dumpster fire
a detour into the Phoenix Open, aka Waste Management
When the golf season is reborn from the ashes into sleazeball prominence . . .
The WM Phoenix Open, aka Waste Management, aka Wasted Management is widely touted as “the wildest party in golf”, the “Greatest Show on Grass”, a frat party rather than a traditional, quiet tournament (but do those even exist anymore? The [British] Open might be closest…), taking place on or abouts Super Bowl weekend. Thank god it’s not on Groundhog Day.
A long way from the game’s origins during the Song Dynasty, with the Romans’ paganica, and with the Scottish gentlemen…
Known for its raucous atmosphere, especially at the notorious 16th hole (sponsored by Oakley), ‘The People’s Open’ features rowdies booing, BABABOOOEEYYY-ing, binge-drinking, and blowharding at TPC Scottsdale, unofficially inaugurating the new season of PGA Tour golf.
Now what the hell am I doing talking about golf?1
⛳ Welp, the golf course and its environs are familiar turf to me. Chicagoland is a bustling and historical golf hub—the first official 18-hole course, the Chicago Golf Club, was established in 1892—and my forefathers have been known to carry bags of sticks in their trunks of one kind or another.2
In my middle-class, middlewest, suburban childhood, traces of my fathers could be found in the stacks of spent scorecards on the kitchen counter or in the cookie cabinet next to the pecan sandies, long phone calls negotiating the fellas into twosomes, foursomes, zoosomes; shoe polish and two-tone Footjoys, and tournament golf playing on the weekends.3 In them days, the soundtrack mixed a still-quiet golf clap, the dulcet tones of Jim Nantz and Verne Lundquist, whispers, and posh accents announcing legends like Nick Faldo, Fred Couples, John Daly, Bernhard Langer, Ernie Els, Payne Stewart (RIP)…
… And then, of course, Tiger Woods eclipsed them all. Thrilling to watch Tiger smoke the bastards like that damned Phil Mickelson, to witness his climb to utter dominance and complete mastery.4 Yes, it felt great watching a Black man rout the competition, particularly in a sport with such a racist history. If Tiger was playing, it was his game to lose. Everyone else was playing for second place. His excellence transcended the PGA, but the professional golf machine absolutely depended on Tiger for its own legitimacy. Of course, Woods’ legacy didn’t escape the dumpster fire either.
I’m the first-born daughter of a golf diehard, inexplicable anglophile, and inveterate company man who always championed the upper echelons and management as being in a woefully misunderstood, underdog position. Downtrodden, even. O! how I bridled at those drudging, opining monologues that inevitably got around to the insidious, nincompoop talking point—the government ought to be run like a business! O! How I reveled in shredding him (and from an early age) as, more or less, a class traitor of dubious morals.5 When he wasn’t at the office or out on the course, that is.6
My dad’s philosophy of life is/was to treat it like a game. In his book, you’re a fool if you expect any good in life, and the only smart play is to bank all the dough you can before you die. Grin through all shiteousness enough, hopefully, to line your coffin thick. Though for a miser, enough does not exist. Perhaps you can take it with you! I digress!
I learned early enough that if I wanted to spend time with him, it had to be while doing something productive like his errands, or taking an interest in his interests. One of my mother’s early refrains told the woe of a golf widow. Over the years that shifted into gratitude for her status, get that man out of my house.
To be fair, we shared loves of music and the Chicago Bulls—shooting hoops in the backyard a few golden evenings—and giggling over Three Stooges reruns. I recognized early that I liked playing sports, though I was discouraged from joining any sort of group or team. Elsewhere, I was hooked on professional wrestling, an interest my parents roundly disdained and I ultimately took underground.
But. There was something about watching golf with him, a game he had languishing time for.
Back at the Ponderosa on Sundays after his own dawn tee time, Dad would assemble his paperwork for the coming week, snacks (a big bag of Cheddar O-Ke-Doke), his ashtray, and turn on the golf. So long as I kept quiet and until I asked too many questions, my intrusion was tolerated. Often enough I was shagged out of the room for being too much, and from the simmering resentment in the air I knew he preferred to watch alone.7
But these stolen moments when my presence was allowed near his great love, I observed the quiet buzzing of those gathered into the flattened aspect of the pastoral, trying to understand how this notoriously boring game could capture his attention and his passion so completely (perhaps it was father-specific illness where they truss you up in cleats and slacks after you turn 35); recognizing the implicit, tawdry clues of the monied and their manners unspooling in many shades of green.8
Golf epitomizes the tame world. … an Eezy-wipe lawn where nothing of life, dirty and glorious, remains. Golf turns outdoors into indoors, a prefab mat of stultified grass, processed, pesticided, herbicided, the pseudo-green of formica sterility. Here, the grass is not singing. The wind cannot blow through it. ...
