Rory makes ‘boring’ discovery, pro sends odd email, Hovland keeps tinkering | Monday Finish

Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where we didn’t make an ace, carry a tee shot 338 yards or play Cypress Point this week but we did watch some golf. To the news…

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GOLF STUFF I LIKE

We’re so back.

Last week in this space I wrote that we should press restart on the golf season. Not that we should like, take away trophies. Just that the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am — the first week with Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy in the field, the first week without football, the first week with all the Tour’s top guys at a top venue — was a good chance to start fresh. A good chance to talk about something besides [yawn] slow play.

And gang, it worked. We’re back. The season is officially underway. This week rocked. Pebble Beach looked great on TV. We got aces. Wild weather. Top-tier competition. A crowded Sunday leaderboard. Those sweet, sweet drone shots at the meeting of Pebble cliffs and Pacific Ocean. Scheffler showed. Shane Lowry made a proper charge to runner-up. And McIlroy ran away with a triumphant win, gapping the field by pairing flamethrower-level power with deadly accuracy — with a little dose of restraint mixed in.

It wasn’t all dreamland, of course. Symptoms of pro golf’s illness remain. Literally, in the case of Ludvig Aberg, who withdrew after one round. There was CBS’s coverage gap on Sunday, which meant golf fans were treated to the end of a college basketball game as McIlroy birdied the iconic par-3 7th, an inexcusable (and recurring!) miss from a network that by-and-large crushed it all weekend. There was the absence of World No. 2 Xander Schauffele, still out with a rib injury. And there were reminders of other pros missing, like five-time champ Phil Mickelson, now on LIV, or Bryson DeChambeau, playing on the Asian Tour in India instead.

But mostly it was dreamland — for McIlroy in particular. His week began with his TGL debut, which wound up as the league’s best night yet, even in a Ballfrog loss. It continued with a trek to Cypress Point, his first-ever round at arguably America’s greatest coastal course. He made an ace on Thursday. Charged toward the lead on the weekend. And wound up doing battle on Sunday alongside Lowry, probably his closest friend on Tour, who finished two shots back of McIlroy in solo second. Everything came up Rory.

There was plenty to unpack from his round, not just his preposterous eagle at the par-5 14th but all the little stuff — his touch around the greens, his precision from fairway bunkers, his decision to lay back off the tee — that contributed to his win.

And McIlroy was somewhat rueful comparing this version of himself to a younger, more impulsive version: “It certainly feels a little more boring to me,” he admitted. “It might look a little bit more boring on the golf course, but it’s definitely more effective.”

But it’s worth considering the testimony of his peers. Did Lowry see a tempered version of his friend?

“No. He tried to hit a 6-iron out of the bunker on the second,” he said, referring to a daring shot from the fairway bunker McIlroy pulled off en route to birdie at the par-5. “I said to Sepp [Straka, their third], ‘Look at the shot he’s going for here.’ But he’s Rory McIlroy.”

Straka added his own perspective.

“That 14th hole kind of sums it up: just a bomb drive down there. We both hit 7 there — his was 7-iron, mine was a 7-wood.”

Finally there was Lucas Glover, who shared third and played just ahead of McIlroy.

“Yeah, when he’s good, he’s great. And when he’s not great, he’s good,” he said.

Mull that one over. This week McIlroy was great. The PGA Tour was, too. There’s some correlation there. And that’s golf stuff I like.

WINNERS

Who won the week?

Rory McIlroy won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the 27th PGA Tour victory of his career. The last time someone reached 27 PGA Tour wins was in 2005, when Phil Mickelson won the PGA Championship. This level of winning doesn’t come around often.

A Lim Kim won the LPGA’s season opener, the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, thanks to three birdies in her final four holes. She cemented her wire-to-wire victory with a 25-footer for birdie at No. 18 to hold off hard-charging World No. 1 Nelly Korda by one.

Laurie Canter won the Bapco Energies Bahrain Championship on the DP World Tour, the second victory in less than a year for the Englishman and one that elevated him to No. 51 in the world and No. 2 in the Race to Dubai.

Josh Teater won the Panama Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour, a particularly noteworthy accomplishment given he’s just a couple months from turning 46 and his last win came in [checks notes twice] 2009. Teater began the final round six shots back before a round that’ll change the rest of his pro career.

But arguably the most off-the-radar win of the week came from Ollie Schniederjans, the former World No. 1 amateur, famous for his no-hat look and his aggressive stinger, who lost his card after the 2018-19 PGA Tour season and all but disappeared. He re-emerged at this year’s LIV Golf Promotions event, where he played well. But he was unbeatable in the International Series India event at DLF Golf and Country Club in New Delhi.

“It was a long process, it took a lot of patience,” Schniederjans said, understating things. “I did a lot to change my body and swing, and had to learn a lot through that process.”

It’ll be fascinating to see where he goes from here. But Step 1 is already interesting: He’ll fill in for an injured Mickelson on LIV this week in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the league’s first event of the year.

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NOT-WINNERS

These guys are good, too.

