LOS ANGELES — Scottie Scheffler doesn’t really want to talk about his putting.

He is too polite to dismiss the subject entirely, too wholesomely 

 to actually get mad if you keep bringing it up. Inquire about it and Scheffler will tilt his head to the side, offer up a fairly-benign description of what he’s working on, then chuckle the way he does when he’s trying to be friendly, but also convey he’d love to switch topics.

The message is clear: The putting is (mostly) normal. Time to move on. Find a new slant.

The journalist in me, especially this season, wishes Scheffler would lower his shields occasionally, and let us peek into his mind. He is a genius with 13 of the clubs in his bag, and if he wanted, he could teach a masterclass in how to attack a golf course. Scheffler is having a historically-great season everywhere but on greens this year, statistically right there in strokes gained (+3.00) with Tiger Woods at the peak of his powers (+3.22 in 2006). But the golfer in me understands his reluctance to reveal much, particularly when it comes to an intimate topic like his demonic putting stroke.

A golf swing is an athletic endeavor, a marriage of speed and technique. Putting, on the other hand, is an art, and art is nothing if not an expression of vulnerability. Anyone who has ever stood over a nervy 5-footer, delicately brushed it toward the hole, then watched with intensifying rage as it slid by (yet again!) knows exactly how exposed and raw you can feel with a putter in your hand. The more it happens, the more you flirt with madness. To talk about it is to breathe additional life into it, so he’s reluctant to talk about it.

The putting, however, has been a problem.

You can look at stats and come to that conclusion (he’s 148th on the PGA Tour in SG: putting), or you can watch Scheffler grind on the putting green for hours at a time (something he did prior to the start of the U.S. Open). Eventually, you’ll arrive at the same place. It has been like watching a superhero dodge debris from a crumbling building, only to see him trip over a curb on his way to shake hands with the mayor.

Scheffler has been so good in other areas of the game, if he can just get back to 

 putting, he’s going to be hard to beat this week at LACC. His first-round 67 on Thursday — where he gained 1.52 strokes on the greens, his best performance in a month — felt like a strong first step toward that goal. It came courtesy of a new putter, a Scotty Cameron model that is slightly bigger and has a longer aiming line.


“Sometimes you have to bring another putter around to make the original one scared,” Scheffler said early in the week.

He took some weight out of it, fiddled with it for a few days, then took a leap of faith with it. He mostly stuck to his same routine — confirming the read with his caddie Ted Scott, taking two practice swings while he looks at the hole and trying to stay zen over the ball — and seemed relieved that something finally worked.

“Putting is such a weird thing,” Scheffler said. “Sometimes when you're on the green, sometimes when you feel good, you feel like you're never going to miss. And then sometimes when you feel terrible, you feel like you're never going to make. Putting is just so different than the rest of the game, so when it comes to putters, it's all personal.”

His first real test with the new putter came on the fourth hole when a sloppy approach and indifferent chip left him with a five-footer for par. His putt caught the left edge of the hole and curled around the back, dripping in. It felt like the first time in weeks a lipped putt had found the bottom of the cup instead of spinning away. For the next few hours, he looked like a jump shooter on a heater. He rolled in birdies on 9, 12, 15, and 16.


“I feel like I rolled it well today and I saw some putts go in, which was nice,” Scheffler said. “I haven’t felt like I’ve been rolling it bad. Sometimes you just need to put something else down on the ground to look at.”


Golf, though, cannot resist humbling you, especially when you think you have it figured out. The better your swing, the more torment the golfing gods seem to send your way. Adam Scott has, in the eyes of most, the textbook swing of the modern era, and yet putting has tormented him for the majority of his career. Ben Hogan’s swing has been studied and copied by thousands of golfers for half a century, yet by the end of his career, putting gave him so much anxiety, he theorized that it should be eliminated from golf.

We’re nowhere close to that with Scheffler, who is almost certainly just in the midst of a slump. He might already be leaving it behind. It would be wise not to overthink it, or tinker too much. But when he came to the 18th green at LACC on Thursday afternoon, the demons reappeared to inflict unexpected cruelty.

Scheffler, who had climbed to 4-under after a slow start, left a lag putt from below the hole three feet short. It was a putt that seemed fine, nothing to stress over in his clean-up for par. But when he missed it, you could hear the crowd groan. You could see a flicker of doubt return to Scheffler’s face.

He chuckled after he made the comebacker for bogey, then walked toward the scoring tent.

It was important to laugh it off, lest it linger the way these things sometimes do.

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

The Agitation of Scottie Scheffler

If you’re the “golf person” in your group of friends, the “What’s up with this Tour stuff?” question is something that is going to be inescapable for a while. We’re still working through what we know and how to feel about everything, just like you probably are.

Hopefully, with the document below, you can feel somewhat prepared to discuss this topic (or at least have a link to forward to people). These answers are based on information we’ve gathered by reading everything we possibly can, and talking to people both on the record and on background over the past week (and year).

We’re going to start as basic and as simplified as we can and things are just going to keep going and going. So feel free to eject at any time. No one will blame you.

Editor's Note: Shortly after this piece was published, the PGA Tour announced that Commissioner Jay Monahan 

was "recuperating from a medical situation."

I’d like to skip the rest of this article: In the simplest possible terms, what happened?

After two years of telling players not to take Saudi money, Jay Monahan and the PGA Tour took a yacht-load of Saudi money.

For sure. You should keep reading though.

