At WM Phoenix Open, an important lesson: 30-somethings still down for a party | Monday Finish

Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where Thomas Detry won by a touchdown in Phoenix and it was WAY closer than the Super Bowl. To the news…

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GOLF STUFF I LIKE

Thirty-somethings making comebacks.

As I slid deeper into the couch cushions for four hours of Super Bowl following four hours of golf on Sunday and heard mention of veteran Eagles running back Saquon Barkley‘s 28th birthday immediately after I’d heard about rising young golf star 32-year-old Thomas Detry it struck me as the perfect juxtaposition of sports and ages and the way we think about them differently.

For a running back, staring down your early 30s generally means you’ve had a longer-than-average career and that the end of the road is looming. But for a golfer? It means you’re probably still in your prime, or you’re just entering that prime — but either way, you’ve seen some stuff. You’ve been through some stuff. The good news? If you can find it, success tastes sweeter knowing the bitter bite of disappointment.

Which brings us to the top of the leaderboard at the WM Phoenix Open, where the top six names were between 30 and 32 and know both sporting joy and pain in abundance. Better yet: they showed the world that you can turn 30 and still be the biggest stars at the biggest [golf] party in the world.

There in T6 was Justin Thomas, 31, who was on top of the golfing world less than three years ago when he won the 2022 PGA Championship, the second of his career. But then he rode the rollercoaster down in 2023, missing the cut in three of four majors, sliding in the world ranking and only making it to the Ryder Cup team via controversial captain’s pick. He played better in 2024 but missed the Presidents Cup, a shock to the American team system. Now, though, Thomas can feel he’s on the upswing again. This was his fourth top-six finish in his last six worldwide starts. He’s back at No. 11 in the world, the highest he’s been since early 2023.

“I haven’t gotten what I wanted, and that’s that trophy. But I feel like I’m getting there and I’m doing a lot of the right things. I just have to obviously keep putting myself there, and hopefully one of these years it’ll happen.

Just ahead of Thomas in T4 was Jordan Spieth, also 31 years old and even more familiar with the rollercoaster. This was a terrific week for Spieth after months of not-so-terrific. He hadn’t cracked the top 10 since last April and hadn’t cracked the top five since his first start of 2024. Now, after disappearing for six months following a wrist injury, he’s grading himself by a different set of criteria than he was as a prodigy a decade ago. By this set of expectations he’s well ahead of schedule. We’ll resist the urge to get way, way ahead of ourselves by suggesting that this T4 marks the beginning of a third act of Spieth’s career. But it’s certainly a good sign.

“I had a new putter and a new driver and a new wrist, and I was trying to figure out how to manage all three,” he said. He did so quite well, it turned out.

Alongside Spieth at T4 was Christiaan Bezuidenhout, 30, who has battled far more than his golf swing and his putter. The South African pro unknowingly drank rat poison at age 2 and has dealt with the effects ever since, including a severe stutter that fed into feelings of anxiety and depression. Bezuidenhout’s amateur career was marred by a drug suspension when he tested positive for beta blockers his doctor has prescribed him to help deal with that anxiety. But he conquered one hurdle after the next, his game kept him climbing the ladder and in the last five years he’s developed into a consistent presence on the world stage.

“This golf tournament always tests you,” he said on the weekend. “There’s a lot going on at this event with the crowds and the spectators walking and shouting and things like that. You just really try and lock yourself in to what you want to do, focus on the processes every time you hit a shot, and then just accept the outcome.” Success.

Michael Kim, 31, is all too familiar with golf’s depths. After winning the 2018 John Deere Classic he made a 36-hole cut just once in 2019 and 2020; at one point he missed 25 cuts in a row and fell outside the top 1000 in the world.

But when he turned things around a couple years ago he really turned ’em around. Where other golfers would have understandably thrown in the towel, Kim got his mojo back, slowly but surely. And now, all these years later, Sunday’s T2 catapulted him to a career-best No. 86 in the world.

“Really proud of the way I played this week,” he wrote in a fascinating breakdown on Twitter. “My game didn’t feel amazing after the first day but scrapped it around. Figured it out as the week went along and couldn’t be happier with how I handled the mental side of playing in contention in the weekend.”

Daniel Berger, 31, is still continuing his fight back to the top after an 18-month layoff. Berger’s back is feeling the best it has after it sidelined him for most of two seasons, and his play reflects that. He finished T2 at last year’s season-ending RSM Classic to secure full status for 2025. And he finished T2 again on Sunday, making a massive leap in the standings. Berger hasn’t lost his signature swagger — asked how he felt about leading the field in driving accuracy, he said, “I just do that every week,” and added “I hit one 350 on 18 so I have distance if I want it, I just choose to try to hit it straighter more often” — and it’s terrific for the Tour to have someone back who is unapologetically himself.