Shane Lowry, who finished solo second at Pebble: To come out here and kind of go head to head with Rory down the stretch, it’s pretty nice. The older I get, the doubts do creep in every year of ‘do you still kind of have it at this level.’ And when you go out there, I showed even without my best stuff what I was made of today, and I’m pretty proud of myself.”

Lucas Glover, who finished T3: “Happy with birdie on 17 and 18. It’s always good when you [media officials] ask me to come in on a Sunday. Happy as I can be.”

Nelly Korda, who finished solo second at Lake Nona: “This is what I love about golf, being in the hunt on a Sunday going down the back nine. Yeah, I mean, I played well. I wish I had a couple of those putts back this week. I three-putted 9 twice for par, and when you kind of think about it that way, you’re never going to be happy with the outcome.”

SHORT HITTERS

5 things the PGA Tour says it’s tackling in 2025.

A group of reporters (including me and James Colgan) met with PGA Tour executives, who pulled back the curtain a bit on research the Tour has done to improve its (sorry, I hate this word) product going forward. Full recap here, but five shorter bits below:

1. They want to enhance the broadcasts.

They’ve heard your complaints. Will they overhaul the presentation of golf on TV? Don’t hold your breath, but they may get more creative going forward with, say, more sponsor integration to the broadcast rather than cutting to a commercial.

They also explained what they’ve learned from fans, including what they don’t like, which includes slow play, and what they do like, which includes player-caddie conversations on challenging shots. Brandel Chamblee caused a bit of a stir on Twitter by saying those things are in direct opposition, but they don’t have to be. If you help set up a shot with a brief player-caddie discussion, that’s good action and good context all in one. Baby steps, though.

2. They want to speed things up.

Virtual rulings. Rangefinder tests. Smaller fields. Possibly even the naming and shaming of slow players. It sounds like the Tour is ready to make some actual moves on the subject. But again, if you’re waiting to believe it until you see it, I get that.

3. They want their fans to know their players better.

This doesn’t necessarily mean through a pre-produced profile or dramatic essay. Instead it means showing a player’s personality through their “on-course persona,” which reportedly the 18-34-year-old demographic considers the most important factor in rooting interest.

4. They want to keep improving the on-site experience.

We didn’t hear a ton about this one but it’s the building block for everything we see on TV — without a good real-life experience it’s tough to just make one up.

5. They could change the Tour Championship ASAP.

It sounds like it could change dramatically, too. We’re talking match-play, bracket-style, big money. The data (I am now sick of that phrase) was clear that viewers want “consequential play” and that the competition “needs meaning” but that getting there still has to be an entertaining process. In other words, the idea of crowning the most deserving year-end champion may give way to a more entertaining finale.

ONE DUMB GRAPHIC

May have to zoom in here. Or keep scrolling.

ONE SWING THOUGHT

Viktor Hovland on tinkering.

His toe seems to be feeling better — but his mind is as busy as ever.

“I’m very curious by nature and I like to look under every single stone,” Viktor Hovland said before a T22 finish. “But if I didn’t do that I wouldn’t be here today because I just — I was never the most talented, I was never the best in my age group growing up. I always had to improve every single year to get to where I’m at today. So I don’t think that is the problem in itself, it’s just I made a few poor decisions along the way and I’ve kind of learnt that lesson now. So I’ll probably be a little bit more reluctant to make changes unless I really have good data to support that change.

“Now I have a better understanding of what I used to do that made me great. So I just — if I’m going to make a change, I’m way more confident in the reasoning behind that, if that makes sense.”

ONE BIG QUESTION

What was Charley Hoffman doing?

At 6:03 p.m. on Sunday evening, 20-year vet Charley Hoffman sent a grab-bag of takes to the entire PGA Tour membership. There was reference to slow play, the hot topic of the day. But there were also two oddities that stood out.

One was Hoffman’s gripe about the way Pebble Beach filled up its field of 80 players. As laid out before the season, the event added the hottest five players from the year’s first few events (the “Aon Swing 5”) and then filled from the FedEx Fall standings after that. Hoffman seemed to think they should have drawn from the Swing 5 list instead. But he wasn’t exactly an impartial observer — Hoffman is sixth on that list.

Two was the timing and direction of Hoffman’s most pointed remark. “Here’s something else to think about,” he said. “Many of you keep saying you want to play fewer events, yet you still find time for TGL, Race to Dubai, and other non-PGA Tour events…”

Who was that in reference to? Well, there’s one guy who co-founded the TGL, won last year’s Race to Dubai and held a “non-PGA Tour event” in December. He was also walking up the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach, about to seal his victory and a terrific weekend for the PGA Tour, when Hoffman sent the email.

The question, then: Why call out Rory McIlroy there and then? Why call him out at all?

ONE THING TO WATCH

Cam Davis from the roots.

McIlroy’s ace and Lowry’s ace and a series of McIlroy moonballs made their way ’round social media all week. But I was probably most impressed by this Cam Davis wizardry at No. 18 on Sunday, going from “should I even hit this” to “get in the hole!” at record speed.

NEWS FROM SEATTLE

Monday Finish HQ.

First snow of the season. Golf season may be further away than I thought. Time to dream up plans for a TGL expansion team…

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