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☆ PGA Tour and LIV Golf Agree to Alliance, Ending Golf’s Bitter Fight
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The PGA Tour, the dominant force in men’s professional golf for generations, and LIV Golf, which made its debut just last year and is backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in Saudi money, will together form an industry powerhouse that is expected to transform the sport, executives announced Tuesday. The rival circuits had spent the last year clashing in public, and the tentative agreement that emerged from secret negotiations blindsided virtually all of the world’s top players, agents and broadcasters. The deal would create a new company that would consolidate the PGA Tour’s prestige, television contracts and marketing muscle with Saudi money. The deal, coming when Saudi Arabia is increasingly looking to assert itself on the world stage as something besides one of the world’s largest oil producers, has implications beyond sports. The Saudi money will give the new organization greater clout, but it comes with the troubling association of the kingdom’s human rights record, its treatment of women and accusations that it was responsible for the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a leading critic.

Persons: LIV Golf, blindsided, Yasir al, Jamal Khashoggi Organizations: PGA, Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund Locations: Saudi, Saudi Arabia

After two years of sniping, lawsuits and ill will, the major men’s golf tours agreed to merge on Tuesday. The PGA Tour, which runs golf in North America; the PGA European Tour, which is known as the DP World Tour and holds events in much of the rest of the world; and the upstart LIV Tour agreed to merge their operations. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which spent billions to launch the LIV Tour, will invest in the new company, and the governor of that fund will become its chairman. The LIV Tour started last year and offered big-name players from the other tours huge sums to jump ship. Many players and officials of the PGA Tour were sharply critical of LIV, both for dividing the golf world and for associating with the Saudi government and its poor human rights record.

Persons: Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Cameron Smith, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, LIV, ” Organizations: PGA European, LIV, PGA Locations: North America, Saudi

PinnedThe PGA Tour and LIV Golf, the insurgent league bankrolled by billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, said on Tuesday that they had agreed to a merger, ending a bitter and costly fight for supremacy of men’s professional golf that had divided top players, everyday fans and corporate sponsors. Now, by merging with the PGA Tour, it has gained a foothold that guarantees it outsize influence in the game’s future. The PIF also will have right of first refusal on new investments in the merged tour, according to the statement announcing the merger. “Going forward, PIF will have the exclusive right to further invest in the new entity, including a right of first refusal on any capital that may be invested in the new entity, including into the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and DP World Tour.” The PGA Tour will appoint a majority of the board, the statement said, and hold a majority voting interest in the combined entity. In a memorandum to PGA Tour players on Tuesday, Monahan said the wealth fund would have a minority position in the new for-profit company that will control men’s golf.

Persons: LIV Golf, bankrolling LIV, “, PIF, LIV, Jay Monahan, we’ve, LIV . Monahan, Yasir al, Monahan, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, LIV signees, Graeme McDowell, “ It’s, ” Organizations: PGA, Premier League soccer, Public Investment Fund, PGA Tour, ”, Public Investment, U.S Locations: Saudi, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

☆ PGA and LIV Merger PGA Tour and LIV Golf Agree to Merger
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

PinnedThe PGA Tour and LIV Golf, the insurgent league bankrolled by billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, said Tuesday that they had agreed to a merger, ending a bitter fight for supremacy of men’s professional golf that had divided top players, everyday fans and corporate sponsors. The governor of the Saudi fund will become chairman of the joined organization. Monahan is expected to be the new group’s chief executive, with Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, installed as its chairman. The PGA Tour, long the dominant force in professional golf, retaliated by banning any players who joined the new tour from its events. But by midday Tuesday, golf’s era of high-dollar brinkmanship had ended, with promises of “a fair and objective process for any players” looking to return to good standing with the PGA Tour or its European counterpart.

Persons: LIV Golf, LIV, we’ve, ” Jay Monahan, LIV . Monahan, Yasir al, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson Organizations: PGA, Saudi, Public Investment Fund, PGA Tour, Public Investment Locations: Saudi

☆ Economic outlook looking less cloudy, says former Fed Vice Chair Alan Blinder
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailEconomic outlook looking less cloudy, says former Fed Vice Chair Alan BlinderAlan Blinder, former Fed Vice Chair, joins 'Closing Bell' to discuss the better-than-expected jobs report and the resilient job market and what it means for the Fed's next move.

