LIV stars in danger, Rory, Scottie send message, Beef is back | Monday Finish

Welcome to the Monday Finish, where football’s top receiver got put in handcuffs and everyone started making golf jokes! Scottie Scheffler really IS reaching superstar status. To the news…

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GOLF STUFF I LIKE

Beef is back.

Matt Wallace was in tears as he stepped up for his post-round interview.

“Knackered,” he said. “That was a hard day.”

It was an understandably emotional moment for Wallace, who’d just won on the DP World Tour for the first time since 2018. He’d broken his worldwide winless streak at last year’s Corales Puntacana Championship, but a win on his home circuit meant something extra for the 34-year-old Englishman. His four-shot final-round lead had evaporated but he’d punched back with a birdie on the first extra hole.

“I stuck at it and that’s me, and that’s golf. For me, that’s Matt Wallace golf right there,” he said.

It was fitting that Wallace won this tournament, the European Masters at Crans-sur-Sierre in Switzerland, given this was the site of a heartbreaking playoff loss here two years ago. But his overtime birdie lifted him over Alfredo Garcia-Heredia of Spain and immediately he reset his goals to something bigger.

“Ryder Cup, let’s go,” he said.

But arguably the bigger comeback belonged to Andrew “Beef” Johnston, who didn’t win but came damn close.

It’s been a long climb for Johnston, who burst onto the scene in 2016 as a Spanish Open champ and an Open Champ contender with a trademark beard and an infectious smile. The accompanying fanfare was a lot to handle; in subsequent seasons he lost his PGA Tour card and struggled with expectations. Still, he remained a fixture on the European tour — until, amid a battle with both physical and mental health, he all but disappeared from competitive golf in 2022 and 2023, playing just one tournament and slipping outside the top 2,000 in the world.

Even his comeback has been far from glamorous; our Sean Zak detailed how the week of this year’s Open, the eight-year reunion of the “best golf of his life,” he was missing the cut in California at the alternate-field Barracuda Championship.

But something has clicked in the last month. T23 at the Czech Masters. T18 at the British Masters. And then came Sunday’s 66, which secured a solo third for Johnston, his best finish in four years. He was one wiggle shy of a playoff but the finish catapulted him up 69 spots to No. 85 on the Race to Dubai rankings, securing him some status beyond this season.

“There’s a lot of relief,” he said. “It’s been a tough couple of years. It’s been tough.”

The fact that Beef’s been going through “tough” — and he’s still going? That’s golf stuff I like.

WINNERS

Who won the week?

There were no events on the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, the LET, the Korn Ferry Tour or LIV but there’s always golf being played, which means we’ll never run out of winners.

Matt Wallace won on the DP World Tour for the fifth time and moved up to No. 73 in the world.

Japan’s Kensei Hirata won on the Asian Tour’s Shinhan Donghae Open, an event co-sanctioned by the Japan Golf Tour, to move to No. 131 in the world.

Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen won the Challenge Tour’s Big Green Egg German Challenge, home to my favorite tee markers in golf.

Fatima Fernandez Cano won her third Epson Tour title of the season; she’s now mathematically guaranteed to get her LPGA Tour card back. With three tournaments left so are Yahui Zhang, Jessica Porvasnik and Lauren Stephenson.

The PGA Tour Americas wrapped up its summer as Will Cannon won the Fortinet Cup Championship and 10 pros secured their Korn Ferry Tour cards: John Keefer, Frederik Kjettrup, Matthew Anderson, Barend Botha, Clay Feagler, Cannon, Harry Hillier, Sandy Scott, Ryan Burnett and Ian Holt.

And Y.E. Yang beat Bernhard Langer in a playoff at the Ascension Charity Classic, claiming his first PGA Tour Champions title 15 years and a month after beating Tiger Woods at the 2009 PGA Championship.

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NOT-WINNERS

Who’s out?

LIV Golf’s Individual Championship takes place outside of Chicago this week. There are big-time prizes up for grabs at the top of LIV’s season-long race, where Jon Rahm leads over Joaquin Niemann. But there’s arguably even more at stake for players lower on the order of merit. Players who finish 25-48 on the list and don’t have contracts (the contracts are secret, so your guess is as good as mine) will become free agents after this season with no guarantee of re-signing, while players outside the top 48 will be booted from the league (unless they play their way back in via LIV’s Promotions event).

According to LIV, seven players currently in the Chicago field are outside that top 48 — the “Drop Zone” — while seven more could technically fall into that relegation zone, too.

The seven currently on the outside: Scott Vincent, Branden Grace, Bubba Watson, Kalle Samooja, Kieran Vincent and wild card players Hudson Swafford and Anthony Kim. Watson is a captain and thus exempt from relegation; it’s not clear what’ll happen to the wild card players.

The seven currently on the inside and hoping to stay there? That includes some star power, too: Henrik Stenson, Mito Pereira, Phil Mickelson, Jinichiro Kozuma, Ian Poulter, Harold Varner III and Pat Perez. Stenson, Mickelson and Poulter are captains and therefore safe. But whoever gets relegated will have an interesting and uncertain future; they’ll likely have opportunities to play Asian Tour events but any road back to the PGA Tour for, say, Varner doesn’t currently exist.

