The golf world got its first look Monday at the framework agreement that the PGA Tour and DP World Tour struck with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) to reshape the world of men’s professional golf. The documents were obtained by No Laying Up shortly after being provided to Congress as part of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations inquiry into the pending deal.

The framework agreement can be read in its entirety 

Here are a few things to know about the agreement.

There weren’t really any bombshells hiding in the written agreement.

Interviews done by Jimmy Dunne and others, like 

, seemed to cover almost all of what was put on paper in the framework agreement. If you’d like an in-depth read about what happened (along with some of our analysis), here’s a piece 

Now, it's worth mentioning up front how scant the document is on specifics. This was mentioned over and over in interviews the past few weeks, however now we can see it spelled out. The leadership doesn't appear to be withholding any details, there just don't seem to 

There are still a thousand unanswered questions about nearly every section of the framework, which was signed by Commissioners Jay Monahan and Keith Pelley, as well as PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan. But as far as what has been put on paper, the agreement doesn’t seem to contain a big smoking gun that wasn’t already mentioned in the media.

Everything that follows is operating under the assumption that this deal goes through. If not, the framework is torn up and "the parties can revert to operating their respective businesses in the state that existed pre-agreement in their discretion."

The parties agreed to some sort of discipline for players returning to the PGA Tour.

While there are no specifics included in the framework, the document does include language stating that the parties will work together “to establish a fair and objective process for any players who desire to re-apply for membership with the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour following the completion of the 2023 season… consistent with each Tour's disciplinary policies.”

A lot of people will probably focus on the Official World Golf Rankings line.

The wording in the framework agreement is: “The Parties will cooperate in good faith and use best efforts to secure OWGR recognition for LIV events and players under OWGR's criteria for considering LIV's pending application.”

As a refresher: A big hesitation for players who chose not to jump to LIV (and a big complaint of those who did), is the lack of OWGR points available at LIV events. These points are used to determine who qualifies for major championships and, for some players, are also used to determine sponsor incentive bonuses. The fear (rightly so) for many players was that if they don’t get new OWGR points, their world rankings would plummet and they would not be eligible for major championships, which is exactly 

Reminder: The majors mostly make up the OWGR board and can change how they fill their fields any time they choose to do so. Feel free to 

So, is this line in the framework agreement deserving of a LIV victory lap? 

 but smart money would be on a “not exactly” for a few reasons.

Besides the fact that the phrase “best efforts” feels far from a guarantee…

We still don’t know what’s going to happen to LIV Golf.

The framework agreement spells out that the three golf entities will continue to co-exist. Let’s look at the exact language:

“NewCo will undertake a full and objective empirical data-driven evaluation of LIV and its prospects and potential and will make a good faith assessment of the benefits of team golf in general, and PIF, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour will work together in an effort to determine how best to integrate team golf into PGA Tour and DP World Tour events going forward.”

In our opinion, this could be taken three ways. After the 2023 LIV Golf season:

• The NewCo will evaluate the P&L of LIV Golf – an entity that pays for TV coverage, costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year and 

 – and decide to kill it and fold the players back into the PGA Tour/DP World Tour.

• The NewCo will decide that the team golf model – now with all of the world’s best players at its disposal – would unlock untold amounts of new revenue and serves as a better way to run men’s professional golf. This would require totally blowing up the existing Tour system and all of its infrastructure, including the billions of dollars in committed contractual revenue from title sponsors and media partners, which stretches into the next decade. This seems unlikely.

• Due to the P&L exercise above, the NewCo decides to shutter LIV Golf and comes up with a totally different team concept. Picture a mini team event series in the fall (which has been talked about in the past), a reviving of the World Cup of Golf (which has been 

), which in the past has seen the likes of Gary Woodland and Matt Kuchar as the players willing to travel to represent the United States. A worldwide event like that, free of the constraints of the Olympic committee’s love of stroke play, with purses to draw the best players from each country, seems like a far more interesting option than much of what else has been presented.

