I want to begin this column with a statement of fact: Slow play in golf is not Patrick Cantlay’s fault.

The problem did not begin with him, nor would forcing him to play faster magically fix things. Cantlay is playing within an established set of norms, and obviously doing it well. If you told most professional golfers they could rise to No. 4 in the world by playing at tortoise speed, they would gladly take that trade off. Cantlay has found an approach that works for him, and used it to become one of the best golfers in the world.

From his perspective, I can see why he has no incentive to change. In fact, it seems clear Cantlay doesn’t believe slow play is an actual problem.

“One thing that's interesting sitting on the (player advisory council) is you get all the numbers and the data, and rounds have taken about the same length of time for the last 10 or 20 years that they currently take,” Cantlay told reporters this week at the RBC Heritage. “When you play a golf course like Augusta National where all the hole locations are on lots of slope and the greens are really fast, it's just going to take longer and longer to hole out.”

Is Cantlay wrong? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it the last few days. My initial reaction is of course he’s wrong. Professional golf has become so plodding and methodical, most tournaments this spring haven’t been able to finalize their cut on Friday, with the second round now regularly finishing on Saturday morning. But the complicated answer is more nuanced, which makes potential solutions hard to propose.

Let’s start with a thought experiment: Why does slow play matter?

It certainly matters to most weekend hackers. There is nothing more maddening than being jammed behind a foursome in carts that won’t wave you through and makes you wait on every tee while they take 15 practice swings in the fairway. But that’s not professional golf. Equating the two, which people frequently do, is unfair. Why should I care if Cantlay spends three minutes reading a putt, or dithering over club selection from the fairway, when a television producer can just cut to someone else while he goes through his meticulous routine?

It’s because playing fast ought to be a skill.

Andy Johnson of The Fried Egg made a great argument about slow play years ago that has always stuck with me: How quickly an athlete can process a situation and make a decision is part of what determines athletic greatness. Every quarterback who experienced success in college could likely experience it in the NFL if they had an unlimited amount of time to break down a defense. The best quarterbacks can process information almost immediately, then determine where they want to go with the football. That's the difference.

Similarly, being forced to make hard decisions in a window of time similar to your competitors should be part of professional golf.

Brooks Koepka certainly feels that way. I walked with Koepka and Jon Rahm on Sunday at the Masters, and watching Brooks stew as he was forced to wait on every shot inspired the most sympathy I’ve felt for him in years. Koepka, no shrinking violet when it comes to sharing his thoughts, did not shy away from making his displeasure clear in his post-round press conference.

“The group in front of us was brutally slow,” Koepka said. “Jon went to the bathroom like seven times during the round, and we were still waiting.”

Asked about Koepka’s comments while he was prepping for the RBC Heritage on Tuesday, Cantlay suggested that everyone was slow, not just his group.

“We got on the second tee and the group in front of us was on the second tee when we got there,” Cantlay told Golf Channel’s Kira Dixon. “The final group was there when we were on the second tee. We waited all day. Our group waited in 15 fairway; our group waited in 18 fairway. I think it was slow for everyone.”

It’s true that Cantlay and Viktor Hovland had to wait at times during their final round. But I’m not sure Cantlay’s framing tells the full story. Hovland was clearly trying to pick up the pace of the group and seemed like he’d had enough of Cantlay late in the round. Cameras spotted 

 before Cantlay had even crossed Rae’s Creek, a minor violation of unspoken golf etiquette but a major indicator that even the jovial Hovland was fed up. On other holes, you could see Hovland walking down the left side of the fairway at the edge of the frame while Cantlay was still addressing the ball.

Slow players rarely think they’re slow, which is part of the problem. Even the fast players — like Koepka or Rory McIlroy — don’t want to rush to the next tee just to sit and wait. But they are held hostage by the slow players, who think everyone else is as deliberate as they are, so they have no incentive to change.

From a fan’s perspective, I feel like we’re ticking closer to an eruption, and Cantlay is the flash point for people’s frustrations. Check out 

 from Golf.com writer Claire Rodgers, who spotted the growing unrest in Cantlay’s mentions. That simmering criticism isn’t a media creation.

If you concede that slow play is a problem, then what’s the solution? That’s where it gets complicated. It’s not as simple as demanding Cantlay speed up. Players, for the most part, don’t agree with Koepka. Or if they do, they don't seem to be demanding change, either from their peers or from rules officials. Fast players mostly seem resigned to their fate.

It used to be standard that players in twosomes were expected to get around in under four hours, even in majors. When they didn’t, they were put on the clock, warned, and threatened with a penalty. Jack Nicklaus was a notoriously slow player when he joined the PGA Tour, regularly falling behind the group ahead of him. But in 1962, he was hit with a slow play penalty in the Portland Open, and the embarrassment of it forced him to play faster. He eventually called that penalty one of the best things to happen to him. 

“They wouldn’t give you a slow-play penalty if you weren’t slow,” Nicklaus said.

These days, twosomes regularly flirt with (and exceed) five-hour rounds. During the Open Championship at St. Andrews in 2022, 

 Some of that can be attributed to the Old Course, it's tricky hole locations and its long waits as players drive greens and reach par 5's. But not all of it. At The Players Championship, average rounds were between 4:55 and 5:30, and chief referee Gary Young said he didn’t think it was an issue, that it was in line with the Tour’s expectations.

“We're a membership organization,” Young said. “We try to maximize the starts for our members. That's always been a priority, and we just understand that we will, unfortunately, have to finish sometimes on Saturday morning. That's just the way it is. The numbers are the numbers. It's a mathematical equation. You can figure it out.”

