Last week, the USGA and R&A proposed a Model Local Rule (MLR) that gives competition organizers the option to require the use of golf balls that are tested under modified launch conditions to address the impacts of hitting distance in golf.

In simplified terms: a rolled-back golf ball for elite competitions.

The reaction from professional golfers was almost universally negative. They didn't like the idea of bifurcation. They didn’t want to see long hitters reigned in. They didn’t want to lose the connection with the amateur game. In dozens of interviews around the world, they expressed frustration, disappointment, even confusion.


Rory McIlroy, however, was not among them.


The reason? He is in favor of the proposal. All of it.

In an exclusive interview with No Laying Up on Tuesday, McIlroy said he thinks the potential changes, which are proposed to take effect in 2026, would be good for the overall health of the sport and potentially reintroduce skills into the professional game that have been diminished over the past few decades. McIlroy said he was not in favor of a full rollback that included amateurs, but a rollback at the elite level is a workable compromise.

“I’ve been pretty adamant that I don’t really want the governing bodies to touch the recreational golfer because we need to make this game as not intimidating and as much fun as possible, just to try to keep the participation levels at an all-time high,” McIlroy said. “So, I’m glad in this new proposal that they haven’t touched the recreational golfer. But for elite level play, I really like it. I really do. I know that’s a really unpopular opinion amongst my peers, but I think it’s going to help identify who the best players are a bit easier. Especially in this era of parity that we’ve been living in these past couple of decades. You guys [at No Laying Up] use the term ‘golf has been dumbed down a little bit at the elite level,’ and I completely agree. I think you’re gonna see people with more well-rounded games succeed easier than what the game has become, which is a bit bomb and gouge over these last few years.”

The proposal — which would limit the distance a ball can fly to 320 yards when struck with a 127 mph swing speed during testing — would likely result in driver distances decreasing by 15 to 20 yards for elite players. It would also, in theory, make players like McIlroy hit more mid-irons and fewer wedges and short irons. McIlroy believes that would be good for the sport. It might also separate the best players from the pack more often.


“Selfishly, I think it helps me,” McIlroy said. “I think this is only gonna help the better player. You know, it might help the longer player too, in some ways. But I think it's going to help the overall professional game. I think making guys hit some long irons again, and some mid irons, and being able to hit every club in your bag in a round of golf. … I can't remember the last time when I've had to do that. I don't know if this change in the ball will make us do that, but it certainly is a step closer to that.”

McIlroy conceded that, over time, his views on the issue have evolved. When the USGA released its long-awaited Distance Insights Report in 2021, he famously called it “a huge waste of time and a huge waste of money.” But when the governing bodies chose to limit their proposal to elite competitions and elite players, he felt he could support it. The sustainability aspect is an important part of his reasoning as well.

“It has evolved, yeah,” McIlroy said. “I was once of the opinion that, you know, they don't try to make Formula One cars go slower. Innovation is a part of every sport. It's a part of every industry. But whenever that innovation outgrows the footprint of the game, that's when I think we have a problem.”


It was actually tennis that planted some seeds in McIlroy’s brain to help him change his mind.

“I had a really good chat with the chairman of the All England Lawn and Tennis Club when I was at Wimbledon a few years ago,” McIlroy said. “We were just talking about a few things and he said, ‘Rory, back in the early 2000s, when men's tennis was predominantly serve and volley, it wasn't very good for the entertainment aspect of the game. Rallies wouldn't last more than three shots. We can't make the court any bigger. So what we did do is we slowed the ball down and we changed the grass on the court to make it a little stickier.’ And then you fast forward from that change three years later and you've got Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal playing, probably one of the best finals of Wimbledon ever.”


Instead of fighting tooth and nail against the changes, arguing that the big servers were losing their biggest weapon, tennis mostly embraced them. And the sport thrived.

“They didn't make a big deal of it,” McIlroy said. “They didn't have to go through all the things that the R&A and the USGA have to, but it's another example of another sport slowing the ball down and making some changes that I think has certainly benefited that sport. People can talk about, in this country, about going from an aluminum baseball bat in college to going to a wooden bat in the pros. This isn't unique to golf, this happens in other sports as well.”

McIlroy said he realizes he’s likely going to be among a minority of PGA Tour players who are in favor of the changes.

“I think my opinion differs from my peers, and probably the PGA Tour as a whole,” McIlroy said. “And obviously, look, this is just my opinion and I'm only one voice. But honestly, if I'm taking my PGA Tour hat off here, the major championships are already such a big deal in the game of golf, and if the major championships somehow adopt this ball change, and the PGA Tour doesn't, I think it widens that gap between PGA Tour golf and major championship golf. Which, if anything, the PGA Tour is trying to make up some sort of market share, or trying to get a little closer to the major championships in terms of the interest that we create within our tournaments.”

If the PGA Tour doesn’t adopt the Model Local Rule, McIlroy said he may still play the rolled back ball in PGA Tour events.

“Honestly, for me, the major championships are the biggest deal, so if the PGA Tour doesn't implement it, I might still play the Model Local Rule ball, because I know that that'll give me the best chance and the best preparation leading into the major championships,” McIlroy said. “And again, this is personal preference and personal opinion at this stage of my career. I know that I'm gonna be defined by the amount of major championships that I hopefully will win from now until the end of my career. And that's the most important thing for me.

“If that gives me the best chance to succeed at the major championships and feel as prepared as I possibly can be, then that's what I would do.”


Chris Solomon is the co-founder of No Laying Up and head of podcast content.

Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director of No Laying Up.

McIlroy Supports Governing Bodies' Distance Proposal

Welcome back to the No Laying Up bi-weekly mailbag! In this space, we’ll address topics big and small, smart and dumb, irreverent and serious. You need to be a member of The Nest to submit a question to the mailbag, but the mailbag itself will be free to read (as long as you behave yourselves). Most of our questions are submitted via our message board, The Refuge, but if you’re not a message board person, please send me an email at kvv@nolayingup.com with your Nest handle and your question. As a bonus, if your question gets picked, we’ll send you a free NLU towel.

Dflock24: Realistically what would you like to see in regards to a ball/equipment rollback? Obviously most of the talk is around a more spinny ball to exaggerate mishits; do you think this or other suggestions would be enough to truly make a difference in the professional game? Could changes such as a spinner ball or reduced legal driver head actually have a lasting impact, or would the players eventually figure it out and get back to overpowering courses in 5-10 years?

