The post Bethpage Black’s next major? It’s coming sooner than expected appeared first on Golf.

The post Bethpage Black’s next major? It’s coming sooner than expected appeared first on Golf.

The PGA of America is still a week away from hosting the first Ryder Cup in Bethpage history, but both sides have already signed up for more.

On Wednesday morning, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and the PGA of America announced that the state of New York would host two additional PGA Championships in the 2030s, in 2033 at Bethpage Black and in 2035 at Oak Hill. The decision brings back the PGA Championship to Bethpage for the second time in recent history, continuing a relationship between the governing body and the stewards of New York’s most famous municipal golf course. As part of the agreement, Bethpage will also host the 2028 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.

“The Black Course tested the strongest field in golf in 2019, delivering a memorable PGA Championship and promises to do so again in 2033,” Don Rea, the PGA of America president said in a release. “These three Championships will add to our association’s extensive history in the state of New York, and we cannot wait to see the world’s best players compete on Long Island and in Rochester.”

The news quiets some whispers locally about the future of Bethpage Black as a major championship venue, which did not have another big-time golf event on the calendar following next week’s Ryder Cup. Bethpage’s Black Course, a Depression-era A.W. Tillinghast design with a vaunted history as a public-access major championship brute, has earned plaudits from golf diehards as a major host, but has existed somewhere in the realm between “U.S. Open test” and “PGA Championship mainstay.”

The course has hosted a PGA Championship and two U.S. Opens since the turn of the century, and next week will host its first-ever Ryder Cup. Those tournaments have generally been lauded as successes, with Bethpage’s municipal roots setting the stage for packed crowds of rabid New Yorkers and its proximity to the city opening the checkbooks for major corporate hospitality and sponsorship buildouts.

The Black Course presents a few layers of appeal to a governing body like the PGA of America. For one thing, the PGA generates larger revenues from tournaments held in major metropolitan areas, where it can attract more substantial hospitality options. For another, Bethpage’s roots as the so-called “People’s Country Club” imbue no shortage of ticket demand among the New York faithful — as evidenced by the PGA of America’s highly criticized decision to charge a $750 entry price for the Ryder Cup.

The PGA of America’s decision brings a major championship to four New York venues in the next decade, with Oak Hill and Bethpage serving in addition to U.S. Open hosts Winged Foot and Shinnecock Hills.

For Bethpage, the decision adds fuel to two years of excitement leading into next week’s Ryder Cup, where the “People’s Country Club” will once again count the very best in the world among its guests.

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The post Did fan’s cocktail cause Max Homa’s comically bad lie at PGA Championship? appeared first on Golf.

The post Did fan’s cocktail cause Max Homa’s comically bad lie at PGA Championship? appeared first on Golf.

The 2025 PGA Championship was a bizarre one. It featured a chorus of complaints about playing conditions, mud balls and bad lies from the pros playing at Quail Hollow. One week later, the weird stories — and bad breaks — continue to be revealed. The latest involves fan favorite Max Homa and a comically bad lie that one fan claims his transfusion cocktail caused.

Here’s what you need to know.

Max Homa’s Sunday PGA swoon

Homa’s long stretch of on-course struggles are well known at this point. Just this season, Homa recorded five consecutive missed cuts from the WM Phoenix Open in February through the Valero Texas Open in April.

Then Homa’s longtime caddie Joe Greiner decided to end their working relationship just before the Masters, which Homa confirmed was “not my choice.”

But at what seemed like his lowest moment, Homa showed some life at Augusta, finishing T12, his best result in any tournament since last May.

Then at the 2025 PGA Championship, Homa shot a blistering second-round 64 that launched him into contention at five under.

The good news was short-lived. The six-time PGA Tour winner followed that up going 76-77 on the weekend to finish T60.

Homa’s horrible break and Reddit user’s claim

Homa’s final-round 77 at Quail Hollow was particularly ugly, featuring seven bogeys and two double bogeys. There’s little doubt Homa faced a large share of bad lies and breaks over his final 36 holes at the PGA Championship.

But one bad break in particular stands out.

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On his final hole of the tournament, the treacherous par-4 18th, Homa lost his drive into the right rough near a grove of trees.