Young’s comments have merit, but he was conflating field size with slow play. Even on the weekends, after the cut reduces the field in half, players are still glacially slow.

And therein lies the problem: Modern rules officials can only enforce the rules that are on the books. Players aren’t expected to complete their rounds in a certain amount of time, they’re expected to maintain their position on the golf course. When they fall out of position, they’re put on the clock, and have 40 seconds to hit their next shot once it is their turn to play. For the most part, they magically speed up and get back in position. As long as they’re in position, it doesn’t matter how slow they are.

Rules officials also seem reluctant to use the power they have to force players to change. In 2013, there were two slow-play penalties handed out in majors, one to 14-year-old Tianlang Guan at the Masters, and another to Hideki Matsuyama at the Open Championship. Since then, just one player — John Catlin at the 2021 PGA Championship — 

has been hit with a slow play penalty in the last 10 years

 at a major. That’s almost 20,000 rounds of golf played with ONE slow play penalty.

It’s hard, though, to come up with a solution, particularly with so much money at stake in every tournament. One player asking for a ruling, or one walk back to the tee after a ball finishes a foot out of bounds, has a domino effect that grinds the entire wave to a halt. As long as humans are involved, those slow downs are impossible to avoid. 

 does an excellent job of explaining the phenomenon.

Doing nothing because the issue is difficult isn’t a reasonable position either. Some of the objections raised in golf are similar to the resistance that baseball faced when it tried to speed up the game, and implementing the pitch clock this year has cut down tremendously on the fidgeting and histrionics between pitches. I don’t think a standard shot clock would work for golf, but players clearly aren’t interested in policing themselves, particularly on the PGA Tour. The majors ought to draw a clear line and not leave so much of it up to a vague interpretation that clearly favors a certain class of players.

Maybe golf should view the time allotted to a group the way it’s viewed in competitive chess. You have a finite amount of time, and you may use it as you choose. But if you take longer on some turns, you need to take less on others.

There would likely be a player revolt, but as Cantlay joked years ago on a hot mic in Hawaii: Players can sometimes be pampered. It might be time for some tough love.

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

KVV: What do we do about slow play?

AUGUSTA — Jon Rahm had just left the 18th green when the singing started.

The sun was dipping low in the sky and the shadows were getting long, but the newly-minted Masters champion was lingering on the green, about to make his way through a corridor of patrons on his way to scoring. He embraced his wife, Kelley, then lifted his son, Kepa, onto his hip, still soaking everything in. Jose Maria Olazabal, his friend and mentor, embraced him. Each man was trying to hold back tears.

Somewhere deep in the crowd, a small group of Europeans began to serenade him. A few seconds later, it felt like everyone at Augusta was joining them.

It’s hard to pin down the disparate motivations of the people who make up a large crowd. Some, certainly, were applauding Rahm’s historic performance. Others, most likely, felt a connection to a man who has never been shy about sharing his emotions. There were also those who weren’t shy about the fact that they’d been pulling for Rahm all day simply because he was not Brooks Koepka, not a member of LIV Golf. But in the end, the reasons for their support didn’t matter, only the outcome. As Rahm made his way toward the clubhouse, the singing intensified.


The 28-year-old kept looking up at the sky and smiling. He was thinking about a lot of things, about the dreams he had as a little boy of winning the Masters, but also about Seve Ballesteros and the other Spanish golfers who forged a path for him to get to this moment. It was Ballesteros’ birthday

“I never thought I was going to cry by winning a golf tournament, but I got very close on that 18th hole,” Rahm said. “This one was for Seve. He was up there helping, and I know he did.”

It was easy at the beginning of the week to view the 2023 Masters as a referendum on the viability of whether or not LIV Golf’s credibility was growing or fading. Players were asked about it repeatedly during the pre-tournament build-up. Augusta National subtly let its distaste be known by sidelining LIV Golfers from early-week press conferences, with the exception of Cam Smith, the reigning Open champion. Greg Norman, the commissioner of LIV, countered by complaining he hadn’t been invited to the Masters, then suggested that if a LIV member were to win the tournament, all 18 LIV players in attendance might storm the green in celebration.


It felt like the Masters had been pulled, unwillingly, into the messy debate, one that will likely rage for years to come. But by the time the actual golf started, the LIV discussion seemed less important than the history at stake. That’s the power of the Masters. Tiger Woods mentioned on Tuesday that the joy he feels when he’s on property now is different from what he felt back in 1997, but fulfilling in different ways. He gets to spend time with his son and his friends, sharing old memories. He seemed almost wistful as he said it. “So much of my life has been here at Augusta National,” Woods said. “I don’t know how many of these I have left. So I just want to be able to appreciate the time that I have here and cherish the memories.”

Even Phil Mickelson, the man at the center of the fracture, felt the aura of Augusta when he showed up, a year after missing the tournament for the first time in 2022.

“If you love golf, when you come here, it's more of a spiritual experience, where you feel this appreciation for this great game and the gratitude that you have,” Mickelson said. “I thought it was exciting that this tournament rose above it all to have the best players in the world here and lost all the pettiness; that was great.”

There was also no shortage of storylines outside squabbles between the PGA Tour and LIV. The new tee on the 13th hole had a turn in the spotlight. That inevitably spurred talk that if Augusta has to spend upwards of $30 million to maintain the design integrity of its most iconic hole, there are changes coming to the sport, likely in the name of bifurcation.

“Generally we have always been supportive of the governing bodies,” said Masters chairman Fred Ridley. “I've stated that we believe distance needs to be addressed. I think the natural conclusion is, yes, we will be supportive.”