Persons: Alan Blinder Alan Blinder

☆ Stanford Golf Star Rose Zhang Is Ready for Her Professional Debut
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Not long before Rose Zhang clutched a microphone on Tuesday, Michelle Wie West laughingly made an observation: Zhang might have logged more weeks as the world’s No. 1 amateur women’s golfer than Wie West spent as an amateur, period. It was an exaggeration — even though Wie West became a professional at 15 years old and Zhang spent more than 140 weeks in the top spot — but it also wryly underscored how Zhang’s rise in women’s golf is playing out differently from how other ascending stars built their careers. In Zhang, who will make her professional debut this week at the Mizuho Americas Open in Jersey City, N.J., women’s golf is getting the rare prodigy who has played for an American college. “So I wanted to see how I fared in college golf, and it turned out well.”

Persons: Rose Zhang clutched, Michelle Wie West laughingly, Zhang, Wie, you’re, ” Zhang, “ Organizations: Mizuho Locations: Jersey City, N.J

☆ Koepka Wins P.G.A. Championship, Vanquishing Demons and Boosting LIV
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

By the end of last year, he had a swelling hunch that his recovery was nearly done and that he could, finally, be relevant again. “He is back to being healthy,” said Cameron Smith, who won the British Open last summer and then joined LIV later in the year. Championships in recent decades, often evoking the rigors of the 2008 competition at Oakland Hills in Michigan. Of the 156 players who competed this past week, only 11 finished below par — a departure from 2013, when the P.G.A. Championship was contested at Oak Hill and 21 players finished in the red.

☆ Brooks Koepka Surges to the Lead at P.G.A. Championship
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-20 | by ( Alan Blinder | Desiree Rios | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Four years ago, less than a week before he won his second consecutive P.G.A. Championship, Brooks Koepka allowed the world inside his swaggering mind. “You figure about half of them won’t play well from there, so you’re down to about maybe 35,” he added. And now he is in the mix this weekend at the P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, where he fired a field-best four-under-par 66 on a rain-soaked Saturday, giving him a one-stroke lead over Corey Conners and Viktor Hovland with a round to play.

☆ Scheffler, Hovland and Conners Share the Lead at P.G.A. Championship
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

And when he walked off the course on Friday, his tournament score at one under par, he was positioned to contend at the P.G.A. He had figured, he said, that four under could win the tournament at an Oak Hill Country Club where the fairways seem to be awfully hard to find. “There are chances,” said Rose, the 2013 U.S. Open winner who only in February ended a four-year drought of PGA Tour victories. By nightfall, only nine men in the 156-player field were under par; the 2008 P.G.A. Championship was the last with fewer than 10 players below par after two rounds.

☆ Ferocious Oak Hill Daunts P.G.A. Championship Field, With More to Come
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Scottie Scheffler had, at least in the moment, a share of the P.G.A. Championship lead when he offered a foreboding prediction Thursday afternoon: Oak Hill Country Club, already playing to the point of menace in the first round, would only become more terrorizing. The winds are expected to bluster. And, for good measure, the East Course has been recently restored to bring back the diabolical, century-old wizardry of the architect Donald J. Ross. Rory McIlroy, the four-time major champion, hit two fairways all day as he dueled with crosswinds off the tees.

☆ How Oak Hill Was Returned to Its Roots
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Oak Hill Country Club, near Rochester, N.Y., has been a familiar stop for men’s professional golf for decades: Since 1956, it has hosted three U.S. Championship returns to Oak Hill on Thursday for the first time since 2013, the East Course will be different than it was for some of the elite tournaments it has hosted. In recent years, the club brought in Andrew Green to interpret and restore some of Donald J. Ross’s original design from the 1920s. Championship at Oak Hill, put it recently. In an interview this spring, though, Green said he had regarded the Oak Hill project as an opportunity to reemphasize Ross’s approach, which includes unorthodox shapes for greens.

