I think there's some merit to what Phil and Norman were going after with the SGL. The way they went about it could not have been worse. Not only were they throwing shade and taking jabs at the tour constantly, they were using Saudi Fucking Arabia as their grandstanding partner. How they were completely unable to read the room in that regard is beyond me. There are legitimate gripes with the tour and how it operates, how money is distributed, course setup, etc. Putting pressure on Jay Monohan and the rest of the powers that be within the hierarchy of the tour is/was necessary.
Professional golf as it exists today is in a pretty interesting conundrum in regard to distributing the money they generate. On one hand you have the notion that only the best guys each week get paid and on the other hand you have guys that move the needle each week, drive revenue, and still miss the cut and miss out on any money from that week. If people are tuning in to watch Spieth or Rory on a Thursday afternoon, should they be compensated for that? I don't know what the answer is but it seems like they should to some degree. How that all shakes down, I don't know, but if they generate a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue for a Thursday round, you'd think they'd get a piece of that. I think PIP is a really good step in right direction but it's not perfect and nobody expected it to be perfect immediately. I dunno, feel free to shoot holes in where I'm coming from. This is a really interesting topic IMO. I don't think it's as black and white as - you only earn money if you make the weekend - anymore.
Either way, Phil looks about as bad as bad can look with all of this. He fucked it all up, too. And trying to blame Shipnuck and claim that he's a victim is a fucking poosie move.