Rory McIlroy endured yet another exhausting build-up to the Masters, endless questions about whether he could finally capture the career grand slam, only to get bounced from the tournament after two rounds for the second time in three years. (63-year-old Fred Couples bested him by four shots in becoming the oldest player ever to make the cut.) Scottie Scheffler seemed poised to defend his title, the first man to do so since Woods in 2000 and 2001, but his putting abandoned him early in the week, and he never climbed into contention despite leading the field with 76 percent of his greens hit. His most memorable moment came when cameras caught him having an animated, seemingly heated exchange with his putting coach on the practice green on Wednesday.

By the time the weekend arrived, the Masters felt like a two-man race. Despite four-putting the first hole of the tournament, Rahm opened 65-69, a score bested only by Koepka, who opened 65-67.

“If you're going to make a double or four-putt or anything, it might as well be the first hole, 71 holes to make it up,” Rahm said. After the tournament, he couldn’t resist giving his friend Zach Ertz, a tight end for the Arizona Cardinals, considerable grief. Ertz had texted Rahm Thursday morning, ten minutes before his tee time, mentioning that the first hole looked like a “walk in the park.”

“Thank you Zach,” Rahm said. “Don’t ever do that again, please.”

As patient as Rahm was, a rejuvenated and motivated Koepka entered the final round with a two-shot lead and a chance to win his fifth major, something that no one saw coming 18 months ago when he seemed adrift and lost, unable to swing with the kind of freedom that helped him rise to become the No. 1 player in the world. One of the reasons he said he agreed to participate in Netflix’s documentary, Full Swing, is because he wanted people to see another side of him. He felt vulnerable and broken, but as his health returned, so did his internal fire. He’d chosen LIV in part because his career felt in jeopardy and while he remained happy with that decision, he did miss aspects of his old life.

“Competitively you miss playing against them, right?” Koepka said. “Because you want Rory to play his best and Scottie to play his best and Jon to play his best and go toe-to-toe with them. I do miss that, and that's one thing that I do miss, and that's what I think makes these majors so cool.”

For two and half days, Koepka hit the kind of towering, breathtaking drives that reminded you of the man he used to be. His irons were surgical, his putting was artful.

“I've known this for a while, but I guess it was just a matter of going out and doing it,” Koepka said.

Rahm, fighting through the worst of the weather, could barely stay within striking distance. When play was called on Saturday due to a deluge of rain, Koepka had stretched his lead to four shots. Rahm sensed he needed to increase the pressure, lest they start fitting Koepka for a green jacket on Saturday night.

“I wasn't expecting Brooks to play bad,” Rahm said. “I can't expect that, right? So I need to bring the fight to him.”

Slowly Rahm began to chip away. He cut the lead to two by the end of the third round but was furious with himself that it wasn’t closer. A bad 3-putt bogey on 13, a three-putt par on 15 and a lazy iron into 16 that led to another bogey had him seething.

“That's the only time I ever felt like, you know, I was truly upset at something,” Rahm said.

But Rahm’s caddie, Adam Hayes, made him promise something before they tee off in the final round. No half measures for the rest of the day.

“I told him I needed 100 percent commitment on every shot,” Hayes said. “I know when he does that, he’s really hard to beat.”

It would be (somewhat) unfair to suggest that Koepka suffered a Norman-esque collapse on Sunday. But he continued his troubling pattern of looking shaky when trying to close out a major, one that now has scar tissue earned from Harding Park, Pebble Beach, Portrush and Kiawah. His opening tee shot in the final round felt like an indicator that it was not going to be easy. He yanked it so far left, it actually missed the pine trees that frame No. 1 and came to rest in the 9th fairway. Koepka marched to his ball and, remarkably, ripped a high draw over the tree line that somehow found the green, but everything from that moment felt like he was battling internal demons in addition to battling Rahm.

It did not help that Koepka, a refreshingly fast player, felt like he found himself waiting on the group ahead (Patrick Cantlay and Viktor Hovland) every time he stood over the ball.

There are statistical models that do a decent job of explaining how good Rahm has been over the last two years. (On Thursday, for example, he gained a ridiculous 8.12 strokes tee to green, shooting 65 despite losing half a shot on the green to the field.) But perhaps more telling is the 

 he inspires out there. Max Homa put it succinctly at the Genesis Invitational early in the year when he compared Rahm to Thanos, the villain in the Avenger movies. He overwhelms you until his victory feels inevitable. When he made a birdie on No. 3 to cut Koepka’s lead to one, you could feel a shift in the air.

“I think that birdie let us take a deep breath,” Hayes said.

Rahm could sense Koepka was getting uncomfortable, particularly now that he had the tee. He wanted to give Koepka something to look at on every shot, something he had to chase. It was a strategy that helped him with his own nerves.

“I might have looked calm, but I was definitely, definitely nervous out there,” Rahm said. “I'm glad that's the way it looked. That's what you strive for, right? You don't want to panic, and I never panicked. I felt comfortable with my game, and I had a plan to execute, and that's all I can do.”

When Koepka made bogeys on No. 4 and No. 6, it was a tie ballgame, but it felt like Rahm had already grabbed the lead. Koepka was reeling, particularly off the tee. On the 8th hole, he pull-hooked a drive well left, the ball clattering around in the woods for what felt like a lifetime before it came to rest between a bush and a tree. Koepka punched out and was able to salvage a par, but when Rahm hit his third shot to a foot for a tap-in birdie, Koepka could sense things slipping away.

“I felt like that's kind of where the momentum shifted right there,” Koepka said.

