There is no rigid mathematical definition for what constitutes an outlier, a data point that deviates significantly from other observations. It’s largely a subjective call, but often an obvious one when the most conspicuous outliers are measured against the company they keep. Even in golf.
Gary Player, for example. He’s an aberration even within the small data set of three he’s frequently counted among. Player is upset at being denied the ability to take an unaccompanied foursome to play a private course of which he’s not a member, in this case Augusta National Golf Club. “I have been an ambassador for Augusta for all these years, yet they won’t let me have one round of golf in my life with my three grandsons,” he said. “My grandsons are dying to know about their grandfather’s episodes on that golf course.”
Leaving aside the improbability that the grandkids haven’t listened ad nauseam to Grandpa’s every accomplishment, real and imagined, Player’s public complaint serves as a reminder that while Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus became members of Augusta National, he alone among the “Big Three” never received the invitation. Player is like every other Masters winner – an honorary member, unable to bring guests unless hosted by an actual member. Three years ago, he grumbled that finding a host was “not easy,” suggesting there isn’t a long line of green jackets eager to endure four hours of uninterrupted bragging about everything from majors won to miles flown to pristine bowel movements had. The exclusion rankles, and he clearly blames Augusta National’s chairman, Fred Ridley.
“Arnold, Jack and I came along and we fought it out every year, and then we made Augusta thanks to the coverage and publicity we generated around the Masters, whether the club likes to admit it or not,” he said. “They won’t admit it, but we made Augusta.”
“It is just this current management there, but these are the times we live in and I accept it, but I accept it with sadness.”
With sadness, but apparently not with silence.
There’s a voluminous book of evidence that justifies Ridley and his predecessors treating Player as an anomaly versus Palmer and Nicklaus, and why they limit his activities at the club to the one week in which they tolerate a good many others they’d rather not see. Neither Arnie nor Jack ever dismissed the Masters as fourth among major championships, as Gary did – a defensible position, sure, but he shouldn’t be surprised when Augusta National in turn ranks him third among the Big Three they’d like to welcome. Arnie’s kids never got arrested after an altercation stemming from selling (but not honoring) access to the tournament and writing a bad check to cover housing in town, unlike Gary’s shiftless scion, Wayne. Jack’s sons didn’t pull a cheap marketing stunt by positioning a sleeve of golf balls at head height behind a wheelchair-bound Lee Elder during a ceremony to honor his breaking the color barrier at the Masters, as Wayne did in 2021, earning the grifting gobshite a lifetime ban from the club.
“The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are,” wrote Malcom Gladwell in his bestseller, “Outliers.”
A couple more outliers in the sport became apparent when Anthony Kim won the LIV Golf stop in Australia. The tournament itself, for starters.
The Adelaide event is run by a LIV Golf entity that manages its affairs outside the U.S., and which is required by U.K. regulators to file its accounts. In 2024, Adelaide generated about $26 million, accounting for almost half of the total reported revenue. That’s a significant statistical deviation from the norm, since that entity lost more than $460 million in ’24, $393 million the year prior, and over $240 million in the 18 months up to the end of 2022. The commercial success of Adelaide is routinely brandished by bootlickers as proof of LIV’s traction when it’s really only evidence that there exists a market of fans long underserved by elite tours (in part because of insularity, but also because legitimate corporate sponsorship has been hard to come by). The same voices declaring the second event on LIV’s schedule a resounding success were comparatively silent after the first event in Saudi Arabia, which drew an American TV audience of 23,000 (which at least represented an improvement on the 19,000 who watched last year).
Kim too is an outlier, much as he was during his brief PGA Tour career.
His lengthy absence from the sport, his issues with addiction, and his impressive work to rebuild a career give him justifiable reasons to celebrate the victory (the social media slurps who reacted like it’s the Second Coming seldom require an excuse for sycophancy). But he’s an outlier because his status as a LIV winner was earned by right, not gifted via selection or contractual obligation. His original arrival at LIV wasn’t, as apologists would have you believe, a vote of confidence since borne out. It was a desperate marketing stunt, luring golf’s mystery man back into the open with a substantial check. He took it more seriously than his employer and, when he was relegated after the ’25 season, earned his place anew.
Like Player, Kim is the exception who proves the rule – that LIV isn’t a meritocracy, that more than 90% of its competitors are there by dint of invitation rather than qualification, that some of them are contractually protected from the consequences of poor performance, all while others are ejected based solely on their national origin.
Gary Player’s public petulance won’t determine policy at Augusta National. That’s Fred Ridley’s domain. And Anthony Kim’s win, however impressive and improbable, will not impact the future of LIV. Only Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the league’s benefactor, can do that. And right now, neither Ridley nor Al-Rumayyan seems much inclined to change course.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Lynch: Anthony Kim, Gary Player are outliers. Only one is a positive