Not exactly. The deal, as first outlined in 

 by Jay Monahan and Yasir al-Rumayyan, would go as such:

The PGA Tour (historically a 501c6 tax-exempt non-profit) will move its commercial endeavors (TV rights, golf course properties, etc.) into a brand new for-profit company (referred to as “newco” throughout this piece). The DP World Tour will do the same with its commercial endeavors. And the PIF (Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, reported to be worth nearly $700 billion) will do the same with its commercial golf endeavors (Golf Saudi, LIV Golf, Aramco Team Series, etc.).

explained by the people who architected the deal

, the assets of this newco will undergo a valuation. As we understand it, the valuation will be done by an independent party. (How much is the PGA Tour brand worth versus the DP World Tour versus LIV Golf, etc.?) Once that is determined, equity in the new company will be doled out accordingly. Monahan will serve as the CEO of this company, while al-Rumayyan will be chairman of the board.

The PIF will then have the first opportunity to invest in this newco, trading cash for an increased minority stake in the company.

So in the simplest possible terms: if the total valuation of all of these assets is $10 billion and the PIF would like to buy 20 percent more of the company, they would contribute $2 billion for that equity stake.


What’s to stop them from buying the whole thing?

According to those familiar with the negotiation, the deal would be structured to ensure that the PGA Tour maintains majority control over the newco, with the initial board being stacked 3 to 1 in favor of the PGA Tour (Monahan, Jimmy Dunne, and Ed Herlihy on the PGA Tour side and al-Rumayyan on the PIF side). All other details on voting shares and ownership shares, etc., are unclear as of now. But Dunne, who negotiated the framework agreement with Al-Rumayan, is adamant that the PGA Tour will retain control in all scenarios.

“As much as I like the people I dealt with, the game of golf is too important. The legacy of the PGA Tour is too important,” Dunne said in an interview with the Golf Channel. “The people that we have in place have too much experience that we have no desire, no need –– There is no way on God's green Earth that we're going to give up control. I don't know how else to say that."

Aren’t Monahan and the Tour complete hypocrites at this point? Why should we believe anything they say?

Hypocrites, yes. The PGA Tour has even acknowledged as much. “I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” Monahan said the day the was announced, responding to a question about why the Tour invoked the 9/11 Families and lobbied Congress about the Saudis' human rights record.

Whether you want to continue to believe them as they spell out this new deal is up to you.

It’s important to emphasize, and we’re going to do so repeatedly, that almost zero concrete details have been announced about this deal. We don’t know the size of the investment. We don’t know if or how players who remained loyal to the PGA Tour will be rewarded financially. There has been some talk, from Dunne and others, of players being given equity shares in the new company.

We don’t know if or how LIV Golf players will be re-integrated into the PGA Tour ecosystem. We don’t know if LIV Golf is even going to exist after this season. We don’t know why the deal was rushed so quickly without any details. We don’t know – if this remains a private for-profit company – if we’ll ever get answers to a lot of these questions and there are about 100 other things to add to this list.

If those details exist at all, the only people that know them are the people who were part of this very secretive negotiation. Based on the past two years, golf fans are well within their right to be dubious of anything they have to say about it.

OK, I get the gist. Is anything going to change for me as a fan?

Who knows, man? As it stands right now, if you believe the people who have made the announcements, things will be business as usual on the PGA Tour in 2024. The new schedule will remain as planned (and should be announced in the coming weeks). Designated events, even though they strained the Tour’s finances and relationships with sponsors, are by all indications here to stay. The mini-runs of regular mule-heavy events will still ladder up to the designated events. And all of that will be planned around the majors, which now, comically, just seem more interesting and important than ever.

You’ll almost certainly see Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, become a major sponsor in men’s pro golf, as it is in F1, soccer, etc. How will that sponsorship affect the Tour’s relationships and market with other Tour partners? Who knows? Is buying traditional sponsor inventory another way to put pressure on the Tour’s decision-making outside of the equity control in the newco? Don’t know. Again, lots of questions.

But outside of that, it doesn’t seem like much will change from a week-to-week perspective on the PGA Tour, at least in the short term.


This is all subject to change based on what happens in the coming months and whether the deal even goes through, as it’s going to face scrutiny from the U.S. Senate, antitrust officials in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe and a host of other things. Keep reading!


I’m a massive fan of The Iron Heads and I'm planning to travel the whole LIV Golf circuit in 2024. Should I book my plane tickets or wait?

The initial reports were painted as a merger between LIV and the PGA Tour and, predictably, were celebrated as a victory for LIV. (As a reminder, LIV has nearly zero revenue, minuscule TV ratings, no new big-name signings, and has lost a crucial court ruling in the UK which successfully upheld the DP World Tour’s ban of LIV players. This deal is about the PGA Tour joining forces with the group that 

 LIV, not the fledgling organization described herein.)

The company line thus far has been that the newco will conduct an empirical evaluation of LIV at the end of the 2023 season and make a decision on whether to continue the league. The easiest conclusion to draw from that would be that Jay Monahan is now the CEO of LIV and you can guess that he – and the players that remained loyal to the PGA Tour – would enjoy killing it before this sentence is over. At a bare minimum, it seems certain that the idea of competing events on a given week would go away.

But the actual answer is that we don’t know. It’s possible LIV goes away completely. It’s possible that team golf takes a new form as some sort of fall-based Aramco Team Series. It’s even possible that they decide that in order to maximize financial upside, pro golf 

 be entirely team-based and they continue to re-shape the sport.

Monahan did say he doesn’t see a scenario where LIV events and PGA Tour events are staged opposite of each other. LIV captains, including Martin Kaymer and Dustin Johnson, have said they’ve received assurances from al-Rumayyan that the LIV Tour will continue through 2024.

Feel free to guess whatever outcome you want, but we don’t know at this point.


Does this mean that LIV players can come back to the PGA Tour?

Short answer: Yes, eventually. (With potentially some exceptions!) All the language around this deal has been about re-unifying the game of golf and it’s clear that both sides want all the best players in the world playing together in one place.

Of course, the answer is more complicated than just waving them back in. There could be heavy fines involved, but what’s more likely is there will be a limited future financial upside for LIV players (likely in the form of things like PIP earnings, equity in the newco, etc.).

