada was a serious country after the Libs naked substitution of Carney for the loathed Justin Trudeau. After all, hadn’t the U.S. Democrats tried the same thing and been summarily spanked by voters?

More to the point, had Canadian voters missed a great opportunity by sticking their heads in the ground on Chinese gangs using Canada as a drug launch pad, Canadian banks being fined billons for money laundering, immigration flooding social services, cratering GDP and Palestinian protests clogging the streets?

This at a time when the under-50 generation has lost faith in its destiny within Canada. As we wrote in March why are 43 percent of 18-36 male CDNs telling pollsters they would accept U.S. citizenship if they were guaranteed full rights and financial protections? Where upper-class products of liberal education— the future professional class— have taken to wearing keffiyehs to the convocations and demonstrations. Where housing is an unattainable goal in most major Canadian urban centres.

It’s not hard to see them looking at the Mike Myers obsession with a long-gone Canada and saying let’s get out of here. The signs are there. Recently former TVOntario host Steve Pakin attended two convocations. The first at the former Ryerson University, which switched its name to Toronto Metropolitan University in a fit of settler colonizer guilt. The second at Queens University, traditionally one of the elite schools in the nation. Here’s what he saw.

“At the end of the (TMU) convocation, when Charles Falzon, on his final day as dean of TMU’s Creative School, asked students to stand and sing the national anthem, many refused. They remained seated. Then, when the singing began, it was abundantly noticeable that almost none of the students sang along. And it wasn’t because they didn’t know the words, which were projected on a big screen. The unhappy looks on their faces clearly indicated a different, more political, explanation.

I asked some of the TMU staff about it after the ceremony was over, and they confirmed what I saw happens all the time at convocations. Then I texted the president of another Ontario university who agreed: this is a common phenomenon among this generation at post-secondary institutions.”

At Queens, where Canadian flags were almost non-existent, O Canada was sung, but the message of unrest was clear: “Convocation sends a message of social stability,” Queen’s principal Patrick Deane  began in his speech.  “It is a ceremony shaped in history. You should value your connection to the past, but question that inheritance. Focus on the kind of society you’d like to inhabit.”

You can bet Deane is not telling them to question climate change and trans rights. As Paikin observes, “if we fail to create a more perfect union, we shouldn’t be surprised when a vast swath of young people don’t sing our anthem the way so many of the rest of us do.” So why are the best and brightest so reluctant to see as future in becoming the new professional class that runs society?

In the Free Press River Page searched the source of their discontent. “If the Great Recession, Covid-19, and the spectre of an artificial intelligence-assisted ‘white collar bloodbath’ has taught the professional class anything, it is that their credentials cannot save them. This insecurity, compounded by the outrageous cost of living in many large cities, has pushed the PMC’s anxieties to the breaking point. 

“Add that to the triumph of identity politics in professional class institutions like universities, corporate C-suites, non-governmental organizations, and media—itself a byproduct of inter-elite competition as many have observed—and what you have is the modern left.

“… they’ve already come to the baffling conclusion that there’s no difference between class struggle and child sex changes. More to the point, the socialist mantra “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” has only ever stood the test of time in Anabaptist sects. It requires a religious devotion to self-sacrifice that is not characteristic of this anxious and hyper-competitive class—as many actual socialists have spent the last decade warning.”

As we wrote in March Boomer nostalgia is a dead end. “It’s time that Canada’s aging elite ceded a greater voice in the national debate to younger voices. They need an intervention of the type Trump is now performing on Canadians addicted to sitting in first class but paying economy. He brought them into a room with the chairs and levelled with them about getting the free stuff they assumed was their right. Defence, security, trade, medical access. He’s the first president to do this in half a century.

And like all people addicted, CDN Boomers don’t want the truth. They want performance theatre, T-shirts and hockey games. They blame Trump for their predicament, caught between grim realities. Will they take the 12 steps? Or will their kids have to tell them the facts as they escort them to the home?” Because we’re now seeing the likely answer to that question everywhere in Canadian society.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

The Game That Let Canadians Forgive The Liberals — Again

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With the Americans winning the first game 3-1, a sense of panic crept over Canada as it headed to Game 2 in Boston. Losing a political battle with Trump was bad enough, but losing hockey bragging rights heading into a federal election was catastrophic for the Family Compact.

