Only 15 yrs old — headed to the pga 👀

GM. This is Easy Pars. The golf newsletter that feels weird watching golf on the CW Network.

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• Legendary golf course is totally hip to modern times.

• Isn’t he too young for the PGA Tour?

• Will LIV Golf get lucky this season?

Augusta National Golf Club: Accepting women (since 2012)

The Augusta National Golf Club is famous for being the location for one of the biggest golf events of the year: The Masters.

It’s also famous for being selective with its membership and with the rules by which members need to abide.

The Augusta Golf Club is the OG when it comes to “exclusivity” in country clubs.

As a matter of fact, for most of its nearly 100-year history, it was so exclusive that it excluded women from its membership.

But that policy has changed.

For almost 10 years now, they’ve started accepting women into their ranks.

The small list of female members includes former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina philanthropist Darla Moore.

And now, Annika Sorenstam, whom many consider one of the GOATS of the LPGA is now a member.

Sorenstam, a 72-time LPGA winner and 10-time major champion, has become the first LPGA professional to join the prestigious Augusta National Golf Club.

She started her membership in October.

In a recent statement, Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley emphasized that the inclusion of women has positively impacted the club's culture and he vowed to continue increasing female membership.

Good to see that the traditional golf club is getting hip to the times.

Is this 15-year-old the next teenage golf phenom?

For those of us who love golf, we know firsthand how difficult and downright frustrating it can be.

That’s why it takes a long, long time to get good at it.

Proof is that the average age of a PGA Tour pro golfer is 33.

Compare that to the average age of 26 in the NBA and you can tell that it takes time to get to the top of the heap.

That’s why it’s so impressive when someone like 15-year-old Oliver Betschart, from Bermuda, qualifies to compete in the PGA Tour.

It’s mindblowing how talented and hard-working this young man has to be to play at this level at such a young age.

He qualified for the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, making him one of only three players to advance through the qualifying rounds.

During the 54-hole local qualifier for the Butterfield event, he scored 3-over and finished behind winner Eric West.

Don’t like, right now, we’re all like:

Only four younger players, including Michelle Wie West and Tianlang Guan, have participated in a PGA Tour event.

We’ll definitely be keeping an eye out whenever this young prodigy plays.

“I swear, people are dying to watch this.”

You’d think that if you somehow manage to get 48 of the best players in golf add a cool team-play element to it and throw ridiculous amounts of money at it, everyone would be dying to watch it.

It’s more or less the premise behind the Ryder Cup, minus the Europe vs USA element of it.

It really does make sense IMO.

But in practice, it didn’t really play out for LIV Golf.

Very few people are watching the up-and-coming league, and even though their events have been successful, they really need to get more people tuning in to make the league take off.

This is the very difficult job that Will Staeger, LIV's chief media officer has to somehow figure out how to do.

Currently partnered with the CW network for weekend broadcasts, the league is missing out on monetizing about 33% of its airtime, which includes Friday opening rounds.

Compare this with the TGL, Tiger and Rory’s virtual golf league, which already has a massive ESPN broadcast deal signed, you can see how bad the situation is for LIV.

Staeger will attend the Sportel sports media conference in Monaco to try and get conversations started with potential partners like CBS, FOX, NBC, Disney, and Warner Bros.

Do you think LIV will have better luck this season wrangling broadcast partners now that they’re probably in cahoots with the PGA Tour?

We’ll have to wait and see.

Meme of the Day

😂😂

Hard-hitting journo questioning Augusta like:

That’s it for today. We’ll go back to tuning in to the CW Network.

Later gator,

E.