Worldwide, golf is an arch act of enclosure, a commons fenced and subdued for the wealthy, trampling serf and seedling. The enemy of wildness, it is a demonstration of the absolute dominion of man over wild nature.
— JAY GRIFFITHS, Wild: An Elemental Journey
Too often, a jaunt through a poisoned plot of stolen land. I would add here that that coveted cut-grass scent so many golfers enjoy is a distress signal from the grass, shrieking in pain. To hell with grass lawns!!
As with wrestling, I was curious about the performance and rituals of these gussied up men in drag. The golfers walked for hours over hill and dale, strategizing with their caddies holding the bag, restraining (or not) their passion to win and dominate. The tableau almost gave the impression of adventuring; certainly they were battling. I glimpsed what I now recognize as eroticism in some of their play, an electric joy, somehow, alongside their staid appearances. Very different from wrestling’s operatic passion.9
It is of games the most mysterious, the least earthbound, the one wherein the wall between us and the supernatural is rubbed thinnest.
— JOHN UPDIKE, Pulitzer Prize winner, avid golfer, noted misogynist
Above all, golf is a mental game.10 In the old days, I wished the golfers would throw clubs or get into screaming matches; bring some bombast, some heat. Like pro wrestling! I should’ve been careful what I wished for. Visualization is essential, but the trick seems to be relaxation. All of a sudden within that context, golf seems a very intimate window into the player’s psyche: do they actually like play? if they shank it or hit into the water, are they gonna freak out and miss the cut? Which way will their spiral open? Can their ego withstand the pressure? What is their relationship with oblivion?
Jinkx Monsoon won the much-vaunted season 5 crown of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the title Queen of All Queens by using her erotic power and her philosophy, Water off a duck’s back.
By contrast, as much as my dad golfed, it rarely seemed like he enjoyed the game. The social elements, sure—planning, gossip, practicing, even. He’d come home and recount the round to us (“I stunk!”), I’d learn there were thrown clubs, broken clubs, I’d learn the virtue of a hearty breakfast beforehand, grown men shitting in the rough (and by the green!), rants and drama, gambling, and rigid perfectionism taking precedence over the notion of play. The hi-lo dichotomy amused me, like Caddyshack. I don’t even know how much dad enjoyed being outside, so much as he enjoyed riding his cart (with baggy) over hypercontrolled, hypermanicured vistas, criticizing others. The game itself was a fixation that, more often than not, resulted in a letdown. I wondered about my dad’s capacity for joy. At least he was trying?
As a kid, I had fun playing mini golf. I was good at it. Once I grew up and tried it, I found I liked playing golf-golf, too, every once in a blue moon.11 I like play. I like hitting the hell out of the ball. I don’t pay or gamble. I don’t care how I score. The only concern I give others is basic human courtesy, otherwise I try my best to forget everyone else. Attention changes the alchemy, yknow? I caddie for myself, carrying my own tang of guilt because, well, golf is costly.12 Environmentally, morally, materially.13
Yet. I enjoy the meditative quality of following this little ball, imagining pathways and arcs in the sky, and surrendering control over the outcome as your surroundings swallow you up into their heartbeat calls and songs—the dancing prairie grasses, the breeze, the birds and the critters welcome you in and unleash their symphony—the sounds of melting into nothingness. You are Gaea. Then humans echo with their thwicks and plunks; the guy on the next tee yowls, running from wasps thirsting after his sugary beverage…
At the same time, manners and caste with their mix of elegance and absurdity and cruelty have always held my fascination. Whether it was on the screen, or my aunts reading and encouraging me to read folks like Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, the Brontës, and P.G. Wodehouse; Princess Diana, her escape from the royal family, and then her death (murder); my own life experiences particularly in da burbz, they all fed the deep, numinous pull within me to attend.1415 Golf is a perfect microcosm of this, rank with byzantine baloney, ripe for dissecting.
TL; DR: Consider this one of my windows into the ongoing wars: the centuries-old class war and the culture wars that the ruling class loves to deploy against us. Bogeys, birdies, albatrosses indeed, all well within my bardic jurisdiction. I have this knowledge, now what shall I do with it?
⛳ Remember when I said I should’ve been careful what I wished for? about golf becoming more like professional wrestling? Well, the world has gone and gotten itself in a big, damn schmozz… In addition to mainstream golf culture’s preexisting flaws, it’s now completely, undeniably Trumpwrapped. MAG[A]-tied, if you will. Dear leader loves his golf. I wonder, did he golf today?
