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Bryson DeChambeau confident PGA Tour and LIV Golf will solve differences; ‘Scientist’ using some of his $125 million signing-on fee to help community

Matt Smith — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 08:52:07 +0000

Bryson DeChambeau at LIV Golf Bedminster. LIV Golf

By Matt Smith
LIV Golf star Bryson DeChambeau has insisted that the feud between the new series and the PGA Tour will be resolved “shortly”, while hinting he was paid $125 million to sign for Greg Norman’s innovative circuit — and is paying back into the community.

Speaking to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, the big-hitting American was relaxed and confident when asked if he is concerned about a lifetime ban from the PGA Tour for joining LIV Golf — a perceived rival to the US tour.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “No, I’m not worried about that. I think it will get figured out.”

Interestingly, the 2020 US Open champion added: “I personally know that it will get figured out, whether it’s legally or whether they come to the table and work out terms. I definitely think it will wash itself out in the future, pretty shortly.”

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Speaking about his move to LIV Golf, DeChambeau told Carlson: “First and foremost, it is a lot of opportunity to do something different in the game of golf. I’ve always been a bit of a trendsetter. Growing up I always thought I’d do something cool in the game of golf.

“I’ve always thought golf has to tailor to the younger generation and I am all about growing the game of golf. I think that in every industry, no matter what it is, it has always been changing and innovating and golf isn’t any different. New formats and teams is enhancing the spirit of the game.”

Inevitably, the topic of money came up during the interview, and ‘The Scientist’ was open about the lure of the cash and how he plans to use it to help the community.

“Solely for the economics, it was a no-brainer,” Dechambeau said. “This is our livelihoods and it was a great economic opportunity for golfers to make a lot of money.

“That’s why we grew up playing golf — also for the history, to go and win majors, PGA Tour events and now I want to win LIV events. You can see the passion and competitive aspect of this environment out here and we all want to win every single week.

“With the resources I now have, it doesn’t mean I’m able to sit on my butt and do nothing,” he said. “At a certain point in time you realise there’s more to life than golf and that’s what LIV Golf allows me to do.”

When asked if reports of a $125 million signing-on fee were accurate, DeChambeau responded: “I’m not gonna say the details, I mean for what’s reported it’s somewhat close. It’s a four-and-a-half-year deal, I can definitely tell you that and a lot of it was upfront, which is great.

“I’ve already put it in places that make sense whether it’s my foundation or real estate — being able to build a multi-sport complex — or taking care of my family … numerous other things too.”

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Behind the scenes of one of the most complicated TV deals in golf history

Golf Digest Middle East — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 04:38:45 +0000

David John Griffin/Icon Sportswire

By Dave Shedloski
Football. Baseball. The R&A. Riviera Country Club. Torrey Pines. The PNC Challenge. The Jack Nicklaus Medal. The Olympics. COVID-19.

You have to cast a wide net over this potpourri of subject matter to fully relay the story of how the television rights to the U.S. Open changed hands from FOX Sports to NBC in a gesture of cooperation between competing networks. The deal, a child of necessity for FOX and a product of desire for NBC—which had seen FOX get in the Peacock Network henhouse in 2013 and steal away the rights to USGA championships—happened neatly and quickly and ended up being the kind of win-win-win that left all parties satisfied.

Of course, it all started with the metastasizing coronavirus pandemic that by mid-March forced golf, as well as the world of sports at large, to come to a standstill. As March turned to April, a shake-up of the major championship schedule was starting to come together, which got the wheels turning inside the head of Jon Miller, president of programming for NBC Sports.

“We kept hearing that the Open Championship was going to go from July to September, that Augusta was going to reposition to November and that the U.S. Open was possibly going to go to Riviera and be the third week of December,” Miller recalled. “And we knew that we couldn’t handle [the U.S. Open] if it was in December, because we have Sunday Night Football, and it would have also been the same weekend as our Father/Son event. So we didn’t really pay too much attention to the U.S. Open. We were just more concerned with the Open Championship.”