Realistically, what I would like to see is professional golfers step back and realize that their interests do not always align with the greater good of the game. Professional golfers are really good at picking apart the challenge a golf course presents. Some of them see it as art, and some of them see it as a math equation they are trying to solve, but the goal is the same: Shoot the lowest score. The goal of the governing bodies is different. They have a responsibility to strike a balance between professional golfers, amateur golfers, golf course owners and architects, the environment, superintendents and history. Professional golfers have the biggest megaphone, but they also have selfish motivations. They don’t want their jobs to get harder and they don’t want the equipment companies who pay them to have to rethink a marketing strategy that has benefitted them. I wish they could realize they could step outside themselves and understand there is a value in preserving the historical connection we have to the game. Do I need to see them hitting a 1-iron into the 13th hole at Augusta National like Jack Nicklaus did? No, I’m not that extreme, but it would be nice to see more 4 irons instead of 8 irons. They could have participated in sensible reform, and worked with the USGA and R&A, but they’ve resisted ANY reform. I think if Mike Whan had announced that a new tournament ball was going to spin more or punish mishits severely, they would have howled in protest to that as well. So I don’t know what the answer is. But I do know the framing of the issue is frequently dishonest. Professional golfers are still going to be really good at golf no matter what ball they play. And if the ball doesn’t fly (quite) as far, maybe we don’t have to make greens STIMP at 13 or 14 in every major, which would benefit the game in a lot of ways, not just at the professional level but in a way that cascades down.

: Aside from the larger audience, what has your experience been using Twitter threads as a means of reporting? Does the 280 character bullet point have any significant impact on your approach? If so, is there any reason why this approach couldn't be incorporated into your NLU website posts?

One thing I’m enjoying about this mailbag is it feels like people like a peek into how the sausage of journalism is made. If you haven’t followed along, I’ve written multiple “columns” on Twitter from the Genesis and The Players instead of incorporating them into the NLU website, a decision that has baffled some of my friends but delighted some readers. The reasons behind it, I think, is fairly simple: The shelf life for a Thursday or Friday column from a golf tournament is very short. By the time I get it written, edited, built and posted, it might live on our website for what … five or six hours before play begins again?

There is an immediacy to writing in Twitter threads and also a discipline to it. I kind of enjoy trying to write well in small boxes. In truth, I think digital media companies have sometimes made a mistake in trying to monetize the written word. How likely are you to click on a digital banner ad on NoLayingUp.com when you’re interested in one of my stories? I think you’re more likely to be annoyed than you are willing to buy a product from one of those ads.


I want people to read those Twitter threads and feel something about the NLU universe. If you like my insights, hopefully, you’ll stick around and read the Sunday wrap-up or you’ll listen to the podcast or join the Nest. My friend Kyle Porter and I had a conversation about this recently. Writing is a great way to bring people under your umbrella. It’s not a great way to make money. Do Twitter threads feel like a waste if they just disappear? Maybe. And I think there will be moments when we could make them into actual columns. 

, I knew when I saw that I wanted it to be more than a series of tweets. So I wrote a column. I think my honest answer is, we’re figuring this stuff out as we go along. I like the freedom to do whatever the moment calls for.


Dmmcgaha: KVV, I really need your help. As I’m perusing the lineups for some music festivals this summer, I see that the foo fighters are headlining a lot of festivals. My question is: Who’s favorite band is the Foo Fighters? Aren’t they just Creed with a lead singer who was in Nirvana instead of the CIA? Foo Fighters is a heavier version of Maroon 5: Tons of accolades, but no one admits they like them. Can you help?

This topic came up recently in a group chat I’m in and I’m kind of surprised at how polarizing the Foo Fighters are among my friends. Often when these kinds of questions come up, I’m reminded of the anecdote about New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, who was alleged to have quipped when Richard Nixon was elected president that she didn’t know how that was possible because she didn’t know anyone who had voted for him. (The anecdote is almost 

, but has bandied about for 50 some years as a way of poking fun at someone who seems out of touch and living in a bubble. In truth, Kael was almost certainly admitting her own provincialism.)

Do I know anyone who is a passionate fan of the Foo Fighters? Admittedly I do not. But that might be an indictment of me, not the Foo Fighters. I think the comparison to Creed and Maroon 5 is unfair because Creed stinks (

 and Randy) and Maroon 5 is not a rock band, they’re a pop band.

Here is what I will say about the Foo Fighters: They have two videos I can watch and I immediately get choked up. The time they played “

 with Taylor Hawkins’ son on the kit, and the time they closed down Dave Letterman’s run as a late night host 

 the song Letterman listened to repeatedly in the hospital when he needed a quintuple bypass.

I like snarking about art and music as much as anyone, but I don’t see how you can watch the Shane Hawkins video and not be moved by the power of music. There is a moment at the 3:45 mark where Dave Grohl looks back at Shane with a mixture of pride and wonderment that just guts me. Imagine losing your dad and then getting up on stage, sitting in the exact seat where he sat, and just mashing the drums with everything you’ve got in front of thousands of people. Grieving takes on different forms, and that one moves me every time.

The second video is more about my own shit, but it’s loosely connected to the theme of dads. When I was a kid, watching David Letterman on Friday nights was one of best bonding experiences I had with my dad, and it spanned such an important period of my life (from when I was a teenager to when I was a father myself) that when Letterman brought out the Foo Fighters to say goodbye and they started ripping through Everlong, it felt like a slideshow of the last 25 years for me. Nothing has ever made me bawl out of nowhere like that did, sitting alone in the dark, thinking about being a teenager and my dad setting up the television on our back deck during the summer so we could watch Letterman under the stars.

I couldn’t tell you what a single Foo Fighters song means if I’m being honest. But emotionally, they’re a pretty good soundtrack to some big themes in my life.

RunOfTheDill: Simple question. Rank The Wire top 5 non-police characters and why Bodie is your favorite.

In the last mailbag, I declared (perhaps foolishly) that I don’t love ranking stuff because comparison is a thief of joy. So instead of ranking them, I’m going to just list five characters and why I love them and people can rank them as they see fit. I’m also not going to pick Omar simply because that’s too easy, everyone loves Omar and he’d make every list so I’m going to create a special exemption for him, like the PGA Tour did to make sure Tiger Woods could get in any designated event he wants.

Bubbles: One of the best things about Bubs is the way he functions as the Greek Chorus throughout the series. He works with the cops but he’s not of the cops, and he is part of the street but not part of either the Barksdale crew or the Stanfield crew. It is his job to serve as the moral arbiter between the two worlds, and Andre Royo’s acting might be the best on the whole show. I often think about the quote “It’s a thin line between heaven and here” because it takes a cliche and tweaks it just enough to make you stop and realize what it means to be Bubbles. Lastly, is there a better scene in the entire show than Bubbles climbing the stairs to eat dinner with his sister’s family during the final montage? The scene has equals, but nothing in the show felt as earned as that one.