What seems least likely based on the framework agreement and the statements made the past few weeks by most key stakeholders, would be that LIV and the PGA/DP World Tours continue to operate independently and run concurrently as they do now. There is perhaps a chance that they run separately in different times of the year, but with the top players' continued pleas to consolidate the schedule and play fewer tournaments, it seems next to impossible to get enough critical mass to make both products successful. 

The lawsuits are over. So is the recruiting of players to LIV through the end of 2023.

In addition to all litigation between the tours and LIV Golf being dropped with prejudice (meaning they cannot be picked back up if this deal falls apart), the framework also spells out that the two sides have agreed “not to, directly or indirectly, enter into any contract, agreement or understanding with, solicit, or recruit any players who are members of the other's tour or organization to become members of their respective organizations or any other golf league.” That means you can go ahead and ignore every rumor you see on Twitter about Jon Rahm flirting with LIV, at least until 2024. If the agreement falls apart, or doesn’t get finalized by the end of the year, LIV could potentially begin recruiting players again.

The agreement was signed on May 30, a week before the announcement was made on television.

This seems relevant only because so much of the messaging during and after the announcement seemed rushed, chaotic and reactive. The initial reactions of many fans, media and especially players, was confused speculation, mostly due to the fact that so many felt blindsided by the announcement. The Tour has said repeatedly that this was done in order to prevent leaks or misinformation, but it’s hard not for this to feel like an own goal by leadership if there really was a week to prepare for the announcement.

The part about the PGA Tour retaining control of the NewCo appears to be correct.

Much was made about Jimmy Dunne’s claims that the deal struck was one that would bring a cash infusion to the PGA Tour and DP World Tour without the tours giving up control over how the money was spent. Based on language in the framework agreement, that appears to be what the PIF has signed on for.

“The PGA Tour will at all times maintain a controlling voting interest in NewCo and PIF will continue to hold a non-controlling voting interest, notwithstanding any incremental investment by PIF or exercise of its right of first refusal.”

The PIF will become a major sponsor of men’s professional golf.

Language from the document spells out that the PIF “will make a financial investment to become a premier corporate sponsor” of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour and that the Tours will “work together collaboratively to identify a high profile event for which PIF or its designee(s) will make a financial investment to serve as title sponsor.” What this means is – surprise – unclear, but it’s something worth considering as the Tour bumps up against the limitations of its current sponsors as purses continue to climb in the age of designated events.

When the Definitive Agreement is signed, Yasir Al-Rumayyan will be a member of the PGA Tour policy board.

Again, this is not new news. It was spelled out in the initial press release. But it’s still wild to see and worth repeating that the person who was funding the Tour’s biggest rival the past 2 years is now in the room helping to make decisions.

Monahan is obviously a fixture of the framework agreement. In addition to his role as PGA Tour commissioner, he would also be taking on the role of CEO of the NewCo.

 that Monahan was recovering from a “medical situation” and he’s been away from his day-to-day role ever since. He’s not expected to be at the next meeting of the PGA Tour policy board on June 27 and it’s unclear if or when he will return to his role as commissioner.

If Monahan does not return to his commissioner role, it’s unclear what will happen with the CEO position of the NewCo. Since Monahan’s leave began, chief operating officer Ron Price and executive vice president Tyler Dennis have been running day-to-day operations.

The signed copy of the framework agreement confirms much of what was put forth by Jimmy Dunne and the PGA Tour. There is still a lot left to be determined about the fate of LIV going forward, although it’s likely team golf will exist in some form in the future. The details of how players who left for LIV will be potentially integrated back into the PGA Tour and DP World Tour remain unclear, only that all parties will make a “good faith” effort to come up with a fair criteria and terms of readmission. We still don’t know whether forming a new for-profit company and allowing the Saudis to invest in that company will alleviate the regulatory concerns of the Justice Department, and that is likely to play out over the next six months (or more) but it is clear the Saudis are likely to be major players in professional golf moving forward.