By the first weekend in April, the R&A informed NBC brass that the Open Championship, scheduled for July 16-19 at Royal St. George’s in Sandwich, England, was being cancelled. USGA CEO Mike Davis moved quickly, taking the September dates (this week) and thereby obviating the need to move the 120th championship from Winged Foot.

That put FOX in a fix. The network, which began hosting USGA events in 2015 in a deal over 12 years and worth an estimated $1 billion, has an extensive college football package on Saturday and the NFL on Sunday. What’s more, it also has the rights to Major League Baseball. In the midst of trying to find coverage windows on FOX but knowing that much of its U.S. Open coverage would be pushed to FS1, Larry Jones, executive vice president, business, accepted an offer from Miller to have a conversation about options for the 2020 championship.

“The original conversation was only going to be for 2020,” Miller said.

An email request to speak to Jones or Eric Shanks at FOX for this story went unanswered.

But internal conversations at NBC that involved Pete Bevacqua, Christine Dorfler and Molly Solomon at Golf Channel, among others, eventually steered Miller toward seeking the remaining seven years of the FOX deal.

“The feeling was that we just didn’t want to go for 2020. If we’re going to do this we should see if we could get the whole thing back,” Miller said. “Look, they were very open about it. Golf was not the right fit for them. None of the people who were there now at FOX were involved in the deal when it was done in August of 2013. Interestingly, there are still a lot of people at NBC who were involved with the USGA because we had it for 20 years and it was a very important property and just important to our golf business of which we think we were really strong.”

Initially, NBC golf producer Tommy Roy thought the chances were “pretty slim” that the network would regain the rights to the U.S. Open. Chris Condon

The only hurdle was the 2021 championship at Torrey Pines. NBC is committed to coverage of the U.S. Olympic Trials after the Summer Games were yet another casualty of the pandemic and postponed until next year. Eventually, they were able to work around it.

While talks were ongoing, Tommy Roy, golf producer for NBC, received a call from Mike McCarley, president, golf at NBC Sports Group, asking for a proposed budget to broadcast the U.S. Open this year. This was no problem, since Roy had produced the 2006 coverage at Winged Foot, and, in fact, had been the producer since NBC first began televising the U.S. Open in 1995.

“That’s when I knew something was going on,” Roy said. “But it was like, put this together, but chances are probably pretty slim that we’re going to get to do it.”

That’s when Roy employed his lucky medal. At a farewell dinner at the 2014 U.S. Amateur in Atlanta, NBC’s final event for the USGA, Davis presented Roy with a special rendition of the Jack Nicklaus Medal that the U.S. Open winner receives along with the trophy. “Mike said, ‘Tom, you’re the only non-winner of the U.S. Open to be ever given this medal.’ It said on it, ‘Champion Storyteller.’ It’s very cool.”

Roy kept the medal on display in his office, but he decided to put it in his pocket once he was told of the small chance to again produce his favourite event.

FOX began broadcasting the U.S. Open in 2015 at Chambers Bay with Joe Buck, Brad Faxon and Greg Norman in the booth. David Cannon

“Every four or five days one of our executives would text us going, ‘Is he carrying that medal around? Things are starting to happen here.’ And the next one, ‘Keep that medal in your pocket because things are really starting to look pretty good.’ So then when it happened it was, like, all right, the medal brought us good luck.”

It took more than luck. FOX and NBC had to hammer out a deal in which the two sides split nearly equally the cost of the remainder of the FOX contract. Talks wrapped up in early June. But that was hardly the end of it. FOX did not have the right to simply assign the TV rights to NBC. The USGA had to sign off on it, essentially negotiating an exit deal with FOX and closing on a new deal with NBC.

FOX representatives broke the news of their agreement with NBC to Davis at a June 17 meeting at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J. The next day NBC officials visited USGA headquarters at Golf House in Liberty Corner, N.J., to start the process of negotiations.

