Browsing: Awkward

When new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp stepped to the lectern for the first time, he hinted that a radical change was on the horizon.

“I think the focus will be to create events that really matter,” Rolapp said. “Competition should be easy to follow. The regular season and postseason should be connected in a way that builds towards the Tour Championship in a way that all sports fans can understand.”

Rolapp was providing his first glimpse at his unified theory for the PGA Tour — one involving a new word for pro golf: Scarcity.

There’s a lot we don’t know about how Rolapp’s vision for scarcity will look. Will it involve the continuation of the PGA Tour fall season, which falls directly outside of Rolapp’s description, but continues to add events with title sponsors signed to multi-year contracts? How about a streamlined regular season? Does the Tour of the future welcome fewer players, or no cuts?

Three months after those first words from Rolapp, though, we do know one thing about scarcity in pro golf: It’s going to give us a lot more television.

On Monday morning, Golf Channel released the rosters for the dueling teams taking part in the first-ever Golf Channel Games — a primetime, first-of-its-kind, made-for-TV golf skills competition featuring teams led by Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy. The Gameswill be played three weeks after the return of The Skins Game, a primetime, made-for-TV match between Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Keegan Bradley and Tommy Fleetwood. Those two events will set the stage for the return of golf’s ultimateprimetime, made-for-TV product, the second season of the simulator golf league named TGL, which will begin on Dec. 28. And those are each to say nothing of the on-again, off-again, made-for-TV golf series known as The Match, or the new golf tour dedicated to reinventing golf on TV, LIV.

Everywhere you look, somebody is selling golf on television, and those sales pitches are looking less and less like 72 holes of tournament golf.

The big idea underpinning each of these new golf ventures is one that Rolapp, once the point person for the NFL’s media rights, knows well: Money in sports runs through television. The best way to make a buck, if you’re Golf Channel or the TGL or the Skins Game, is to air on a major network to major ratings. But the conceit responsible for makingmoney on television from these events is slightly less ironclad: That people, particularly casual golf fans already beleaguered by the slog of the golf regular season, will tune in to watch.

Rosters announced for Rory McIlroy/Scottie Scheffler primetime event

By:

Josh Berhow

In some ways, it’s easy to understand why this new golf silly season might appeal to someone of Rolapp’s sensibilities. At the NFL, Rolapp learned the value of a season that lasts 20 weeks but never truly ends. He saw how non-traditional football content (the Senior Bowl, the combine, the draft, free agency, training camp, the preseason) could keep the NFL at the center of the sports world’s collective consciousness even when games were months away. He learned that television was a vessel for experimentation with the end goal of capturing attention.

But this new vision of golf requires something the NFL does not often worry about: Attention from the broader sports world.

This is a concern evidenced by The Match’sslow slide from a “golf event” into a “celebrity event featuring golf”: Even if the best players are on television, and even if they’re playing in a highly marketable format, there is no guarantee that fans will care enough to watch. And even if fans do tune in to watch, there’s no guarantee you’ve built something that they will continueto watch each year (like any of the events on the non-traditional football calendar).

None of this is to say that the people behind any of these events shouldn’t bother. The TGL was a success far beyond most projections in its inaugural season, and returns for year two with a legitimate reason for optimism. Merely it is to say that the game of making money from television depends upon people watching, and when it comes to made-for-TV golf gambits, audiences are far from a guarantee. (The Tour, it should be noted, possesses the ability to reject such televised overtures under its media rights regulations, and often collects a fee in exchange for signing over media rights.)

One way to ensure people are watching is to provide a sense of scarcity — to make those at home feel like they’re missing out by not watching. This is Rolapp’s idea, however it manifests. But in the winter of 2025, how does scarcity actually look?

It looks like golf made for TV — an abundance of it.

This week’s WWE RAW opening segment may have experienced a change of direction.

CM Punk opened WWE RAW’s November 3 episode with his newly won World Heavyweight Championship. He talked about his Saturday Night’s Main Event win last weekend to thank several people for supporting him, like the fans and his wife, AJ Lee, then his opponent, Jey Uso, and mocked Seth Rollins.

The champion asked for any challengers to step up for the title. The first to answer was Logan Paul, then The Vision followed with Paul Heyman leading the verbal exchange. The segment ended with Bron Breakker and Bronson Reed beating up the champion, but The Maverick returned to even the odds, but got beaten up as well. However, Punk recovered and took out the duo.

Although it was action-packed, the segment also had some silent instances, creating somewhat awkward encounters. As it turns out, there was another issue in the exchange.

WWE RAW’s Recent Opening Segment Went 10 Minutes Over

In the recent Wrestling Observer Radio episode, Bryan Alvarez recapped the entire WWE RAW opening segment and also noted how it had some notable awkward moments. He added that it went 10 minutes longer than planned.

Bryan Alvarez: This went 10 minutes longer than it was supposed to. Very, very long opening segment. And they had to get everybody out of the ring to get to the next match.

Dave Meltzer: Two hours and 45 minutes.

Bryan: Yeah, it was a long show tonight.”

This week’s WWE RAW episode went 2 hours and 45 minutes, and the usual time in the past was just 2 hours and 30 minutes, which meant some segments or matches had to be altered with the sudden change. However, it was previously noted that the Monday show’s runtime is more flexible under the Netflix deal.

