Bruce Dowbiggin
Rahm Gone: We Should LIV So Long

Rahm, Rahm, Rahm, you’ve been gone so long, you’ve been gone, gone, gone so long. — Chilliwack (sorta’)
Anyone who says they understand what’s happening in golf world doesn’t understand the golf world. To understate the case, these are not the best of times for the Tiger Woods-dominated PGA Tour. First, Tiger is hardly playing, and he’s still the biggest asset they’ve got. Second, Greg Norman’s LIV Tour is hemorrhaging money but still has a fortune to lure Jon Rahm. Third, NBC punted announcer Paul Azinger for not putting talcum on the backsides of players before he criticized them.
Fourth? Well, consider the past nine months:
After swearing a blood oath to players that he would never make any deals with the renegade LIV golf operation, commissioner Jay Monahan then cut his biggest loyalist, Rory McIlroy, off at the knees in June by announcing he’d secretly concluded a merger deal with the Saudi Arabian Investment Fund that underwrites LIV. (A deal that’s yet to be finally consummated.)
The pampered U.S. darlings of Tiger’s Tour were then eviscerated in September’s Ryder Cup in Italy, an event defined by Patrick Cantlay refusing to wear a team hat. Depending on whom you consult it either tore apart the U.S. dressing room or was no big whoop. (Cantlay lost his Goldman Sachs sponsorship soon after)
McIlroy— who almost came to blows with caddie Joe LaCava during the Ryder Cup— later announced that he was removing himself from his role as a dominant voice on the Tour Players Council. He claimed fatigue and frustration over dividing his concentration from golf itself. Jordan Spieth was announced as a short-term, very reluctant replacement.
That was followed by news that Monahan was out as commissioner just as soon as he completes the negotiations with LIV for the anticipated merger. A likely replacement will need the approval of the oft-injured Woods whose TV star power still dominates the Tour’s television ratings.
However Tiger’s game-but-lame performance last week on one good leg at his own event The Hero Challenge meant that his long domination of the Tour is probably dead and buried. As much as GolfChannel tries to put a smiley face on Woods playing once a month, there is no one to fill the celebrity gap that he leaves.
Which brings us to the worst news for the Tiger Tour: Spaniard Jon Rahm, arguably the No.1 player of the Tour, is taking his act to the dreaded LIV Tour— perhaps as soon as this week. After fervently committing to the Tour earlier this year, Rahm has apparently tired of the Woods/ McIroy cabal that dominates the Tour. Stories have circulated how he’s been frozen out of the south Florida cliques that dominate the Tour.
If he can get some adjustments made to LIV’s format he’ll be paid a reported a staggering $600 M to join his countryman Sergio Garcia’s team at LIV. Remember that Rahm doesn’t need money. He’s got tons. So this move would solely be about pride and reputation.
Perennial grouchy Golfchannel analyst Brandel Chamblee finds it distasteful to do business with the sheiks. “If it were offered to me by the mafia, or in this case at the behest of MBS/Saudis, knowing the money was derived from corruption and used for the benefit of some very bad people, the decision would be very simple. There is a difference between value and values.”
Not that he will disappear into the discotheque world of Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman. Rahm could still qualify for all the Tour majors next year while wearing short pants the rest of the time. The absence of the mercurial Spaniard at the rest of the Tour’s top-level events will leave a huge gap on a charisma-challenged tour. Current No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is about as exciting as The Weather Channel.
While LIV is still an unwatched work in progress, powered by the vast wealth of SA, a Rahm signing shows that the sheiks have no signs of backing off their challenge to the comfy traditionalists of the Tour. As we see in Gaza, memories go back a long way in the Middle East, and slights aren’t forgotten easily.
Then came the news that the PGA and the R&A in Britain have finally announced that the juicing of golf balls will be stopped. Going forward balls used in competition will have five percent less distance, reducing the threat the supersonic balls pose to the traditional golf courses on Tour, which bombers have brought to their knees with driver/ wedge strategies.
This satisfies Woods, the Tour’s upper echelon and some golf-course architects. For the rest of humanity the decision to remove the most visceral thrill in the sport— knocking the daylights out of your driver—is less positive. Once again, Chamblee is leading the snark (although we agree with him this time). “I appreciate the governing bodies and what they mean to the game, but on the roll back issue they are not only out of touch with the game they govern, but the people that play it. It is a very small number of people that are in favour of a roll back…
“But take the fun out of the game ( FYI, long drives are fun), and demand falls. And, there is absolutely no reason to lengthen golf courses to challenge the best players. Lengthening golf courses is a knee jerk reaction that only makes the “problem” of distance gains worse.”
One small ray of sunshine for Canadians. The Tour has finally gotten the Canadian Open away from its slot the week before the U.S. Open. This year’s week-long celebration ion Nick Taylor’s 72-foot putt will go in the last week of May. Hopefully this will bring a better field. So we got that going for us.
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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, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new 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 http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Bruce Dowbiggin
Canadians Thinks America Owes Them. Trump Has Other Ideas

