Category: Sports

Yot would be unwise to place blind faith in the comments of a judge during a commercial dispute. In the case of LIV Golf and associated chaos, a sporting resolution chamber in the UK placed a stay on suspensions of DP World, formerly European, Tour golfers long before this week’s dramatic events in a courtroom in California. Interpretations of the law, however, are rarely an exact science.

In contrast to the UK, Judge Beth Labson Freeman determined the PGA Tour was well within its rights to exclude Matt Jones, Talor Gooch and Hudson Swafford from a playoff berth they had earned via on-course pursuits because it was undermined by an off-course swag grab “If LIV Golf is elite golf’s future, what do the players care about the dust-collecting trophies of a bygone era?” asked Freeman in her written reasoning of her. It felt a valid point.

In an open letter to Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour’s commissioner, the LIV chief, Greg Norman, once stated: “You can’t ban players from playing golf.” Norman’s sentiment was equally clear during correspondence with Sergio García. “They cannot ban you for one day let alone life,” said Norman. “It is a shallow threat.” The entry list for this week’s St Jude in Memphis says otherwise. “I said to some of the guys personally, I think they’ve been brainwashed by the way they feel so adamant that they’re going to be back out on the PGA Tour,” said Billy Horschel, the world No 15. In court , Judge Freeman had stated: “These LIV contracts lock up players up in a way the PGA Tour never imagined. They are so restrictive.” So much for Norman’s insistence of bringing “free agency”.

No sooner had the LIV trio been denied a tee time in Tennessee than Rory McIlroy touched on an intriguing aspect of the ongoing civil war. “I certainly have a little more respect for the guys who haven’t put their names to the lawsuit,” said the Northern Irishman.

The broader, antitrust case to which McIlroy referred involves Jones, Gooch and Swafford plus Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Ian Poulter, Peter Uilhein, Jason Kokrak, Pat Perez and Abraham Ancer. Carlos Ortiz’s name was removed from the claim in recent days.

The distinction – and it is necessary – between LIV golfers and their attitudes is an important one. That is absolutely the case in the minds of McIlroy and others, who do not take kindly to potential harm, monetary and reputational, being affected on the PGA Tour by a group who at least gave the impression of riding off into a superior world.

This week, Richard Bland – an early LIV convert – is competing in the $1.5m World Invitational at Galgorm Castle on the DP World Tour. Nothing stops Bland from doing this – just as Poulter or Henrik Stenson cannot be prevented from competing in the Czech Masters and PGA Championship at Wentworth – but it is a terrible look. And for what? Dust-collecting trophies?

Maybe the Ryder Cup falls into that category. The main court battle between Mickelson et al and the PGA Tour is not likely to begin until next autumn which will rule DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed and Brooks Koepka out of the meeting with Europe in Rome barring exceptional performances in the majors to earn ranking points needed for qualification or unlikely captain’s picks. Johnson, Reed and Koepka have been nowhere near litigation, which lends itself to the LIV theory, for them, really is only about money rather than a fresh professional domain. DeChambeau has made a great play of being the best he can be yet here he is, all-but excluded from a team competition where legends are created.

Garcia ruled out legal challenges the moment he joined LIV. The Spaniard awaits the exact lie of the land regarding European Ryder Cup qualification before resigning or retaining membership of the DP World Tour. Poulter is involved in litigation against tours on both sides of the Atlantic. Stenson threw his hands up and cried foul having been removed as Europe’s Ryder Cup captain. Louis Oosthuizen, Martin Kaymer and a batch of others could have entered last month’s Scottish Open after the stay against a ban was issued. Instead, they stayed well clear. Unlike Norman and Mickelson, Oosthuizen – who considered retirement before LIV came calling – appeared for the past champions’ celebrations at the Open minus any fuss at all.

Cameron Smith’s glory at St Andrews means he can defect to LIV while safe in the knowledge of major exemptions for the foreseeable future. Smith’s insistence this week that he will compete in this year’s President’s Cup was curious given he will be banned from that event, presided over by the PGA Tour, if he tees up in the LIV tournament in Boston early next month.

Golf is presently the most volatile of all sports. Judge Freeman made plain golfers were handsomely rewarded for following the LIV path. A tacky, tawdry, non-competitive sportswashing scene is hardly appealing. It would be a mistake, however, to assume every golfer has adopted the same approach while entering it.