Based on what’s been said publicly and reporting we’ve done, the idea would be to take each player on a case-by-case basis. For instance, a player who quietly went about their business at LIV would likely have a much simpler path back than someone who, I don’t know, funded the official incorporation documents for a breakaway league and 

 to poach players. What is clear from talking to players who remained loyal to the PGA Tour is they are not happy (and that’s putting it mildly) about the idea of having missed out on a generational payday. It’s not going to be as smooth or as simple as letting bygones be bygones.

(Editor’s note: Bet on the reintegration being a massive shitshow.)


Who are those guys you mentioned a minute ago that are going to make up this new board?

Ed Herlihy is the chairman of the PGA Tour policy board. In real life, he is a partner at New York City’s Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and a powerhouse mergers and acquisitions lawyer. Just for fun, he’s also an Augusta National member.

Jimmy Dunne is an independent director on the PGA Tour’s policy board. He is the Vice Chairman and Senior Managing Principal of Piper Sandler, a massive investment banking firm in New York. He is also an Augusta member, as well as the president of Seminole Golf Club and a member… pretty much everywhere else, too. Massive Notre Dame guy.

Dunne is relevant to this conversation for a lot of reasons. The first thing that many people know about Dunne is that his life was dramatically changed by the 9/11 attacks, which you 

The other thing to know is that Dunne just joined the PGA Tour policy board in November of last year. Reading between the lines, it’s clear that he was brought in to learn the lay of the land and help get the PGA Tour out of the mess in which it found itself over the past 2 years as LIV Golf poached some of its biggest names and brought colossally expensive legal action against the Tour. He was the one that first reached out to al-Rumayyan. He was the one that set up the first meeting in London. And he (and Herlihy) were the ones that urged Monahan to get in a room with al-Rumayyan to continue conversations.

So did all of this happen without any players knowing about the deal? Seems like they would be really pissed?

It seems that way, yes. There are other names slowly trickling out (

Michael Klein and Amanda Staveley are two names

 that seemed to be involved from an M&A perspective), but seemingly no players were involved. Rory McIlroy and Cam Smith found out the morning of. Tiger Woods seemingly didn’t know. Greg Norman was told 5 minutes before the CNBC interview. The majority of PGA Tour players likely found out on Twitter or in texts from confused friends.

As far as we can tell, the immediate reaction from players touched a few different nerves:

Players who stood with the PGA Tour on moral grounds for the past 2 years understandably felt used and foolish.

Players of all skill levels who didn’t take the LIV money felt like they missed the boat.

Players who remained loyal to the PGA Tour 

 they would somehow be made whole through this new partnership.

As the dust has settled a bit and players learned more about the proposed deal through player meetings, PAC meetings and meetings with the 

of top players, it seems like the anger is cooling a bit. (We’re still hearing stories of players who are truly livid, however, particularly with Monahan. The fact that a “player-run organization” had no say from the players as it was dramatically reshaped isn’t lost on them.)

Trying to understand how golf changed forever

When Pat Riley was coaching the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s, he came up with a term to explain why all dynasties eventually fall. Typically, they aren’t toppled from the outside. Most implode from within. He called it the Disease of More.

Athletes, by nature, are addicted to achievement. It’s part of what separates them from mortals. If they win one championship, they’re briefly satisfied, but the feeling soon fades and they are desperate for more. If they earn a million dollars, they’re ecstatic, but before long, it seems insufficient. They are convinced they need more. More of everything, more commercials, more followers on social media, more houses, more influence, even more romantic partners. The same forces that inspire you to work hard to get everything you ever wanted eventually consume you. Your wants simply mushroom. Millionaires long to be billionaires. Billionaires long to be kings.

Golf is currently afflicted with the Disease of More.

It has infected everything — the players, the executives, and even some of the media that covers it. (We’re not innocent here.) And while you can admire the ambition of someone who sees millions in their bank account and stews over the fact that it’s not yet billions, this particular strain of the Disease of More seems so contagious, there is a real chance it ends up consuming the sport’s entire essence.


I was thinking this week, after the news broke that the PGA Tour was going to partner with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, about the reasons I fell in love with the game of golf.

They had a lot to do with Phil Mickelson if I’m being honest.

There was something magnetic about his rapscallion charm on a golf course. I had a begrudging respect for Tiger Woods, but I found it hard to root for perfection. It took me years to warm up to him. I was drawn, instead, to someone who seemed more human, more vulnerable. Mickelson could be a swashbuckling fool, sure, but he was my fool.

On the golf course where I learned the game, there was a hole that I loved, a sharp dogleg left that was framed by rugged pine trees. The green was driveable — if you were willing to court disaster. It was a blind shot. Short was dead but so was long. You had no idea if you’d pulled off the shot until you reached the green. To hit an iron to the corner of the dogleg was the sensible play, it was only a wedge from there, but I couldn't resist trying to cut the corner, teeing the ball high and launching a drive up over the trees. I did it because that’s what Phil would do, chase the adrenaline rush. No feeling on a golf course has ever matched the rush of rounding the corner, squinting to see if my ball had landed on the green or bounded into the woods.

I don’t think I’ve ever rooted harder for someone than I did for Mickelson during the final round of the 2004 Masters. I jumped off my couch after each back nine birdie, desperately trying to will him to victory through the pixels of my television screen. The neighbors of my Baltimore row house were livid, pounding our shared walls to implore me to quiet down, but for a few hours, I didn’t care how impolite I was. I was invested in Mickelson’s journey, having suffered through all the disappointments, and this was the payoff.

I never once gave a single shit how much money Mickelson won that day.

Or any day, for that matter. It was the thrill of the chase that mattered.