It was around the 9th green that both Rahm and Koepka realized that a new contender had entered the arena, and it was none other than Mickelson. The 52-year-old was standing over a birdie putt on 18 as they were making their way to the 10th tee, having each just bogeyed the ninth hole, and when Mickelson buried it with an emphatic fist pump to get to 8-under par, suddenly it no longer felt like match-play.

“There was tension out there,” Rahm said.

Mickelson had thrown a final round 65 at them, making eight birdies on his way to a T-2 finish.

“Unfortunately it wasn't enough, but it was really a lot of fun for me to play at this level again,” Mickelson said.

Rahm, however, didn’t let it faze him. A golf junkie at heart, he’d watched nearly every final round of the Masters available on YouTube and he knew the danger that lurked on No. 12. Early in the week, he’d had a conversation with Tony Finau during a practice round about the 2019 Masters, when Tiger Woods found the green when everyone else in contention found the water. He wanted to know from Finau: Did he feel like he’d hit a good shot into 12 that day?

"Tony said ‘It was a good shot, it was just a yard too far right and spun in the water,’ ” Rahm said.  “Then he mentioned Tiger's shot went left of the bunker to that Sunday pin. So when I got there today, dry land is mission No. 1, right? … That's what I had to do, hit it right over the center of the bunker and hope it hits green. And then after that, hit a great lag putt, tapped it in and moved on.”

Rahm had one last thunderbolt to throw at Koepka on the fourteenth hole. His drive found the first cut on the right side of the hole, but he hit a beautiful fade toward a funnel pin that trickled down the slope like a raindrop in slow motion. A birdie gave him a five-stroke lead over Koepka and a four-stroke lead over Mickelson.

“If there was a key moment throughout the day, it was that shot,” Rahm said. “I used an 8-iron. It started around the left edge of the green, and all it had to do was fade about five yards and it would reach the slope.”

When Rahm’s drive on 18 hit a tree branch on the left and came down short of the fairway, it did inspire one final moment of levity between him and Hayes, even though Rahm was leading by four. After Rahm laid up with a 4-iron, he was standing over his ball when Hayes gave him one final directive.

“Would you get this ball up and down like a proper champion?” Hayes said.

When Rahm wedged it close, a wave of relief began to wash over him. He was about to win the Masters.

“This one was for Seve,” Rahm said. “There's got to be something here about having a Spanish passport, I don't know, there's something about the grounds that transmits into all of us.”

Jon Rahm's Inevitability

It’s strange to think that the U.S. Amateur champion has twice had to ask everyone to put some respect on his name.

As soon as he won his round of 64 match at Ridgewood Country Club, the top-ten-ranked amateur made it clear he knew where he stood with the media (hint: nowhere near the top). For his Masters debut, all the amateur attention went to Gordon Sargent, the NCAA champion with mind-boggling swing speed and length.

Sam Bennett would never formally ask anyone to put any respect on his name. But he’ll show and tell you just how he feels. First, it was with his control off-the-tee. His methodical play. His most unlikely of putts.

“Everybody coming into this week was (saying), yeah, hope you get Low Am. That’s pretty much all they were saying,” Bennett said. “I just wanted to put two good rounds up. I knew my golf was good enough to compete out here.”

Carding the first bogey-free opening round by an amateur in 58 years, his follow-up on Friday only contained one blemish. Two back-to-back rounds of 68 from someone with an amateur designation can seem surprising, especially when they’re solo third by day’s end.

Truly, no part of either his U.S. Amateur campaign or Masters is really all that unbelievable. But if this week is his formal introduction, it necessitates a lot more context.

He knows. “I'm more than what's happened to me and what I've been through. So it comes up a lot, and I'm ready for it to stop coming up quite as much,” Bennett said after his second round on Friday.

You’ve probably heard about how Bennett is a small-town kid who grew up on a 9-hole course in Madisonville, Texas. You’ve also probably heard 

about the loss of his father to Alzheimer's

, who used his last written words to write “Don’t wait to do something” on his wrist. You’ve now seen the NIL logos dressed over his lack of a “pretty swing” (his words).

Truthfully, any idea of complication has found Sam Bennett — he’s never been one to chase it. He’s had one swing lesson in his life, back in middle school, and despite the public balking at his motion, vows to never employ a swing coach. If it’s not inherently broken, he figures, no reason to fix it.


Had he turned professional with Korn Ferry Tour status waiting for him last summer, or if he’d burned himself out with the amateur reps instead of playing golf with his closest friends at Traditions Golf Course, the dreams of the U.S. Amateur or the Masters would have never been his realities. Of course, that decision was made not knowing any of this would happen.

“I love college golf,” he said on Friday. “Being with my teammates, eating a filet mignon for free every night, just all of it. Traveling to México, Cabo, Hawaii, it's been great.”

This deliberately slower pace is intentional, even when it doesn’t have to do with golf. A few months after he won the Havemeyer, after some time spent back at school (only 40 minutes from home), he was invited to be honored in front of a packed Kyle Field at a Texas A&M game. It’d been his biggest ceremony yet – far bigger than the audience he had for the biggest accomplishment in his career.


Once again, everything sped up. His room became a mess, too. In a moment of trying to control all of his chaos, he realized the anxieties of his daily life had physically manifested. Why rush such a simple task? He stopped himself, put on some music, and intently caught up on laundry.


“I always tell my buddies to slow down and enjoy it all – look around, say hello, just the little things. It’s always helped me stay patient in a sense, I guess,” he said at the time.