In other news: Superstar reacts to CM Punk’s callout on WWE RAW.

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Every Ryder Cup, each captain has an extremely awkward assignment: He has to choose the golfer on his team he trusts the least.

Enter the “Envelope Rule.”

Beginning at the 1979 Ryder Cup, each captain was tasked with putting the name of one player in a sealed envelope to be opened in case of emergency. The theory was this: If somebody on one team got injured during competition, that team shouldn’t be punished. Instead, the other team would choose a player to essentially sit out the final singles session, their non-match would result in a half-point for each team, and the rest of each team would continue in battle.

What makes the job so painful is the strategy behind it. Because you’re choosing a player to sit out singles, you’re picking the guy whose contributions you’re looking forward to the least. It’s no surprise that some captains have said it’s their least favorite part of the job.

Curtis Strange described it well in an AP story: “These guys become family. And it’s like you’re telling one of them you don’t love them as much.”

Because it’s such a sensitive process, the contents of each envelope remains secret; this is a break-in-case-of-emergency situation. So we don’t typically see the names, and if they’re not used, the envelopes are either returned to the captains or, in at least one case, burned. But there were back-to-back Ryder Cups where we found out.

1991: Steve Pate’s car crash

At Kiawah Island in 1991, the event so intense it became known as the “War on the Shore,” an early week car accident involving several members of the U.S. team left Ryder Cup rookie Steve Pate with bruised ribs and a trip to the hospital. Pate sat the first three sessions before U.S. captain Dave Stockton sent him out in Saturday afternoon’s four-ball sessions, where he and Corey Pavin lost 2 and 1 to Bernhard Langer and Colin Montgomerie and he aggravated his injuries.

“Everything on my left side went,” he told Golfweek. “I gutted out the round, but I knew I was done for the week.”

But before Sunday’s singles matches, in which Pate was slated to take on European legend Seve Ballesteros, Stockton announced that Pate was too injured to go. He’d later explain that he couldn’t hit sand wedge farther than 40 yards and didn’t stand a chance.

Once Stockton made the call, Team Europe was forced to unseal its envelope, revealing the name of David Gilford, a 26-year-old rookie who’d lost his first two partner matches 4 and 2 and then 7 and 6.

The move was controversial at the time. “They certainly did it to get a half point,” Gilford said, frustrated to be denied the chance to take on Wayne Levi. And Montgomerie added doubts of his own.

“We thought it was fishy,” he said. “Injuries don’t get worse overnight.”

1993: Sam Torrance’s toe

In 1993, European stalwart Sam Torrance was unable to go on Sunday, suffering from an infected toe. In response, the Americans had to name their player to sit out, and it came from an unexpected place: Lanny Wadkins, one of the most successful Ryder Cuppers of all time, volunteered for the spot, letting U.S. captain Tom Watson off the hook.

“I was a captain’s pick,” Wadkins said by way of explanation. “The other guys have earned their way onto the team with two years of great play. I have played in eight Ryder Cups now and I don’t know how many matches, and I would hate to deprive somebody of the experience.”

Wadkins’ decision seemed to have an energizing effect for the Americans. Before they went off in Sunday singles, Watson had Wadkins leave the room before addressing the rest of the team.

“Every match today,” he said, “has a little bit of Lanny Wadkins in it. If your match is getting a little too tough for you, think about Lanny Wadkins and what he did for you.”

After Davis Love III holed a putt on 18 to seal his win over Constantino Rocca, Wadkins was the man he sought out first; “that putt was for you,” he said.

That’s the last time the U.S. won an away Ryder Cup.

2009 Presidents Cup: Fred Couples’ Tiger prank

This one’s worth watching: Fred Couples recounting the envelope prank he played on Tiger Woods and the rest of the U.S. team. This wasn’t the Ryder Cup; Couples captained the winning team at the 2009 Presidents Cup. But it’s the same idea …

“At the beginning of the week,” Couples said, “in case of injury, you put a name in an envelope. I’m the only guy in the room with [opposing captain Greg] Norman. He puts a name in, I put a name in and we give them to the head official Steve Carman. So anyway, as the story goes, we go on and we go on and we win Sunday night.

“Steve Carman comes in and he has to give the envelope back to the captain. We’re in the room hootin’ and hollerin’. He pulls me aside and I know what he’s gonna say: ‘Here’s you’re envelope.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you open it up in front of everyone and read the name in there?’

“So he tears it open and he reads it and it’s Tiger Woods. The whole room went silent. They thought I was such a clown that I put Tiger Woods in there as the guy who wouldn’t play on Sunday in case of an injury.

“So I didn’t tell the story for two full years,” Couples continued. “So we somehow unhooked the envelope and I took the name out of the there. It was someone who was a [captain’s] pick, and I put Tiger’s name in there. He texted me for weeks: ‘Dude, you’ve got the biggest balls of anyone I’ve ever seen.’

“I went, ‘You know what? Why not put your name in. I thought I’d stir things up.’ So that went for years. I finally told the story. I took a lot of heck for it, but for two years I had everyone thinking I put Tiger Woods’ name in the envelope.”

Here’s hoping, for the players and captains’ sakes, that everybody stays healthy.

But we’d learn something interesting if they don’t.

As Tommy Fleetwood was preparing to put the finishing touches on his first PGA Tour win at the Tour Championship…