Hello friends, and welcome to this week’s edition of the Rogers Report! I am very excited for the next few weeks. We’ve got the Grant Thornton Invitational this week, where PGA and LPGA Tour pros are teaming up and competing for equal prize money. Next week, I’ll head to the PNC Championship in Orlando and watch Tiger and Charlie Woods (and many others) tee it up, and then a week later it’s Christmas. It may be a slower time of the golf season, but my excitement is through the roof.
But before any of that can happen, let’s take a look at what’s happening right now in the golf space. I’d be remiss not to start off with this quote from our favorite 15-time major champion.
How about that? Congrats to my colleague, Dylan Dethier, for the lovely shoutout and affirmation. If I were him, I’d make that my alarm sound. And if you’re curious as to what Dylan’s “great question” (and Tiger’s response) was, here you go:
Q. Tiger, you mentioned protecting the integrity of the Tour and kind of what makes the Tour. I’m curious, like now we’re in this spot where you’ve sort of stripped it all back, everything’s potentially on the table. What is important about the PGA Tour? Like what is the bedrock of what makes professional golf valuable?
TIGER WOODS: “Well, I think — that’s a great question, Dylan. What we have to do is we have to make sure that we have access to the game. I had access to the game. I had an ability to get on Tour. We ensure that, and have — ensure that we protect our schedule, like I talked about earlier, and our Tour and take care of the players. Without the players, there is no Tour. How do we take care of them in a better way, not just financially. Obviously everyone wants to get paid, but how do we have the best competitive atmosphere and competitive events from week to week to week and what does that look like, and what does it look like for the players to have to be involved in that and what do they have to give up to have that and what are — like Bob was mentioning earlier — what are investors looking for to invest in our Tour.”
I would also like to take a moment to thank Jeff Eisenband, who put out what might be The Perfect Tweet on Sunday evening. My two worlds have officially collided and I couldn’t be happier.
Speaking of Taylor Swift, I did my best to explain all the things that are happening in golf right now using her songs.
Okay, on to the good stuff.
The most wholesome family in golf
On Sunday, Scottie and Meredith Scheffler proved once again that they are the most wholesome people on the planet.
Meredith might be the ultimate hype woman. Every time Scottie wins, we hear her telling her husband how proud she is. And then she embraces Scheffler’s caddie, Ted Scott, and tells him the exact same thing! I’d love for someone to stand over my shoulder and tell me how proud they are every time I hit “send Tweet” or “post to Instagram.” I’m sure my work performance would skyrocket.
Back to the wholesome content. Look how genuine Mr. and Mrs. Scheffler are in thanking Tiger for an amazing week!
Their whole squad went out to the Bahamas to support Scheffler, which made the win even more sweet.
And for the finale of wholesome-Scheffler content, I present to you this compilation of Scottie’s laughter.
Tiger’s return
Tiger played in a tournament for the first time since the Masters at the Hero, and I’ve handpicked some of my favorite moments from the week that I hope to remember for a while. We’ll start off with this video of Tiger and Justin Thomas making their way down the fairway, practicing their swings.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Men will practice their golf swing anywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’ve won multiple majors or if you haven’t broken 100. It’s like the male version of the Bechdel Test. Get a man together with some other guys and they will make some air swings. It doesn’t matter if they’re in an undersized New York City apartment, the sidelines of a basketball game or in the middle of a PGA Tour event. It’s gonna happen, and it was lovely to see Tiger and JT enjoying themselves while adhering to this phenomenon.
Next up we have the interaction between Tiger and his pal, the VP of TGR Ventures and caddie for the week, Rob McNamara. Yes, I miss seeing Joe LaCava on Tiger’s bag already. However, it must have been such a cool experience for McNamara to caddie for his good pal out there. And what’s better than lugging around a heavy Tour bag for an 82-time PGA Tour champion for 18 holes? Probably finishing and being able to relax for a bit. Lucky for us, we got to see Tiger and McNamara interact as soon as Round 1 was complete.
As someone who, due to extreme circumstances, had to caddie exactly one time in my life, I can very much relate to the whole “not reading a putt all day” thing. My abilities as a caddie include carrying the bag, minimal complaining, pulling pins and providing comedic relief when necessary. Getting yardages? Reading putts? Sure, I can do that, if you want to get bad information all day long. Rob McNamara is a man of the people who was called upon to work a dream job last week (read: a dream for many golf fans, but not for me. Tour bags look impossible to carry.). I’m grateful that it allowed Tiger to made a silly mid-round joke.