Shortly after the U.S. Amateur, he decided his head coach Brian Kortan, his right hand all week long at Ridgewood, would co-star at the Masters. His self-proclaimed second dad was the only person in his corner who witnessed the entire week – another purposeful move, to maintain his focus. Kortan, (Bennett prefers to address him by surname), hasn’t missed a beat at Augusta National.


In a token of appreciation, perhaps, Kortan’s player has had one collegiate victory since that fateful August. He broke Texas A&M's 18-hole scoring record with a final round 61 at an event in Hawaii. But for someone who cares so much about his own game, the history part seems to feel like a footnote in the context of his own enjoyment.

“I wasn’t thinking of any record,” he said after his first round at the Masters, admittedly unfamiliar with Ken Venturi’s amateur scoring record. “I was just trying to stack shots and give myself some looks and keep it under the hole, which I did.”

In the months that followed his U.S. Amateur victory, Bennett’s Havemeyer Trophy hadn’t traveled too far. Not because he didn’t appreciate it; it just wasn’t his speed. It’d seen the football field, and he toyed with the idea of taking it out to the bars, but it spent a lot of time sat by his Christmas tree – just how he preferred.

In plain sight seems to be the Green Jacket, which tends to see a lot more places. In front of the 23-year-old are two professionals: Brooks Koepka, who is seeking major championship redemption after a years-long drought, and Jon Rahm, who, like Bennett, is a USGA champion; albeit one that comes with a larger purse. Should Sam Bennett happen to add the Green Jacket to his wardrobe, who knows where it will go? Unlike Koepka and Rahm, the novice already knows to spend a little more time doing his laundry.


At the end of his Friday press conference, the starry-eyed, giddy amateur slipped out. “I think the hard part’s done,” Bennett said. “I made the cut as an amateur. I kinda made my mark. I played steady golf. Now it’s time for me to go out and enjoy, soak it all in, and be able to play the weekend at the Masters.”

But Sam Bennett, in contention at the Masters, will return after his long-awaited round three begins.


“I found myself in a situation where Low Am is out of the equation, (and) I’ve got a golf tournament that I can go out and win.”

Simply Sam Bennett

AUGUSTA — In his lowest moments, Brooks Koepka thought seriously about quitting.

Golf was his job, not his obsession, and for an 18-month stretch, his job was making him miserable. His body was a wreck, his confidence was depleted, and when he stood over the ball, he felt lost. He was embarrassed and in pain, physical and emotional, to the point where he felt like he was going to snap.


When he missed the cut at the Masters in 2022, Koepka signed his scorecard, walked into the player’s parking lot at Augusta, and in brief a fit of rage, he tried to put his fist through the back window of his courtesy car.

“Not once, but twice,” Kopeka said Friday. “First time didn't go, so figured try it again.”


“Wasn’t strong enough, I guess,” Koepka said. “The ride home was pretty silent. Just a lot of frustration. I guess Mercedes makes a pretty good back window.”

Koepka shared that story not long after shooting 67 in the second round of the Masters, a tournament he now leads by four shots going into the weekend. It was his second straight round that felt like a throwback to a different time, a time when he seemed like a boa constrictor in major championships, slowly squeezing the life out of other golfers with a quiet intensity of an apex predator.


There was a time when it seemed unlikely we’d ever see this version of Koepka again. Now it seems we’ll spend the weekend pondering if he’s about to pass Rory McIlroy in total majors.

“If I wasn't going to be able to move the way I wanted to, I didn't want to play the game anymore,” Koepka said, detailing how injuries to his knee and hip had him pondering retirement. “It's just that simple. There was definitely moments of that. Last year was pretty tough. Just a lot of frustration.”

Koepka has been, from the beginning, an integral cog in LIV’s plan to upend the world of professional golf. His signing last year after the U.S. Open was one of the bigger surprises and one of Greg Norman’s biggest coups. But it has been interesting, in recent months, to see Koepka offering LIV a lukewarm endorsement in public while rumors percolate that he has some regrets, even though he is contractually bound to LIV for the foreseeable future. He played a practice round with Rory McIlroy on Tuesday and made it clear they communicate regularly. Asked directly after his round if his decision to join LIV would have been harder if he’d been healthy, Koepka didn’t exactly give the kind of answer Norman would like to boast about.

“Honestly, yeah, probably, if I'm being completely honest,” Koepka said. “I think it would have been. But I'm happy with the decision I made.”

Whatever the future of LIV is, and however you feel about sportswashing (and hypocrisy, and the torture and murder of journalists, and What About China, et cetera, et cetera…) the last two days at Augusta have made it clear that golf is a lot more interesting when Koepka is in the mix, throwing darts with his irons and delivering little digs in press conferences.

He is the best kind of rogue in a sport where politeness typically rules the roost. Koepka spends a lot of time trying to convince people he doesn’t love golf, and that he’s too cool for this shit. And perhaps that is true, and what makes him unlikeable in some circles. He has a way of seeming dismissive and dickish when he’s trying to be honest, like 

when he told Golf Digest he didn’t get the fuss over the Ryder Cup

 and thought the event took him too much out of his regular routine. Paul Azinger said he thought Koepka should give up his spot on the team if he wasn’t all in. Masters champion 

Ian Woosnam blasted him as “arrogant” and insisted he “Get a life!”

But I’ve always had a soft spot for him. It’s fun for the drama of the sport when he punches back and shows what a dominant force he can be when healthy. It’s fun when he backs up his tough guy bravado, not by punching out windows but by stunting on fields full of shrinking violets.