I understand why Mickelson cared about the money. The value he brought to the game — the loyalty of people like me — allowed the PGA Tour and the majors to reap billions of dollars over the course of his career. By his estimate (and I think he was correct) people like him and Tiger offered the PGA Tour more value than they were receiving in return. Endorsement money was nice, but why shouldn’t Mickelson get an extra piece of the pie when people were clearly tuning in to see him play, not Kirk Triplett or Briny Baird?

Phil Mickelson wanted more. And he probably deserved more. Those frustrations set in motion seismic changes within the sport, but now we have reached a moment where the PGA Tour is trying to become the first American sport that is no longer tethered to reality.

The Disease of More has essentially removed fans from that equation. We no longer matter. Someone else is eager to foot a massive bill, and they would prefer you do not ask questions as to why.

It makes for an interesting thought exercise.

In every other sport, compensation has to be tied to revenue. Revenue has to be driven by interest, whether it’s measured in eyeballs tuning in, or tickets purchased. The Baltimore Ravens, for example, could sign Lamar Jackson to a $260 million contract this spring, the largest in NFL history, because a huge pile of money is generated by the interest in his abilities. If the interest in Jackson — or in similarly-talented players like Patrick Mahomes — suddenly waned, NFL players would eventually need to reflect that. Jackson might want more money, but the basic economic principles of profits and losses being tethered to each other would make it impossible.

Golf, though, is not the NFL. It is a niche sport, and it always has been. There was a time when Tiger nearly dragged it into the mainstream, and you could argue he deserved $200 million in guaranteed money, but that time has come and gone. He is not limping through that door any time soon. A lot of people in golf want to be paid like Lamar Jackson, but their skills (based on profits and losses) did not warrant similar compensation, and this was a frustrating reality to accept, so they have simply chosen not to accept it. The Saudis were happy to step in and satiate that economic insecurity.

What the last few weeks have revealed about golf is that, at the highest level, virtually everyone is a bullshit artist who has been duplicitous enough to say whatever the moment called for in order to justify their position. None of this, it turns out, has ever had anything to do with the 9/11 families, human rights concerns, LGBTQ rights, growing the game, shotgun starts, golf in Australia or disrupting the PGA Tour’s monopoly.

It was about power and money. Everyone at the top wanted more.

I still think there is a good chance this deal doesn’t go through, that it was hastily scrambled together by people desperate to save face. The Department of Justice, by all indications, will want to closely scrutinize everything. And there are a number of players — ones who showed glimpses of principle over the last year only to be blindsided by their commissioner — who are furious.

Whatever it is that PGA Tour executives and the Saudis are attempting to build, it has nothing to do with the people who love and watch the sport. It’s a passthrough that helps money and influence get redistributed. The golf is now completely secondary.

They’re going to hope you’ll support it, the way you always have, but let this week serve as a reminder that you don’t have to. Here is the brutal truth about the PGA Tour: Its greatest value has always been providing context for the majors. I grew aware of Phil Mickelson because he was a character on a weekly television show called the PGA Tour, but I only 

 about him because of the majors. You can still watch and enjoy the majors without giving a second thought to the phony Sturm und Drang of the FedExCup. The majors may not be pure, but they still represent something more than a soulless cash grab.

The Saudis can buy up almost everything, and almost anyone, as long as the world runs on oil. But the reasons you love the game don’t have to go up for sale.

Find yourself a dogleg with a blind green, tee it high and swing boldly. Sip a cold beer and see how much of the afternoon sunshine you can possibly inhale.


The people squabbling over giant piles of money, because they can never be comfortable as long as someone else has more, will still be there if you ever want to return.


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

The Disease of More

Welcome back to the NLU Mailbag. In this space, we’ll address topics big and small, smart and dumb, irreverent and serious.

A quick reminder: 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. If your question gets picked, we’ll send you a free NLU towel.

Manhattan: You get to play an 18 hole pro-am with one professional golfer of your choice. It’s a true alt-shot format. The field is filled with other notable pros and capable amateurs, and if you don’t finish top 5 you both have to give up golfing for 5 years.

Who is your current active player pick? Who is your historical choice?

—2000 Tiger, hope he doesn’t rip your throat out after you spray one in your 6 hours together?

—2004 Phil, hope his creativity, positivity, and overall game keeps you close enough to in contention that he doesn’t mail it in for the last 4 holes?

—2014 Rory, and assume at minimum some sort of back-door top 5 will happen? Some historical version of Jack, Arnie, Seve? Or someone else?

This question has haunted me since I read it, particularly with the current state of my short game. The burden of having a great player’s career in my hands is a heavy one. Do I choose based on skill set? What about a personality fit? And what course are we playing? I have been wrestling with it for days. I would love to play golf for the next five years so I can’t even go full troll and pick a player I loathe just to potentially keep him from the game. This is true nightmare fuel.

Before I choose, I want to address your historical examples. I think peak-Tiger is an interesting answer because I suspect he’s the player most likely to overcome whatever garbage shots I threw at him. And as great as he was, no one has ever been better in the history of golf at turning what should be 5s into 4s. HOWEVER! — shoutout to my old colleague Stephen A. Smith — he’d also have the most to lose, and he’d likely stop speaking to me after the third time I skulled a chip across the green. Can you imagine the historical pressure I’d be under? Tiger won 8 majors between 2000 and 2005. If he and I couldn’t get it done, he’d spend five years of his athletic prime with little to do besides play NAVY S.E.A.L. I don’t think I want that on my conscience.

Phil would be interesting because, you’re right, he’d be the most encouraging. One underrated element of his career — and I suspect one of the reasons he’d felt underpaid for 30 years — is that no one has ever been better at ramping up the charm and enthusiasm when it comes to interacting with those who need to whip out their checkbooks. Watching Phil ham it up during various versions of The Match, cracking jokes, playing to the camera, hat-tipping the sponsors, but also encouraging and instructing Tom Brady when he was potentially unraveling, was a great window into this. He could make a 13-handicap feel like the next shot was going to be flush, even after three or four hosel shanks. Plus, his 2004 season is really underrated. I’d totally forgotten that he just barely missed the playoff between Ernie Els and Todd Hamilton in the Open Championship. He was in serious contention in four majors that year!