Frank Sobotka: Anytime anyone says to me that they don’t like Season 2 of The Wire, I immediately write them off as someone who doesn’t actually get the message the show is trying to convey. Season 2 is what makes you understand this isn’t a conflict between cops and drug dealers, it’s the story of an American city ripped apart because institutions are more powerful than individuals. Frank’s choices are the same as D’Angelo’s choices, but David Simon and Ed Burns were some of the first people to help people understand how similarly fated each character was. “We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just stick our hands in someone else’s pockets” is as good a line of dialog as there is in the series, and I love Chris Bauer’s long walk toward The Greek and Spiros when they know he’s met with the FBI but he doesn’t know they know. Such a sad, powerful moment.


Prop Joe: When you re-watch the series, I don’t think anyone makes me smile more than Robert Chew. His delivery of dry one-liners is so perfect. Prop Joe survives with cunning wit more than muscle, and the only person who is truly his equal in that department is Omar. My favorite tidbit about Chew is he was a real life theater coach and a teacher in Baltimore city schools and he helped coach all the kids in Season 4 feel comfortable and confident in their performances, as well as Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, who had never acted before. There are a dozen Prop Joe lines that I love, but I chuckle every time I think about him saying he’s “Irving Pepper from the law firm Pepper, Pepper and Bay Leaf.”

Wee-Bey: One of my favorite moments in the series involves Wee-Bey, when Bunny Colvin visits him in prison to ask if he can adopt Namond. Wee-Bey hasn’t really been featured as a character much since Season 1, but when the moment calls for it, he delivers such an unexpected powerful transformation as he realizes his son doesn’t have to meet the same fate he did. Hassan Johnson barely has any lines in the scene with Robert Wisdom, but his face is so good at conveying the angst and torment. It’s weird to say that one of your favorite characters is probably the show’s most ruthless killer, but the way he’s humanized late in the series as someone who could swallow his pride when his kid is offered a chance at a better life is quite moving.

Stringer Bell: I know you kicked this off by assuming that Bodie should be the top draft pick, but after mulling it, I had to leave him off. I love his character, but I love others just a little bit more. My friend Bomani Jones 

that Stringer is actually the worst, and he’s not wrong, but all the reasons he lists are actually the reasons I Iove his character. He thought he was smarter than everyone. He thought he could run a drug empire like a legitimate business. He betrayed his friends, he got them killed, he ended up looking like a fool several times. He was a terrible boss! But those are the reasons he’s fascinating. His scene on the balcony where he and Avon know they’ve each betrayed one another, but are still feeling nostalgic about the young punks they used to be, is one of my favorite scenes in the whole series. People overuse the term Shakespearean, but that’s about as close as you can get to Shakespeare in modern television.


Greebs: Is there a golfer whose story you love that would make him winning a non-elevated event so good you’d be rooting for him?

The easy answer to this is Harry Higgs, a win that would maybe go down as the most delightful day in the history of Golf Twitter. Obviously, we are light years apart when it comes to golf talent, but I see a lot of myself in Higgs, both in our frame and in how we tend to get down on ourselves on the golf course. 

 is a good window into why he’s such a vulnerable, interesting person.

Ztlumak:  As a journalist, how do you go about planning questions for a subject ahead of an interview or prior to a press conference (a la The Players where you may only get one shot) and how has that skill evolved over the course of your career?

Press conferences are such a strange dance between reporter and subject. If you ask a great question, you’re essentially giving the answer to everyone else in the room to use for their own stuff. So your reward is uplifting everyone’s story, not just your own. I usually try to get a specific detail out of someone that I know is going to be interesting to my story. Sometimes it turns out to be a whiff. It seemed like, from social media reports, Scottie Scheffler had spent considerable time on the range Saturday night after shooting 65, and I wondered if it might have reflected some larger anxiety about his swing so I asked him why he was beating balls until the sunset. “I hit like 10 balls,” Scheffler said, and I think he assumed I was trying to make a sophomoric joke. 

 I really needed a Jim Halpert in that moment behind me to whisper: ‘Phrasing, Kevin.’ ”

I think there are also moments when it’s important for the press to ask questions that speak to broader issues, particularly if readers or viewers have made it clear they want the answer and they feel like no one has asked the question. I actually would have liked to have asked Jay Monahan about 

 but I didn’t see it before Monahan’s press conference last Tuesday. (Phil! @ me next time.)

mschriver3: I can’t remember where I put it - but please expound on your “no-drop tournament” concept. Where is it hosted - realistically and for most carnage (e.g. St Andrews versus Bay Hill). Does OB not exist? Is a water ball or any unplayable lie an auto-DQ?

In case you’re not a regular podcast listener, I have joked recently that I’d love to see the PGA Tour hold a tournament where there was no TIO relief. If you hit the ball behind a Port-A-John, you have to play it around, over, or off the toilet. (Sometimes I like to imagine the look on a Hollywood director’s face if a golf consultant tried to bring up TIO relief during 

.) There are obvious safety issues and insurance issues that would come into play, but shouldn’t you be able to avoid hitting the ball 

into a parking lot as a professional golfer

? Why should you get a free drop in that scenario? You hit it into a parking lot! There ought to be a reward for keeping the ball in the field of play. Consider the potential recovery shots as well. What would be more thrilling than watching Jordan Spieth make pars from a salad bar in a hospitality tent?

I think we could embrace that glorious madness for one tournament. Obviously, if you hit the ball in the water, that’s a natural hazard and you take your penalty stroke and plan on. But hit it behind the scoreboard? Tough break, figure it out.

Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director of No Laying Up. Email him at kvv@nolayingup.com.

KVV Mailbag: The Rollback, Modern Journalism and The Wire

The distance debate is so addictive because it’s so complicated.

Every proposed solution presents countless consequences for countless stakeholders in the game, impacting everyone from the everyday player to billion-dollar corporations. It’s incredibly easy to throw out fixes and impossibly complicated to implement solutions. And that’s assuming you can even get everyone to agree there’s a problem to be solved, which seems more difficult than ever.

It’s boring, but I think there are legitimate pros and cons on both sides of the argument around reducing hitting distances for the best players in the game. Personally speaking, I have long thought there are more pros than cons on the side of some sort of bifurcation between the recreational game and the professional game and it seems the USGA and R&A feel the same way. You may violently disagree for any number of reasons, which is fine.

But on some level, I think this all becomes a pretty good Rorschach test for how you feel about the role of governance in the world of golf.

Maybe this is too simplistic, but it seems like two reminders are in order for many around the game. The first is that the purpose of the USGA and R&A is to be the governing bodies of the sport and to ensure the healthy future of the game. Full stop. Right? Agree or disagree? Because it’s hard to move forward without being on the same page there.