Not only does he love to play pretend golf, it’s part of his business portfolio. Shortly after his second presidential term started, Trump called a meeting between enemies-to-partners golf tours, the PGA and LIV Golf in order to finalize their stalled merger. The New York Times summed it up:
That divide led the tour and the wealth fund in June 2023 to announce half-baked plans to combine in some form. But those efforts have been stymied by, among other things, angst over regulatory review, player frustration and the future of LIV Golf itself.
The “PGA” stands for and encompasses many things, so for clarity’s sake: The Professional Golfers’ Association of America, PGA of America, is a golf organization founded in 1916 in Frisco, Texas, with the goal of expanding the game and upholding standards. In 1968, the PGA Tour, a nonprofit, spun off from PGA of America to organize events for PGA players. Plus you have the USGA, the U.S. Golf Association, which is a separate entity that runs the U.S. Open that is on the tour but not owned by the PGA. They’re an even bigger governing body. So in this piece going forward, when I refer to the PGA, I’m referring to their tour and association the whole kit and kaboodle.
I’ve reached «golf» semantic satiety, have you?
Then you have LIV Golf, conceived by Greg Norman’s Thirst for Revenge and bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) to allegedly sportwash their human rights record and credible claims of state corruption.16 The long and short of it is, two-time major tournament champion golfer Greg Norman, aka The Shark—who famously never won the Masters—has had a dream of world tour golf since 1994. In his view, King Arnold Palmer and the PGA’s monopolistic ways thwarted this dream. Fast forward 20 years, Norman teamed up with the Saudis and formed LIV Golf. LIV promised golfers fatter purses of guaranteed money—similar to what Ted Turner’s WCW promised talent willing to jump ship from the WWF during professional wrestling’s Monday Night Wars in the ‘90s—and shorter rounds (the “LIV” of LIV Golf stands for 54 holes). Here’s a brief history of golf’s great schism.
“Ultimately, hopefully, the two tours are going to merge. That’ll be good. I’m involved in that too,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One while traveling to a LIV Golf event at his golf club in Doral, Florida. “But hopefully we’re going to get the two tours to merge. You have the PGA Tour and the LIV Tour. And I think having them merge would be a great thing.”
Enter Trump to put his hands all over it during that February 2025 meeting. He is, after all, an event partner with LIV, hosting events at his golf courses and raking in plenty with his sports diplomacy.1718 Sports columnist Sally Jenkins put it like this:
Take your average pigsty, trample it into ooze with the feet of dozens of pork-chasers until it’s such a slimy mire that no clean shoe can gain purchase, wreath it in a clammy fog constituted by the greedy breath of zombie opportunists with dead dull cash-staring eyes, and there you have the “reunification” of golf.
… The PGA Tour players don’t need this. They merely want it because they are addicted to $20 million purses and are afraid those are unsustainable, even with their recent infusion of $1.5 billion from American businessmen.
A regular mudball. Aside: that first line reads in my head to the tune of “The Candy Man Can”.
A year on now, LIV is changing its format from 54 holes to 72 holes, pissing off its players, and reportedly withering on the vine. Meanwhile, the PGA is rolling along with more money, a new schedule, and new leadership. PGA golfers who went to LIV have been welcomed back (the grass is greener, I suppose), holding a signature event at Trump National Doral in Miami... Now united in holy mergerimony, the PGA, LIV, Trump, and the Saudis may bathe together in their mutual fund of corruption and hypocrisy. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. Providing value for the shareholders and whatnot.
As we know, Trump has the uncanny ability to expose the depths of covert evil and raise them all to center stage. Perhaps it’s his 29º Leo Ascendant shining that light to a critical, karmic degree. And I suppose in the end that might be helpful, even if unintentionally.
It’s not as if golf hasn’t been the site of corruption or politics before now. It’s not as if the Zionist genocide and apartheid against Palestine was not happening before Trump. It certainly was. Roving paramilitary gangs have been terrorizing the people of this land for centuries before he was born, it just has a new name now. Abolish ICE. Corporations and colonizers, aka empire, have been extracting and exploiting human life energy for profit longer than he has. Or his daddy. The obsession with whiteness has been a plague on humanity since the pale Neanderthal ventured from the caves, long before Trump used it as a cudgel. And come to find out, the demonic, cannibalistic, global elite human trafficking pedophile ring all the conspiracy theorists warned us about existed before he became a member.