Breaking: It’s now being reported that in the 2024 U.S. election, zero Canadians voted for Donald Trump. In fact, zero Canadians voted for anyone on the ballot. They’re not allowed to. And yet rage monkeys in the Canadian media seem to have the idea that Canada is— and should be— an immediate priority of POTUS 47.
Here’s Globe & Mail/ CBC wind therapist Andrew Coyne about ten exits past normal on the idea of Donald Trump on Canadian soil. Okay, on Alberta soil. “We’re going to roll out the red carpet for the wannabe dictator of America at the very moment he is moving to suppress dissent with armed force?” (You mean like the Truckers Convoy?)
Cartoonist Michael DeAdder, who likely cries if you use improper pronouns, says “Hold my kombucha”. His latest etching has Trump asking a veteran what he did in the war. The witty retort is “Fought against people like you”. Get it? Trump murders six millions Jews. But The Hill keeps this guy working, and the laughs just keep on coming. Free speech!

The presumption is jaw-dropping. Even as Trump’s approval rating hits 53 percent, Canadians online were echoing Democrats’ fever dreams of forming a shadow government to take over from Trump via coup. This sense of impunity at a distance is why the Canadian government— along with other drive-by virtue signallers UK, Norway, New Zealand, and Australia— have imposed sanctions on two sitting members of the Israeli cabinet. They know it will rile Trump’s America.
For ordinary Canadians, Trump became a post-it note to justify giving Team Liberal another swing at ruining the nation. “We used to be such friends! He’s a tyrant.!” This just in: Love him or hate him Trump is employed by Americans to do their bidding. He’s not a sentimental buddy of Canada who’ll cut us some slack for old time’s sake. He has no remittance from Canada to please the Laurentian elites. If your defence is non-existent and your military gender-obsessed: you had it coming.
Are his policies jostling Canada? Absolutely. Read Art of the Deal. The 51st state jibe when Justin soiled himself was rude. But it worked on pliant Canadian liberals. Now the The Little Banker is disavowing the dissolute decade of Trudeau while employing Conservatives’ policies on defence spending, inter-provincial trade and border security. Hell, he’s naming longtime Tories to his personal staff.

In the end Carney knows this ain’t mock Parliament. That his dossier begins and ends with satisfying the beast to the south. None of this should be a surprise. Yet Canadians dozed when Trump made clear in his election campaign that the American economy is the greatest in the world. If you want to fish in that pond it’s not going to be for free. That means tariffs for a range of U.S. industries that couldn’t compete in a Biden world.
We can argue how well tariffs work, but Trump wants them to reduce taxes on the people who elected him. Not the Canadians who fly first class but pay economy. And who have pushed his approval ratings into the 50s, higher than ever before. (Likely to spike higher after the No Kings Riot season peters out.)
No wonder Canadians preferred the guy before Trump, the senile sock puppet whose government was run by anonymous figures using the auto-pen. Sleepy Joe let Canada slide into mediocrity and financial peril without any judgement. It was comfortable. Then The Donald had the nerve to expose the ditch Canada was in.
Canada, Trump pointed out, was delinquent on its defence, harbouring Chinese drug lords, printing money like Canadian Tire and its banks were involved in money laundering. That was the nice stuff. Try Organized fentanyl networks operating with impunity in the largest cities of the nation So dumping on Trump in salty cartoons allows Canada’s Mod Squad to ignore the real issues that should have been litigated in the April election.
We have written extensively about the ruse that was played on gormless Canadians in “U.S. Voters Smelled A Rat But Canadian Voters Bought The Cheese” We have catalogued Canada’s drug and money laundering disgrace in “Chinese Gangs Dominate Canada: Why Will Voters Give Liberals Another Term?” We’ve described the real-estate bubble economy created by Trudeau and sidekick Carney that threatens to crash the economy and ruin seniors’ pensions in
In the end, it is still la-la-la-la We Can’t Hear You. Trump-obsessed Boomers more concerned with the equity in their jumped-up bungalows gave the finger to the next generations and blamed it all on Orange Man Bad. In the monotone of Canadian political comment it all seemed so easy. Turn against Trump. Cash another dividend. Cheer on MSNBC and CNN bitch sessions.
The Family Compact don’t get it. Their Antifa heroes down south plan demos and “nonviolent” activity to crater the public resolve. In Canada that still works. But in the U.S. the Covid reverb is hitting the natural governing class of the nation. While they craft fine phrases about democracy the consumers remember them using a virus to stop society.
The appetite for Gavin Newsom blovaitors and Jen Psaki fart catchers is crashing in America. Riots may be coming in the U.S., but it won’t be like George Floyd and Covid and the pussy hats. At some point Canada’s docile classes better wake up, too. America owes them nothing. They need to earn the respect.
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.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Simone Biles Fails To Stick The Landing Going After Riley Gaines

