Cut Line: Why shouldn’t players be paid to play the Ryder Cup?

In this week’s edition, we scream into the void and unpack both sides of the pay-to-play Ryder Cup debate and marvel at the transformational popularity Caitlin Clark brought to golf.

Made Cut

The Caitlin Effect. It’s not often the golf world pivots on a random Wednesday to an LPGA Tour pro-am, but then it’s not often a generational talent brings her stardom to another stage.

WNBA star Caitlin Clark was the highlight of Wednesday’s pro-am at The Annika, the LPGA’s penultimate event, and while the league’s Rookie of the Year is not the first singular athlete to turn to golf, her presence at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Florida, felt bigger.

“I think it’s awesome,” tournament host Annika Sorenstam told GolfDigest.com. “Yeah, I love all the young girls with the signs. Nothing we would really see on a normal Wednesday. It’s just great how it brings attention to the tournament.”

Sorenstam played the second nine with Clark, who sports a self-estimated 16 handicap, after world No. 1 Nelly Korda was with her on the front. The entire round felt like an epiphany.

Both Korda and Sorenstam are unrivaled talents in their sport but have a tendency to shy away from the spotlight, unlike Clark who proved Wednesday she is the spotlight regardless of the sport.

Math. It turns out some of the small print in the proposed plan to cut fields sizes and the number of fully exempt PGA Tour members might help the rank-and-file, thanks to some serious math and Maverick McNealy.

Part of the plan, which will be voted on by the policy board Monday, will help level the playing field for players who are not qualified for the circuit’s signature events. The new formula – which was not surprisingly flushed out by McNealy, a Stanford graduate with a degree in management science and engineering – would more accurately award FedExCup points for middle-of-the-pack finishes based on Data Golf’s true strokes gain.

“It was something a lot of guys pointed out even before the season started that it seemed like those signature events were getting too many points relative to regular Tour events,” McNealy said on “Golf Today” this week. “About halfway through the year it felt like those guys playing in those signature events were getting such a big advantage and I wanted to figure out how. Data Golf does a really good job of measuring how guys play. … From positions 8 to 30^th-ish, the signature events were giving out too many points for the quality of play.”

This is probably not the first time McNealy has put his degree to good use but it’s the first time his fellow Tour players are glad he did.

Made Cut-Did Not Finish (MDF)

Pay to play. Full disclosure, this is a bit of a contrarian take and will likely not age well but given the state of the professional game it would be naïve to not acknowledge the painfully obvious facts that come with player empowerment.

Rory McIlroy said Thursday he would pay to appear in the Ryder Cup in the wake of a recent report that the PGA of America could compensate U.S. players.

According to multiple reports, the PGA of America is poised to start paying players to participate in the Ryder Cup, a move that has many, including Rory McIlroy, cringing at the unabashed greed.

“I personally would pay for the privilege to play on the Ryder Cup,” McIlroy told BBC Sport this week in Dubai. “The two purest forms of competition in our game right now are the Ryder Cup and the Olympics, and it’s partly because of that, the purity of no money being involved.”

While the Northern Irishman is almost always the voice of reason and arguably the best version of a moral compass the professional game has, on this topic the altruism misses the simple truth that professional athletes are not charities.

The idea that players should dedicate a week of their lives to the U.S. Ryder Cup pro bono is a romantic concept that ignores the economics of the matches — remember, the PGA charged $750 for a one-day ticket to next year’s matches at Bethpage. The idea that the athletes — the labor — shouldn’t expect some slice of that pie is archaic to the extreme.

In fact, the bigger issue seems to be the going rate for a potential U.S. Ryder Cup player, which is set at $400,000 according to a report in The Telegraph. For context, a player would make more than that with an 11^th-place tie at one of the Tour’s signature events.

You can be offended by the brazen greed of it all but the PGA is probably getting a discount.

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In the spirit of equal time, Golf Channel colleague Brandel Chamblee posted an insightful response to the Ryder Cup payment story (please check the entire post) and his points are all predictably valid, but that doesn’t change the economics or politics of the moment.

Missed Cut

Drama. It’s a losing proposition to throw stones across the Atlantic Ocean when it comes to the manufactured drama of a season-long race, but at least the Tour’s convoluted playoff finale allows for a measure of drama.

This week’s DP World Tour finale in Dubai began with Rory McIlroy in a commanding lead in the season-long points race, more than 1,500 points ahead of No. 2 on the list, Thriston Lawrence.

The lead is so insurmountable that even if Lawrence wins the DP World Tour Championship — he’s 34^th and nine shots off the lead through two rounds — McIlroy could secure the title with an uninspired 11^th-place finish or better (he’s currently tied for second place).

It would be McIlroy’s sixth season title, which would move him to second on the all-time list behind Colin Montgomerie, which is cool, but that dominant performance leaves little room for drama.