I’d love to pick Rory – can you imagine what I’d shoot from where he hits his drives? (Don’t hate, Randy. I’m just trying to project confidence.) Rory and I would also talk prestige television between shots to keep things light, and he would likely be more forgiving than some players when I left him in a brutal spot. Plus, if he had to sit out of golf for five years, it would not emotionally cripple him the way it would some players. I wouldn't be ruining his life. Hell, he could go to college or write a novel.

The correct answer here, however, is Jordan Spieth.

To paraphrase Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, I may think hitting nervy recovery shots from absurd places is my ally, but Spieth was born into that life. Molded by it. He didn’t see a green in regulation until he was already a man, and by then it was nothing to him!

I think Spieth has lived so much of his life in the golfing darkness, he would feel right at home with some of my misses. Plus, imagine our banter! We both talk a bit too much for our own good and could use a good editor.

It would be, at the very least, a spectacle.

Professorlefty: Which golf legends would definitely have gone to LIV?

It pains me a little to say this, but I think Seve would have 1000 percent gone to LIV. In a different lifetime, he probably would have played the Mickelson role. Remember, Seve spent the better part of his career extremely frustrated at the European Tour, 

 for the value he brought to events in Europe. (He was almost certainly correct.)

I think he would have also seen LIV as an opportunity for him to be a showman. The team concept likely also would have appealed to him. He wanted appearance fees, but the European Tour wouldn’t allow them (much like the PGA Tour) and that’s essentially what LIV’s financial model is. I suspect he also would have loved pushing back on reporters over the whole thing.

I haven’t heard it referenced much in this debate, but the issues surrounding LIV aren’t so different from the issues raised in the 1980s when South Africa was hosting lucrative golf tournaments despite the fact there was an international sporting boycott to protest Apartheid. In 1981, five of the world’s best golfers (Seve, Johnny Miller, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Lee Trevino) competed in a golf competition at Sun City, South Africa. Miller won the top prize of $500,000, which was an enormous sum considering Tom Watson got $60,000 that year for winning the Masters.

Some people's primary motivation is money. The suffering of others doesn’t factor much into their calculus. Gary Player’s argument — at least after he went woke, by today’s standards — was that he was trying to bring about change through dialogue and participation.

“I really don't understand how you can say that you must penalize an athlete for the policies of his country's government,” Player told the New York Times in 1979. “I mean, what would Americans have said if somebody had suggested keeping Jack [Nicklaus] or Arnold [Palmer] out of the British Open because of the war in Vietnam? Besides, if you're going to talk human rights, why stop at South Africa? What about the Russians, the Cubans, some of the black countries in Africa?”

As you can see, the WhatAbout Caucus has existed for many years, and will likely be around indefinitely. Their arguments would resonate more if they wanted to actually discuss human rights everywhere, but mostly what they want is for people to stop talking about any of it so they can count their blood money without being annoyed by criticism. They don’t actually care about what’s going on in China; the misdirection is the point.

So while I can’t say for sure who would have gone to LIV or their reasons for doing so, those trips to South Africa at the height of Apartheid offer at least a clue.

Dmcpherron: How many strokes is a good caddy worth to a pro? What about an amateur? Do we undervalue or overvalue caddies?

Your film room playing lesson really got me thinking about the true value of having a true pro be there for every shot. I’ve played with caddies a couple of times and always felt like I this value is way higher then we truly believe.

I think we overvalue certain things about them, but undervalue others. I think caddies often become an easy punching bag when players don’t play well. It allows us to call for change, deflecting some of the blame from the player. Rory experienced a lot of this with J.P. Fitzgerald early in his career. Everyone wanted Fitzgerald gone and assumed as soon as he was, McIlroy would win more majors. Six years later, McIlroy and Harry Diamond have had a lot of success, but no majors. It doesn’t mean it was the wrong move, it just means the caddie is only part of the equation.

Most people in golf believe that Steve Williams is the greatest caddie ever and that he truly did know how to save a shot per round. But how many majors would Tiger have won with a different caddie? The same is true of Bones. I think Jim “Bones” McKay is a truly great caddie, easily one of the best ever, and yet he was on the bag for some of the most memorable major collapses in history. Would any caddie have been able to talk Mickelson out of hitting driver on 18 at Winged Foot? Or convince him to hit his second shot way right of the green instead of trying to carve it around the tree, at least getting him into a playoff? I think Mickelson was likely going to make those decisions no matter what. That’s his nature.

I used to think Dustin Johnson could benefit from having someone other than his brother on the bag, but here is the reality: He won two majors with Austin, and zero with Joe LaCava, one of the best caddies in the game, who was on his bag for four years. Sometimes comfort is better than logic.

In the end, the caddie can be a therapist, a strategist, or a motivator, but if the player is someone who doesn’t listen or is stubborn, they might as well be a donkey who can schlep a bag. The relationship needs to be collaborative.

I do think caddies can definitely help marginally-talented players like you and me because it takes our dumbest decisions off the table. As someone who makes a couple of dumb decisions per round — as you’ll see in an upcoming film room — that’s crippling when you do it.

I do love having a caddie at a course I’ve never played before, but sometimes I also feel added pressure in not wanting to let them down.

Because I don’t play golf competitively, I decided to tap in Soly for his thoughts here on what makes a good caddie, and why I wasn’t one. I actually caddied for him last year in our Nest Invitational Tournament, and we came up a little short and finished 2nd. I probably suffered from “Trying to do too much” syndrome, but it was a fun experience that we both took too seriously when we probably should have been pounding High Noons and enjoying ourselves more.