The second is that they’ve been working on this distance study (and been transparent about it) for a very long time. The Distance Insights project has been underway for about 5 years and they’ve surely been keeping an eye on the topic for decades before that. Let me stop you at, “Why didn’t they look at––” because I promise they did. Just go read about it.

You can, and should, disagree with parts of their thinking and question specifics. (I literally don’t know what else Twitter is for these days.) And PGA Tour players have every right to hate something that could potentially affect their livelihood and #product. That’s what this comment period is for.

But when those two Very Serious Organizations spend the better part of a decade researching a topic and come back with the headline: “Predictable, continued (distance) increases will become a significant issue for the next generation if not addressed soon,” it’s not something that’s done flippantly.

Policy making is a lot harder than tweeting, which is a lesson learned from way too much tweeting. Is the proposed solution going to make everyone happy?

Probably not. But nothing ever does. So instead, the only people who have been looking seriously at this issue as more and more land is gobbled up for tee boxes will be painted as the 10-handicaps trying their best to ruin the game. Which is part of the job.

If you think the best people to make the rules for PGA Tour players are PGA Tour players, that’s an interesting conversation. It’s just a totally different conversation than we’ve ever had in golf. And judging by how much more boring the weekly PGA Tour setups are than those done by outside parties at the majors, I’m quite pessimistic about going down that road.

Likewise, if you think it should be left up to the fans and entertainment value, that’s fine. If you think the people cheering as Bryson DeChambeau pulverizes a golf ball over the lake at Bay Hill have given more thought to the best long-term interests of the game than the USGA, then, again, we’re probably just going to have to disagree.

(Side note: That Bryson drive was great and one of my favorite golf memories of the past few years. And it would have been just as good from one tee box up. It’s not the specific number that makes Bryson’s drives fascinating. It’s the fact that he was the only one who could do it. It’s all relative.)

We can keep going. What does Justin Thomas think? What does Jack Nicklaus think? (Cautiously) What does Charley Hoffman think? What do equipment manufacturers think? What do TV networks think? What do sponsors think? What do agronomists think? What do biomechanists think? What does Augusta National think?

All of these parties have valid thoughts on one of the biggest decisions that will be made in pro golf this decade. Some of those arguments are better than others. Some are understandably biased and self-interested. Some are flat-out wrong. Some are brilliant. What makes the discussion so overwhelming is when all the information and takes are flying around, in and out of context, at 127 miles per hour and 11 degrees of launch.

The unenviable task that faces the USGA and the R&A is to listen to all of them, along with all of their own research, and make an unbiased and unemotional decision about what to do. It’s pretty clear they’ve done that, and they’ve probably given it a lot more thought than the guy on Twitter who says “why don’t we ban golf tees?”

We’ve just spent two years discussing how the PGA Tour should have looked around the corner and been more proactive in making the changes necessary to keep their stars from jumping to a rival league. It’s easy to see some parallels in the decision faced by the USGA and the R&A. Look at how pissed off some of the PGA Tour rank-and-file is today about changing their structure 

AS they’re facing an actual existential threat

!!! If the PGA Tour had tried 5 years ago to get ahead of LIV’s rise, it would have been fighting the same inertia the governing bodies are facing in trying to curb the distance issue.


Things in golf are going great. And the easiest thing to do in a boom time for the game would be nothing. But if the USGA and R&A have identified that golf (at least golf at an elite level) is headed in the wrong direction, it’s very clearly their job to take action. And that action only gets tougher to take with every day that goes by.

The Loudest Voice in the Conversation

PONTE VEDRA — When Scottie Scheffler was a boy, he spent innumerable hours hanging around the chipping green at Royal Oaks Country Club in Dallas. It was the only place, according to his coach Randy Smith, Scheffler would let his body and his brain slow down. He was constantly talking, running, buzzing with energy. Although the Legend of Scheffler often references his childhood humility, obnoxious would be a more honest description.

“As a little kid, he would get a little red and hot,” Smith said. “I said you’d better quit it now because there are some people who will really give you crap the older you get. He was outgoing, chirpy, zoom zooming everywhere. He was like the Energizer Bunny, into everything.”

It was exhausting. But when it came to chipping contests, Scheffler was fearless. He would stare down anyone who would take him on, whether it was kids his own age or the club’s PGA Tour regulars like Justin Leonard and Colt Knost.

“If you took all those contests when he was little, every single one of them, he’d be batting 70 percent from about age nine against the pros,” Smith said. “Now he’s got a couple kids doing to him what he did to them. I’ve seen [Scheffler get beat] once. He did not take it well.”

There are a few ways to look at Scheffler, who continued to make his case on Sunday that he is the best golfer in the world with a five-stroke win at The Players Championship, a win that returned him to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings and earned him $4.5 million.

You can view him as brilliant but bland, a little too corporate and too genial of a player in which to emotionally invest your fandom.

Or you can grow to appreciate him for what he is, an artist with irons and wedges who — despite projecting a friendly and humble persona — burns with a quiet, competitive rage that he’s learned to channel into the biggest moments.

“Every once in a while he’ll have a bit of an explosion,” Smith said while Scheffler was inside scoring, putting his signature on a final round 69, his sixth career win. “But he’s kind of figured out that there is nothing [good about] burning up the energy inside you that you need to create the best stuff. You watch great basketball players. They get mad. Oh god, do they get mad. But it’s amazing how fast they’re right back into the heat of the action. That’s what he does. He doesn’t burn up a lot of mental energy on getting mad. Now, he may completely go off at the range. But he doesn’t do it out here.”

The Players is decidedly not a major championship (sorry Mr. Monahan). But it does always serve as a good spot to assess where pro golf stands with majors just beyond the horizon. A few storylines took shape early in the week. The absence of the players who defected for LIV was clearly felt, none more than defending champion Cam Smith. Jon Rahm even fielded a question asking if Smith should have been granted an exemption, a delightful bit of theater considering he was answering it in the PGA Tour’s Media Center surrounded by PGA Tour employees.

“I mean, yes and no,” Rahm said. “I feel like as defending champion you've earned a right. But we're talking about a very unique circumstance in the world of golf. Some players made a choice of going to a different golf league knowing that they weren't going to be allowed to play here. And yes, this is a massive event. It is very close to a major quality event, but it's still a PGA Tour event. So with that regard, no. I don't think just him should be allowed to be here.”

It also became clear that Rory McIlroy remains the game’s most interesting golfer, especially if you factor in how much he means to the sport and the ways he’s chosen to take the lead in re-shaping the PGA Tour. He spent his Tuesday morning in a 2-hour player meeting helping the Tour present the plan for 2024, a plan that creates eight designated events (all of them likely to be held without a cut) for the Top 70 players in the FedExCup standings.