Quail Hollow’s 18th squeezed a ton of double bogeys out of the field during PGA week. But most of those were to blame on the creek that runs along the left side of the fairway and green. Not to mention mud balls acquired in the 18th fairway.

But when Homa walked up to where his drive had landed, he found a very different form of trouble: his ball had come to rest at the bottom of a large nest of pine straw.

The lie was so bad it begged the question if there had been human intervention. And according to a Reddit user’s post this week, there had been.

On Wednesday, Reddit user @bravemanafish posted two photos of Homa staring at his horrible lie on 18. He also included a surprising, though unconfirmed, confession.

According to the poster, he had created the nest of pine straw as a makeshift cup holder for his transfusion cocktail. Then he’d watched in horror as Homa’s drive found its way into the middle of it.

“I was sitting by the 18th fairway at Quail. I had made a little nest out of the pine straw so my transfusion didn’t tip over on the slope,” @bravemanafish wrote on Reddit. “Max Homa’s drive landed in my drink spot and he had a terrible lie for his second shot. The look on his face hurt my heart.”

In a second post, he expressed more remorse for his alleged interference.

“I kept mouthing ‘I’m sorry’ to his caddie Bill Harke, but I don’t think they understood how upset I was.”

We can’t say for sure whether this is true, but the user’s photos clearly showed Homa at Quail Hollow in the clothes he wore on Sunday at the PGA.

And the story also lines up with Homa’s play on the hole, according to a digital representation of his scorecard on PGAChampionship.com.

Whether or not Homa’s bad lie was due to the fan’s cocktail, there is no doubt he got a horrible break.

The popular pro hacked out from there and ended up with a bogey 5.

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The post Why Ernie Els sees some Tiger Woods in Scottie Scheffler appeared first on Golf.

The post Why Ernie Els sees some Tiger Woods in Scottie Scheffler appeared first on Golf.

Some might be afraid to say it, but Ernie Els isn’t.

Scottie Scheffler’s run of dominance over the past 13 months has drawn comparisons to Tiger Woods. With his emphatic win at the 2025 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club, Scheffler joined Woods and Jack Nicklaus as the only players since World War II to have 15 wins and three majors before turning 29. Woods, Scheffler and Nicklaus are also the only three players to have multiple Masters wins, multiple Players Championship wins and a PGA Championship title.

Woods’ presence on major championship leaderboards put his rivals under added pressure. It made them feel like they had to play near-perfect golf to beat him, knowing he wouldn’t beat himself. Scheffler has the same effect, as was evidenced last week at Quail Hollow.

To Els, who won four major championships in the Woods era, that’s a good place for the comparisons to start.

“I see the similarities now with Scheffler [and Woods],” Els said ahead of the Senior PGA Championship at Congressional. “Seems like he plays his best golf under the most extreme pressure, and that’s a hallmark of a champion. There’s more confidence that he’s getting by winning these tournaments. It’s only going to get tougher for the group following to try and get into that kind of mindset that he’s in. I think Tiger brought that intensity.

“You had your work cut out for you. I won four majors in his era, and there was a lot of other guys that won majors in that era, but we never got to the six, seven, eight. Mickelson did eventually; he got to six majors. But he had a hold on us. You knew you were in for a tough tournament when he was around, and I think that’s happening now with Scheffler.”

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On Sunday at Quail Hollow, Scheffler entered the final round with a three-shot lead over Alex Noren. He had a five-shot lead over Jon Rahm and a six-shot edge over Bryson DeChambeau. With Scheffler out in front, the major champions behind him felt they had to execute perfectly to give themselves a chance to catch him.

“There were times where I feel like I pressed,” DeChambeau said after a T2 finish. “Green Mile did it to me [Saturday] and kind of did it to me again today, and that’s golf, man. I’ve got to be more precise and fix what I can fix to make myself more consistent and get up there, the likes of what Scottie is doing right now.”

That’s the kind of pressure Scheffler puts on a tournament. Tiger had a similar effect, but multiplied.

“I was always a scoreboard watcher, especially after [the 1994 U.S. Open],” Els said. “If I saw his name on the leaderboard, obviously, he’s playing well, and he’s not going to go away. So you knew you were in for a long haul.”

Scheffler’s leaderboard aura might feel similar to Woods’, but the 15-time major champion pinpointed something else that connects the two: the methodical nature with which they attack tournaments.

