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The PGA Tour tends to be a very safe place where the Tour goes out of its way to make sure the players are mostly shown in a good light, that the broadcasts are full of boring segments that show how great the players are and how grateful the CEOs of each tournament sponsor are just to be a part of things.
But right now the Tour has been given a gift from the marketing gods and it would be simply idiotic not to play it up.
I’m talking, of course, about a long-simmering feud between Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau that continues to roll on and is easily the most fun/interesting thing to hit the Tour since Tiger Woods started dominating the game so many years ago.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about it started last year when DeChambeau heard about Koepka complaining about his slow play. DeChambeau took matters into his own hands and went up to Koepka’s caddie on the practice green before a round and told the caddie to tell his boss to come voice those complaints to his face.
I mean, that was just tremendous stuff.
Then it escalated last January when DeChambeau took a shot at Koepka’s physique, saying while streaming on Twitch: “I don’t know if (Koepka’s) genetics even make him look good, to be honest. In the Body Issue, He didn’t have any abs, to be honest. I got some abs.”
Oh, that was rich.
Koepka responded by basically saying scoreboard and showing off his four major championship trophies. (That’s four more major championship trophies than DeChambeau has.)
Since then, DeChambeau, who is the villain the game of golf needs right now, spent his time in quarantine packing on like 30 pounds of muscle and mass and has perfected a punishing swing that has him driving the ball in historic fashion. That all also has him making a mockery of many different golf courses with drives the past few weeks that make everything a pitch-and-putt course for him. Last Sunday he used that to get his sixth Tour win in four years.
Then on Tuesday Koepka came out of nowhere and tweeted a GIF of the fictional character Kenny Powers knocking over a cameraman that also had a mention of steroid allegations against Powers, which one can assume was picked on purpose by Koepka. DeChambeau did have an idiotic run-in with a CBS cameraman last week, so that GIF makes sense. The steroid dig is just some extra fuel to the fire, which is tremendous.
So now the PGA Tour has something incredibly awesome on its hands – two of the best players continuing to take shots at each other. If the Tour doesn’t jump on this and make it into more of a thing then I don’t know what the Tour is even doing. This is ratings gold. This is something that the game of golf has almost never had. This is something that is so sellable it’s not even funny.
So where should the Tour start? Pair the two players up next week when they’re both in the field at The Memorial Tournament. That is easy money and is what all of Golf Twitter wants right now.
This isn’t the time to hide from controversy and juicy storylines. This isn’t the time to play up some bland players not named Koepka or DeChambeau. This the time to push all of the chips into the middle of the table and sit back and watch how it all unfolds.
A bulked-up, protein-shake guzzling DeChambeau alone is a gift to the Tour as he has become must-see TV since golf returned.
Now Koepka is lobbing in shots from out of nowhere?
How. Darn. Awesome.
Come on, PGA Tour. Forget about the boring ways you usually go about things and let’s have some fun.
Let’s get loose.
Let’s get Brooks vs. Bryson whenever we get the chance.
Tuesday’s biggest winner: WNBA players who want Kelly Loeffler out.
US Senator Kelly Loeffler seems to be someone who is terrible at her job and someone who is bad for our nation. She’s also terrible for the WNBA. You see, Loeffler is a co-owner of the Atlanta Dream and on Tuesday she came out and said she doesn’t support the Black Lives Matter movement and doesn’t support the league’s plans to support the movement. Just terrible, terrible leadership by a person who sold off millions of dollars in stocks upon hearing about the coronavirus while telling her supporters they had nothing to worry about. WNBA players spoke up in big numbers on Tuesday and they all said the same thing – they want Loeffler, who appears to be an awful person, out of the league. Hopefully that happens, because Loeffler doesn’t seem to be a great person.
Quick hits: WNBA’s bubble is not looking good… 8 questions about Mahomes’ historic deal… Hamilton’s best moments… And more!
– Speaking of the WNBA, my pal Mike Sykes looks at how the league’s bubble in Florida is already a disaster.
– My other pal Henry McKenna has 8 questions about Patrick Mahomes’ historic deal with the Chiefs.
– My other pal Hemal Jhaveri counts down the top 11 moments from “Hamilton” film on Disney+.
– And my other pal Charles Curtis explains why Mahomes’ new deal is bad for Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys.
– Oh, and ESPN’s Adam Schefter gave a hat-tip to a liquor store manager who broke Patrick Mahomes contract story.