“I don’t think I slept for, like, almost two weeks,” said Navin Singh, chief commercial officer for the USGA, who with Chris Fraser, chief legal officer, were the primary representatives for the USGA in the talks with the two networks. “It was, basically, sunup to sundown working on this deal. Usually when you work on a rights deal, it can go over the span of a year sometimes. Or more. We did the whole thing in a matter of days.

“There were challenges for FOX and opportunities for NBC and they were able to work through all of it collectively, which was pretty impressive, and then they were able to come to us with their needs to close those deals,” Singh added. “They made it a lot easier than it could have ended up being. In the end, it was the best thing for golf and the best thing for the USGA.”

The eventual deal that NBC signed with the USGA wasn’t exactly what FOX had negotiated, though as Singh pointed out, from a fan standpoint it looks like a simple transfer from FOX to NBC because coverage hours remain the same.

With NBC getting back the U.S. Open, viewers will hear the familiar voices of David Feherty and Roger Maltbie. Scott Halleran

“The FOX contract, quite honestly, had a lot of stuff in it that we would never have agreed to,” Miller said. “In order for us to bring the USGA into the fold, we had to acquire not only the broadcast rights, the cable rights and the digital rights, but we had to get it as one complete package. The FOX contract only included broadcast rights; it did not include digital rights or streaming rights. So it was very important to us that we had all those rights.”

There were other tweaks that benefitted each side. Just to name one example, the USGA gained additional coverage in the form of “Live From” pregame programming on Golf Channel for the U.S. Women’s Open, which this year is slated for December at Champions Golf Club in Houston.

The whirlwind of activity that took place to bring the U.S. Open back to NBC took less than three months, with the official announcement from the USGA coming June 29.

“Last year’s U.S. Open was a fantastic production, and we leave FOX with nothing but positive relationships,” Singh said. “In some ways this was tough for us because we built something from scratch with them. But at the same time, we’re excited to be reunited with NBC and Golf Channel. Having already worked with them on our amateur events this year, you can sense the energy and excitement from Tommy Roy and everyone about being back. We couldn’t be more pleased how it all turned out.”

For NBC, it’s about more than just being back.

“We were very happy to get it,” Miller said, “not only for NBC Sports, but also we were happy to get it for our golf team, for our golf business. We were thrilled to get it for our affiliates. We were able to incorporate a Peacock element [NBC’s over-the-top streaming television service] into it, which is so important at NBC right now.

“We’re all just so excited to be back with this group because we just feel that the USGA and NBC are a great marriage – much like the Olympics and NBC, much like Notre Dame football and NBC, much like Sunday Night Football and NBC, or the Ryder Cup on NBC. We think the U.S. Open is home on NBC. It’s back where it belongs.”

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Fox’s Sunday U.S. Open coverage featured Tiger Woods (a lot) less than usual, according to these numbers

Golf Digest Middle East — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 05:00:26 +0000

Tiger Woods hits his second shot on the 13th hole during the final round of the 2019 U.S. Open. (Christian Petersen)

By Alex Myers
Fox Sports’ fifth crack at covering the U.S. Open was almost universally viewed as a success. Even those involved would be the first to say the network has come a long way since Chambers Bay in 2015. But while TV critics could probably find a few things to nitpick other than the always present “More golf shots, less commercials!” demand (To be fair, Fox went nearly an hour without a single ad during the final stretch), there’s one thing fans couldn’t say on Sunday.

“They showed too much Tiger Woods!”

A small, but vocal crowd chants this refrain during almost every PGA Tour event—in particular, the ones when Woods isn’t contending. While their claims that Woods is shown a disproportionate amount certainly have merit, they never seem to grasp that most people want to watch the 15-time major champ no matter his position on the leader board. But Fox, at least for one week, bucked that trend.

The website Classic TV Sports has been tracking all the final-round shots shown at golf’s four major championships since the start of the 2014 season. The site’s Jeff Haggar has meticulously kept these records while being consistent in using approximately five-hour windows. On Sunday, he monitored this from 5 p.m. ET until the final putt was holed by Justin Rose at 9:31, and a couple of things jump out.