☆ Meet the Pro Athlete Who Is Thrilled to Be in His 50s
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Just past a Dairy Queen near Houston last month, Steven Alker’s new status was aloft: His name and face were on a lamppost banner. Championship tee box as the man who surged from nearly-never-in-first to toast of the PGA Tour Champions, as the senior circuit is known. He is not exactly the betting favorite, not in a field largely headlined by men in their 20s and 30s. He knows he may not even make the cut and finish the tournament, where a victory would make Alker, 51, the oldest major champion in history. But Alker has been defying the clock that has often been the etiology of agony for professional athletes.

PITTSFORD, N.Y. — The Justice Department’s antitrust inquiry into men’s professional golf has included interviews with players, including the major tournament winners Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Sergio García, as the authorities examine whether the PGA Tour sought to manipulate the sport’s labor market. Although lawyers for the PGA Tour met with Justice Department officials in Washington this week, a timeline for the review’s completion — much less whether the government will try to force any changes in golf — is not clear. But the inquiry’s scope and persistence has deepened the turbulence in the sport, which has been grappling with the recent rise of LIV Golf, a league that used money from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to lure top players away from the PGA Tour. Eight people with knowledge of the Justice Department’s inquiry described its breadth on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was pending. The department declined to comment.

☆ After Mishap-Laden Masters, McIlroy Seeks a Sharper Swing and a Clearer Mind
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

PITTSFORD, N.Y. — About six weeks ago — that is, a missed Masters Tournament cut, a self-imposed hiatus and a tie for 47th at the Wells Fargo Championship ago — Rory McIlroy talked about pies. “It’s just putting all those ingredients in and setting the oven to the right temperature and letting it all sort of come to fruition.”This week’s P.G.A. But a victory or a strong showing would quiet the doubts that have arisen around McIlroy, who is No. 3 in the Official World Golf Ranking but perpetually shadowed by his failure to capture a major championship since 2014. Despite his membership at Oak Hill, McIlroy has been reluctant to declare some sort of home-course advantage since he, after all, lives in Florida.

☆ Jack Nicklaus Would Like a Word
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

If Oak Hill doesn’t play tougher this time around, should it stay in the mix for the majors? Oak Hill will play plenty tough. Oak Hill is not going to bend; it’s too good of a golf course to yield. Championship at Oak Hill in May will have a pretty tough crop of rough. When I got a good, tough golf course, that’s where the better players shined, and Oak Hill will shine.

☆ Saudi-Financed LIV Golf Expands Its Reach Into Washington
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Alan Blinder | Maggie Haberman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

LIV Golf, the league financed with billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and facing scrutiny over its motives and ambitions, has hired one of Washington’s most influential consulting conglomerates, whose co-founder works with a super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. The league, whose close links to former President Donald J. Trump have helped bring LIV both a greater spotlight and a storm of condemnation, said Friday that it had reached an agreement with the conglomerate, GP3 Partners, to promote “LIV Golf’s mission to modernize and supercharge” golf. Mr. Cox is among the GP3 consultants who will be working on the account, a person familiar with the arrangement said. Mr. Cox did not respond to a message seeking comment.

☆ Fmr. Fed Vice Chair Alan Blinder calls the debt ceiling a 'storm' Powell shrugged off
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailFmr. Fed Vice Chair Alan Blinder calls the debt ceiling a 'storm' Powell shrugged offFmr. CEA Chair Jason Furman and Fmr. Fed Vice Chair Alan Blinder, join 'Closing Bell: Overtime' to discuss their takeaways from the Fed meeting and their forecast for the economy.

ORLANDO, Florida, April 14 (Reuters) - Engineering a soft landing is hard. Blinder posits that the soft landing parameters of avoiding recession completely are too narrow. "To achieve another soft landing under these circumstances, the Fed will have to be skillful indeed," Blinder concludes. The Fed cut rates five months later and the rest is soft landing history. Of these 70 episodes, 41 ended with a hard landing and 29 with a soft landing.