I thought it was an eye-rolling decision when he played in the 2021 Masters just 19 days after he underwent surgery for a shattered kneecap and damaged ligaments. What was he trying to prove, other than he was a hardo? But from Koepka’s perspective, I was looking at it the wrong way. All of us were. He might not love golf, but he loved majors.

“I've missed enough majors,” Koepka said. “I missed this one in … I think it was the year P-Reed won. I missed the major Bryson won. I missed like three or four through that whole stretch of 2016 to 2020. I missed a good bit of them. I was, I don't know, just tired of it. I felt like glass that was always breaking. It's not fun. But I feel a lot better now. To be here is special. It's a special event.”

Getting back required not only a lot of rehab work on his body but also swallowing a good amount of pride. Koepka fired his instructor Claude Harmon III in March of 2021 after eight years together, convinced he needed to hear a different voice in his ear as he struggled to find his game. But after several frustrating finishes during LIV’s 2022 season, he felt like he’d bottomed out.

“I think I got probably to the low point when we were at Trump's place in Bedminster,” Koepka said. “Walked in the locker room, and I think my physio Marc Wahl was waiting for that true low point to hit. I said, ‘I think I need to go back to Claude and start working with Claude again. Doing it on my own wasn't working for me.’ ”

In the midst of it all, Koepka agreed to participate in the first season of Full Swing on Netflix, a decision that many people in golf have been wondering if he regretted once his episode came out. Quite the opposite, Koepka says.

“People probably don't think I'm as open as what I really am,” he said. “I'll tell you exactly how I'm feeling at the time, how I'm feeling in the moment, and that's -- I'm pretty vulnerable, too, away from the golf course. I've always said what you see on the golf course isn't what you get behind closed doors.”

If Koepka does win the Masters, it would be a great outcome for LIV Golf, but it would also be an entertaining outcome for golf in general. Koepka and Patrick Reed play the heel far better than some of their co-workers, and while Koepka is infinitely more talented than Reed, if the two of them have a lifetime exemption into the Masters, it would make for a tasty decade of potential party crashing.

Even this year’s Masters has managed to produce a little controversy for Koepka, as rules officials from the tournament have twice called he and playing partner Gary Woodland in to review an incident from Thursday’s round where Koepka’s caddie appeared to be signaling to Woodland’s caddie Brennan “Butch” Little what club Koepka hit into 15 green. That’s a two-shot penalty under the rules of golf, but both players have been adamant that wasn’t the case.

“I asked Butchy if he saw what he hit. He said no,” Woodland said. “Luckily for us because Brooks ended up hitting 5-iron. I hit 5-iron. I asked Butchy what the club was, and he said it's a choked-up perfect 5. I hit my shot. When we were walking down, I asked Brooks what he hit, and he said 5. If I would have known that, I probably would have hit 6-iron, and I would have hit 6-iron in the middle of the water. Luckily for me, I didn't know what he hit. That's the end of it.”

Koepka told a similar story and added that he was called in a second time by rules officials to testify whether he’d flashed five fingers with his left hand. He insisted he had not.

“I don't know if you're supposed to take your glove off with your fist closed or what now,” Koepka said.

Koepka, of all people, knows how important club selection at Augusta National can be. He might have a Masters already if he’d know what club to hit into No. 12 on Sunday in 2019, when he and Francesco Molinari and Tony Finau all hit the ball into the water and Tiger Woods found the center of the green on his way to a fifth green jacket. Making hard choices about the wind and the carry distance is an essential part of golf, as we were reminded that day. Player and caddie ought to make that decision alone, as Woods and Joe LaCava did at that moment.

Would Brooks feel differently about those kinds of scenarios if Woods had asked Molinari what club he’d just dunked in the water so he could club off that decision? It’s impossible to say. But a stroke on Thursday can have the same meaning on Sunday when they’re added up in the final tally.

If nothing else, it makes Koepka’s weekend rounds all the more interesting. It’s possible a Ball Don’t Lie situation looms. It’s also possible that it won’t matter, and the controversy will be forgotten by Sunday afternoon as Koepka marches to victory.

He has a way of smashing narratives with his best golf, which is a lot more fun and rewarding than trying to smash car windows.

Brooks Koepka (tries to) smash windows, smashes expectations

AUGUSTA — Phil Mickelson showed up this week to play the Masters for the first time in two years and proceeded to behave like he was attending a funeral.


He seemed somber. Every interaction was muted. For the first time in 30 years of playing in this tournament, he had almost nothing to say in the build-up. Fuzzy Zoeller and Tommy Aaron told the Augusta Chronicle that Mickelson was essentially silent during the Champions Dinner, quietly eating his meal but not engaging anyone in conversation.

For someone who radiated joy every time he drove through the gates of Augusta National — including the time in 2019 when he recorded a video on his phone as he drove down Magnolia Lane and declared he was going to “hit bombs” all weekend — it felt strange to see him behave so differently at a place so familiar. However you feel about Mickelson’s decision to join LIV Golf and the relationships it strained, there was something sad about seeing him like this.

When he walked to the first tee just after noon on Thursday, the reaction from the patrons could best be described as subdued. He offered a few courtesy nods of appreciation, then a limp thumbs up, but his gallery felt thinner than it had in at least two decades. He still had a smattering of support, but nothing like it once was.


“He looks weird,” said one person in the crowd, leaning toward a friend.

“Yeah I think it’s a health thing,” the friend replied. “Isn’t he in those commercials for osteoporosis? Or wait, that’s not it. I think it’s that thing you get when you type too much. Carpal tunnel.”


“He looks good,” whispered an older patron as Mickelson teed up his ball. “He’s just lost that pot belly he used to have.”

