Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where Rodgers and McCarthy blew a lead in the fourth for the first time since the 2018 Packers lost in Week 13. To the news…
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GOLF STUFF I LIKE
Learning from Augusta.
If, as they say, the Masters doesn’t start until the back nine on Sunday, Ludvig Åberg‘s 2024 Masters started poorly.
Sure, he was seven under for the tournament and in a share of the lead as he played No. 10 in last year’s final round. And sure, that was the first major championship of his young life. But when his approach shot at the 11th hit a wall of wind and fell short and left into the greenside pond, his tournament hopes all but drowned with it.
Still, there was something to be learned from what Åberg did next. The then-24-year-old parred the 12th, rallied with birdies at 13 and 14 and played blemish-free to the clubhouse. Behind him, leader Scottie Scheffler matched Åberg’s birdies at 13 and 14 and added another at 16 to build his lead back up to four, where it would ultimately finish. But Åberg had done something important: He’d showed his relentlessness, posting a final-round 69 to make the World No. 1 go out and beat him.
I thought of that back nine on Sunday at the Genesis as Åberg disappeared from coverage following a 5-5-5 stretch on 4-5-6 at Torrey Pines South. The tournament leaders were suddenly four shots ahead and there were a whole bunch of big-name pros between the Swede and the top of the board.
But Åberg dug in. He birdied No. 7. Then he birdied No. 9. And as the world was focused on Maverick McNealy’s breakaway run two groups ahead, Åberg went about his business and birdied 13, 14 and 15. He nearly birdied No. 17, too, and when he smashed driver-7-wood to the back of the par-5 18th green and then executed on a ticklish two-putt, he’d suddenly secured the biggest win of his career.
“It’s a nice feeling knowing that I didn’t get ahead of myself,” Åberg said. “I was sort of focused on the things that I could focus on and then, knowing that you’ll get a lot of chances as long as you’re executing the shots, I was really pleased with the way I finished today.”
Knowing you’ll get some chances — and then taking full advantage of ’em all? That’s golf stuff I like. The Age of Åberg has arrived.
WINNERS
Who won the week?
Ludvig Aberg’s victory was the second of his PGA Tour career; with the win he gets $4 million and a jump up to No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking, behind only Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Rory McIlroy.
“I was pretty bummed I didn’t get to win a tournament last year, but it’s really nice to be able to do it again,” he said. “It’s almost addicting to walk down those last couple holes and I just want to do it again.”
On LIV Golf, Joaquin Niemann won LIV Golf’s Adelaide event in Australia; his three-stroke victory was his third on LIV and a reminder just how good the 2022 Genesis Invitational champ is three years later. The tournament remains LIV’s greatest sign of potential, at least on the ground — the league reported more than 100,000 attendees for the week.
And Wilco Nienaber, the South African pro best known for his prodigious length, dialed in that firepower en route to a seven-stroke victory at the NTT Data Pro-Am on the HotelPlanner Tour (formerly known as the Challenge Tour) to move inside the top 300 in the world.
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NOT-WINNERS
These guys are good, too.
Maverick McNealy played an epic final round, particularly his first 13 holes. In fact, if McNealy had handed off to Åberg for the final five holes they would have combined for a course-record 12-under 60. Instead, McNealy bogeyed 14 and parred his way home for an eight-under 64, good enough for second place and a jump to No. 14 in the world, the best position of his career.
“It’s really fun when the ball’s coming off exactly like you want, when you’re standing over a putt and you feel like it’s just going to go in,” McNealy said post-round. We’ll have to believe him.
Scottie Scheffler finished T3 alongside Patrick Rodgers; while Rodgers held the 54-hole lead, Scheffler threw down a final-round rollercoaster 66 that included two chip-ins for birdie but two back-nine par-3 bogeys, too.
“I think I feel pretty bad about where I’m at,” Scheffler said post-round, then caught himself. He’s coming off hand surgery, after all, and finished on the podium without his best stuff.
“I’m trying to do myself to stay patient with myself, which can be tough because I have high expectations and I think when I get out here and start competing, I definitely forget that I had lost some of the progress I made in the offseason.”
ONE DUMB GRAPHIC
Mav McNealy and the gang.
SHORT HITTERS
5 things Tiger Woods said.
Tournament host Tiger Woods joined CBS’s Jim Nantz and Trevor Immelman broadcast on Sunday afternoon.
1. His mom kept his stats.
Woods lost his mother Tida last week; on Sunday competitors at the Genesis wore red pins in her honor. He smiled as he offered fond memories of her on the broadcast; Woods has long said her role in his golf upbringing is underrated.