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them. George Orwell
Or, in the case of Olympic legend Simone Biles, only gymnasts believe in the incendiary issue of trans men competing in women’s sports. Biles, who has made a secondary career as an object of pity, took exception when former swimmer Riley Gaines, an opponent of trans men competing against women, sent a picture of Minnesota softball team that recently won a state title with a pitcher who is reported to be transgender.
“Comments off lol,’ Gaines wrote in response to the post which wasn’t permitting any comments from the public. “To be expected when your star player is a boy.”
That brought Biles into the fray. ‘You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. ‘You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! ‘But instead… You bully them… One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!’
She then poked Gaines again, saying: ‘Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.” (Gaines husband is 6-foot-4)

The loser reference was to Gaines having lost to a trans swimmer in an NCAA race. Since then Gaines has launched a campaign to outlaw biological males from competing with cisgendered girls and women. She has testified in the U.S. Congress and has appeared in numerous interviews espousing a position supported by the vast majority of Americans.

One might think the proof of this position— unquestioned as recently as a decade ago— would be obvious. But Biles and gender radicals who’ve tried to make trans into the Emancipation Proclamation of the 21st century are not giving up the fight.
Here’s someone named Nancy Armour in USA Today. “There is no scientific evidence that transgender women athletes have a physical advantage over cisgender women athletes, but that hasn’t stopped Gaines from claiming they do..” When legislation banning trans men in girls/ women sports was presented in the U.S. Congress 106 Democrats voted against the motion. The chattering class on CBC, MSNBC and CNN likewise have a cohort of those opposing the ban.
But it was the outburst from Biles that most appalled fans who’d worshipped her as the GOAT of Olympic gymnastics and then sympathized with her victimization by Dr. Larry Nasser. Even when she bailed on her teammates at the 2024 Games they cut her slack. But suddenly a woman who’s preached against body shaming and intolerance was deriding a fellow athlete’s body and mocking her complaints.
Critics were quick to post Biles’ hypocrisy about compassion, citing her own tear-stained testimony about how she was taken advantage by a doctor. Here’s how we described her psychological distress last August during the Olympics. “Prominent among them was gymnast Simone Biles who described the abuse she’d suffered from a male trainer and on social media as the greatest female gymnast in history. Even as she added more golds to her mantle she’d seemed unable to find peace in her accomplishments.
“Due to mental blocks, she’d had to step away from the sport for a time to get her head straight. She had a lot of company from fellow competitors who described sexual harassment and intimidation on social media for their unhappiness. (Hence the constant mental health commercials on the TV broadcasts.)”
Now the same role model is mocking Gaines? It seems unthinkable. As for the claims that men have no advantage against women, it was pointed out that there are zero women who try to reverse the equation, going into men’s sports. They show the hard truths about competitive records of men versus women in a range of sports. They describe the physical risks for women playing against larger, stronger men. Here. Here. And here.
It’s still stunning to see Biles toeing the radical LGBTQ line while asking for traditional pity of a victimized woman herself. Or the amount of support that the cause has garnered from progressives throughout society. When did people became so obtuse about the growth this societal contagion?
We wrote earlier this year about how such notions take hold. MacDonald Laurier Institute fellow Mia Hughes charted a history of similar social contagions such as bulimia and multiple-personality disorder. “In 1972, British psychologist Gerald Russell treated a woman with an unusual eating disorder involving binging and purging. Over the next seven years, he saw a further 30 woman presenting with the same condition. In 1979, he wrote a paper published in Psychological Medicine, in which he gave it the name bulimia nervosa….
“Then something remarkable happened. The illness swept the globe like wildfire… affecting an estimated 30 million people by the mid-1990s, the majority of whom were teenage girls and young women. The explanation for this rapid spread is what philosopher Ian Hacking calls ‘semantic contagion’ – how the process of naming and describing a condition creates the means by which the condition spreads. The epidemic of multiple-personality disorder in the 90s was spread this same way… Multiple studies demonstrate the media’s culpability in the spread of social contagions.”
The new contagion is trans athletes. USA Today is just one example of how influencers try to legitimize campaigns to boost their own self esteem. As the battle to reverse the trans incursion shows, there are only too many willing to play politics in the gender debate. Like the pro-Palestinian movement in North America the trans athlete hoax exists is a bubble where reality and fiction can co-exist, knowing they’ll never be put to the test.
Orwell called it doublethink “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” Biles and the liberal elites have it mastered. Nursing their grievance while finding it a fault in others.
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, Bruce is regular media contributor. The new book from there team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin is Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. In paperback and Kindle on #Amazon. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
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