“It’s also more political than the (1972) Summit Series was, because Canada’s existence wasn’t on the line then, and it may be now. You’re damn right Canadians should boo the (U.S.) anthem.” Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur before Gm. 1 of USA/ Canada in The 4 Nations Cup.

The year 2025 is barely half over on Canada Day. There is much to go before we start assembling Best Of Lists for the year. But as Palestinian flags duel with the Maple Leaf for prominence on the 158th anniversary of Canada’s becoming a sovereign country it’s a fair guess that we will settle on Febuary 21 as the pivotal date of the year— and Canada’s destiny as well.

That was the date of Game 2 in the U.S./Canada rivalry at the Four Nations Tournament. Ostensibly created by the NHL to replace the moribund All Star format, the showdown of hockey nations in Boston became much more. Jolted by non-sports factors it became a pivotal moment in modern Canadian history.

Set against U.S. president Donald Trump’s bellicose talk of Canada as a U.S. state and the Mike Myers/ Mark Carney Elbows Up ad campaign, the gold-medal game evoked, for those of a certain age, memories of the famous 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the USSR. And somehow produced an unprecedented political reversal in Canadian elections.

As we wrote on Feb. 16 after Gm. 1 in Montreal, the Four Nations had been meant to be something far less incendiary.  “Expecting a guys’ weekend like the concurrent NBA All Star game, the fraternal folks instead got a Pier Six brawl. It was the most stunning beginning to a game most could remember in 50 years. (Not least of all the rabid Canadian fanbase urging patriotism in the home of Quebec separation) Considering this Four Nations event was the NHL’s idea to replace the tame midseason All Star Game where players apologize for bumping into each other during a casual skate, the tumult as referees tried to start the game was shocking.

“Despite public calls for mutual respect, the sustained booing of the American national anthem and the Team Canada invocation by MMA legend Georges St. Pierre was answered by the Tkachuck brothers, Matthew and Brady, with a series of fights in the first nine seconds of the game. Three fights to be exact ,when former Canuck J.T. Miller squared up with Brandon Hagel. (All three U.S. players have either played on or now play for Canadian NHL teams.)  

“Premeditated and nasty. To say nothing of the vicious mugging of Canada’s legend Sidney Crosby behind the U.S. net moments later by Charlie McEvoy.”

With the Americans winning the game 3-1 on Feb. 15, a sense of panic crept over Canada as it headed to Game 2 in Boston. Losing a political battle with Trump was bad enough, but losing hockey bragging rights heading into a federal election was catastrophic for the Family Compact. As we wrote in the aftermath, a slaughter was avoided.

“In the rematch for a title created just weeks before by the NHL the boys stuck to hockey. Anthem booing was restrained. Outside of an ill-advised appearance by Wayne Gretzky— now loathed for his Trump support— the emphasis was on skill. Playing largely without injured Matthew and Brady Tkachuk and McAvoy, the U.S. forced the game to OT where beleaguered goalie Craig Binnington held Canada in the game until Connor McDavid scored the game winner. “

The stunning turnaround in the series produced a similar turnaround in the Canadian federal election. Galvanized by Trump’s 51st State disrespect and exhilarated by the hockey team’s comeback, voters switched their votes in huge numbers to Carney, ignoring the abysmal record of the Liberals and their pathetic polling. From Pierre Poilievre having a 20-point lead in polls, hockey-besotted Canada flipped to award Carney a near-majority in the April 28 election.

The result stunned the Canadian political class and international critics who questioned how a single sporting event could have miraculously rescued the Liberals from themselves in such a short time.

While Canada soared because of the four Nations, a Canadian icon crashed to earth. “Perhaps the most public outcome was the now-demonization of Gretzky in Canada. Just as they had with Bobby Orr, another Canadian superstar living in America, Canadians wiped their hands of No. 99 over politics. Despite appeals from Orr, Don Cherry and others, the chance to make Gretzky a Trump proxy was too tempting.

We have been in several arguments on the subject among friends: Does Gretzky owe Canada something after carrying its hockey burden for so long? Could he have worn a Team Canada jersey? Shouldn’t he have made a statement that he backs Canada in its showdown with Trump? For now 99 is 0 in his homeland.”

Even now, months later, the events of late February have an air of disbelief around them, a shift so dramatic and so impactful on the nation that many still shake their heads. Sure, hockey wasn’t the device that blew up Canada’s politics. But it was the fuse that created a crater in the country.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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