First look at the PIF, PGA Tour framework agreement 

 — Ten minutes before his Sunday tee time in the U.S. Open, Wyndham Clark was still hitting balls on the range of Los Angeles Country Club. Every few seconds, his caddie would flip him a ball and he would blast it 330 yards into the ether, but he wasn’t visualizing shots or going through his routine. His brain was racing.

Rickie Fowler, Clark’s playing partner, was already making his way up the hill toward the first tee, but Clark remained at the end of the range. He needed more time before facing the moment. A few feet away, Julie Elion, a sports psychologist Clark has been working with, stood just outside of his divots and peppered him with questions.


“We were talking about anything but golf,” Clark said. “We were talking about traveling. We were talking about the beautiful homes out here. She was just trying to keep it light. She has a great calmness and presence about her.”

Clark wasn’t sure about Elion six months ago when his caddie, John Ellis, and his agent Rob Mougey, asked him to consider working with her. He didn’t love the idea of being analyzed. But he was so grateful once he got to know her and began to trust her. Before he went to the first tee, she reminded him of a mantra they’d discussed.

“Every time you hear someone chant ‘Rickie!’ think of your goals and get cocky and show them who you are.”

Clark said he reminded himself of the mantra more than 100 times on Sunday. An hour after winning the U.S. Open, he was still stunned by how much it had helped.

“Maybe someday they’ll be chanting my name,” he said.


Every major championship begins to fade in my mind once the trophy gets handed out.

 The weeks, as wonderful as they often can be, begin to blur. Details get sanded down in my mind, and the specifics start to dissolve. I know, for example, Jon Rahm won the Masters (duh), and I can picture the shot he hit to essentially seal the tournament, a chippy 8-iron from the right rough on the 14th hole that curved in the air, peeled off the slope in the middle of the green and curled to four feet. I was standing 20 feet from him when he hit it. That is seared into my brain.

But Rahm’s lesser moments of that week, I’d need to check the tape to get right. Did he win by four or was it three? Did he go for the 13th green in two, or did he lay up? I honestly can’t remember.

I was struck by something Rory McIlroy said at the U.S. Open this week in an interview with Sky Sports, when reporter Jamie Weir asked him if his 2011 win in the U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club felt like a lifetime ago, and that he was almost a different person.

“It does feel like a lifetime ago,” McIlroy said. “I honestly think it’s the best week of ball striking I’ve ever had. I don’t know that I’ve ever hit the ball better than that week and I go back and watch that week a lot because of how well I hit it. But I think this is what makes me feel old: I’ve started to just remember watching the highlights rather than remembering what actually happened.”

I wanted to remember the 2023 U.S. Open for what actually happened, not just watch the highlights someday, so I spent the week with my notebook in hand, jotting down the scenes I longed to preserve.


Clark nervously preparing for the biggest round of his life on the driving range took on a greater importance after he hoisted the trophy, but even if he hadn’t emerged victorious, it still would have resonated with me. For all the brilliance that was on display during the week, we wouldn’t care if it was robots hitting the shots.

The little glimpses of humanity and vulnerability are what make golf worth investing in.

When Michael Brennan dressed up as Rickie Fowler for Halloween in 2012,

 he wasn’t expecting to get anything out of it. He was just a 9-year-old kid who loved golf and thought Fowler was the coolest. But his father had a friend who knew someone who worked for Fowler, and eventually, a picture of Brennan decked out in orange and wearing a wig made its way into Fowler’s hands. Fowler autographed it with a promise: “To Mike. Look forward to playing a practice round with you at the 2025 U.S. Open! Keep up the good work!!”

Eleven years later, Brennan — now a senior on the golf team at Wake Forest University — qualified for the U.S. Open. He beat Fowler’s offer by two years. When Fowler found out via his agent, he wanted to make good on the promise, so he invited Brennan to join him for a Tuesday match against Fowler’s friends, Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth. It was a reminder, to Fowler, that life can come full circle. As a kid, he’d once dressed up as Fred Couples for Halloween, and gotten to play with him when he turned pro. The least he could do was pay it forward.