But (allegedly) Trump is a member. He’s a driving force. He is an infernal apotheosis of these hateful, demonic abuses of power against the people. Trump, and therefore the Trumpian Age of Fascism, is deeply embedded in professional golf and golf culture. Golfers hate it if you mention politics anywhere near their beloved escape, but that’s a tough tiddlywink, now isn’t it? Their claim to privilege—to exclude politics from their escapism—ain’t cuttin it. Golf may have an air of exclusivity, but it’s not immune from context or morality.
Moving in these circles, aspiring to them or even being proximal with them exacts a price. The professional golf circuit is financially and philosophically tied up with the global elite. It is a stage for geopolitics. A front? To what extent does golf facilitate global corruption? To what extent is professional golf complicit?
It’s uncanny: here we are again, another golf season begun, the latest Bad Bunny concert in the books (aka the Super Bowl), I Giochi Olimpici invernali sono tornati, all amid the current, brutal horrors.
Business as usual, except it’s definitely not. But the enduring routine and tradition of sports and in this case, the PGA Tour, gives the veneer of normalcy. One thing about golf, it’s where business happens. ⛳
⛳ With that, we return to the fire. Waste Management is consistently the highest-attended outing of the season. The 500,000+ attendees at ‘The People’s Open’ are loud, they’re proud, they chug beer and then shower you with on 16, they’re screaming Bababooeyyyy!!!!!!! during your backswing and fucking up your concentration; it’s the Coliseum for fratbro golf culture. Once February rolls around and I hear their barking and braying on the tv set, I know pro golf is back.
Day 1 antics. Mind you, these tourneys are four days, Thor’s Day through Sunday. Here’s a Saturday tradition.
Oh no, it’s started raining again: A retrospective of the 16th hole
Some golfers like it rowdy, but these ones aren’t down to clown.
Check out the comments from local emergency responders on this reddit thread.
Waste Management has it’s Caddyshack-esque hijinks. Unfortunately, it’s not a comedy starring Second City players, written by Harold Ramis and Brian Doyle Murray. It’s reality and as we know, reality is typically uglier than fiction.
Trump is an infernal apotheosis of evil empire, Waste Management is a shitshow of golf culture, and elite golf is a clubhouse for fascism variants like MAGA and crypto-nazis come to rut and enjoy their escape from politics (and sobriety), aka from the realities and consequences of their moral choices (or lack thereof).
Updike once wrote in Golf Digest, “Somehow, it is hard to dislike a man once you have played a round of golf with him.” I have to part company with old johnny here, that’s a buncha claptrap if you ask me, but did you? No, and neither did he. But I would venture that most golfers would disagree with this sentiment, idealistic as it is. Have you heard golfers talk about the clowns they get grouped up with out there?19
⛳ Now what kind of hypocrite am I, dumping on golf generally and Waste Management specifically as a drunken sleazefest while tuning into the very same tournament from home?
Please, lemme know your theories:
Is this a vice? My parents used to scold me for watching pro wrestling, but I never felt as morally and ethically confused/compromised watching that as I have watching golf.20
There’s something truly satisfying watching the balletic movements. Is it truly the old biddy’s boring disease? Suburb Syndrome? Is it the pandemic? Has COVID addled my brain? Perhaps. In 2023, Full Swing came out and filled the void that Bravo left behind in my television watching. (The whole Sandoval/Ariana drama was like an overdose, I went cold turkey.) I recognized the fellas, I know how these golfmen love their drama and gossip, and there was that same voyeurism and critique of the monied in a way not too far off from the Real Housewives.
Is it ancestral? My forefathers on the other side of the veil calling through my blood for me to watch, to share in this ancient game with them? Is this a product of familial estrangement? The ghost I haven’t given up yet? My honey watches, but that doesn’t mean I have to. But I have. I have even looked forward to it. idk anymore, but. I HAVE WATCHED ALONE. Well, if by “alone” I mean with my cat who just so happens to loves the ambient tourney sounds for his nappings…
I have no good, clear answer, just one big compelling mélange, or onion. Mélange onion, now that’s a great fake recipe name.
As a hypocrite living in this world, I know there is no ethical consumption. At the same time, there are some prices I’m not willing to pay. Truths I’m not willing to look past. Experiences and groups and privilege I’m glad to be excluded from or reject. Topics, like pro golf, I want to scrutinize.
What can I say? Like my grandma, I’m a firebug.
So here we are, with all this knowledge What am I watching for?
First of all, power dynamics and protest. As we’ve established, the golf course is a political site, a geopolitical site, and the people are at the gates.