“We see shots into the greens very similarly, how we miss golf balls into the correct spots,” Woods said of Scheffler in a video released by the PGA Tour. “It’s not always pretty, but it’s not about the here and now. It’s about the long game. It’s over 72 holes. It’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon. I think that’s the similarity in how we play the game.”

To compare anyone to Woods feels outlandish given the sheer volume of achievements Woods racked up in his legendary career. Although perhaps Scheffler will continue this torrid stretch and eventually cement himself in that rarified air.

But there is no doubt that Scheffler has levitated above everyone else in men’s professional golf for over a year and shows no signs of slowing down. His presence will continue to be felt at major championships until he is no longer the guy to beat.

Given what we just witnessed at Quail Hollow, that might not be for quite some time.

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The post ‘Magnitude of force:’ Scottie Scheffler’s most impressive PGA feat wasn’t seen appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘Magnitude of force:’ Scottie Scheffler’s most impressive PGA feat wasn’t seen appeared first on Golf.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Scottie Scheffler sat at the podium on Sunday at Quail Hollow Club, basking in the glow radiating off the Wanamaker Trophy he had just won by lapping the field at the 2025 PGA Championship.

Scheffler has levitated above everyone else in the world of elite men’s professional golf since his prolific 2024 run started with wins at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Players and the Masters. A freak ravioli accident combined with Rory McIlroy’s blistering hot start put Scheffler, who has been World No. 1 for 117 consecutive weeks, seemingly in the background.

But Scheffler’s romp at Quail Hollow was an emphatic reminder that men’s professional golf is his kingdom and everyone else is trying to play catch-up. Scheffler started the PGA Championship fighting his swing. Despite having less than his best, Scheffler posted scores in the first two rounds to put himself in contention. Then, on Saturday, he put the tournament in a chokehold with a blistering five-hole run that saw him enter the final round with a three-shot lead over Alex Noren and a five-shot lead over the next closest major champion, Jon Rahm.

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With his name on top of the leaderboard, Scheffler put the pressure on the chasers to play perfect golf if they wanted to have a chance of catching him. Even if Scheffler didn’t play flawless golf on Sunday (he didn’t), the chasers would need to push him and empty the tank even to have a chance. He is, after all, Scottie Scheffler.

Bryson DeChambeau, who started the final round six shots back of Scheffler, felt it. He knew who was at the top of the leaderboard and understood what it would take to have a chance to track Scheffler down.

With Quail Hollow’s first eight holes getting chewed up by the early wave, the chasers needed to get off to a hot start, post birdies and make Scheffler aware of their presence.

DeChambeau missed the green at the 1st and shook his head when his birdie chip came up short. His birdie putts at No. 2 and No. 3 drew frustrated reactions. Hands on the head, a gesture at a break that wasn’t, a long exhale. When his shot from the bunker on the par-3 4th didn’t break left as expected, DeChambeau smacked his leg and called his caddie over in frustration.

There’s major championship pressure, and there’s major championship pressure when Scheffler is on top.

When DeChambeau’s birdie putt on No. 8 missed, he waved his arm again at a misread break and walked off to the tee knowing he’d missed his chance to fully apply pressure to the best golfer in the world.

“There were times where I feel like I pressed,” DeChambeau said after a T2-finish at Quail Hollow. “Green Mile did it to me yesterday and kind of did it to me again today, and that’s golf, man. I’ve got to be more precise and fix what I can fix to make myself more consistent and get up there, the likes of what Scottie is doing right now.”

Rahm went out a little later than DeChambeau and rattled off seven pars to start but made birdies on 8, 10 and 11. When Scheffler stumbled on the front nine due a string of the lefts, Rahm suddenly found himself tied for the lead. But knowing what holes Scheffler still had in front of him, Rahm was acutely aware that catching the World No. 1 was only the first step in an unlikely comeback. He’d likely need three more birdies to give himself a realistic chance at a playoff. Scottie Scheffler isn’t going to give you anything.

With Rahm on the 12th hole, Scheffler poured in a birdie at No. 10 to retake the lead.

When the ball hit the bottom of the cup, a message ripped through the course to Rahm.