Few little boys get to live out their athletic dreams, but Brennan is one of them. He and Fowler came to the 9th hole at LACC, a tricky Par 3 that plays over a giant section of barranca, with their match against Spieth and Thomas tied. This was the last hole. Brennan hit a towering iron shot that settled 15 feet below the pin, and when Fowler missed the green, it was up to Brennan to close it out.

As the players crossed the bridge to read their putts, a small group that included Fowler’s wife, Alison, Thomas’ wife Jillian, and Spieth’s wife, Annie, gathered behind the green to watch.

Brennan studied the line, wiggled his feet and sent the ball rolling. Seconds after it dripped into the hole for the win, Fowler’s daughter, Maya, dashed onto the green and plucked the ball out of the cup. Everyone chuckled.

For the next 10 minutes, family bedlam broke out. Maya Fowler and Sammy Spieth, Jordan and Annie’s son, toddled around the green, their fathers beaming with affection. Eventually, Spieth crouched down to give Sammy a gentle putting lesson. Maya Fowler, wishing she could stay longer, maybe forever, began to cry as she was scooped up by her mom.


“Hey, it’s okay,” Rickie Fowler said, soothing his daughter as they walked.

There would be plenty of golf to come. It was time to go be a dad.

I knew I wasn’t going to be home for Father’s Day this year

 because it always falls on the Sunday of the U.S. Open, so I made a promise to my 11-year-old daughter, Keegan. If she came up with a question, I’d ask it to her favorite player, Rory McIlroy, then report back with an answer. She agonized over what to ask before settling on something, and I tucked it away, saving it for the right moment.


On Tuesday, I walked a few holes with McIlroy during his practice round. As he studied the course, we chatted about the framework agreement between the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, about Succession and Ted Lasso, and about our families. Practice rounds can be slow, particularly at the U.S. Open. Eventually, in the middle of the 16th fairway as McIlroy waited for the group ahead to clear the green, I posed my daughter’s question.


Would you rather make 20 holes in one playing by yourself, or one hole in one playing with your friends?

“I think I’d have to go with a hole in one in front of my friends,” he said.


Who, after all, would ever believe you if you said you made 20 holes in one by yourself?

“My first hole in one, I was actually playing by myself,” McIlroy admitted. “I went running back up to the clubhouse at Holywood Golf Club to tell everyone.”


They did, he admitted. He was, after all, a pretty good player as a kid.


“I was eight,” he said. We both chuckled.

When I relayed the story to my daughter over FaceTime, she grew wide-eyed with wonder. (We both love that she has freckles, just like McIlroy.) She said the story made her want to practice more.

It’s a shame, I realized, you can’t bottle up your golfing innocence and keep it forever.

Wyndham Clark used to hate it when people said nice things about his golf swing.

 He was outwardly polite, but inside he seethed.


“My first few years on TOUR it actually really bothered me because people would say, oh, you have such a great swing, and I didn't know where the ball was going, and that was really frustrating for me,” Clark said.

He had a lot of anger inside him, and even though he understood it was connected to losing his mom, Lise, to breast cancer when he was in college, he still didn’t know how to deal with it.


“I've had many times where I've gone home and was yelling in my car and punching things and just so mad that I'm like, ‘Why can't I do what my peers are doing?’ ” Clark said.

There was a time when he would break clubs and storm off courses. He didn’t get mad, however, when it felt on Sunday like his whole tournament might be unraveling. On the 8th hole, a reachable Par 5, he missed the green by a yard with his second shot, but his ball was buried in a bush and he could barely see it. When he tried to chip it out, his wedge slid right under the ball, and it barely moved. His two-shot lead in the final round of the U.S. Open looked fragile.

“The tough thing was, I couldn’t see where I was hitting,” Clark said. “The lie was not bad, but I couldn’t see.”

