The pick of the letters and emails to hit the Golf Monthly offices this month
State of the game
I am writing out of frustration with the current state of the professional game. It seems the ‘lunatics have taken over the asylum’.
At a time when golf has recovered popularity, the professional game is becoming increasingly fractured. It is essential that the divide between the PGA Tour and LIV is resolved so the best players compete against each other consistently. Instead, the PGA Tour has wasted time and effort finding an alternative partner to pump up the prize funds for a declining number of top golfers. Viewing figures in America are poor and getting worse.
Sponsors are withdrawing, presumably as the product is becoming less attractive. There is too much competition in sport to allow this to continue. Recently in America, fewer than a million people watched the final round of a PGA Tour event, which was followed by an NFL match where the audience was almost 30 million.
Confidence in the PGA Tour leadership is non-existent. In Europe, the DP World Tour has lost its leader and the CEO of The R&A is stepping down. At a time when leadership has never been so important, it is disappearing. Golf will recover. There will be an agreement at some point and one has to hope that the damage to the professional game is not long-term.
Road to recovery
I am aGM subscriber for a few reasons but the one I’d like to mention here is my recovery from two ankle fusion operations, the first in December 2022 and the second in January this year. Both have meant three to four months off work (I’m a self-employed builder) with longer out of the game, which I only got back into four years ago.
The reasons for the two operations were slightly different but both now mean I have got restricted movement. Having read up on what Tiger has had done, I can fully understand how much pain he is in walking, playing and just in life in general, so I do hope people start to understand (and even look into the complexity of the problem) to cut him a bit of slack.
My main aim this year, after two years playing go