SHORT HITTERS

Five pros with something to prove at the Solheim Cup.

Nelly Korda is expected to lead the American side; she’s won at historic levels this season and is runaway World No. 1 but this is a distinctly different type of pressure: team play and match play in specific context: the U.S. team hasn’t won any of the last three Cups. (They tied last year, but Europe retained.)

Lauren Coughlin makes her Solheim Cup debut in her home state, capping off a dream year in which she won her first LPGA title — and then her second, just a couple weeks later. Coughlin grew up in Virginia and went to the University of Virginia, too. She’ll hope to win some matches on her home turf, too.

Lexi Thompson caps off her final full season on the LPGA Tour with a captain’s pick onto her seventh (!) team; she’ll step into the fire of team match play as one of only two players on the roster who has been on a winning U.S. team.

Charley Hull comes in as the top points-getter among European qualifiers; this has also been a banner year for her play and popularity. Hull has battled some injury late in the year but relishes match-play situations and crowds rooting against her; we’ll see how she fares this go ’round.

Leona Maguire hasn’t been playing particularly well but remained high enough in Rolex Rankings to qualify automatically; she would have been an obvious pick regardless thanks to her 7-2-1 record over the last three cups.

ONE DUMB GRAPHIC

Like I said, I’m a sucker for the mini Big Green Egg.

ONE SWING THOUGHT

Get back to your roots.

Collin Morikawa‘s resurgent 2024 season came in part due to his reconnection with lifelong coach Rick Sessinghaus. Viktor Hovland showed some improvement after getting back with swing coach Joe Mayo. Rory McIlroy saw his game improve when he stopped messing about and went back to work with childhood coach Michael Bannon. Coach-player connections are tricky and fickle but I’ve grown fascinated by the idea that golfers at the highest level do best when they return to some sort of essential identity.

An Irish TV station posted a video showing McIlroy and caddie Harry Diamond playing Royal County Down ahead of this week’s Irish Open with Bannon alongside, working through some swing thoughts. That’s good vibes — consider that Bannon came to the U.S. earlier this year ahead of the Wells Fargo, which wound up being McIlroy’s most dominant tournament win in years. But it doesn’t quite guarantee a win; Bannon was there at Royal Troon, too, ahead of McIlroy’s MC. What’s the swing thought here? Stay true to your roots, I guess. Swing your swing. Especially if you’re a top-10 golfer in the world.

ONE BIG QUESTION

What are Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy doing?

There are golf matches and there are golf matches, and the recently announced showdown pitting Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau against Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler is the latter.

At the moment PGA Tour players can’t freely enter LIV events. Nor can LIV players play PGA Tour events. They meet at majors, at least some of ’em, but it seemed from the outside like that was kinda the only option.

But apparently it isn’t?

This fourball feels like a strong suggestion, like a deliberate message, like a shot sent from the PGA Tour’s best player and its biggest star to golf’s leadership that they’re willing to work with LIV pros.

“I think for the players it’s a way to capitalize on everything that’s been going on,” McIlroy told UTV on Monday. “For golf to be as strong as it can be we need the best players playing against each other more often, and not just the four times a year at the majors. So if this match help along the way at getting people back together, hopefully that’s a good thing.”

The match appears to be an olive branch extended and accepted by eager co-conspirators. DeChambeau recently said that he thinks LIV’s top priority should be figuring things out with the Tour. Koepka has never been overly rah-rah about his new circuit and has expressed a desire to play against PGA Tour guys more often. The two of them stand to benefit from the match because it gets them back in the ring with two top Tour stars.

The match stands to benefit, too, from being the first LIV vs. PGA Tour-style showdown. And the cynics among you could suggest that this won’t do anything to meaningfully advance negotiations and that this is just a cash grab for all four. You might even be right. And the whole thing would have more juice if it was a true grudge match and these guys openly hated each other rather than working together as business partners arriving at a mutually beneficial arrangement. Still, this is significant, especially as it relates to one question:

If this match is a tiny first step, what’s the second?

ONE THING TO WATCH

James Earl Jones.

Let the voice of the incomparable James Earl Jones wash over you for a couple minutes of nostalgic goodness. What a powerful presence. He’ll be missed.

NEWS FROM SEATTLE

Monday Finish HQ.

I’ve been working in coffee shops lately which means this week I was exposed to what I imagine is an every-year phenomenon: Back to School Week means parents go wild. My usual spots were jam-packed after drop-off. Parents socializing, commiserating, working, slamming coffee, hammering pastries. If the bars had been open those might have been packed, too.

Already by Week 2 things have slowed down, but big congrats to all the parents out there. I hope you find peace after drop-off. You earned it.

We’ll see you next week!

Before you go, a quick request: If you like the Monday Finish, subscribe for free HERE to get it in your email inbox!

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.