His mind was racing. He took another swipe at the ball and it rocketed across the green. The crowd gasped in a combination of sympathy and shock.

“I didn’t even know where it went,” Clark said.

Remarkably, he didn’t panic. He assessed his chip, nipped it perfectly, and got up and down for bogey.

“That’s momentum,” Clark said. “Even though I made a bogey and it looked like I should have made a birdie or par, making bogey there didn't kill me and kept me in the tournament. That was a huge point in the round.”

 Rory McIlroy wasn’t sure what to do. He was standing on the left side of the 14th fairway, trying to assess which wedge to hit from 125 yards. He was torn between a sand wedge and a gap wedge. He talked it over with his caddie, Harry Diamond, before settling on his choice. He was trailing Clark by a shot and running out of holes. This was a moment.

“As I was walking up to it, it felt like it was a perfect full sand wedge,” McIlroy said. “Hit it hard, get some spin on it. Then while we were getting prepared for the shot, the wind started to freshen a little bit. Full sand wedge wasn't getting there, so I said to Harry, three-quarter gap wedge would be perfect.”

Even when the ball was still in the air, he knew he had made a mistake. The wind was hammering it, and his swing had been a bit tentative. The shot came up nearly 10 yards short and plugged in the grass face of the bunker. His best chance to make a birdie on the back nine had disappeared. Minutes later — after a frantic search for his ball resulted in a fortuitous free drop when Scottie Scheffler found where it had embedded — McIlroy missed a par putt. He could only look on in anguish from the 15th tee box as Clark roasted a 3 wood onto the green to set up an easy birdie.


The wedge, in the end, is what will sting for a bit.

“I feel like I didn't time the shot perfectly,” McIlroy said. “I hit it when the wind was at its strongest and the ball just got hit a lot by the wind, and obviously it came up short. If I had it back, I think I had the right club and the right shot. I might have just had to wait an extra 15 or 20 seconds to let that little gust settle.”

Ten Memories from LACC

LOS ANGELES — Someone is about to have their heart broken by the U.S. Open today.

They will walk to the first tee at Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course, most likely feeling excited but nervous. They will leave the 18th green, hours later, deflated and demoralized.

I tried my best, I just got outplayed; I know I’ll be stronger because of this; it’s just golf

 — but deep down, we know this one will sting. Part of what makes a major championship so compelling is how much it hurts if it happens to slip away. The gulf between 1st and 2nd is emotionally immeasurable. You can’t win a major without an intense desire to do so, but it’s the same desire that leaves you vulnerable to crippling disappointment.

All four men atop the leaderboard have much to gain with a victory. But the pressure each man is facing is slightly different. If you’re looking for clues as to which one might lift the trophy, just ask yourself: Who is best equipped to handle the possibility of more heartache?

He has been close like this before, flirting with career-defining victories, only to see them slip away time and time again. Over a decade, his youthful potential slowly morphed into a sheen of underachievement. Then one day, he found himself lost in the golfing wilderness, needing to tear apart his swing and rebuild it just to survive. A win would mean a great deal to Fowler, a prophecy fulfilled and a legacy re-written at age 34. But a loss would be unlikely to break him. He is, in a way, playing with house money. There was a time, not long ago, when a moment like this seemed unthinkable. Just a year ago, he couldn’t even get into the U.S. Open and had to fly home and contemplate his future after practicing all week as the first alternate at Brookline Country Club.

“After going through the last few years, I'm not scared to fail,” Fowler said. “I've dealt with that. We'll just go leave it all out there. I'm not scared to be wherever we're at.”

He too has been here before, on the cusp of history, only to see someone else play better and snatch it away. The sting of letting the Open Championship at St. Andrews slip from his grasp in 2022 was immense, and some of those feelings may still linger. Next year’s PGA Championship would represent a decade since McIlroy has won a major, and there has been plenty of disappointment in that journey, a lot of searching as McIlroy figured out who he wanted to be away from golf. He believes he is better for it.