“You know what position you’re in because, even if you don’t want to look at leaderboards, the crowd lets you know,” Rahm said. “They’re so excited, it doesn’t matter, they’ll tell you. Even when you don’t know exactly what’s going on on a hole, if you hear a cheer, you do know what’s going on. Like on 12 green when I hit my putt, at the same time I heard a cheer from 10; I was fully aware that was a Scottie birdie. I just could tell.”

When Rahm was unable to take advantage of the short par-4 14th or the par-5 15th, he knew his chances of overtaking Scheffler were close to dashed.

“If there’s ever a time where it felt like it was slipping away to an extent, it was not birdieing 14 and 15; that was definitely the mistake,” Rahm said.

Rahm bogeyed 16 and then doubled his way home as he tried to go for broke to catch Scheffler.

When Rahm’s par putt at 16 missed, Scheffler was across the lake, walking to his ball in the 15th fairway. Minutes later, Scheffler made birdie to stretch the lead to four, and all that was left was a Green Mile coronation and the celebration.

As Scheffler was teeing off for his final-round romp at Quail Hollow, his close friend Sam Burns was putting the finishing touches on his PGA Championship.

Burns has played a lot of golf with Scheffler. While he wasn’t in chase mode on Sunday at Quail Hollow, he understood what Rahm, DeChambeau and others felt as they attempted to track Scheffler down.

“I’ve played a lot of golf with him, and it seems like every shot has a magnitude of force and just finds its way up there,” Burns said.

Even before he took the lead on Saturday, Scheffler’s presence on the leaderboard made the outcome feel inevitable. As contenders came off the course Saturday, they all talked about how they had given themselves a chance to win on Sunday. Behind them, Scheffler torched Quail Hollow’s Green Mile to make their statements moot, crush their aspirations 24 hours before the tournament concluded and set up a walk to a third career major for himself.

“Magnitude of force.”

Scheffler made everyone at Quail Hollow feel it.

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The post Sergio Garcia barely misses U.S. Open spot, likely snapping incredible streak appeared first on Golf.

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DALLAS — A three-putt bogey on Sergio Garcia’s last of 36 holes in the Final Stage U.S. Open Qualifier here on Monday will likely snap his streak of 25 consecutive U.S. Open appearances.

Barring an unlikely USGA exemption for the former Masters champion, who now plays for LIV Golf, he will not be at Oakmont next month. Garcia has recorded five top-10 finishes in the Open, including a T3 in 2005; last year at Pinehurst he tied for 12th.

Coming off four rounds at the PGA Championship, where Garcia finished 67th, he shot a morning 65 at Bent Tree Country Club capped by a 20-foot birdie make on the 18th hole; at that point, the Spaniard was well positioned to earn one of the seven qualifying spots up for grabs. But his form soured in the afternoon, and he shot 71, leaving him, at six under par, one shot out a playoff for an Open spot.

“You have to play good in the afternoon just like the morning, and I didn’t do that,” Garcia said as he walked to the parking lot.

A year ago, Garcia made the Open as the first alternate out of the Dallas qualifier; two years ago, he cruised into the Open, finishing second in Dallas.

After an up-and-down week at the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow in North Carolina, Garcia flew to Dallas late Sunday night to get back for his early Monday morning starting time at Bent Tree.

Among those earning a spot at Oakmont were two-time PGA Tour winner James Hahn, who will play the Open for the first time in nine years; medalist Rasmus Peterson Neergaard from Denmark; and PGA Tour player Adam Schenk.

Garcia is in pursuit of a spot on the European Cup Ryder Cup team that will face the U.S. at Bethpage Black in September. Helping his cause was a hot start to his season that included a win at LIV Hong Kong in early March. But more recently Garcia has struggled, missing the cut at the Masters and shooting a third-round 79 at the PGA Championship.

“Obviously the way I’m playing, even if Luke [Donald] offered me a pick right now, I would tell him no,” Garcia said at the PGA on Sunday. “So obviously I need to get better.”

“I need to get more where I was just before the Masters. You know, just show myself and show everyone that my game is solid, and it can help Team Europe. It’s as simple as that.”

At Bent Tree on Monday, Garcia doubled down on that assessment, saying, “I just got to play better. I’m not doing it.”

Among the other notables to miss out on qualifying in Dallas were PGA Tour players Cameron Champ, Charlie Hoffman, Joel Dahmen and Austin Eckroat; and Garcia’s LIV stablemates, Abraham Ancer and Talor Gooch.