☆ A New Twist for the Tradition-Bound Masters: The LIV Golf Era
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

AUGUSTA, Ga. — The mystery started in earnest last spring and lasted until autumn’s twilight. But Phil Mickelson — among the most famous frontmen for LIV Golf, the league bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — insists that he believed he would be allowed to play the 2023 Masters Tournament, which opens Thursday. Never mind any discomfort, or how on-course rivalries had transformed into long-distance furies tinged by politics, power, pride and money. No, Mickelson reasoned, tradition would prevail at Augusta National Golf Club, surely among sports’ safest wagers. “I wasn’t really worried,” said Mickelson, who spent the 2022 Masters in a self-imposed sporting exile after he effectively downplayed Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses.

Public Investment Fund LIV Golf Trump World Performance54 LIV Golfers PLUS 45 OTHERS CONSULTANTS LAWYERS McKinsey & Company PwC Public Investment Fund Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan White & Case M. Klein & Company Teneo Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Majed al-Sorour Newcastle United Aramco Golf Saudi Benjamin Quayle Yasir al-Rumayyan Ari Fleischer Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LIV Golf Performance54 Trump World Greg Norman Donald J. Trump Gary Davidson Jed Moore Eric Trump Jared Kushner LIV Golfers Cameron Smith Phil Mickelson Dustin Johnson PLUS 45 OTHERSLIV Golf has cleaved men’s professional golf like no other force since the 1960s. Some of the world’s top players, including Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson, have become the faces of LIV Golf. The Public Investment FundDiagram of the major figures in LIV Golf that are connected to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Public Investment Fund Jared Kushner’s firm accepted a $2 billion investment from the Public Investment Fund. LIV Golf Trump World Eric Trump Jared Kushner Donald J. Trump Public Investment Fund Jared Kushner’s firm accepted a $2 billion investment from the Public Investment Fund.

☆ Cloud of uncertainty around banks is the case for a pause, says Princeton's Alan Blinder
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailCloud of uncertainty around banks is the case for a pause, says Princeton's Alan BlinderFormer Fed Vice Chair Alan Blinder joins 'Closing Bell: Overtime' to discuss the Fed's decision and why he believes raising rates 25 bps was a mistake.

☆ Starc scythes down India as Australia win second ODI to level series
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

March 19 (Reuters) - Australian pacer Mitchell Starc ripped through India's lineup with five wickets to lay the platform for a crushing 10-wicket win in the second one-day international in Visakhapatnam on Sunday that levelled their three-match series at 1-1. "Starc in particular with the new ball, swinging it back down the line and putting them under early pressure. We didn't play to our potential and didn't apply ourselves with the bat," Rohit said after India's heaviest defeat in terms of balls remaining. He's been doing it for years for Australia with the new ball. Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Ken FerrisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Fmr. Fed Vice Chair Alan Blinder says 50 bps hike next meeting unlikely
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailFmr. Fed Vice Chair Alan Blinder says 50 bps hike next meeting unlikelyAlan Blinder, FMR Fed vice chair, joins 'Closing Bell: Overtime' to discuss the Fed and what he expects its next moves to be.

☆ What Lael Brainard's departure means for the Fed
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailWhat Lael Brainard's departure means for the FedAlan Blinder, former Federal Reserve vice chairman and Princeton University professor, joins 'Squawk on the Street' to discuss the move to transition Lael Brainard from the Fed to the National Economic Council, the gesture to push out dovish sentiment from the Fed, and more.

☆ One chart shows how inflation is slowing down even faster than you think
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Madison Hoff | Ayelet Sheffey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

The annualized 3-month change in the CPI has recently been lower than the year-over-year change. The following chart shows how the year-over-year change in the Consumer Price Index compares to that of the annualized 3-month change over time:After rising from 0.7% in September to 2.4% in October, the annualized 3-month change then dropped to 2.1% in November. While the unadjusted data shows the annualized 3-month change was flat in December, the 3-month annualized inflation rate was 1.8% when looking at seasonally-adjusted data, which still suggests a dramatic cooling off of inflation in the last few months. Blinder wrote that "when the inflation rate changes abruptly, 12-month averages can leave you watching recent history rather than current events." "So is today's true inflation rate a mere 2.5%, meaning that Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve can relax?

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