“I feel like I've showed a lot of resilience in my career, a lot of ups and downs, and I keep coming back,” McIlroy said. “And whether that means that I get rewarded or I get punched in the gut or whatever it is, I'll always keep coming back.”

Lately, he’s found himself pulling up old footage on YouTube, trying to channel a hint of his youthful arrogance, or at least the freedom that accompanied it. But what surprised him was how much patience he displayed back then, even though there wasn’t a hint of gray in his hair and it felt like his whole career was in front of him.

“I actually couldn't believe how many irons and 3-woods and stuff I was hitting off the tee,” McIlroy said. “It set something off in my mind about, you know how to do this. You know how to play smart. You don't have to hit driver all the time. Yes, it's a big weapon, it's a big advantage. But I keep saying I've got more weapons in my arsenal now than I did back then, so I may as well use them.”

In one sense, he faces the least amount of pressure of anyone near the top of the board. He is having a historically-great season from tee to green, but he just can’t get his putter to cooperate. He has the least amount of scar tissue in majors (for now).


Bad putting can slowly drive even the best players to the brink of madness, but we aren’t there yet with Scheffler. He is still playing with house money. Coming up short after starting the day three shots behind would feel like a missed opportunity, but it would not weigh as heavily on him as it would Fowler or McIlroy. Scheffler hasn’t been worn down (yet) by the weight of expectations the way they have. He might also be, more than anyone of his generation, built for this.


“I like competing. I like playing against the best players. I like hard golf courses,” Scheffler said.” So I guess those all kind of line up with the majors. I just feel like the challenge of everything suits my game better than some of the easier tests that we see on TOUR throughout the year.”

His resume is the thinnest, by far, of the contenders. He’s only played in six majors in his career and missed the cut in four of them. He has one career win, and it came five weeks ago at the Wells Fargo. A year ago, Clark was ranked 241st in the world, and although he has emerged as a promising young player, this may be his best chance to win a major. As Fowler can attest, potential is great until it suddenly becomes a burden.


Clark, however, knows what real heartache feels like.

When he was four, his mother, Lise, was diagnosed with breast cancer but underwent treatment for two years and became cancer free. When Clark was in college at Oklahoma State, her cancer returned and a year later, she died at age 55. It sent Clark into a spiral of anger and depression. It took him years to grieve properly, and he contemplated quitting golf numerous times. What kept him going was a message his mom delivered to him when she got sick: Play for something bigger than yourself.

Clark couldn’t stop thinking about her this week, particularly after his first round 64.


“I was walking down yesterday and I kind of was just smiling as I was playing well, and I go, man, ‘I wish you could be here, Mom, because it's a dream come true to be doing this at the highest level in front of friends and family that are out here,’ ” Clark said. “I wish she could be here. But I know she's proud of me, and she's made a huge impact on my life. I am who I am today because of her. She was kind of my rock and my always-there supporter. So when things were tough or when things were going great, she was always there to keep me grounded and either bring me up or keep the high going. Yeah, I mean, I'm getting a little choked up. She's everything, and I miss her, and everything I do out here is a lot for her.”


Intellectually, a single round of golf shouldn’t define anyone. There are too many variables, and the bounces are too random, to extrapolate it into a legacy. But that’s a big part of why we watch, why we slog through hours of commercial interruptions and why we sit on the edge of the couch, nervous and anxious, praying for birdies.

The potential for more heartache always looms, but that’s what makes us care.

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

Triumph and Heartache Looms

LOS ANGELES — We have reached the halfway point of the United States Open, and before we settle in for the weekend, let’s pause and take a litmus test for something. It may help us tackle a philosophical question that is bigger than birdies and bogeys.


How did you feel when Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele opened the tournament with a pair of 62s, breaking a record for the lowest round in the history of the event?


If it annoyed you, you are not alone. Instead of celebrating Fowler and Schauffele’s feat, thousands of people hopped onto the internet to complain. If the tenor of these complaints felt familiar, it’s because they tend to resurface every time there are low scores in this tournament.