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The post It’s tough to leave a major happy. Collin Morikawa explained why appeared first on Golf.

The post It’s tough to leave a major happy. Collin Morikawa explained why appeared first on Golf.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There’s a special alcove in the Quail Hollow locker room that housed about 300 sq. feet of greatness this week. 

At the center of this room, which was in the center of the larger locker room, sat a replica of the Wanamaker Trophy alongside Quail’s other meaningful trophies. The Presidents Cup, the Wells Fargo (now Truist) Championship, even the annual Member-Guest. Surrounding these trophies were the reserved lockers of those whose names are inscribed on that silver. This was a pop-up champions locker room hidden in plain sight, so inconspicuous that Xander Schauffele, the defending champ, had a hard time finding it at the start of the week. 

At the end of the week — as players dragged their luggage out the door and deposited gloves, balls, even clubs into a bin as donations to the local First Tee — that alcove is where we found Collin Morikawa, the 2020 champ and No. 4 player in the world, deep in his emotions.

It was a fiery week for many in the field. Quail Hollow — a course they know so well — played much differently than expected, with Mother Nature leaning on the scale. There was also the world’s best player, in the lead and running away. Morikawa held it together better than most — he didn’t throw any clubs or get caught cussing on the broadcast — all the way through the final putt. Just not after. 

As he approached scoring, he found his longtime coach and agent waiting for him, and loudly shared a three-word assessment for his game:

“Pathetic f—king golf.”

He signed for one-over 72 and then returned to his coach, Rick Sessinghaus, and new caddie, Joe Greiner, for a stern venting session, very much out in the open. It lasted about 15 minutes as players came and went. Bryson DeChambeau headed to the 1st tee. Rory McIlroy passed through, very much intent on not speaking with reporters (or anyone but the club owner) about his week. 

Morikawa needed to talk about it. 

“I don’t try and be harsh like that,” Morikawa told me, duffel bag over his shoulder, just a few steps out of the champions alcove. “But you just have to talk things through. I don’t think people do that enough with their team around them. They kind of internalize it. Sometimes you just got to let out your frustration.”

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That frustration is partly why I was curious to get Morikawa’s perspective. Emotion is the center of golf stories. Of human journeys. But another reason is because, back in March, Morikawa lost his lead in the final few holes of the Arnold Palmer Invitational and declined to speak with reporters post-round. A few days later, at the Players, he spent an entire press conference explaining that day at length, but made headlines for declaring that, in the moment, he didn’t owe an explanation to anyone. He didn’t want to speak with anyone, period. He wanted out of Orlando as soon as possible. But he also said one more thing in that impassioned take: that if he had given it an hour or so, he would have been able to chat with a clearer mind. It’s an increasingly popular sentiment among pros.

So there we were, about an hour after Morikawa declared his play of the “pathetic f—king” variety, getting into the details. 

“It’s small things,” he said. “Because I know this game is so — everything is just by the thread of a needle, right? Small margins could mean big results. At the end of the day, I can live with bad golf. But bad golf to me is poor swings, you know, and poor execution. 

“When I am giving away shots that I feel like I shouldn’t — and me being, I feel like, a mentally strong player — that’s what’s frustrating.” 

Ultimately, he said, there is something about his game that befuddles him at the moment. (That’s golf.) Making double bogey on the 18th hole in rounds 1, 2 and 3 is going to annoy him for awhile, and probably will until he plays it better next spring at the Truist. But Morikawa takes pride in not showing that frustration when he’s inside the ropes. In the locker room, he struggled to pinpoint the specifics of the small, mental errors, or maybe he’s just keeping them to himself. I’d guess his team probably knows. He thought back to the 2022 season when his swing was just a little bit off, and he couldn’t quite explain it. This week, he says, it was a little physical and a little mental. The way he described the pain of his six Sunday bogeys — with a sigh, followed by three seconds of silence — made them sound like they’d caused him personal offense. Maybe that’s what it’s like in an arena with the tiniest margins.