Recently, our good Scot neighbors, friends, and family have been decorating Trump’s Turnberry golf course, reminding the Dontator that, among other things (like Thee Red Flag of his ghastly close association/human trafficking business rivalry with Jeffrey Epstein), Gaza is not for sale. Like many golfers I personally know, Trump cares more about the damage to his property than his damage to the people.
“‘Scotland is already great.’ Protesters troll Trump on his golfing trip” NPR | July 26, 2025
“Trump labels pro-Palestine protesters accused of vandalising Turnberry as ‘terrorists’” - The Guardian | March 31, 2025
“The families of 9/11 victims and survivors held a news conference on Thursday to protest Saudi-funded LIV Golf Series at the Trump National Doral Golf Club.” WPLG Local 10 News | October 27, 2022
Is there anyone in the PGA today who doesn’t cave to fascism? Would the corporate sponsors and the nexus of avarice permit such a thing?
⛳ Last year’s golf season ended on a sour note with the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in New York. It’s a tribal event where Team USA and Team Europe face off every other year. In 2025, Team Europe beat Team USA on the latter’s home turf and well deserved, if you ask me.
Trump was there, the first sitting president to ever attend a Ryder Cup, and the place was surging with pigs, adding to the chaos. He was all over the thing, shaking hands with U.S. captain Keegan Bradley at the first hole, drawing cheers from the fans in attendance. A fittingly gross start.
Then the tournament began and the American fans went on to embarrass themselves with hostile taunting and jingoistic jeers. Sky News called it “the most abusive Ryder Cup in almost a century of matches.” Fans were insulting the European golfers’ families and spewing homophobic slurs at them, and to top it off, actively interfering with play. Justin Thomas, world number 12, was distracted by taking a page out of Payne Stewart’s book trying to get the Americans to pipe down so his Team Europe opponents could get off a shot. The Guardian and The Telegraph’s Oliver Brown referred to the Americans’ behavior as a reflection of Trump.
Rory McIlroy in particular, world number 2 golfer and Northern Irishman, was fuming—the fans reserved their strongest abuse for him, even the emcee chanted “FUCK YOU, RORY!”, and then some American rowdies threw a drink at his wife.
Keegan Bradley made sure to take up for it, though, calling the fans’ behavior passionate. He’s 18th in the world ranking, somehow, though I always forget that when I watch him play. Meh. He was honored that Trump wanted him to pick himself as a playing captain, not done since Arnold Palmer in 1963. Had his leadership been stronger, the fans may have been distracted by Team USA’s golf prowess enough to quit hating so hard. Captain Keeg certainly earned this loss.
Next year, the Ryder Cup will be at Adare Manor in County Limerick, Ireland. If I were them ugly Americans, I’d be watching my step. Folks around the world are weary, and both patience and tolerance are finite. Just ask J.D. Vance, currently competing in the brown-nosing, shit-heel-boot-licking, couch-fucking triathlon at Milan Cortina. Not for any medals, just for the love of the game.
So that was the sour taste left in pro golf’s mouth at the end of last season. Distinctly American ugliness and boorishness and hateration, which has been steadily growing into the new normal over the past, oh, 7+ years or so, coinciding with a certain dictator’s dictatorship. And as much as the golf elitists doth protest this isn’t us, we aren’t like this, we’re classy! Not when you lay down with these fleabags. That fantasy is over.
From day one I was rooting for Team USA to lose and before day one was done, I had tuned out. In the spirit of the American fans’ vulgarity I say, that shit was so disgusting it was unwatchable. The visceral tension swept through my body watching golfworld go gaga for a fucking fascist, acting like this shit was all great, much less normal.
I look upon the Royal and Ancient game as being a powerful game, as being a powerful force that influences the best things in humanity… I trust that the effect of this match will be to influence a cordial, friendly and peaceful feeling throughout the whole civilised world.
— SAMUEL RYDER, founder of the Ryder Cup
I was done. Until the foul stench of Waste Management emanated from its winter hibernation last weekend. They got my ass with morbid curiosity. From the shitshow of the Ryder Cup into the landfill of Waste Management, what fresh hell would emerge? Could it get sleazier?
Rory didn’t play Waste Management this year, but he is currently in the news for being mentioned in the Epstein files. Apparently, Jeffrey Epstein’s pilot, Larry Visoski, mocked Rory to Epstein’s accountant, Rick Kahn, over email for overpaying on a private plane.
Global elite problems.