Berger is still also finding slights where he can. What will it be like teeing it up at Torrey Pines after his play earned him a spot in this week’s Genesis Invitational?

“I’m excited. I haven’t played in a Signature Event. It was a nice feeling. I asked for a sponsor exemption into Pebble Beach where the last time I played it I won, and two years in a row I didn’t get that exemption, so it kind of was a little chip on my shoulder to get it done without needing anyone’s help, so I’m excited to go back.”

And then there was Thomas Detry, who turned 32 last month, had never won on the PGA Tour despite several close calls. When he’d been in contention, he’d played pretty poorly. So when he entered Sunday’s final round at one of golf’s loudest venues with a five-shot lead, there was some question as to how he’d handle that pressure — and then he shot seven-under 65, tied for the low round of the day, to win by a full touchdown.

“Incredible,” Detry said post-round. He felt nervous Saturday morning, being near the lead. And he woke up on Sunday at 4 a.m. and couldn’t fall back asleep. But he was able to draw on an inner confidence and manage the pressure that has overwhelmed him in the past.

“Deep inside of me, I kind of really trusted myself,” he said. “I felt like I’ve been doing a lot of really good things in the past to put myself in that position, and I felt like I was kind of ready to win. So deep inside, I was kind of like, yeah, this one, nobody was going to take it away from me.”

So here’s to the thirty-somethings. To second and third and fourth acts. And to running backs, for that matter — specifically Barkley. (And, while we’re at it to golf writers of a similar age.) Fighting through some stuff and coming out the other side? That’s golf stuff I like.

WINNERS

Who won the week?

Thomas Detry’s WM Phoenix Open win was his first on the PGA Tour and the first for a Belgian player on Tour. Because my great-grandfather came to the U.S. from Belgium and because we have the same first three letters in our last names (Thomas, are we cousins…?) I claim this as a victory for myself, too.

Yealimi Noh was a first-time winner, too, after closing with one of the best rounds of the day at the Founders Cup in Bradenton, Fla. in the first full-field event of the LPGA season. Noh credited a switch to a broomstick-style putter as the move that helped get her mojo back — her ball-striking improved when her putting improved, she said.

“Seeing my competitors and friends win always gave me extra motivation,” she said. “To really get it done, and especially in the first tournament of the year, is really nice.”

Haotong Li secured an emotional win at the DP World Tour’s Qatar Masters, his fourth win on the circuit but his first since 2022.

“I never thought I could come back in this position,” Li said post-round. “I finally improved myself.”

Adrian Meronk won at LIV’s event in Saudi Arabia, the circuit’s first event of the 2025 season. The Polish 31-year-old, who joined LIV ahead of the 2024 season won wire-to-wire under the lights at Riyadh Golf Club.

And Kyle Westmoreland won his first Korn Ferry Tour title at the Astara Golf Championship in Bogota, Colombia. The former active-duty Air Force captain earned PGA Tour status a couple years ago but didn’t retain his card. Now he has an inside track at earning his way back to the big show.

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NOT-WINNERS

These guys are good, too.

We’ve covered the PGA Tour’s almost-winners but it’s worth mentioning that Monday qualifier Will Chandler finished T6 in the WM’s final open qualifying session; he’ll earn a spot in the Mexico Open. Bob MacIntyre finished T6 alongside him and Justin Thomas. Scottie Scheffler made a spirited charge with four birdies in his first six holes on Sunday to get into second place but faded in uncharacteristic fashion with bogeys at 12, 13 and 16 before a double at 18 to finish T25. And the Danish twins, Rasmus and Nicolai Højgaard, kicked off their 2025 PGA Tour campaign with a T12 and T36 finish, respectively.

Jin Young Ko finished second in Bradenton, while Megan Khang was third and World No. 1 Nelly Korda was T7. It’ll be interesting to see how much Lexi Thompson we get this year; we expect a limited number of events but she finished T13 in her season debut and has played pretty steady golf since announcing she’d be stepping away from a full-time schedule.

Elsewhere, Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen continues to climb through the golf ranks and finished second on the DP World Tour. Jon Rahm and Sebastian Munoz finished T2 on LIV. And promising youngsters Christo Lamprecht and Pierceson Coody finished T2 on the Korn Ferry Tour; while Coody is a past winner on the KFT, it’s the best result of Lamprecht’s young professional life.

SHORT HITTERS

5 bits of news.