It felt like a particularly insightful, meaningful moment, this locker-room scene, and somehow more real than what he would have said in front of a microphone, anyway. Like a conversation that those of us who care about professional golf — golf nerds, golf media, golf gamblers, sports fans who peek in during the majors, even the casuals who only know Morikawa from a Netflix binge — would find interesting and instructive. How does a missed-opportunity major championship settle with a top pro? How will we understand his next peak if we don’t fully grasp his valley? And while he may have unnecessarily garnered a bit of angst two months ago, at least on Sunday it was clear: Morikawa gets it. His eyes still red with emotion, he was forthright and raw and generous with his time. Those conversations with his team, plus some time to exhale, left him ready to discuss what had happened and what it means.

“I set high standards for myself, and when you don’t reach them, sometimes you go a little crazy,” he said as we started to close. “But sometimes it wakes you up. For me, at the end of the day, it’s like, how do I just wake up a little bit more, to be firing. You can see the competitiveness in Scottie, right? You can really see that through. That’s what I need to kind of pull out of myself again, because that’s what I had when I first came out.”

Scheffler has developed a knack for that. He’s been so good he’s got the world’s best thinking about their best, what it was like when it happened, and what it took to get there. Morikawa’s best was the reason he was in that champions locker room to begin with. This game is littered with stuff like that. Reminders of where you’ve been, and where you want to go. 

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DREAMING OF SUFFOLK PUNCH’S BREAKFAST BOWL, N.Y. — Who’s Scottie Scheffler like? 

The comparison exercise can be both lovable and loathable, right? Relatability helps us understand — he hits like him, she putts like her and so on and so on, all the way until things make a bit more sense. On a less profound note, it makes for fun bar talk, too. Anyways, in the case of Scheffler, your 2025 PGA Championship champion, he sees your pressure and raises it … kinda like Woods. His game can travel everywhere … kinda like Nicklaus’. 

Then there’s the thought of the path he’ll follow in the coming years, and, conveniently, three models have come recently. Will he be like … Woods, who followed major wins with more major wins? Will he be like … Jordan Speith, who followed major wins with what is now a lengthy search? Or will he be like … Rory McIlroy, who’s somewhat of a combo of the two, with his major ascent, descent and recent resurrection.   

But maybe we’re seeing something … new.

He’s a dad-joke liker and a submission specialist straight out of the UFC. He’s a funky swinger who seemingly has taken the flukiness out of chip-ins. Does he have competitive fire? “Uh, yeah,” he said Sunday night, then laughed. Does he compartmentalize it, though? Uh, yeah, that, too. That ginormous Wanamaker Trophy? It’ll reside in what he calls his “golf room.” What does it look like in there? “I’d like to say that it’s nicely presented, but it’s not.”

Scottie Scheffler, ladies and gentlemen.

As we look back at the PGA Championship week that was at Quail Hollow Club, let’s make that observation No. 1 then. We’ll try for 49 more, and, to help the mood, we’ll mix in some music from a few of Charlotte’s best musicians.

2. Kyle Porter, who runs the Normal Sport golf website, tweeted this weekend that Scheffler reminds him of Tim Duncan. That’s a good one.

3. On Sunday night on Golf Channel, analyst Paul McGinley touted Scheffler’s rebound ability, though not in the Duncan sense, and that’s a good thought, too. Nowhere was that better seen than Saturday, when Scheffler bogeyed the par-3 13th at Quail Hollow, then finished eagle — with maybe the shot of the tournament — birdie, par, birdie, birdie. 

4. There was also Sunday’s bounce back. A bogey on 9 was followed by three-under-par golf over the next eight holes.

5. Credit Ted Scott with the assist on Sunday. (Is he Tony Parker then?) Before the back-nine run, Scheffler had been fighting a left miss off the tee, and he was perplexed, though not frustrated. “Kind of what I reminded myself at the turn is — I had a bite to eat,” Scheffler said. “And I told myself, if I keep making good swings, I’m not going to continue to hit the ball left every time, statistically speaking.” 

A short thought from Scott helped, though. 

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“Like, 7, 8, 9, I felt like I hit the shots really solid and it was coming out left,” Scheffler said. “And I told Teddy walking up 9 tee, I was like, ‘That one felt pretty good. I don’t know why that was left again.”

“He was like, ‘Well, maybe you’re aimed over there. Just try and hit a little further right.”

And that was that. 