“I'm not going to sit here and lie, I think the emergence of LIV or the emergence of a competitor to the PGA Tour has benefited everyone that plays elite professional golf,” McIlroy said. “I think when you've been the biggest golf league in the biggest market in the world for the last 60 years, there's not a lot of incentive to innovate. This has caused a ton of innovation at the PGA Tour, and what was quite, I would say, an antiquated system is being revamped to try to mirror where we're at in the world in the 21st century with the media landscape.”

If McIlroy holds the title as the most compelling golfer for reasons beyond the course, then Rahm continues to be the most intimidating and relentless golfer, the man you least want to see charging up the leaderboard or standing across the tee box. But neither man was able to stick around for the weekend, Rahm suffering from a stomach ailment that forced him to withdraw Friday morning, and McIlroy suffering from a driver that, of late, has made him feel similarly queasy every time it drifts offline.

“I’m ready to get back to being purely a golfer,” McIlroy admitted after 76-73 left him outside the cutline. “It’s been a busy couple weeks. Honestly, it’s been a busy six to eight months.”

Rahm and McIlroy’s early exit created an opening for some of the game’s understudies to make their case that they deserve (particularly next season) to be chasing the same rapidly-expanding purses that the superstars have earmarked for themselves. There was a lot of talk early in the week that Sawgrass was the kind of democratic test that might throw a wrench in the narrative that the Tour should be built around its stars, particularly when journeymen like Chad Ramey, Ben Griffin, and David Lingmerth surged into contention. Griffin — who quit golf and became a mortgage broker several years ago, only to return to the game — found himself playfully answering questions about interest rates while in contention at the Tour’s $25 million flagship event after he opened with a 67.

“They’re too high if you're trying to buy a house,” Griffin said. “A $500,000 house two years ago was a little bit more affordable and it's probably double the cost now on a monthly payment. I picked a good time to get out of the mortgage industry, and I don't know how, but people think I'm a wizard for timing it so perfectly.”

Even 56-year-old Jerry Kelly turned a few heads by becoming the oldest player in the history of The Players to make the cut.

“Basically I took another two or three years off my life,” Kelly said. “I’m happy where I’m at on the Champions Tour.”

But the longer the tournament went on, the clearer it was that Cinderella stories were taking a backseat to Scheffler, who ended up making a convincing argument that he — not McIlroy or Rahm — is the most complete player in the game. Scheffler nukes his driver, he can usually shape it in both directions as needed, and he is one of the best iron players on earth. It was all those chipping contests at Royal Oaks, however, that gave him hands as delicate and precise as a violinist.

“Just by eye, it looks just kind of homegrown, which I always feel like works pretty well,” said Max Homa, when asked to describe Scheffler’s short game prowess. “Jordan [Spieth’s] is kind of similar. Obviously, they have great mechanics, but it feels like they do it a different way, which means they typically own it a bit more. I feel like [Scheffler] just knows what he's going to do. He has this stabbing spinner. He's got the really good kind of soft one out of the rough. I feel like he's just very artistic in that way.”

Scheffler’s hands have, over the last 18 months, become the game’s most underrated weapon. Every time he needed his short game to rescue him this week, it was there, much like it was when he won the 2022 Masters. He made only five bogeys all week, a remarkable statistic on a course with water lurking on every hole.

“I think I just like the challenge of harder golf courses,” Scheffler said. “I found a way to choose my moments.”

Scheffler chipped in twice on the weekend — once for eagle at No. 2 on Saturday, then again for birdie at No. 8 on Sunday — each time delivering a dagger in the chest of his pursuers. His Sunday chip-in occurred when his ball came to rest in the rough left of the green, forcing Scheffler to take an awkward stance in the bunker so he could address the ball. He nipped it perfectly, letting it ride a gentle slope, then watched it trickle toward the pin and disappear. It began a run of 

that essentially put the tournament on ice.

“That was just a good example of me playing smart,” Scheffler said. “If you miss it pin high on that hole, you're more than likely going to make a bogey. So all we were doing there was just trying to aim for the front edge. I hit a really good shot and the wind hit it and pushed it a little left. If I wasn't playing that smart, I would have been in a really tough position. I was in a position where there wasn't an easy chip, but it was a very gettable up-and-down and just fortunate to see it go in.”

Scheffler’s caddie, Ted Scott, promised his boss at the beginning of the year that if he chipped in at least 10 times, he’d give him a prize. Neither Scheffler nor Scott would disclose what Scott had to hand over, only that Scott did not expect to have to pay up so quickly.

“It’s probably a bit more fun for me than it is for him because I get to chip in, and he has to owe me for it,” Scheffler said.

If Scheffler does have a weakness, it’s that he doesn’t start particularly fast on Sundays. At the Masters, nothing about his game looked right early until he chipped in for birdie at the third hole. He’s never been able to explain that aspect of his game — or any aspect if he’s being honest.

“I’ve always had a hard time describing myself,” Scheffler admitted.

One theory for his slow starts gained some traction early in the week when Scheffler revealed that he never drinks coffee on tournament days, despite the fact that he loves making himself espresso and drinks it daily at home. “I just don’t need it out here,” he said, chuckling as a group of horrified coffee-infused media members looked at him like he’d just revealed he was a secret serial killer.

Scheffler came out of the gate on Sunday looking less like a jungle cat who saunters up the fairway and more like a freshly-born colt trying to keep his balance on unsteady legs. Min Woo Lee began the day trailing Scheffler two shots, but by the time the duo reached the fourth tee, Lee had erased that gap by birdieing the first hole and watching Scheffler make a sloppy bogey at the third.

The fourth hole, however, remains one of Pete Dye’s most diabolical gifts to the PGA Tour and its players. The fairway is shaped like a slithering python, and its skinny green is guarded by a bulkhead and a pond that swallows golf balls like they are helpless prey. Scheffler hit his drive up onto the mounds left of the fairway, and Lee pushed a driving iron into the rough on the right. Both men looked equally boned.

Lee chose to pitch out to the fairway, unwilling to risk an impossible shot to the green. Scheffler chose to be bold, hacking a wedge that soared high into the air. His ball flirted with the water after it was battered by the wind, but had just enough oomph to clear the pond. Now it was Lee’s turn. He tried to flight his wedge, but the wind wasn’t having it. It hit the green and danced along the bulkhead for a few seconds before tumbling into the water. He ended up making a triple bogey. No one ever got within three of Scheffler again.

“It happened really quick,” Lee said. “It's one of those things where it's Sunday and you just make a couple bad decisions and it all kind of falls down.”

