Friday Fun
It's Friday so ... Fri-yay? I'm running out of quips here.
Here are a list of things that occurred to me this week that didn’t merit a full post on their own.
Because it was the end of the year, I had a lot of “wrapup” podcasts and that certainly included wrapups of the 2022 golf year. My favorite two golf podcasts, No Laying Up and The Shotgun Start did a great job with this and brought a few things to mind I’d forgotten about or missed when they happened. And naturally, a LOT of it was focused around the LIV Golf Tour, the biggest story in golf in quite some time. Here were some things I’d really forgotten all about, namely WHO joined the league.
In the “I don’t think about you at all” category (hat tip: DJ Piehowski), I really haven’t thought a whit about Paul Casey, Matthew Wolff, Abraham Ancer, Jason Kokrak, Kevin Na, Hudson Swafford, Cameron Tringale. These guys largely were competitive on a number of weeks on tour (okay, not all of them all the time) and I literally haven’t noticed their absence one bit.
In the “They hate us cause they ain’t us” - that is, guys I miss because I enjoy rooting against them: Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau. The tour needs villains. It just does.
And, to be fair, guys I wish were still on the PGA Tour because I miss watching them play golf: Cameron Smith, Marc Leishman, Dustin Johnson, Harold Varner III, Joaquin Niemann, Carlos Ortiz, and (to my shock) Bubba Watson.
There are also guys like Phil Mickelson, Charles Howell III, Pat Perez, Henrik Stenson, Lee Westwood and Graeme McDowell who I wish hadn’t left because it truly taints how I think about them going forward. Let’s see what happens in 2023.
Speaking of LIV and 2023, I’m not sure if they’ll pull any more big name golfers this year (though I remain SHOCKED that housecat Patrick Cantlay hasn’t joined the fray) but I do think they will - or could - start a women’s league and attract a TON of top talent. This is because of the massive inequity in pay on that tour. In fact, if LIV doesn’t do this, it’s a reflection on how little they think the LPGA moves the needle because the cost involved would likely not be massive.
There are a slew of new TV shows, books and even movies I’m getting excited for this year - enough that I’ll probably actually create a full post for them - but I’m really looking forward not only to the new season of Succession and Ted Lasso (two shows that couldn’t be more different from one another in tone) as well as the Netflix PGA series (what a season to start with!) but the series Daisy Jones and the Six, which is based on a fun book I read a few years back.
I am not necessarily the biggest fan of Texas. But I am a big fan of a guy named Brandon Yates who I used to work with and is simply one of those guys who you can’t help but like the moment you meet him. He’s not doing great right now with a health scare that is at this moment unclear what’s going on. But he runs a very cool shop called Outside, Texas and if you are so inclined to make a purchase there of some gear, it would help a good guy fight an unknown thing.
I’ve been pretty good about avoiding Twitter since Elon took over, but I would be remiss in not sharing this - apparently a kid went to a Depeche Mode concert way back before they’d truly broken out. This was in Belfast in 1983. He wasn’t allowed to bring his camera into the club, so instead he tossed an unused roll of film onstage with his name and address. The band took a BUNCH of photos back stage and mailed him the photos. That’s just extremely, extremely cool. (Being old film photos, they’re awful resolution, but …still.)