When I caddied for Hueber in a Monday qualifier, I got yardages, carried the clubs, raked the bunkers, and held the pin. I didn’t even help him with wind direction. Was there when he asked any question, but gave up nothing unprovoked because there was nothing I was going to pick up on that he was not.

The dynamic of having a caddie that is not the same level player as you is always difficult. Like, I’m sorry to say it KVV, but there’s just no shot in golf that I feel like I need your golf advice on. When Hueber tells me to add 10 to a shot into the wind, I know he’s compensating for whatever he feels like I need to compensate for, and also he has a massive amount of experience in judging what wind does to a well-struck golf shot. If I’m approaching a shot, and not asking for input on the club/yardage, a player does not want to hear “165 playing 175.” In my head, I already may be thinking it’s actually playing 180, but I need the loft of my 190 club to get through the wind, blah blah blah. But now it’s been put into my head that the wind isn’t as strong as I think, and it didn’t come from someone that knows it better than me. When caddying, it’s hard not to give advice to feel like you’re doing something. And as a player, you never wanna tell a caddie to do less, because then you’re just an asshole.

Rapport is the most crucial thing with a caddie, and it’s more important than the actual “skill” of the caddie. I can have a relatively quiet caddie that I find super helpful because I know when to ask for help, and he knows when to just let me do my thing. I hate getting a read that’s unasked for. I’m always gonna see what I see, and if I’m told something different than what I see, I’m gonna marry the two thoughts together and hit an uncommitted putt. Yet if it’s with a caddie I trust, it can obviously be super helpful to be saved by the local knowledge. At times even at the Gasparilla, I was calling Hueber off putts because I was putting so poorly and we just weren’t speaking the same language. Absolutely zero fault of his (I’ve had my hottest putting round ever with him on the bag), but I needed to just see my own read, trust it, and hit it. (It did not help).

My advice for the situation in the future is to be as in touch as possible with what your player needs from you, and maybe even ask your player on the first hole what it is they want. Do they want to be pumped up when things are going bad? Do they want you to ask them questions? Do they want you to give you what the wind is doing and where you see the putts are breaking even without asking? Do they want you to step in only if you see something jumping out at them that’s going wrong (slow your tempo down!)? All things that a player should be responsible for but rarely takes responsibility for. (Hand up here.)

 now in the books, what are your favorite and least favorite series finales from your favorite all-time shows and why?

 is probably my top spot. Just beautiful and weird and ambiguous. If more people had watched, we’d still be arguing over it, which is essential for great art. 

 has maybe my favorite walk-off line of any series. And Coach Taylor coming down the escalator to find his wife and ask matter-of-factly 

“Will you take me with you to Philadelphia, please?”

 in the Friday Nights Lights finale absolutely gutted me. It’s such an earned moment in five seasons of observing their marriage. A great series finale gives you callbacks to earlier seasons or characters, but it also surprises you and leaves you feeling like the writers had a plan and they honored the journey and the audience.

 ending but have grown weary of debating it over the years. To me, it doesn’t matter if Tony lives or dies at that moment, only that the rest of his life is going to be full of dread and anxiety.

 are obvious ones, but just thinking about them gets me worked up all over again. I could write (and have written, on our message board) thousands of words about these shows and why they dropped the ball with the game on the line like Lee Evans in the AFC Championship. But essentially my frustration with LOST comes down to this: Every story in history could end with “...and then they died and went to heaven.” It’s truly weak shit. The writers kept upping the ante on the story and when it got too big, they bailed rather than find a satisfying exit. Designing an intricately-plotted show and then saying “Psyche! It’s actually about your feelings and the friends we made along the way” was absurd.

As for HIMYM, I don’t hate Ted and Robin ending up together as much as some people do, but the pacing of it was so poor, I still can’t believe it was actually greenlit by rooms full of people. Ted may have had a decade to grieve the death of his wife, but the audience gets all of 30 seconds to do it before his kids give him permission to chase their Aunt Robin. It’s among the most insane things ever put on television, erasing the investment the show asked you to make for 10 seasons in under a minute.

 was extremely dumb by the end, but by that point, my expectations were very low. I expected LOST and HIMYM to redeem themselves.

Duckhunter07: In your opinion, what is the best month for golf in Maryland?

I’ll go with October. The heat of the summer has broken and the leaves have changed but mostly haven’t started to fall. The gloom of November is looming, but my favorite kind of golf is when the weather is a little crisp in the morning and cool in the evening. If I lived somewhere else, I’d pick August because there is nothing I like more than golf at twilight, especially when it’s 9 p.m. But August can be like swimming in mushroom soup in Maryland.

Dmmcgaha: You can become a member at any US Open course, but that’s the only course you can play for the rest of your life. What course is it and why’s it the Myopia Hunt Club?

I’ve never been invited to play Myopia Hunt Club, but judging from the photos, my goodness, that would be an incredible pick. If we stick with places I’ve actually been, I’d probably land on Pinehurst No. 2. It’s a delightful walk in an area of the country you can (mostly) play year-round. It has a great porch to have a beer afterward. Pebble would be cool, but I don’t see how you play six-hour rounds for the rest of your life. I’d go insane. The contrarian in me wants to choose Chambers Bay because I think it’s a really cool course in a great city and it was unfairly maligned, but the walk up No. 8 and then to the No. 9 tee is a bear. I’m not sure I’d be able to make it when I’m 70. I’d probably stick with Pinehurst in keeping with my belief that all U.S. Opens should be held at public courses. (That’s a topic for another mailbag.)

Killoc: How do you (singular or plural) balance friendship with players (ie. Rory, Max et al) with your work as a sportswriter / content creator? I think there is 100% room for fan-dom in covering sports but I wonder how you approach it?