First, Fox showed 317 shots during that time period, which comes out to 1.17 shots per minute. That’s actually slightly below the 1.2 average of the 22 majors that have been tracked and down from last year’s 1.28 number on Fox. In comparison, this year’s Masters on CBS was at 1.38, but the PGA Championship, which was also on CBS, came in at only 1.14.

More important to this post, however, is how many of those 317 shots were hit by Tiger Woods. And the answer is. . . drumroll, please. . . five. Yep, 5. Out of 317.

OK, so this number needs a lot of contexts. For one, Tiger teed off two-and-a-half hours before the final pairing of Gary Woodland and Rose. He began the day 11 shots off the lead and then bogeyed four of his first six holes to become completely irrelevant before a late rally to shoot 69. So five shots were actually more than enough for someone who finished T-21, especially when you consider Jason Day shot the same Sunday score and finished in the same place and wasn’t shown once. Or Chez Reavie, who played along Brooks Koepka in the penultimate group, started and finished T-3, and only had three more of his shots shown than Woods during that window. (According to Classic TV Sports, the trio of Woodland, Koepka and Rose combined for 204 or 64 per cent of all the shots shown during the window.)

That being said, it was still a surprisingly low number. Given Woods’ numerous absences and missed cuts in majors since 2014 when this data began being compiled, it’s hard to find great comparisons. In fact, this was the first Fox-broadcasted U.S. Open in which Woods has played on the weekend. But the two most similar situations occurred in Tiger’s two previous Masters appearances before winning this year—2015 and 2018—both, obviously, carried by CBS.

In 2015, Woods played in the third-to-last group but shot 73 to tumble to T-17. Yet, nearly half of those shots (35) were still aired. In his next Masters start and his first appearance since coming back from back fusion surgery in 2017, Tiger played in the 20th-to-last pairing, shot 69, finished T-32 and still had 18 of his shots shown. Only five golfers had that many of their shots shown during Fox’s final window at Pebble Beach.

Right or wrong, Fox clearly made a choice to limit the number of shots shown by Woods on Sunday, even airing his closing birdie on tape some five minutes late. Of course, the network would rather show him in contention next year.

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What’s going on with Holly Sonders at Fox Sports? Golf fans are not going to like it

Golf Digest Middle East — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 03:50:17 +0000

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

By Brian Wacker
Holly Sonders has signed a contract extension with Fox Sports, but will not be part of the network’s golf coverage in 2019, Sonders confirmed to Golf Digest on Wednesday.

Golfweek first reported the news.

“I’m proud to have been part of Fox Sports’ golf coverage,” Sonders told Golf Digest. “The entire team there has been like a family. I look forward to continuing my relationship with Fox Sports and transitioning to a studio role and am incredibly excited about what’s ahead.”

The departure from the network’s golf coverage ends a four-year run for Sonders, who was in contract negotiations with Golf Channel in 2014 when Fox offered her a deal after having acquired the rights to the U.S. Open and other USGA championships. Sonders, 31, had become a popular broadcaster on Golf Channel first in her role as a reporter on “Morning Drive” starting in 2011 and then on “School of Golf” and “Playing Lesson with the Pros.”

Sonders was initially hired as a studio host and to work as a sideline reporter as part of Fox’s NFL coverage. Her first tournament with the network was the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay, where she also handled live interviews before being transitioned back to a studio role.

Though Sonders will no longer serve as part of Fox Sports’ golf coverage, her role as a studio host for other events as well as a sideline reporter for its college football coverage will continue. Her current contract was due to expire at the end of the year and was extended with a new multi-year deal, the terms of which were not disclosed. Fox Sports’ USGA contract expires after the 2026 championship season.

“Holly is a valued member of the Fox Sports family and we’re thrilled to continue working with her,” the network said in a statement.

Sonders, a native of Ohio who was an accomplished junior player and was a member of the Michigan State women’s golf team that won the Big Ten title in 2007 before graduating with a degree in journalism in 2009. She began her television career at WBNS-10 in Columbus before stints at KATV in Little Rock, Ark., as well as the Big Ten Network.

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