For a world number 2, Rory’s struggles persist. He was a prominent loyalist to the PGA during the golf civil war (even, allegedly, getting into marriage trouble along the way), only for Commissioner Jay Monahan to turn around and merge with LIV. He finally won the Masters last year (after almost blowing it in a playoff with the veteran Justin Rose who was killing it) and got his grand slam.21 I say “finally” because that was the discourse at the time. Rory’s an excellent golfer and the talk was that he had to win the Masters and “get his” grand slam, otherwise, was he really that good? It was so annoying.
As far as public evidence of his politics, Rory’s something of a flip-flopper. He’s one of the few golfers who has criticized Trump, but that didn’t last long before they became golfing buddies. He’s also said he thinks Elon Musk is “the smartest man in the world.” Barf! These are some of Rory’s sponsors.
Brooks Koepka, the PGA prodigal son, did play but missed the cut. He’s back from LIV, where he defected for more money after saying PGA golfers who went to LIV were sell-outs. His 2023 PGA Championship win lended perceived legitimacy to LIV, the first LIV golfer to win a major. Following his wife Jena’s miscarriage, Koepka returned to the PGA, but he had to pay a pretty penny for his privilege: he’s ineligible for PGA Tour equity bonuses until 2030, and has to make a $5 million charitable donation at the PGA Tour’s request. Here’s a list of Koepka’s sponsors.
The Justins didn’t play the dumpster this year: Justin Thomas is rehabbing from disc surgery. I wonder if he’s also seeing a sports psychologist? I hope so. He’s currently world-12 golfer, but when I watch him it always seems like he’s fighting for his life. Justin Rose, fresh off his win at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines where he broke Tiger’s 72-hole scoring record AND IS WORLD NUMBER 3, THANKYOUVERYMUCH, doesn’t play the People’s Open. Chic.
My Irish grandfathers may be spinning in the earth over my attention to this English golfer born in South Africa.22 Traitor! But I’ve been watching Justin Rose play for like 20 years and there’s something to that. He’s won a major (2013 U.S. Open) and a gold medal (2016 Rio de Janeiro). I appreciate that this veteran (a spry 40-something) takes his time out there and is killing these fools. I appreciate how he rejected LIV’s offers when others like Lee Westwood, Phil Mickelson, dusty boy Dustin Johnson, and Sergio Garcia didn’t, and his game has only gotten better since. Man plays the long game! During the pandemic, he helped create the Rose Ladies golf series to support women’s golf and over the years he’s championed many golf sustainability initiatives. Of course nowadaze, he’s investing in golf AI tools. 😵💫 Here are Rose’s sponsors.
Justin Rose got into it with none other than top-MAGA golfer, Bryson DeChambeau, at the Ryder Cup last fall. Even the caddies got in on the fight. DeChambeau’s rep has evolved over the year from golf’s mad scientist and math prodigy to golf’s MAGA jackhole. It’s unclear who he really is beneath the studied caricature he’s fashioned for himself—a troll, rather than a golfer. He’s very much a vibe match for WM. It was poetic, then, that he could not play Waste Management this year because he’s still with LIV. And apparently, he’s none too pleased with it over there these days. He’s an excellent heel (scripted and off-the-cuff) and a good little fascist for dear leader. BOO! HISS!
That leaves us with World #1 golfer, Scottie Scheffler. Mr. Golden Tee Himself couldn’t save Team USA from imploding at the Ryder Cup. Scheffler is a typically calm juggernaut of a player (if he’s within five of the leader, it’s probably game over for everyone else), who wants to focus on the game rather than the spectacle. The opposite of Bryson DeChambeau. He maintains his privacy and claims entitlement as to what he will and won’t speak about, hoping that his game will speak for him. Though, he is open about his Christianity and how his priorities revolve around glorifying god.
As top golfer, is that entitlement to distance tenable? He’s the face of golf, so he gets to caddie a lot of its baggage. And add more, it seems. At the Ryder Cup, he admitted that he and Trump talk on the phone after his wins and that he thinks Trump, “is kind of funny…,” and “That was one of the things I noticed a lot with the little bit of time I spent with him is [Trump] treats everybody the same and treats people with the utmost respect.”
What an absolute crock of shit. Cognitive dissonance! Enabling a predator! Not very Christian, rather inhumane, if you ask me. He spewed this shit back in September 2025. Would he say the same now? At a human level, I’d like to think not but I won’t hold my breath.
Scheffler’s no stranger to state violence either, even if it was relatively mild. On his way into Valhalla at the 2024 PGA Championship, he was forcibly arrested after some cops gave him conflicting instructions around an active accident scene, then one of the cops jumped on his car and later claimed that Scheffler was driving into him. Very typical cop behavior.