This is an interesting question and one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. When I worked at ESPN, the calculus was simple. I was a journalist. My job was to have detached objectivity about my subjects. I think true objectivity is kind of a myth, because every decision in reporting and writing is made by a person, and people are subjective, but oftentimes I was trying to let the reader decide what he or she wanted to think about a subject. The piece I did about Aaron Rodgers is probably the best example of that kind of journalism.

Moving into a different role at NLU (not only writing stories but appearing regularly on podcasts, offering my opinion on players, rule changes, courses) has admittedly been a bit of a change. Relationships with people like Rory and Max is probably part of that. I like them as people, they seem to like and respect me, and enjoy having occasional conversations that are not about golf. One thing I’ve always admired about Rory is he does not bristle at commentary about his golf game. He expects it, in fact. He wants people like me and my colleagues to hold him to a high standard, even if he’s willing to do stuff like join us on the Trap Draw to talk about Succession. I’ve written critical things about him in the past (observant readers will remember he was an equal part of my infamous Justin Thomas column at Southern Hills) and wouldn’t shy away from doing so in the future, because my loyalty has to be to the audience, not him. And he understands that. (I suspect Max is similar, although I haven’t had as much opportunity to write about him because his rise came at a time when ESPN didn’t have me writing about golf.) I’m also not ashamed to admit that I like him personally and would enjoy seeing him win more majors.

KVV Mailbag: Early U.S. Open Talk, Caddies and TV Finales

Three down to USC’s Brianna Navarrosa in the semifinals of NCAA match play, Zhang was in an unusual spot when she arrived at the 14th green. Her approach had settled 20 feet away from the hole. Navarrosa had her against the ropes. Zhang looked exhausted, and Stanford — the defending champions — was on the verge of giving up back-to-back points.

Not so fast. She buried the putt for a birdie, a sign of life Stanford desperately needed. A rare reaction followed. Zhang smiled as she walked over to scoop up her ball.

The college career of the greatest amateur in history still had a heartbeat.


As Zhang continued onto the closing stretch, USC would go up in two matches and needed one last point to advance to the NCAA final. The defending champs had only one point on the board, leaving Zhang as the anchor match. When she and Navarrosa tied No. 15, suddenly, No. 16 at Grayhawk Golf Club became do or die.

All day, Navarrosa’s steely determination and ball-striking had put Zhang on the ropes

 But on the Par 3 16th, Zhang channeled something magical, hitting a gorgeous tee shot that landed softly and settled to three feet.


Navarrosa’s sat 10 feet away. Zhang looked like she was once again on the verge of something spectacular, something only she could conjure up. She had done this countless times throughout her career. But on this day, no putt seemed too big for Navarrosa, who never trailed in the match. The USC junior drained it with ease, and wouldn’t let up on 17th. The 157th-best player in the world closed out the No. 1-amateur in the world, 2&1.


Tear-stricken and emotionally exasperated, Zhang explained where she went wrong. “Everything caught up to me, the fatigue…when I was dialing in my yardages, trying to figure out my swing, nothing was going well. Felt like everything was a little bit of blur.”

The match was over – and so was Rose Zhang’s amateur career.

Even before the result of the National Championship, I’d been dreading the day I had to write this story.


Not because I don’t want Rose Zhang to turn professional. I think it’s the natural next step. But because we’d have to speak about Rose Zhang’s amateur career in the past tense, and I know how lucky I’ve been to witness a GOAT in real-time.

When I found out Rose was turning professional, I wasn’t surprised. We were on a video shoot in Palo Alto, and she was talking about her plans. She wanted to relocate to Las Vegas and finish up her degree at Stanford. At 25, I envied this 19-year-old for myriad reasons, but mostly at how settled she was in these plans. There was zero fear of the future in the way she spoke. Instead, there was a deep sense of security in what she had, even if it wasn’t everything she wanted.

Her contentment would be tested a few months later when she almost unraveled in the final round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, a tournament she’d quietly coveted since its inception. But when she emerged victorious, it seemed like yet another obstacle overcome by the greatest amateur in history. Now, all that was left was to defend her NCAA title and try to lead an injury-riddled Stanford squad to a team championship.

First, she recaptured her own glory, becoming the only woman in NCAA history to do so. Then she ran out of gas, knocked off by the brilliant putting of Navarrosa, which felt like an abrupt end to the perfect story.

When she walked off the 17th green at Grayhawk Golf Club, still in a blur, she was met by Anne Walker, her coach and confidant for the last two years. The two shared a tearful embrace. A nearly 36-hole day after a week spent in desert golf will do that to a player. But so will a sudden end to a career that, in Zhang’s world, would have resulted in another team championship to the program that gave her so much.

“There’s somewhat of a soul-filtering process in the pool of people that qualify for Stanford athletics,” says Walker. “They already have some built-in soft skills. They’re hardwired to show up every day, be determined, be ambitious and give their all at whatever they’re doing.”

A 4.6 high school GPA and the No. 1-ranked amateur will make you a shoo-in at any golf program.  But there’s no guarantee that such a player will be successful. Unless you are Zhang and win immediately – and three in a row, at that. In two years, she won 12 times in 20 starts, eclipsing names like Tiger Woods, Maverick McNealy and Patrick Rodgers to become the winningest player in school history, and matching Lorena Ochoa’s feat. Out of all 20 events, a total of only 31 players would beat Zhang.

That would be an incredible career if it ended there. But the Rose Zhang experience did not exist in a collegiate vacuum. It started even before she even signed her letter of intent to Palo Alto when she downed defending U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Gabriela Ruffels with an injured left wrist. In the last year she was eligible, she won the U.S. Girls’ Junior in the summer preceding college – becoming the first person to win both in reverse order.