Scheffler soon began to settle in for the kill. After a chip-in on No. 8, he blasted a 322-yard drive down the right side of the ninth fairway, followed it with a 244-yard 3-wood and a chip to five feet. Birdie.

He made an 18-footer on No. 10 for his third straight birdie, then leaned on his short game again to set up easy birdies at 11 and 12.

“I wanted to get as big of a lead as I could because you could hit a really good shot on 17 this afternoon and go in the water,” Scheffler said. He admitted he was sticking to a breathing routine he’d come up with to keep himself calm between swings, but nothing he thought was particularly interesting. Even his anxiety seemed fairly reserved and mundane.

“Not like 10 breaths, just like one or two,” he joked.

It was all but over when Scheffler’s shot at 17 found dry land, and as he watched it trickle down the spine of the green and settle beneath the hole he gave a noticeable fist pump. It was one of his few displays of outward emotion all day.

“Please, please hit the green,” Scheffler said when asked what was going through his mind. “You’re not really in control of what the ball does up there. You can only hit the shot and hope for the best.”

When Scheffler made a majestic 20-foot par putt on 18 — his putter raised into the air before the ball had even reached the hole — his family bounded toward the green, including his 87-year-old grandmother who walked every hole with Scheffler during the week. His wife, Meredith, wrapped him in her arms, but let him go eventually so his mother and father could have a turn. Scott Scheffler put his hands on his son Scottie’s cheeks and pulled him in close to deliver a message. The crowd had begun chanting Scheffler’s name.

“You bring joy, son,” he said, trying not to cry. “You bring joy. We are so proud.”

Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director at No Laying Up.

KVV: Scottie Scheffler's Complete Game

TPC Sawgrass is one of the most demanding "second shot" golf courses on the PGA Tour. So let's see what Tron can fire if we drop him in the middle of every fairway.

NLU Film Room

NLU Film Room: Playing from "Position A" at TPC Sawgrass

Sometimes sports can give us a moment so beautiful, so perfect, it makes you want to cry.

Maybe for you, it’s Michael Jordan holding a pose as he buries a jumper to beat the Jazz in Game 6 of the NBA Finals. For someone else, it might be Santionio Holmes dragging his toes just inside the paint, his arms outstretched as he snags a pass to win the Super Bowl. A header just inside the post from Ronaldo; a running forehand from Roger Federer; a no-look pass from Patrick Mahomes: If you believe that ballet is art, that the melding of sound and movement is an essential form of expression, then can’t sports be part of the same?

I say all this to call your attention to what might be my favorite golf clip since the invention of digital media: Keith Mitchell wiping a drive right in Round 2 of The Players Championship, just as the horn sounds to announce that play for the day has been suspended.

Go watch it now, if you haven’t seen it yet

, before we continue. Casey Bannon of The Golfer’s Journal spotted it late Friday on PGA Tour Live, as bad weather was bearing down on the field. It is a Rembrandt painting of golf frustration and auditory comedy.

If you don’t like when golfers behave like spoiled children, then this clip and this piece I am writing, may not be for you. But if you’ve ever spent an afternoon fighting the frustration of a big right miss, if you’ve ever been battered by the sun on a Florida golf course, nightmarish water lurking on every hole, then Keith Mitchell might be a kindred spirit in this clip.

It’s possible that Mitchell could hear the horn as the top of his backswing, that he was briefly enraged by the random bad luck that befell his round. But I’m not sure if it matters either way. As soon as the ball left his clubface (at 179 mph!) he knew it was irrevocably fucked, and having lived through moments like that on golf courses for half my life, I understand the impulse Mitchell had, to tomahawk his driver into the turf with a violent thump that echoes throughout time and space.

Would I feel differently about this clip if it was Sergio or Tiger or Jon Rahm trying to murder a tee box? It’s possible. If that makes me a hypocrite, then hypocrite thy name is Kevin. Part of what makes it beautiful is that it’s Keith Mitchell, a mild-mannered, charming Southerner. Golf makes gentle boys into monstrous men for the briefest of seconds before the mixture of embarrassment and shame sets in.

One crazed swing of the driver, however, is not enough to elevate a clip like this to the level of art. What happens next is where it transcends to a higher plane. Caddie John Limanti backpedals through the frame, like a combination of Rudolf Nureyev and Ed Reed, trying to track the ball as it screams across the sky.

Just as the horn ceases its dying wail, we see the splash up ahead — thanks to some brilliant camera work — that Mitchell cannot.

“Did it cover?” Mitchell asks, his head down as he chews on his despair.

“It went in the water?” Mitchell asks again, almost like a prayer, as if the ball’s fate might still be a matter of perspective.

The words hang in the air like this is a scene from The Shawshank Redemption. Hope can be a dangerous thing.

As the clip closes, we are left watching Mitchell as he contemplates the melancholy of it all, and perhaps also what it would be like to helicopter fling his driver into the woods. But in the end, he has no choice but to drag himself toward the penalty area, perhaps asking the question so many of us have asked infinite times on a golf course:

Why did I fall in love with such a stupid, tortuous, beautiful game?

Please bask in Keith Mitchell's relatable frustration 

PONTE VEDRA — When Jay Monahan showed up Tuesday for his annual appearance with the media prior to The Players Championship, he walked into the media center, climbed onto the dais and sat down, briefly, in the wrong chair.


Laura Neal, the PGA Tour’s Vice President of Communications and Media Content, quietly gestured to the chair to Monahan’s right and he sheepishly scooted over, with Neal grabbing the chair he had just vacated. Now Monahan’s long-awaited press conference could begin.

If you were searching for metaphors, it was an interesting one. Two years into the PGA Tour’s efforts to fend off the threat of LIV Golf, it’s still debatable whether Monahan has been in the driver’s seat for the dramatic re-shaping of professional golf in America, or if he’s been scooted over to sit in the passenger seat while others — primarily Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods — have taken the wheel.

The reality is, it probably doesn’t matter.


Regardless of who deserves credit, the PGA Tour will look dramatically different in 2024 than it has looked for the last 50 years. And while LIV Golf still looms as a potential threat, that threat feels of late like it has been downgraded to a nuisance. Monahan’s biggest strength, in the end, may turn out to be that he was willing to work on the unpleasant elements of a restructure, like getting sponsors to pony up more money, without demanding credit for the changes.

“That gives me energy, being a part of that,” Monahan said when I asked him Tuesday how he settled on his role as a behind-the-scenes negotiator while others, like McIlroy, took the lead on organization and messaging. “I love every second of it and am thankful for it. … I was grateful that Tiger and Rory and that group of players got together because I was a part of the process. I understood what they were seeking to accomplish; the lines of communication were very open and transparent. In my role it's my job to synthesize that and ultimately come back to our board of five player directors and five independent directors and alongside my team make a recommendation that's in the best interests of the Tour.”