1. Two majors are recognizing LIV Golf.

The U.S. Open and Open Championship are each recognizing LIV Golf and promising a pathway to their respective events if a top-ranked LIV player isn’t otherwise eligible. While this will be a big deal for the individual not otherwise qualified, it feels like a much bigger deal symbolically; until now, there was no meaningful recognition of LIV as a legitimate golf tour from any of golf’s other major stakeholders.

2. After Trump meeting, PGA Tour says something is coming.

We’d gotten plenty of signals that President Trump’s election could pave the way for an expedited review process on dealings between the Saudi PIF and the PGA Tour. That seems to be a reality after Adam Scott and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan met with Trump and released a statement that confirmed things are happening. That would first mean greenlighting a PIF investment in PGA Tour Enterprises. If this is Step 1, any potential reunification between LIV and the PGA Tour would presumably be a large Step 2.

3. Tiger Woods is out of his tournament after loss of his mother.

Woods had previously committed to this week’s Genesis Invitational but announced on Monday that he wasn’t ready to return to competition so soon after the death of his mother Tida.

4. Dustin Johnson’s TaylorMade deal is done.

While plenty of LIV teams are announcing their first sponsorship deals, other legacy deals are running out. Some remain — there’s evidence in the league’s team picture, in which Brooks Koepka is still wearing a Nike shirt and hat rather than a team kit — but Johnson and TaylorMade will each have plenty of memories to cherish.

5. LIV’s first ratings were not good.

We should never draw too many conclusions from any single set of ratings. But given this was LIV’s debut event, given it was staged under the lights in Saudi for the time-zone benefit of North American viewers, and given this was the kickoff tournament of LIV’s deal with Fox, drawing 12,000 eyeballs was not good. It’ll be fascinating to see the other numbers roll in; this year we’ll get more of an apples-to-apples comparison with the PGA Tour.

ONE SWING THOUGHT

One instructor says slow play can hurt you.

One interesting read from last week was Nick Piastowski’s interview with Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott, the brains behind the Vision54 instruction team. How can getting frozen over the ball and overloaded with information actually hurt? Here was her explanation:

“So when I overload with more and more facts and data, It’s really hard for a player to switch over. You can see it a lot, that some people now spend so much time, for example, on the break of a green and they use their system that they like and there’s so much into the sense of the break and where to aim and all of that, and then they get up and they have no ability to sense speed of the putt because speed of the putt is not an intellectual thing, it’s a feel thing. I don’t know how often we call them lineaholics. It’s too much attention. Then there’s no shift, and actually as a putter, I need to have a little access to art and feel and distance. And so it’s just off balance.”

ONE BIG QUESTION

Are we sure we want to get rid of cuts?

I found myself unusually drawn to the golf on Friday night at the WM Phoenix Open. For one thing, we’ve heard from the Tour and their broadcast partners that they’re intending to focus more on cut-line drama as second-round play wraps up. For another, one of the guys chasing the cut line was Luke Clanton, the talented 21-year-old who has been tearing up PGA Tour fields despite his amateur status and needed to make the weekend to earn his PGA Tour card on the spot. He was playing alongside two ex-Alabama golfers a decade apart: Nick Dunlap, who needed birdie at 18 to make the cut, and Justin Thomas, who was in the midst of a birdie run that had him into contention.

They each blitzed their tee shots down the 18th, ball speeds in the mid-to-high 180s, years of hard work and a moment of adrenaline. All three hit the green. And when Clanton missed his birdie putt it was clear from his reaction just how much that moment had meant. When Dunlap made his it was clear what the moment meant to him, too. The cut feels like a strong piece of the fabric of professional golf. It’s clean. It divides success from failure. And without it, it’s tough to find much drama in a golfer 10 shots off the lead playing on Friday evening.

The question, then: Are we sure we want the Tour’s flagship events to eliminate one of the things that makes its other tournaments so compelling?

ONE THING TO WATCH

Jordan Spieth makes par.

Nobody does it quite like this guy. Lefty putter from the desert? Why not?

NEWS FROM SEATTLE

Monday Finish HQ.

I cracked the screen on my iPhone and brought it in Sunday morning for a repair. Being an idiot, I hadn’t quite prepared for the moment that they said, okay, we’ll see you in 90 minutes. Suddenly I was phone-free with nothing to do. How’d it feel? Ultimately it felt kind of awesome. I wandered the mall looking for a place with Golf Channel on (unsuccessful), bought a new pair of gym shoes (more successful) and eventually found my way to the food court (hell yeah). It was an immersive, very present experience. But the fact that I instinctively reached for a phone that wasn’t there about 150 times during that hour and a half was a reminder that my brain is unfathomably broken.

I think I’d like to build more phone-free wandering into my schedule.

We’ll see you next week!

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