Against a backdrop of successive eras of champions, the past few years have been a fallow season for Australian men’s surfing. For decades they were a dominant force on the World Surf League and its predecessor competitions. The reign of Mark Richards, known simply as MR, in the early 1980s led into Tom Carroll’s two world titles. A golden era followed in the 1990s and early 2000s, when Mark Occhilupo, Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson went head-to-head with American superstars Kelly Slater and Andy Irons.

But since Fanning won his third and final world title in 2013, no Australian man has ended the season atop the rankings. It has been an era of Brazilians and Hawaiians. Australians have still been present – ​​Julian Wilson placed third in 2017 and second in 2018, while Owen Wright has been a consistent presence and secured bronze at last year’s Olympics. But in 2019 only Wright flew the Australian flag in the year-end top 10, in ninth. Last year Morgan Cibilic was the lone Australian to qualify for the WSL finals, a new format to determine the title involving the top five ranked surfers (Cibilic qualified fifth and did not progress beyond the opening round).

In 2022, the Australians are back with a bang. A new golden era of Australian men’s surfing beckons.

As the competition window for the final event of the regular season opened this week at the Tahiti Pro, four Australians sit within the top 10. Connor O’Leary and Callum Robson are ninth and seventh respectively, while Ethan Ewing is third and Jack Robinson in second place. Three members of this quartet are under 24.

Robinson, a prodigy who took the surf world by storm in his early teenage years, has been the form surfer for much of the year. Across the past six events, Robinson has won two (his home competition at Margaret River and the G-Land Pro in Indonesia), finished runner-up at the most-recent (at J-Bay in South Africa), and reached the semi -final, quarter-final and third round respectively in the other three. Only Brazil’s Filipe Toledo sits above Robinson in the rankings.

The West Australian is renowned for his effortless tube-riding; he has been conquering waves of consequence since childhood. Robinson is the strong favorite for the Tahiti Pro, held at the punishing Teahupo’o break, which on its day is one of the gnarliest waves in the world (and perhaps the heaviest location on the WSL calendar).

But most impressive about Robinson’s sophomore season on tour has been his performances on smaller waves. Although Robinson’s aerial game has always been strong, the surfer has elevated his punishing turns on the blank canvases of the likes of J-Bay. It is this improvement, more so than his guile de él in the heart of a barrel, that will surely see him become Australia’s next world champion – either at the forthcoming WSL finals in Trestles, California in September or in the years ahead.

Even in-form Robinson was unable to stop compatriot Ewing, a 23-year-old from North Stradbroke, in the recent J-Bay final. Ewing comes from surfing royalty; his late mother, Helen Ewing, won at Bells Beach in 1983. But the pressure of expectations and a series of injuries have hampered his rise from him. There was no doubting Ewing’s raw talent from him, though. For those paying close attention, it was evident that the Queenslander would join the world’s best before too long.

In a recent New Yorker profile of Kai Lenny, one of the best big wave surfers in the world, Lenny said: “I want to surf exactly like Ethan Ewing.” The magazine added: “Ewing was not one of the top [Championship Tour] names. He had never won a CT contest. But Kai was right. Nobody at Sunset [a wave in Hawaii] looked better.”

That long-awaited first WSL win came last month. After making three semi-finals during the season, Ewing finally won through to the J-Bay final. Despite Robinson opening with an 8.83 wave, Ewing kept his nerve to post a 9.13. Combined with a strong second-best wave, Ewing held off the world No 2. Australian v Australian at the sport’s top table.

Robson, meanwhile, has been busy juggling his successful rookie season with efforts to support his home community on the flood-hit NSW far-north coast. The flooding hit home for the 21-year-old; at one point he posted a photo of a floating shipping container bobbing near the roof of his family home from him. In addition to crowdfunding to support the community (raffling off a surf lesson with himself, among other prizes), Robson has been setting the WSL alight – finishing second at Bells and making the quarter-finals in El Salvador and Brazil.

There are no certainties in surfing, a sport dependent on the whims of the ocean and point scores delivered by mercurial judges. The difference between success and failure can be slender and unpredictable; a barrel that closes out to deny a perfect 10, a gravity-defying air that comes unstuck on landing. Plenty stands between this new crop of Australian surf stars and a WSL world title – not least current world No 1 Toledo. The Brazilian has himself never won the title and is eager to follow in the footsteps of compatriots Gabriel Medina, Adriano De Souza and Italo Ferreira (who among them have won five of the past seven WSL titles).

Yet all the signs are promising. It has been a fallow few WSL campaigns for Australian men (the women have had no such problems, winning three of the past five titles). Suddenly a new generation of Australian male surfers have arrived on the scene. They seem eager for a reversion to the mean: Australia as the dominant force in elite surfing.