His game certainly suffered afterward, understandably so. All charges were dropped and afterward, he opted to appease and praise the cops. “Police officers have a difficult job and I hold them in high regard." I get appeasing the aggressor in the immediate aftermath, but time has borne out that Scottie’s comfortably aligned with the fascists. Here are his sponsors.
I know, it’s shooting fish in a barrel pointing out how easy-going pro golf is with fascism, how willing these golfers are to look past and be at home with pure, demonic evil. How willing they are to befriend it. But I think it bears highlighting and repeating. Mélange onion.
⛳ So how did it all end? Well, Hideki Matsuyama lost to Chris Gotterup in a playoff. Crowd noise and a security guy dropping a chair during his backswing caused him to launch the ball into the water. The people spoke, I guess.
Here’s the WM sponsor list. I wonder how many of these are current boycott targets? Until next time, Arizona.
Golf's ultimate moral instruction directs us to find within ourselves a pivotal center of enjoyment: relax into a rhythm that fits the hills and swales, and play the shot at hand -- not the last one, or the next one, but the one at your feet, in the poison ivy, where you put it.
— JOHN UPDIKE
19th Hole
We’re about two months out from Augusta. You may remember Augusta National as the home to The Masters, one of the four majors, the PGA Tour’s crown jewels. You might also remember its notoriously and grotesquely racist and misogynist history. link, link 2, link zoo. Augusta opened for play in 1932.
1990 first Black member admitted. Previously, all members were white men and all the caddies were Black men. Lee Elder was the first Black man to play the Masters at Augusta in 1975.
2012 first female members admitted. They were allowed to compete on the course in 2019 in the final round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur tournament.
Even Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon couldn’t get their buddy a membership to the ultra-exclusive Augusta.
To be clear, it wasn’t until 1961 that the PGA of America removed its “Caucasian-only clause” from the bylaws so that all players could participate in the tournaments. Thank you to heavyweight champion boxer Joe Louis for helping kick the PGA into gear towards integration.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. This week is the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the first signature PGA event of the year. Pebble Beach is a perennial favorite venue for golf’s faithful and according to LINKS Magazine, they are the seventh-most eco-friendly course in the country. Rory will be returning to play with great hullabaloo, along with celebrity guest stars like Travis Kelce, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), and Condoleezza Rice. Barf!
We made it back to the clubhouse!
Thank you for taking this sidewinding detour with me that was about as long as a round of golf. Please have a lemonade, careful of the wasps.
As a present for your companionship, dear reader, please enjoy the above photograph of my peetyboy Jupiter, our sweet orange who will YOWL LIKE THE DICKENS if he cannot lay up on that sofa and rest with the tournament on the set.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go make falafel and take a hot shower.
Stay wavy, stay curious, neighbor
Your very own foolbard,
Kate
post script
At least with pro wrestling, there’s no highfalutin pretension or claim to the moral high ground. Too, pro wrestlers put their bodies on the line with much higher stakes, if you ask me. Plus, you probably won’t hear this out on the tour or the course—
[video courtesy @MPHproject on twitter]
Though, the censors remain hard at work to appease dear leader and the shareholders. But they can’t stop all of us.
Abolish ICE. Free Palestine. Courage or die.
acknowledgements
Thank you to my honey for your support, your love, your generosity of spirit, and your knowledgeable conversation during the crafting of this piece and of my barderie.
Disclaimers: 1) In this essay, I am limiting my focus to mens’ professional golf and general golf culture. 2) I use 0% generative AI in my writing. I do use emdashes, I do use the rule of three, I do use semicolons and other grammatical and rhetorical devices that I have been using for decades, long before any LLM crossed my path, and I will keep using them so long as I like. Thank you.
Legend has it that Grandpa Joe was a great golfer, the best of all of them. He died before I was born, a remote and familiar figure to me kinda like Cary Grant—smiling, charming, a versatile leading man, alas, 2D. He was an artist who served, among other things, as an army scout during WWII, sneaking behind Nazi lines to gather intelligence. Great Uncle Bob died on the course, struck by lightning. A true golfer’s death. I’ll die on that course! Grandpa Fred Rocco was a prolific golfer, he’d go anywhere the greens fee was right. A carouser and a wanderer, he gave money he didn’t have to waitresses at the clubhouse, hoping for sweet attention. My dad would slip the gals money to hide the cookies from him before the end. Diabetes and such. He was known for his tantrums on the course, his excellent tall tales, a shart or two, sleep-driving, and, well, see footnote 3. Grandpa Ron was a ranger. Uncle TJ is reportedly the most naturally talented golfer of the living, but his impatience and his temper get in the way. Men are premier gossips, especially on the course, and he is no exception. I’ve been told he and my dad spent lots of time running their mouths about me while I was pregnant out on the course to anyone who would listen.