On to Sunday. Tiger was sporting a fitted sleeveless shirt, basketball shorts, a backpack and has a work uniform in hand. You can’t tell me you haven’t seen this exact scenario in the parking lot of your local Planet Fitness.
Of course, that’s somehow what makes it cool. He may look like the guy who sets off the Lunk Alarm too much at the gym, but it turns out, having 82-PGA Tour wins is a pretty good shield against it being cringey.
And finally, here’s some bonus content of Tiger from the Bridgestone Golf shoot a few weeks ago.
Spieth gets humbled
No one can humble you more than your own family. As someone who seems to be the easiest target when my siblings start roasting each other in the living room on holidays, I can speak from personal experience. And it seems that not even professional golfers are exempt from being brought back down to earth by relatives. Exhibit A: Jordan Spieth.
This is not a reflection on Sammy Spieth, who is obviously too young to understand that his dad is a famous golfer. Toddlers love to ask “why?” and Sammy did so at the perfect time, when his dad explained that someone requested an autograph.
Keep up the good work, Sammy. It’s your civic duty to keep your dad’s ego under control. Spieth seems like a great guy, so it shouldn’t be too much work.
The pros’ favorite coffee
Tiger shared his (very deluxe) coffee order with Golf Digest a few years ago, and I’ve wondered what kind of coffee other pros drink ever since.
You can learn a lot about a person on the golf course, but you can also learn a lot about them by what they order at the Starbucks drive-through.
Without further ado, here’s what the pros’ coffee orders say about them.
Will Zalatoris gets an iced shaken espresso. He likes the finer things in life and doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He’s not afraid to cry during a rom-com.
Scottie Scheffler makes his own coffee. He’s a wholesome, hard working guy who is stronger willed than I am, because I’d be hitting up Starbucks multiple times a day if I had as many wins as he does.
Max Homa doesn’t drink coffee, but picks up a tall vanilla oat milk latte (the best drink of all, by the way) for his wife, Lacey. He knows her exact order, which means he’s a great listener. Do you know how hard it can be to memorize somebody else’s coffee order? Especially when it’s all in Starbucks lingo? Homa also might be some sort of superhuman if he has a one-year-old and doesn’t drink coffee.
Keegan Bradley gets an iced coffee with a splash of skim milk with no sweetener. To the surprise of absolutely no one, he’s a no frills kind of guy! However, as a fellow New Englander, I would’ve loved a Dunkin shout out here.
Collin Morikawa gets what his wife, Kat, gets. A vanilla sweet cream cold brew. This means he, like Will Zalatoris, appreciates the finer things in life. And he likes to be pampered. So what?
Lucas Glover and Brian Harman drink black coffee. This is extremely unsurprising. This means that they’re simple guys. They don’t need much to be happy.
And finally, Rickie Fowler goes back and forth between an espresso over ice or an oat milk latte. He’s not afraid to shake up the status quo, and he knows when it’s time for work and time for play.
The diamond in the rough of rollback Tweets
Rollback this! Rollback that! It’s only been a few days and I’m already growing tired of all the stir this conversation has caused on social media.
It might be time to re-enforce a word count on Twitter. However, I’d go through all the extremely long posts again and again because my perusing brought me to something great. Rory McIlroy’s Twitter likes. He liked one post in particular that caught my eye. One on the magic of Christmas.
My attention span is about four seconds long on a good day so it definitely took some time for me to get through this post. But it’s all about the spirit of Christmas. One line reads, “You see, Santa Claus is THE IDEA OF GIVING FOR THE SAKE OF GIVING, without thought of thanks or acknowledgement.” What a nice sentiment that I’m glad McIlroy enjoyed. I’m glad to see that he is in the Christmas spirit!
Miscellaneous golf content
Min Woo Lee posted an awesome photo of himself on Instagram a few days ago, and it immediately reminded me of the iconic photo of Tiger at the 2010 Ryder Cup.
Such cool shots! Hopefully Lee’s photographer didn’t get hit. Next up we have Tom Brady, who is working on his game with GOLF Top 100 Teacher Matt Killen.
I wonder what it’s like when one of the best athletes of all time calls you up for help. Killen, if you’re reading this, please let me know.