It’s easy to feel like you’re in a bubble sometimes in golf media, where opinions and hot takes tend to blend together and bounce off one another on Twitter or podcasts, so I decided to spend the day in Mickelson’s gallery watching him navigate one of his favorite playgrounds while listening to the chatter of the people in attendance.


Over the course of the day, I heard a broad spectrum of opinions. I also watched Mickelson come alive for the first time in months.

“Hey Phil!” one man yelled as Mickelson made his way up the first fairway. “We have the same handicap!”

“Yeah, and it’s gambling,” his buddy replied, sending their friend group into a fit of laughter.

“You’re not allowed to yell at LIV players,” another gentleman whispered, elbowing his pal as they watched Mickelson fly his approach long of No. 1. “They’re real serious about that.”

At times, the commentary was friendly. And at times it didn’t make much logical sense.

“Phil we missed you this year in Jacksonville, hope you can defend your title next year!” one patron yells as Mickelson made his way to the second hole. I couldn’t tell if he meant the PGA Championship, which was played at Southern Hills in Tulsa, or The Players Championship, an event Mickelson won in 2007 but will almost certainly never appear in again, but the sentiment seemed sincere. Mickelson smiled and nodded as he walked by.


“What is that logo on his hat?” a woman asked her husband. “Is that the Hy Flyers logo? I really like it.”

On No. 2, when he hooked his drive well into the woods on the right, someone from well behind him called out just loud enough to be heard: “I bet LIV wants their money back!” which drew a few snickers. But when Mickelson ventured outside the ropes to find his ball, it turned into a priceless opportunity to pinch in close and listen to Mickelson debate with his caddie and brother, Tim, about how he might escape from jail.

“Oh shit, he’s gonna hit driver!” whispered someone as Mickelson pulled off his headcover.

It was a classic Mickelson gamble, deciding to hit a driver off the pine straw on the second hole of the tournament, but perhaps to no one’s surprise he (kind of) pulled it off, clipping a branch but also blasting the ball 223 yards across the fairway and into the woods on the left side of No. 2. From there the ball found a cart path and trickled to a stop eventually, a position Mickelson somehow made birdie from after a delicate pitch from across the green.

“That was insane!” one man recounted to his buddy as Mickelson loped after his ball. “As soon as I saw driver come out, the crowd just parted like the Red Sea! He sees all the angles!”


“I bet Phil could hit a flop shot with a 3 wood,” an older gentleman said, as Mickelson sized up his approach.

“I bet he thinks he could for sure,” joked his friend.

As his round went on, Mickelson seemed to draw energy from the circus. He was back in his element. He kept his head down early on, but as the day went on, he frequently responded with a limp thumbs up to those pleading for acknowledgment.

“I think he looks fit,” a woman mentioned to her friend on the 7th hole.

“I think he looks awful,” said a man nearby.

“Nah, he looks good,” she said. “I wish I could look that good.”

Mickelson’s round found its true spark on the 8th hole. After a good drive in the middle of the fairway, he chose to hit driver off the deck for the second time, smashing the kind of shot he once described as a hellacious seed toward the green. It was such a sensational shot, it was a fun reminder that, for all his blunders, few players have ever made golf on a razor’s edge as fun to watch. His shot chased onto the front of the green and ran a foot by the hole before it stopped on the back fringe to set up his second birdie.


“Salty,” Mickelson said when asked after the round what that shot felt like. “Really salty.”

Mickelson had been curt with reporters early in the week. But as he recounted some of his shots after the round, a flicker of the old Playful Phil couldn’t resist returning. When I nudged him into sharing more about the difficulty of that shot into No. 8, he proceeded to deliver a master class on how to attack that hole.

“That's a really hard second shot,” Mickelson said, breaking into a grin for one of the first times all week in front of the media. “I came out here a week or two ago and spent -- you know, hit ten balls, went and picked them up, hit ten balls again. I was trying different clubs for that shot. Because if you've got an uphill lie, you're going to pull draw. That's the tendency, right? So if you're a right-handed player, you're going to have that uphill lie, and it's going to shape it right up that green, and the draw's going to run. If I'm hitting a cut, that's a lot harder shot because, if I pull it right to the right pins, I'm not getting that up and down. I'm going to have a 50, 60-footer, and I'm fighting for par. If I come out and miss it left, it's a potential double over there with the trees and the flowers.

“And I've seen it all. I've been there. I can tell you. But if I pull that shot off, all of a sudden I've got birdie and almost made eagle. So that was a really hard shot that I ended up pulling off, and it allowed me to make a 4 when, if I didn't pull it off, there's no way I'm going to make a 4.”

The rest of the round was just as eventful. It was quintessential Mickelson. He birdied No. 9, but then made a double bogey from the middle of the fairway on No. 11. He hit an incredible shot into No. 12 to make a bounce-back birdie, then birdied both the 13th and 15th holes. In between, he hit an 8-iron right-handed after his drive landed near a tree. He hit a decent shot but still made bogey.

“I had like a leaf that I practice swung, and I was like, all right, if I can hit this leaf, I can hit the ball,” Mickelson said, explaining his thinking behind the decision. “If you ever watched Dodgeball, if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. I thought, if I can hit this leaf, I can hit a ball. I hit the leaf and did it twice, and I'm like, all right, I can do it. Let's go do it.”

As he made his way around the back 9, I heard plenty of cheers but also endless debates about LIV and whether Mickelson had made the right decision.

“You could buy a yacht with the bag he got,” said one man as they watched Mickelson bogey 16.