It was especially fun watching with Grandpa Fred, who shouted at the teevee all to be damned. We shared a love of yelling at the teevee and of delicious food. Unfortunately, he nastied away, embittered, hatefully scapegoating others for his failures he couldn’t stomach. He was good enough to set an example for us to reject.
Shame on me for piling on Phil Mickelson, a man still recovering from his gambling addiction. Must be even rougher nowadaze, considering the predictions market is gobbling us all up. But I gotta be real, I’ve always enjoyed rooting against Phil Mickelson.
Some of our best fights were about Malcolm X and whether the Civil War was about enslavement or states rights. Ask him about it. That Boomer will show his pale, bony ass quick!
Fortunately, we’re long estranged—all for the best—and fortunately I’ve been in therapy for some time. Part of my inner child work covers growing up fast and my compulsion to speak truth to power (aka the grown ups) with a violent anger.
There’s an emotional poverty that afflicts members of my family—when someone shares a like for one of their likes or loves, they feel stolen from, or that it’s ruined.
My dad’s other great loves and passions include my mother, his career, and music. My dad’s a musician, a guitarist and a songwriter. I hope he’s still playing and I hope his art is still bringing him joy.
Oooh, an essay on the drag, homoeroticism, and erotic powers of golf and professional wrestling…???
the golf bible, aka Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz published in 1960, is all about visualization and transcending self image. I have read this book several times, not necessarily for golf but on a recommendation to improve my attunement to my self image.
To be clear, the only times my dad ever took me out to the course was 1) to the range after I begged, and 2) a family golf outing where I got horrific sunburn (I’m talking ear blisters) and scant patience or tutoring from him. I think I held the club for like 10 minutes before he took over and used my turns to scramble.
Lawn maintenance was another of my father’s favorite pastimes. He went from confirmed bachelor musician living by his wits in the ‘70s, not giving a hoot about grass beyond smoking it, to ‘90s dad-homeowner obsessed with the correct proportions of lawn care chemicals, cross-cutting, and taming any and all traces of Mother Nature’s wildness on his property. A Boomer man through and through.
My sensory experience of golf is different from Jay Griffiths’ in Wild. I know golf courses generally guzzle up water we can’t afford (particularly in the era of AI data centers), leach cancer into the soil, take away valuable land from housing. That said and for full disclosure, the courses I’ve played are rife with hawks and herons, foxes, all manner of critters and bugs, native plantings, woods, and natural water basins for floodwater. Gaea is there and in force, regardless of groundskeeper intention. Here’s Golf Wiki with an article about milkweed.
the jokesmith famous for his comic poetry and witty eviscerations of the absurd British aristocracy, his Berlin broadcasts where he was reviled as a traitor and Nazi collaborator, and for ultimately getting a knighthood and a memorial stone at Westminster Abbey—officially commemorated, honoured, captured? by the very aristocracy he satirized.
As you can see, the Brits had their effect on me. Back in my ‘90s childhood, the grown-ups were still in Beatlemania, still watching Fawlty Towers and Keeping Up Appearances, while Cool Britannia had me hook, line, and sinker. I still tear up watching Natasha Richardson in The Parent Trap.
In the writing of this essay, I learned that Charles Barkley was considered as a LIV commentator. I would love to hear Charles commentate on golf, but I was disappointed (fwiw) to read that he bridled at LIV’s “blood money” allegations, saying, “I told [Norman], ‘Listen, they are making up words, like blood money and sportswashing.’ I said, ‘We have all taken blood money, and we all have sportswashed something, so I don’t like those words, to be honest with you.’ … If you are in pro sports, you are taking some type of money from not a great cause.”
Especially if you get grouped with a Boomer. With rare exception, in this eventuality it is wise to pack it up and head for the hills.
To be clear, I did quit watching WWE years ago because I felt morally disgusted with its business practices and personnel (Vince McMahon, the McMahon Family, the union-busting, the abusive culture, the complete lack of safety for performers, I could go on). Otherwise, I adore the art of professional wrestling.
—the sixth player to win the Masters, U.S. Open, Thee Open (fka the British Open), and the PGA Championship. The other grand slam golfers are: Tiger Woods (ofc), The Golden Bear Jack Nicklaus, my grandma’s favorite Gary Player, Ben Hogan, and Gene Sarazen.
Contae Chiarraí agus Contae Chorcaí