PGA Tour chaos, DP World Tour slowness, proposed super leagues - 'time to move on from silly season'

PGA Tour professional Joel Dahmen immersed himself in the boisterous atmosphere of the 16th at TPC Scottsdale

Is this the week golf grows up and leaves behind its silly season? Because that is certainly what it has felt like so far this year.

How else should we characterise a period when millions of dollars are being thrown at people who need it least and beer cans are aimlessly hurled from stands because, well, that is what you do when someone gets a hole-in-one?

There have been other moments of madness - the DP World Tour playing the final rounds of their two biggest tournaments of 2022 to date in pedestrian three balls for starters.

And last Sunday's PGA Tour climax in Phoenix was completed after the United States had switched over to the Super Bowl. Sometimes golf doesn't exactly help itself.

Only at the Waste Management Phoenix Open would a hole-in-one require a mass clean-up operation. That is what was needed after Carlos Ortiz aced the grandstand par-three 16th at TPC Scottsdale.

The hole is surrounded by stands and the celebrating Mexican admitted he was "nailed pretty hard with a beer can" after his tee shot dropped into the hole as he neared the end of his final round.

This Arizona event has built its own party identity. Many of the golfers play up to the boisterous atmosphere and it creates a unique golfing spectacle.

But when players are struck by flying cans and bottles, things are probably overstepping an acceptable mark in a game like golf. Indeed, imagine the furore in any other sport if crowds behaved that way en masse.

Around 20,000 fans surround the par-three 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale and regularly lob beer on the green

This was the same tournament that yielded an extraordinary outburst against the rules by Charley Hoffman, who was aggrieved when his ball rolled back into a penalty area after he had placed it having already taken a one-stroke penalty.

Yes, he was extremely unlucky but to launch a social media attack on the rule making United States Golf Association, calling them "amateurs running pro events", was over the top.

Then again, he is not alone in thinking that pro golfers and only pro golfers know best. It is a sentiment muttered in tour locker rooms across the globe.

How much money super leagues are throwing at them is another hot topic in those environs and has been the issue that has dominated the golfing year so far.

Hoffman actually suggested his rules experience was among reasons why players might be attracted to a proposed Saudi-funded project that is being fronted by Greg Norman.

Later the 45-year-old American admitted he threw in that line to make sure his gripes received media attention. I mean, seriously?

This comes after Phil Mickelson spoke of the "obnoxious greed" of the PGA Tour for denying pro golfers media rights that underpin the television deals that have handsomely financed the 51-year-old's extraordinarily lucrative career.

Any objective analysis would surely conclude Mickelson, (career earnings $97m, pension pot roughly $200m) and Hoffman ($32m earnings from a career with one week in world's top 20) have done very nicely from hitting a ball round a field.

Yet these two Americans are far from alone in feeling that they are hard done by and deserving of more money for their talents. The money men from Saudi Arabia, who have been accused of 'sportswashing' sense an opportunity, have pots of money and are filling a trough for willing snouts.

But maybe, now, sanity is about to break out and golf will takeover.

Perhaps Scottie Scheffler's victory in Arizona last Sunday, ending the anomaly of a Ryder Cup winning top-20 player without a PGA Tour triumph, is a sign that more sensible times have finally arrived.

It is just a shame that the Tour could not come up with a schedule to allow Scheffler's play-off with Patrick Cantlay to be completed before vast swathes of the nation turned over to watch the Los Angeles Rams pip the Cincinnati Bengals in California.

And how many people switched away earlier in the year when Thomas Pieters and Viktor Hovland won their respective titles in Abu Dhabi and Dubai?

Instead of cutting the field accordingly, the final rounds needed to be played in three balls. The drama unfolds too slowly in this format and on both occasions golf failed to show itself in its best light.

That is why disrupters such as the Saudi Super Golf League and the vaunted but currently quiet Premier Golf League see a need and opportunity to shake the status quo.

But neither project can compete with what is on offer in tinsel-town this week, with an all-star cast for the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Club. It includes all of the world's top-10 players and 16 of the leading 20 in the rankings.

The event is promoted by Tiger Woods' Foundation and is played on a historic, dramatic Los Angeles golf course that gives players a fine canvas upon which to demonstrate their skills.

There will be no need for boozed-up crowds to consume excessive alcohol and chuck cans and bottles all over the place. This is a tournament for the connoisseur. It is one to be savoured.

And about time too.