“You could buy four or five yachts,” his friend replied.

When Mickelson sprayed his drive left of 17, another discussion broke out about his fitness as he sized up his approach.

“There is less of him for me to not like,” one man mumbled. “I don’t like the rest either.”

“Money motivates everybody,” one man said to his wife as they watched Mickelson stare down a par putt. “For $100 million, I’d do pretty much anything. Hell, I’d push you down the stairs for $100 million.”

“You would, huh?” she said (mostly) laughing.

“Yeah, it ain’t like there is anybody out here recording me,” he said.

When the round ended, a wild and memorable 71, Mickelson handed out fist bumps along the rope line as he made his way into scoring, then reemerged several minutes later and hugged his wife, Amy, who had walked much of the round in the gallery. It was the first time in several years Amy Mickelson had attended a tournament. The couple embraced and chatted for a few seconds before Mickelson made his way toward reporters. He’d recently updated his Twitter profile to include the word “Husband” before the words “Lefty” and “LIV. Golfer.,” something that wasn’t there back in January.

“I was actually enjoying it and appreciative of the opportunity to be here,” Mickelson said when asked about the emotion of his round. “There was a lot of talk a year ago guys wouldn't be able to be here, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to play and compete here and be a part of it.”

With his mood seemingly chipper, I couldn’t resist asking one of the questions on everyone’s mind: What led to the decision to lose so much weight?

“I needed something different, and I'm having a lot of fun having three teammates and having a different energy and a fun environment, and I want to play and compete at that level,” he said.

Sure, I said, but you’re skinnier than you’ve ever been.

“Thank you,” Mickelson said. “I stopped eating food, that was a big help.”

After a few more questions, Mickelson thanked the media and slipped away. He looked different, certainly, but for the first time in a long time, he sounded like his old self.

The Things People Say About Phil Mickelson

Welcome back to the No Laying Up mailbag! It’s a special Masters edition, which means we split it into two parts. This is Part 2. If you missed Part 1, 

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.

TheKid33: Which Masters traditions/customs are the most underrated, overrated and properly rated?

A good question that is almost certain to cause some controversy, but let me start out by saying I think the Champion’s Dinner is a little overrated. It’s a little weird to me how much we obsess over a bunch of rich guys having dinner together, anticipating what kind of meal the winner from the previous year might serve. It would be one thing if Scottie Scheffler was actually in the kitchen whipping up Texas ribeyes and blackened redfish. But all he’s really doing is putting together a menu, and the previous champions don’t even have to eat it if they don’t want to. I like the aspect of past champions feeling like they’re still welcome in that room decades after they won, but I’m not sure why those of us who will never be invited treat what’s going to be served like such an important matter. It did, however, inspire one of my first Twitter threads, 

about Rory McIlroy and carrot cake if you’re so inclined.

Properly rated? I think skipping shots across the pond on 16 during practice rounds – a relatively new tradition – is properly rated. It’s a delight, and every few years when a player makes a hole-in-one like Jon Rahm did in 2020, it only adds to the joy of the tradition. Everyone should try it.

Underrated? The unspoken agreement is that you can set up your folding chair in just about any spot on the course as long as you get there first, but if you aren’t occupying it, it’s communal property. Anyone can sit there. That idea doesn’t really exist in other American sports. If you are at an NBA game and you get up to walk around and someone takes your sets for a few minutes, most fans are going to be annoyed when they return, as if something has been taken from them. There is a gentleman’s agreement at the Masters that this is not the way to behave. The people who violate that agreement and act huffy do not grasp the good elements of southern hospitality that are supposedly part of the tournament’s ethos. Thankfully, they are few and far between.

CKaneb: KVV, If you played in a match from the Master’s Tees in your current state vs 87 year old Gary Player from the Member’s tees do you think you would win the match?

I’m going to be brutally honest and say I think Gary would beat me handily. And it would be humiliating, but I’m fairly certain he’d clean my clock. It’s important to remember that, even though Gary Player is 87 years old and his antics have become comedy fodder for people like me who were not around for his prime, he really is one of the greatest players ever. The fact that it’s impossible to parody the man because some of his takes are so absurd shouldn’t diminish the fact that nothing about a match with me, a 10-handicap, would make him even a little nervous.

When I see how far back the Masters tees are on some holes compared to the Members’ tees, it makes me even more skeptical of my chances in this scenario.

Let’s say Gary hits the ball 200 yards. There are going to be holes where, even if I hit it 270, I’m going to be well behind him. He’s one of the greatest short game and bunker players of all time. On the flip side, there are a couple holes (No. 7 and No. 9 come to mind) where I’d be better off trying to hit my approach into a bunker than trying to hold the green because at least then the ball wouldn’t roll 100 yards away when I missed.

Writing

KVV: What do we do about slow play?

Jon Rahm's Inevitability

Simply Sam Bennett

Brooks Koepka (tries to) smash windows, smashes expectations

The Things People Say About Phil Mickelson

KVV Mailbag: Masters Part Two

A Newly Nostalgic Tiger Woods Remembers His Epic Chip on No. 16

KVV Mailbag: Masters Part One

7 Thoughts From A Sportswriter Upon Seeing Springsteen For The First Time At Age 45

McIlroy Supports Governing Bodies' Distance Proposal

The Loudest Voice in the Conversation

KVV Mailbag: The Rollback, Modern Journalism and The Wire

What's burning at the Kill House: March 2023

KVV: Scottie Scheffler's Complete Game

Please bask in Keith Mitchell's relatable frustration

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

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

KVV Mailbag: Rankings fatigue, Phil's fall