6. Scheffler has a sneaky good sense of humor, and we might have gotten something special in his Sunday night press conference, had he not refrained. The potential joke was raised in this exchange between him and a reporter, with the reporter’s question in italics:

Scottie, given what you went through last year in Louisville, is this even sweeter?

“I mean, it’s definitely very sweet sitting here with the trophy,” Scheffler said. “I definitely have a few jokes that I want to say that I’m probably going to keep to myself.”

Go for it.

“That’s not a good idea.”

7. Speaking of, this was good. 

8. This was good, too. The Athletic’s Gabby Herzig and Brody Miller talked to the officer involved in last year’s incident, and you can read that story by clicking here. 

9. The image of the tournament, though, will be Scheffler’s young son, Bennett, sitting on the ground in the scoring room as his dad signed his card.

10. This was also good. 

11. And this was good. 

12. So what’s the over-under on major wins for Scheffler’s career? He’s at three now. He turns 29 on June 21. 

Let’s go with 8.5. Only six golfers have won eight or more. 

13. What’s the over-under on major wins for Scheffler … this year? He’s at one now. 

Let’s set the number at one. 

14. Gimme Bryson DeChambeau at the U.S. Open at Oakmont. 

15. Gimme Justin Thomas at the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. 

16. But remember I picked McIlroy to win the PGA.

17. Music break! According to ranker.com, the best Charlotte musician or music group is … FireHouse. (According to Wikipedia, the band started in Richmond, Va., before moving to Charlotte, but we’ll let it slide.) If you’ve ever attended a middle-school dance, you’re familiar with FireHouse’s No. 1 song. 

18. Now that that will be in your head for the next month, let’s talk about McIlroy, whom we didn’t hear from after his pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday. 

No, athletes don’t have to talk to reporters after wins, losses and all of the results in between — that is, if they don’t want fans to know the who, what, when, where, why and how. Press conferences and such are the forum for that. Granted, some fans are entertained just by the action. But the story adds context.

One session skip is OK. Maybe two. But four is a bad look, especially for someone as popular as McIlroy. 

19. Wouldn’t you be curious to know why he struggled this week on a course where he’s won four times? Was it nerves? Was it a Masters hangover? Was it … his driver?

20. OK, let’s talk about Drivergate. (I don’t like using ‘gates,’ but it plays.) We learned that McIlroy was playing a new driver head this week, and the word was his old had failed testing. Testing? According to Kerry Haigh, the PGA of America’s chief championships officer, a third of the drivers in the field were tested, as they are at other events. And why are they tested? For rules conformance. After a while, driver faces can get springy. 

Why is this a big deal? Some folks started to wonder how long McIlroy’s potential hot driver was in play, and I’ll let my esteemed colleague Michael Bamberger address that. In a story published on Sunday on this site, he wrote: Nothing here suggests in any way that McIlroy used a nonconforming driver when he won the Masters. It is almost impossible to imagine that a player would willfully use a nonconforming club. It would violate every principle this game is supposed to stand for.”

Bamberger then wrote that he believed a potential solution would be to test the drivers of the top 10 players on Sunday morning, in addition to the testing already in place. I like that. 

21. One player did reveal that his driver failed testing. 

Scheffler. 

Was his new driver head the reason behind his left miss?

News

“No. I think that was my fault,” he said Sunday, laughing.  

22. All of the hot driver talk got me thinking back to my youth baseball days, when I’d see kids pound Easton bats against the supports of the dugout fence to get more spring. 

It helped some. Some, meanwhile, couldn’t hit the ball even if it were on a tee. I’ll let you decide which group I was in.  

23. Let’s talk Jon Rahm. He could also win at Oakmont. 

He also had the quote of the tournament. 

“I always like to go back a little bit on something that Charles Barkley likes to remind basketball players all the time. Like, I play golf for a living. It’s incredible. Am I embarrassed a little bit about how I finished today? Yeah. But I just need to get over it, get over myself. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not like I’m a doctor or a first responder, where somebody if they have a bad day, truly bad things happen.

“I’ll get over it. I’ll move on. Again, there’s a lot more positive than negative to think about this week. I’m really happy I put myself in position and hopefully learn from this and give it another go in the U.S. Open.”