A year ago, it did not seem like Monahan was the right man for the moment. He was, in the words of Michael Corleone, more of a Tom Hagan, peace time consigliere. In his press conference prior to The Players in 2022, he came across as stiff and defensive. With Phil Mickelson in exile, and Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau having re-committed to the PGA Tour, it felt like an early victory lap. “The PGA Tour is moving on,” Monahan said. Repeated use of the phrase “legacy, not leverage” in the coming months did not project strength the way he clearly hoped it would.

When he came into the CBS booth with Jim Nantz during the final round of the Canadian Open, he looked like he felt personally betrayed by some of the defections to LIV, his voice wavering at times. “I would ask any player who has left or is considering leaving: ‘Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?’ ” Monahan said. An awkward silence hung in the air.


Some of those elements of Monahan’s personality remain evident. He rarely seems relaxed behind a microphone. His answers to even the most mundane questions can sound like a ChatGPT script that has ingested every corporate leadership book on the discount table of Barnes & Noble. Because he meets so infrequently with the media, almost none of the questions he fielded on Tuesday were about The Players Championship, the crown jewel of PGA Tour events. He could benefit from making more casual appearances with the media, chats by the putting green where he didn’t feel like he had to be dressed in his best suit. There are still areas of messaging that are going to be a struggle for him.


But if Greg Norman was what LIV thought it needed — a bold and brash leader who promised big swings and didn’t dwell on getting the details nailed down before he opened his mouth — then Monahan may ultimately turn out to be exactly what the PGA Tour needed to counter it.


He has made his share of missteps. Had he agreed to meet with Andy Gardiner of the Premier Golf League when the concept first arose years ago, it’s possible the PGA Tour could have come up with its own model for team golf, outflanking LIV before they stole Gardiner’s idea and used it for sports washing purposes. A strong case can be made that the Tour’s unwillingness to adapt, much to the frustration of members like Mickelson, left it vulnerable to LIV’s rise. There have definitely been moments the past two years when you had to wonder if the PGA Tour would be better off with a more charismatic commissioner.

But there is also evidence that Monahan has learned to play the long game.


Had Monahan, instead of McIlroy and Woods, proposed a scenario that would dramatically overhaul the Tour in a way that appeared to enrich only the game’s elite, there likely would have been a revolt among the Tour’s steerage class. As it stands, there is some trepidation from those players that what they’re been shown in statistical modeling will play out, but few dissenting voices. The restructuring, which will feature at least eight designated events that have limited fields and no cuts, was passed unanimously by the PGA Tour Policy Board. What ultimately emerged in negotiations looks dramatically different from the initial plan drafted by the players in Delaware last October.

“I can confidently say that it's not two separate tours as much as that might be perceived that way,” said Jordan Spieth. “In Delaware that was the first presentation; it was essentially two separate tours.”


Some of the credit for that should go to Monahan.


“There have been a lot of conversations,” Monahan said. “There have been a lot of bad ideas that we came up with along the way. But candidly, I think the level of discussion has been really helpful and got us to the point that we're at today.”

McIlroy had the credibility to sell it. Monahan believes he has figured out a way to pay for it. Each man played to his strengths. And when the details were fleshed out on Tuesday in a presentation to the larger membership, some of the class resentment dissipated.


“I think the temperature in the room was nowhere near as hot as I anticipated it to be once the information was sort of laid out,” said McIlroy, when asked about the Tuesday player meeting.


Monahan does not wield the kind of power that Roger Goodell or Adam Silver has in their job, an important aspect to remember when assessing how he’s handled the tumult of the last two years. He hasn’t been empowered by billionaires to rule over millionaires. The PGA Tour, both a nonprofit and a player-run organization with a board of directors, doesn’t work that way. Monahan is instead more like the director of a hit Broadway play, a production that has been running for many years. A director needs to manage and massage the egos of actors, producers and stage hands, plus the orchestra. He has to weigh the assessment of critics but also not forget his real job is to please the audience. And he has to do all this from behind the scenes, almost never asking for credit when things do go well.


“I'm pleased with the work the PGA Tour has done in regards to feedback from players,” said Spieth. "I've felt like in the last six months, maybe four months, the communication has been fantastic, and hopefully, this is a product that doesn't need to be changed much. Once the nicks are kind of figured out over the next six months or so, the little details, hopefully it can be a situation where there doesn't have to be a lot of change over the next 20 plus years, and that was really the outlook that we all had on it.”

There are still landmines ahead that Monahan will need to dodge. Eventually, someone from LIV Golf will want to return to the PGA Tour, either because their contract has expired or they’ve decided they have regrets and want to attempt to break it. It’s been a hot topic amongst PGA Tour players in recent weeks, as whispers have grown louder that not everyone is as happy at LIV as they appear in their promotional videos. It has sparked a discussion: Is there any feasible path back to the PGA Tour?


Players seem divided on whether there should be.


“I’ve thought a lot about this,” Max Homa said. “My selfish petty pride would be really frustrated. But I think my unselfish side and my realistic side is, all of those guys that you can name that left are great for golf. Champion golfers, interesting golfers, so many great stories across their careers. So of course I think if I could put my selfish part aside and maybe put on my big-boy hat, I would realize that having them back would be a good thing for golf at large.”

With rumors swirling, it seemed like a question worth putting to Monahan. Was there any wiggle room in the Tour’s position that LIV players would never be allowed back?


“For some reason, I've been hearing that a lot lately,” Monahan said. “And I'm not certain where that's coming from. The players that are playing on that tour are contractually obligated to play on that tour. So any hypotheticals at this point really aren't relevant, and I think you know me well enough to know I'm not a big fan of hypotheticals. But our position, to answer your question directly, has not changed.”

His message, more confident than a year ago, sounded like a different line from The Godfather:


It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.

KVV: Monahan May Have Won By Ceding Power And The Spotlight

On the most logical level, it is silly to feel sorry for Brooks Koepka.

Whatever happens to his career from this point on, he’ll be remembered by history as one of the great players of this era. Koepka will always be one of a few guys who stood up to a Sunday charge from Tiger Woods in a major. He’ll end up in the Hall of Fame, having won (at least) four majors and two Ryder Cups, and he has untold millions to his name. Koepka could spend the next 30 years relaxing by his pool, his wife and his labrador by his side, not giving a damn what might have been. His legacy is secure.

There was, however, a scene in Netflix’s “Full Swing” that made me feel a twinge of sympathy for Koepka for the first time in many years.