This is not the U.S. Open my father grew up with!

I grew up watching previous generations of golfers suffer. What the hell is this?

If you didn’t feel that way, then you’re probably having a good time watching the broadcast (commercial load aside, of course). Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course is an interesting venue, it’s hosting a major tournament for the first time, it was designed by a Golden Age architect, and the leaderboard is filled with big names and compelling storylines. Why should it matter that the 71.39 scoring average of the field was the lowest in history?


The contrast between the two positions represents two interesting but perhaps unanswerable questions:

What do we want the U.S. Open to be in 2023? 

Is an old school U.S. Open bloodbath even possible with modern equipment?

The players, for the most part, have been fine with the set up this week. It’s clear they prefer it when the USGA errs on the side of caution; when they try to identify the best player without embarrassing the rest of the field.

“I've never been a fan of trying to make the golf course too tricky,” said Charley Hoffman, who shot a second round 67. “I mean, if someone goes out and plays good golf they deserve to shoot 8-under.”

They know from experience what’s coming.

“Obviously you start getting 10, 12-under par; now the USGA won't be happy,” said Padraig Harrington. “They're certainly going to try to hold those guys back and have a winning score in single digits.”

If you’re a fan who enjoys seeing the best golfers — one tournament a year — humbled and humiliated, the first two days must have felt like watching someone do the Griddy on Ben Hogan’s grave. Even a few players couldn’t resist admitting they wished the course had played a 

“I'm surprised,” said Rory McIlroy, who posted rounds of 65 and 67, his lowest scores at a U.S. Open since he won the tournament in 2011 at 16-under par. “I didn't see the scores being as low as they are. I think the overcast conditions yesterday combined with that little bit of rain in the morning, I think the course just never got firm at all. It's got the potential to get a little firmer and faster over the next couple days, which will make the scores go up a little bit. We'll see what it's like at the end of the week. It's still early in the week. And yes, the course has played maybe a little easier than everyone thought it would, but wouldn't be surprised on Saturday/Sunday to see it bite back, which going back to your question I feel is what a U.S. Open is all about. It should be tough. It should be just as much of a mental grind out there as a physical one.”

No golfer over the last five years has been better at handling the mental aspect of hard setups than Brooks Koepka. He’s won two U.S. Opens in that span and finished in the top 4 three more times during his career. He’s often stated that difficult conditions give him an advantage over most of the field, both physically and mentally, so it was not a surprise to hear him say he was unimpressed with LACC through two rounds.

“I'm not a huge fan of this place,” Koepka said. “I'm not a huge fan of blind tee shots, and then I think there's just some spots that no matter what you hit, the ball just ends up in the same spot. I think it would be more fun to play on just like a regular round than it would be a U.S. Open. I mean, there's, what, two 8s yesterday? That doesn't happen.”

So what would Koepka’s ideal U.S. Open score look like?

“I think it should be around par,” he said, while conceding that might be impossible at this course. “I think if you made the greens a little bit faster, but I don't know if you really can. Then it might be interesting, that's for sure.”

The trouble with following Koepka’s philosophy is that the USGA has tried to move away from protecting par, in part because the players pitched a fit when they felt setups went over the edge.

In 2018, Zach Johnson fired some pointed criticism at the USGA after only three players broke par on Saturday at Shinnecock. “They've lost the golf course," Johnson infamously told Sky Sports. "When you have a championship that comes down to sheer luck, that's not right.” That same day, Phil Mickelson hit a putt while it was still moving on the 13th hole, an act many felt he did to protest an unfair set up. In 2019, Golf Digest reported that at least 15 of the game’s best players, including McIlroy and Dustin Johnson, had at one point discussed boycotting the U.S. Open over their frustrations with the event.


It’s important to consider all that context when considering how we arrived at the current moment. John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s senior managing director of championships, seemed borderline melancholy when he showed up on Golf Channel Thursday night to try and defend the organization. The emotional undercurrent of the interview was obvious: 

If the weather softens the course, we’re powerless.