“Mom was my rock, you know?” he said. “When my dad worked at McDonnell Douglas at that time and was working on the Delta rocket, Mom would take me to every junior event here in southern California whether it’s nine holes out in Riverside, San Bernadino, she would drive out there and keep score, walk every hole and how many putts I hit, how many fairways I hit, how many greens I hit. She tracked it all.”
2. He was intent on keeping the Genesis in Southern California.
“I wanted to keep the event at an iconic venue. Riviera’s iconic. It was iconic to me when I first played there, it was the first tournament on the PGA Tour I ever played. And I think this golf course is iconic.”
What Woods didn’t say is that Torrey Pines is iconic in part because he has made it that way; he has nearly a Hall of Fame-worthy career of moments at Torrey alone.
“To keep the event in SoCal and be able to raise over $8 million, Genesis is donating every single car this week. So we’re trying to help all the people that have been struggling and will continue to struggle because of the fires. This event I think will go a long way to that healing process, but still — a lot of the people here in Southern California need to heal.”
3. There’s one guy he remembers watching at Torrey Pines.
Woods remembers coming to Torrey Pines when it hosted the Andy Williams San Diego Open. Who does he remember seeing? Somebody you might not expect.
“There’s one guy that my dad said you’ve got to watch him hit a golf ball. It was a 1-iron, it was on the last hole, it was Andy Bean. This was the first time I ever came to a Tour event and then the second event I ever went to was at Riv.”
4. He’s hoping to play more competitive golf in 2025.
More than just the TGL, that is, where Woods will tee it up again on Tuesday evening. Woods had initially committed to this week’s Genesis but withdrew after his mother’s death; he teased on CBS that he’s planning to play more at some “big events” this season but stopped short of specifying.
5. He gave an optimistic LIV-PGA Tour update.
Echoing comments from commissioner Jay Monahan earlier in the week, Woods spoke positively about progress that the pro game’s stakeholders are making in bringing warring factions back together.
“I think that things are going to heal quickly,” he said. “We’re going to get this game going in the right direction. It’s been heading in the wrong direction for a number of years and the fans want all of us to play together, all the top players playing together and we’re going to make that happen.”
ONE SWING THOUGHT
Patrick Rodgers on trying to win without having won.
After another close call, the Stanford standout is still winless on the PGA Tour. How has he tweaked his mentality around winning over time?
“Instead of playing with a lot of expectation, I need to play to achieve,” Patrick Rodgers said after the third round. “That’s what I’ve always set out to do, and it kind of felt like early in my career with the amateur resume that I had, I felt like there was a lot expected of myself internally and it was something where when immediate success, immediate wins didn’t come straight away, it was kind of fighting who I saw myself to be, to be honest with you.
“So instead of playing with a monkey on your back that gets bigger and bigger over time when it doesn’t happen, I’m trying to play from a perspective that feels fresh and new and exciting and full of opportunity because that’s what this game is.”
ONE BIG QUESTION
Is slow play suddenly fixed?
As play wrapped up at Torrey Pines on Sunday night, there was just one problem: CBS still had time to kill. That wasn’t just because Åberg won from the second-to-last group — it was because they’d just played too fast.
Wait, what? Was is that simple? Did the PGA Tour magically fix slow play just by talking about it for a couple weeks? Final rounds for the final groups at Torrey Pines for the Farmers took around five and a half hours, after all. At the Genesis every group finished right around the four-hour mark. Did we shave 90 minutes off pace of play just through hand-wringing and peer pressure?
Probably not. The first big difference was threesomes off split tees (for the Farmers) vs. twosomes off the first (for the Genesis) thanks to a smaller weekend field. The second big difference was scoring conditions, which were brutal for the Farmers (74.75 final-round scoring average) vs. relatively benign for the Genesis (70.14). Even if you adjust for slightly better golfers at the Genesis, the effect is the same: fewer golf shots.
Conditions will come and go. So I guess the question is this: How do we get twosomes off the first tee every weekend?
ONE THING TO WATCH
Tommy Fleetwood at TGL.
First, there was Tommy Fleetwood’s off-the-fake-rocks ace in practice.
Then there was Fleetwood’s mid-length overtime ace (using “ace” liberally in both cases here) to keep the match going. I can’t find a video of that but this is called “one thing”, so watch the above and then check out the screenshots below and use your imagination…
NEWS FROM SEATTLE
Monday Finish HQ.
Seasons come early in Seattle. Fall arrives before I’m ready, but luckily spring does, too. And so even though we just had probably the coldest few weeks of my nearly five years here (not cold-cold, but Seattle-cold, below freezing nearly every morning) it’s starting to feel suspiciously like the start of spring. Little green shoots peeking out of the soil. Robins flitting about in the trees. Temperatures in the 50s surfacing on the forecast. And my golf clubs making little squeaking noises at me from the corner of my office. It’s almost time, gang…
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.