If you’ve watched the show, you probably know the scene I’m about to describe, because it is the most haunting thing I’ve seen on television since the pilot episode of The Leftovers. Koepka, rocking mindlessly on a swing that is hanging in their walk-in closet, is half-listening while his soon-to-be wife, Jena Sims, describes the different swimsuit cover-ups she’s going to bring with her on a trip she's planning, presumably her bachelorette. In a brilliant stroke of editing, we hear Koepka in a voiceover explaining to producers how, in the midst of his current slump, he cannot get away from thinking about his golf swing. He knows he should be listening to his future bride, despite what seems like would be the most vapid conversation imaginable, but he cannot unplug from the obsessions that his profession demands.

The sport has brought him fame, romance and riches, things he assumed would fill up his cup, but ultimately it’s still golf immortality that he’s chasing.

“I go back to the last major I won, and I’d pay back every dollar I’ve ever won in this game just to have that feeling for like another hour,” he says.

Is he being disingenuous as he makes these claims from his multi-million dollar home? I can’t decide. It’s important to remember what we saw on Netflix took place a year ago, before his decision to join LIV Golf. It’s possible he’s reconciled all of this angst with a significantly larger pile of money. But I also think, knowing the stone-cold killer Koepka was on the golf course in his prime, he might be trapped in a hell of his own making. 

If the rumblings are true that Koepka thinks he may have made a mistake in joining LIV and he is sniffing around, at least asking questions as to whether there might be some kind of path back to the PGA Tour, then the news that spilled out on Wednesday about what the Tour will look like in 2024 might spur even deeper reflection.

What if — hypothetically speaking — LIV falls apart within the next 18 months? What if the PGA Tour has already won and players on either side are hesitant to publicly admit it?

I write that sentence fully aware it could turn into my own personal “Mission Accomplished” banner. The Saudis can, if they wish, continue to fund the money pit that is LIV Golf forever. It won’t put even the slightest dent in the Public Investment Fund, which may achieve a valuation of $1 trillion by 2025, according to most estimates. It is possible that everything we’ve seen thus far truly is the beta stage and part of a 10-year plan that will gradually gain momentum. It’s possible Greg Norman will have the last laugh.

It’s also possible that Norman and Phil Mickelson will do in business what they so frequently did in majors: Fall down a flight of stairs in slow motion after considerable bluster, usually right after they insisted this time would be different. (In Dustin Johnson’s case, the stairs actually took place prior to the major.)

What would it do to LIV’s credibility if a player of Koepka’s caliber reversed course and tried to extricate himself from the deal he signed? It might not be a death knell to the league — again, hubris and money could sustain LIV forever — but it would likely be the beginning of the end. And that end could be swift and sudden if the Saudis start to feel embarrassed.

There are already signs their interest is waning, despite Norman’s denials. Signing bonuses are drying up. Teams have been told they need to budget their expenses. New signees Brendan Steele and Dean Burmester aren’t bringing additional eyeballs to LIV outside their friends and families. The legal battle between the PGA Tour and LIV also recently saw the Saudis argue in court that Yasir Al-Rumayan, head of the Public Investment Fund, was a “sitting minister of government with sovereign immunity,” a revelation that could compel the English Premier League to re-examine the PIF’s ownership of Newcastle United. The PIF’s 2021 takeover of Newcastle was only approved by the league after it received “legally-binding assurances” that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would not have any control over the club. Endangering its ownership of Newcastle, which by any measure has been a successful public relations endeavor, while trying to defend the fledgling venture that is LIV Golf, would be an enormous own goal.

What compelling case could LIV make to future recruits (or potential sponsors) if a four-time major winner saw it from the inside and decided he was better off eating crow, returning a portion of the money, and throwing himself at the feet of Jay Monahan and Rory McIlroy, asking if there was still room in the castle on the other side of the moat? No one knows what that might look like at this point, whether players who defected for LIV, fully aware a lifetime ban was one of the potential consequences, would even have their pleas for some kind of amnesty entertained. It’s something Monahan should be asked about in his press conference next week ahead of The Players. If he wants to play offense against LIV, all he would need to do is imply he and the Players Council were open to those discussions. With the plan for 2024 rapidly shaping up, things are moving quickly. No one wants to be left without a (comfy) chair when the music stops.

Koepka has always been, at least to me, a series of contradictions. He loved to pretend he didn’t work hard while privately outworking everyone behind the scenes. He insisted he didn’t care what others thought about him even though it was clear he sought out and read every slight. In “Full Swing” he can be seen sporting a Triggered sweatshirt, an obvious dig at others for being so sensitive, even though he engaged in a year-long feud with Bryson DeChambeau for the crime of suggesting he didn’t have abs in ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue. He belittled golf at every turn, insisting it wasn’t a real sport like basketball and baseball, while also wrapping his self-worth up in being the best golfer in the world. He wanted you to think he didn’t care about the regular season of the sport, then went on Netflix and, in a moment of commendable honesty, admitted that Scottie Scheffler cruising past him at the WM Phoenix Open filled him with existential dread.

There is no way to know what the future of Koepka’s career will look like, regardless of what he decides. It’s clear he joined LIV at least in part because he was privately worried his knee was ruined and his game would never reach the heights it once did. These days, his knee seems fine, and the meaningless competition he once told us he loathed looks as meaningless as ever. Perhaps it took being on the outside to crystallize that money wasn’t going to make him happy, not the way competition could. The Instagram Q&A he did at LIV Mayakoba looked like a hostage video, all the light gone out in his eyes.

I don’t think Dustin Johnson cares about what his legacy might be. He’s the one member of LIV whose approach you can’t help but admire (a little). He has not spent his time scrolling through Twitter, sending pouty DMs to former allies, or taken to Instagram Live to grumble and whine about hypocrisy. He has instead made it clear that there was a price for his services and it was met. Being liked by strangers, at this point, matters little. While everyone else complains, DJ just keeps cashing checks. Whatever contractual obligation he has to promote LIV, he continues to do the bare minimum. I suspect he’s using the Saudis as much as they’re attempting to use him.

I get a different read from Koepka. I think money is obviously important, but it’s also secondary. It’s the juice of competition that made him feel alive, and now that’s missing. The majors alone may not be enough to sustain it. There has to be a part of him that burns every time he sees Scheffler mentioned as the world’s best player because that was once Koepka. As lauded as Scheffler currently is, he still can’t match Koepka’s resume, but the world has already moved on.

Wednesday’s news also made it clear there is a lot of money to be made on the PGA Tour if you can claw your way into the upper tier. Is that something Koepka wants to chase?

Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director at No Laying Up. Email him at kvv@nolayingup.com.

KVV: Brooks Koepka and the balance of golf's civil war

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