“There is so much unknown about Los Angeles Country Club,” Bodenhamer said. “We couldn’t have predicted what happened [Thursday]. I’ll tell you what we won’t do. We’re not going to force anything. We could do things that would make it stupid hard. But we’re not going to do that.”

Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner, seemingly speaking for the thousands of frustrated fans, wanted to know if the USGA was fearful its championship might be losing its identity as the toughest test in golf. Bodenhamer didn’t push back.

“Yes,” he said. “I think we want to keep that. That’s our DNA. Those are things that have been our heart and soul for 125 years. So we’re paying attention and we’ll adjust accordingly. But we’ll take the long-term look.”

Not every U.S. Open venue needs to have the same identity, of course. It’s impossible to make Oakmont, Pinehurst and Pebble Beach play similarly, and they’re three of the USGA’s anchor venues. Dustin Johnson, who won the U.S. Open in 2016 at Oakmont, said all the consternation over how low the scores are is lost on him.

“I mean, it doesn't really matter. I don't care,” Johnson said. “However they want to set it up is fine with me. If you're playing well it doesn't really matter the setup. I think if you look at the venues over the last seven or eight years or ten years, they're all different. They're all set up different. I think this course is great. It's a great venue. It's in perfect condition. It feels like a U.S. Open.”


It’s also impossible to have this debate without discussing the elephant-sized driver head in the room. The 16th hole at LACC is 542 yards and plays as a Par 4. Scottie Scheffler hit a pitching wedge into the green on his way to making birdie on Thursday. Rory McIlroy hit the green with a sand wedge on Friday. If the USGA is still compiling evidence for its Model Local Rule proposal, those two club selections would be a decent exhibit. Because we have reached the point where it’s impossible to logically argue that the U.S. Open should return to being so hard players are struggling to break par, but also they should continue to have wedges into 542-yard Par 4s.

“I think I can speak on behalf of the R&A when I say both the R&A and the USGA believe doing nothing is a bad idea for the long-term future and health of the game,” said USGA CEO Mike Whan at the start of the week.

There are, of course, alternative proposals. Johnny Miller, who until Thursday held the record for the lowest round in U.S. Open history, said he wants to see a return to thick rough and narrow fairways. LACC has deep rough in many spots but also has some wide fairways that funnel the ball into the rough when it’s firm. It has not been as firm as anyone had hoped.

“I'm a big believer, growing up, that the U.S. Open was all about the rough,” Miller said. “It wasn't like the greens were crazy fast. That's what I always thought about when I thought about setup for the U.S. Open, was not this graduated rough, but is about if you miss the fairway you're going to pay a price. I still think that's the way -- if I was president of the USGA, growing the rough would be a high priority.”

But not all Grow The Rough arguments are the same. Matt Fitzpatrick, the 2022 U.S. Open champion, said he doesn’t love the fact that LACC punishes small misses more severely than big ones.

“I think the big issue around this place is you miss the fairway by a yard and you got to chip out. I just think that's the course setup,” Fitzpatrick said. “We’ve played a lot of places recently that have been like that. I think it's very poor when golf courses are set up like that. You can hit it 40 yards off line and you got a lie. So I think there needs to be more done to sort of help more accurate players off the tee by missing the fairway a yard you shouldn't have to be chipping it out. If you miss it by 40, you should be having to chip it out.”

One thing should also be kept in mind as we contemplate all this: We’re only halfway through the championship. The course has already shown some teeth. The sun is shining and the ground is getting firm. Friday’s round was almost a full stroke harder (.84) than Thursday’s. The afternoon wave was 1.68 strokes harder than Thursday. The masochists may have their wish yet.

“You just wait until this place firms up,” Schauffele said. “It's going to be nasty.”

What do we want the U.S. Open to be?

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.

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.

Writing

First look at the PIF, PGA Tour framework agreement

Ten Memories from LACC

Triumph and Heartache Looms

What do we want the U.S. Open to be?

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