Golfing News & Blog Articles

The Charlotte Observers Michael Gordon with the bizarre story of San Diego Padre Wil Myers getting sued by Charlotte’s Carmel Country Club and then countersuing in what can only be called the First World at its Finest.

The short version: Myers joined the club, the pandemic hit and tee times became tough to get. Hardly a news story to any golfer. But the story gets strange given that Myers will make $22.5 million next year and is being sued for non-payment after resigning due to the lack of availability.

According to Myers’ counter-claim, all of this came as an unpleasant surprise. He said he joined the club after being assured that there were ample tee times available on both of Carmel’s courses. Instead, according to his court filing, Myers “found it almost impossible to find a tee time and frequently could not even use the driving range.” He and Margaret resigned their membership in December, telling the club that they had been duped into paying for golf privileges that they couldn’t enjoy. The club responded by citing the provisions of the Myerses’ membership contract and billing them for the $64,000 initiation balance, with a due date of Dec. 31, 2020, and some $785 in outstanding golf shop purchases and overdue charges. Carmel sued last March.

Myers fired back in June, claiming in his countersuit that he and his wife had been victimized by Carmel’s “knowing misrepresentations and omissions” which his complaint described as “immoral, unethical and unscrupulous.”

That seems a tad excessive.

No major surprises on the 2022 broadcast schedule that commences a new television contract and with it, hopefully noticeable improvements on the streaming side now that a majority of production is to be under one umbrella. CBS has 20 events to NBC’s 12, with ESPN+ taking over from NBC Sports.

Details remain at a premium but we did get confirmation of four daily streams fed to ESPN+ starting with the American Express in La Quinta.

For Immediate Release:

PGA TOUR announces broadcast schedule for media partners NBC Sports, CBS Sports and ESPN+ for 2022

CBS Sports to feature 20 events and kicks off 2022 network coverage with the Farmers Insurance Open featuring the first scheduled Saturday finish on the PGA TOUR since 1996

David A. Fahrenthold, Jonathan O'Connell, Josh Dawsey and Shayna Jacobs report that New York state Attorney General Letitia James is considering a lawsuit or convening a grand jury to hold the Trump Organization accountable for wildly different property valuations.

Because Donald Trump was a resident of New York, James is able to investigate the valuation of Trump National Los Angeles, a.k.a. the-better-than-Pebble Beach-because-it’s-on-an-ocean course Trump purchased. And the shaky cliffs of the old Ocean Trails just keep on causing headaches, this time with regard to homesites overlooking the Palos Verdes course.

In 2012, Trump’s “Statement of Financial Condition”— a document that is typically used to demonstrate value to potential lenders — said the course had “52 home sites available for sale,” indicating a potential source of future cash flow.

At the time, however, the club had only received approvals for 36 home sites and six of them had already been sold, according to public records.

In May — after Reuters published an article on the club’s fluctuating valuations — investigators from James’s office contacted the city of Rancho Palos Verdes. They asked for hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, covering the history of the club’s efforts to get home lots approved, according to an email exchange released by the city’s lawyers.

Our deepest sympathies to Josh Sens for having to take out the 8 a.m. Golf news litterings with this “strategic alliance” “news” of 86-year-old Gary Player joining with Jack Nicklaus’s firm for design resource assistance.

Essentially the Nicklaus plan factory will churn out whatever stuff Player is paid slap his name to. Sens writes:

Under the arrangement, Player will enlist the resources of Nicklaus Design to help him launch his reborn Gary Player Design business. (Nicklaus Design is an affiliate of GOLF.com’s parent company, 8AM Golf.) That business has been largely inactive over the past two years, held up by a legal dispute between Player and a company run by one of his sons.

Family.

With that dispute now behind him, Player said he was eager to get back to designing and building courses around the world, and that the relationship with Nicklaus Design would be key as his own design company starts afresh.