Then came the Tiger comparisons. The NIL deals. The media attention. A near-dizzying warp-speed ascent, she’d remain the de facto No. 1 for the rest of her college career. And on that trail she’d encounter multiple obstacles – burnout, injury (an unlucky weight landed on her left foot, leading to a wonky start to her freshman spring) and a long sought-out journey to independence.

“In college, you have to live on your own and make your own decisions,” she said weeks after winning her first NCAA individual title. “That was when I realized what was the most important thing for me, rather than having other people tell me what’s best for me.”

Much of Rose Zhang’s epic career has been illuminated by her time with the Cardinal, but as significant are the moments she has walked alone. Her renewed faith in Christianity led to her Baptism after her freshman year. The major starts, when she became that one amateur who hung around all week. Connecting deeper with her cultural background by taking Chinese classes. And in the final ride with the sisters she never had, she would hoist a championship trophy alone.


It’s deeply symbolic of Zhang’s transition into her new life. Had she decided to turn pro as the No. 1-ranked junior in her class, perhaps her trajectory would have looked much different. The trial run at “adulting,” if you will, was backed by two years full of fun, friends and hard lessons learned. It all feels so fast, but in the context of Zhang’s timeline, she took her sweet time dominating everything.

In what’s now the biggest decision of her entire life, Rose Zhang has some semblance of direction. She will make her first professional start at the Mizuho Americas Open, and spend her summer playing four majors and three professional events. By her side will be Jason Gilroyed, whose caddying resume spans Minjee Lee, Alison Lee and Cristie Kerr.

Where is the ceiling for the greatest amateur golfer of all time? That’s tough to say. But compared to the deep historical significance of Rose Zhang’s amateur career, this next chapter is equally as massive. And thanks to her, women’s golf and women’s amateur golf are in a better place than she found it.

Godspeed, Rose Zhang

ROCHESTER — Viktor Hovland was wiggling his feet in the sand. He was trying to stay poised, to stay in the moment, but the task in front of him was enormous. He was standing in a fairway bunker on the right side of the 16th hole at Oak Hill, trailing Brooks Koepka by a shot. All day, Hovland had hung so tough. He’d refused to flinch, even when Koepka briefly stretched his lead to four. But now he had to hit the shot of his 25-year-old life, a 9-iron with the ball below his feet. He needed to stay level, maintain his spine angle, but also get the ball up quickly, over a mound that was roughly the size of a small whale.

He took a deep breath, gripped then re-gripped his club, and swung.


The PGA Championship essentially hung in the balance.


The ball never got six inches off the ground.

Hovland blasted it directly into the face of the mound, and you could hear, in succession, a muffled thump as it disappeared into the grass and dirt, then a groan from the gallery. Hovland said nothing, but looked toward the sky in agony, then put his gloved left fist to his mouth and lightly bit down on his knuckles.


Five minutes later — after Hovland’s lengthy discussion with a rules official, a drop for an embedded ball and a despondent chip out — Koepka addressed his ball up ahead in the rough. It took him roughly 10 seconds to pull the club back. But when he did, he delivered one of the most ruthless shots I’ve seen on a golf course. His wedge slashed through the thick rough like he was using a filet knife. The ball climbed into the blue-gray sky, but only a little. It seemed to float under the wind, and for a few seconds, everything was deathly quiet. It landed on the front of the green, skidded a bit and released. It came to rest four feet from the hole.

Hovland, marching morosely toward his ball, also knew.

Everyone watching, in fact, knew. The tournament was essentially over.

That is what I’ll remember most about the return of Brooks Koepka, and the day he became just the 20th man in history to win a fifth major – that he saw a moment of weakness in his closest pursuer and he pounced. He snatched the soul right out of Hovland’s body. He hit 67 shots Sunday on his way to a 2-stroke victory over Hovland and Scottie Scheffler. But that one hovers above all of them.

“Brooks is a player that, when he gets in contention, he’s like a shark in the water,” said Masters winner Jon Rahm.

There have been plenty of times, in recent years, when Koepka had a chance to deliver a dagger on a Sunday at a major. Plenty of times, he let those moments slip away. He even referred to them, early in the week of the PGA Championship, as choking. (His words.) It seemed partly done in jest, to get the phrase out there before anyone else could bring it up. But it was also a reflection of his own high standards. Winning majors is hard, and plenty of golfers let opportunities slip away. Koepka once prided himself on not being one of them, and he hated that injuries and mental mistakes eroded that aura of invincibility. But he learned from those miserable moments, and perhaps Hovland will too, one day.

“I've always learned more from the four times I finished second than, I guess, the five times I've won now,” Koepka said, standing next to the Wanamaker Trophy for the third time. “I think failure is how you learn. You get better from it. You realize what mistakes you've made. Each time I've kind of made an adjustment. It's more mentality than it is anything. It's not really golf swing or anything like that. I think the big key is just being open and honest with yourself, and if you can do that, you'll be miles ahead of everybody else.”

Articles

The Agitation of Scottie Scheffler

Trying to understand how golf changed forever

The Disease of More

KVV Mailbag: Early U.S. Open Talk, Caddies and TV Finales

Godspeed, Rose Zhang

Brooks Koepka: Resuming the Pursuit of History

More like Soak Hill! (Sorry)

2023 PGA Championship Notebook: Shanks and Scenes from Day 2

A Reminder of the Bryson Experience

KVV Mailbag: Early PGA Championship Talk, Parenting and Jason Isbell

Rachel Heck is still here, even if she's missing a piece of her

Nest Exclusive: Jerry Springer Was Here to Listen

Randy: A golden day for Nelly's second major

KVV Mailbag: LIV and the majors, all-timers and sandwiches

KVV: What do we do about slow play?

Jon Rahm's Inevitability

Simply Sam Bennett

Brooks Koepka (tries to) smash windows, smashes expectations