24. Let’s talk about the underdogs. Well done on your top-10s, Harris English (150-1 odds before the tournament, according to golfodds.com), Davis Riley (500-1), Jhonattan Vegas (500-1), Ryan Gerard (150-1) and Joe Highsmith (150-1).

25. Let’s talk about the favorites. What happened to Jordan Spieth, Sepp Straka, Shane Lowry, Hideki Matsuyama, Ludvig Aberg, Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Jason Day, Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka and Justin Rose? All missed the cut. 

26. Whew, that’s a lot of big names not to see the weekend? Did it diminish the tournament? 

News

No, in my opinion. I like the long shots, or more specifically, their stories. Did their lack of major-contending experience lead to Scheffler’s move? Maybe. Would more stars have made things more compelling? Perhaps.  

But it’s not like a bunch of 15-handicaps were playing out there. If anything, the depth of talent was showcased, and that further underscored just how hard it is to win a major — because everyone’s freaking good. 

27. Where do I stand on Quail Hollow? I liked it. I liked the strong finish. I liked the drivable par-4s. I liked that the best player was identified. 

28. But I thought this Twitter thread, started by GOLF’s Zephyr Melton, was also good. 

29. Welcome back to contention, Max Homa. And thanks for letting us listen in to your process. This exchange was good, with the reporter’s question in italics:

I’ve often considered you one of the better explainers of things in this sport, and I’m curious if, as the scores aren’t matching the feels or the feels with your coach are not matching what he’s seeing, has any of this been particularly hard to explain to people?

“Yeah, a lot of it has been,” Homa said. “Especially with my wife. She’ll ask me on days at home, like how was today? I’ll say great, and we’ll leave the next day and shoot a zillion. She doesn’t get it.

“It’s hard to explain because I don’t — I can give you the technical version of all of it, but at the end of the day, it is odd. I’ll play some really good practice rounds. Waste Management in particular was probably the best I’ve ever driven the ball in my life, and even in the first round on Thursday, I think I shot six- or seven-over. It’s just a hard game.

“I heard Matt Fitzpatrick was doing an interview, and he explained it. The week he’s driven the ball well, it seemed like he’s putted awful or he hit his irons awful. And the weeks he’s ironed it great or putted great, he’s driven it awful. It is hard to explain.

“The technical is that it just gets faster when you play. The positions I’ve been in and the club being behind me, I can figure it out here and there and get into grooves, and if a feel gets going, I can repeat it a lot. But you start getting nervous, trees on the left, trees on the right, water, whatever, certain winds, it just — it messes with all — you don’t want a lot of timing in your golf swing. People wonder why Scottie is so amazing. He doesn’t have a lot of timing. He’s incredibly athletic and aware of where the golf club is, and I have not been. So when you get under stress and things, it just doesn’t become as easy as — I call it field practice when you’re on a range where you hit a bad one and rake another one over and just try to time it a little better.

News

“It has been hard to explain, but at the end of the day, there’s also been bad days at home. So it’s not like it’s completely foreign when I show up to a golf tournament. Didn’t feel mental. It just was a little bit of mental with a lack of confidence mixed with a golf swing that wasn’t super repeatable.”

30. This was good, too:

It’s always been your way to be very transparent and let people in, which is rare for a lot of athletes, professionals. Do you find that that helps you? Is it almost therapeutic to some degree to let people in rather than — you know, with your feelings and stuff like that — rather than shutting everything out and keeping it inside?

“No, it probably doesn’t help me at all, if I’m being honest. I don’t know, I grew up a fan of sports, as so many are, and I always found it really — like interviews and things to be so thought provoking as a fan to get a little insight. Like I said, we are entertainers, and without the fans, we would be just playing golf with some buddies.

“Yeah, I just try to be myself. Yeah, sometimes I wish I would probably keep some things in, but at the end of the day, we owe a lot to them. It’s not so hard to be transparent. It doesn’t hurt me in any way.”

31. Music break! According to ranker.com, the second-best Charlotte musician or music group is … Jodeci. Fans of 1990s R&B, such as potentially the author of this article, know them well. Here’s one of their hits. 

32. I think Michael Block is great, and I hope he plays in future PGAs. He’s a showman, and golf needs those. I don’t understand the dislike. 

33. Speaking of club pros, this story on Rupe Taylor, written by Golf Digest’s Joel Beall, was good. 

34. One more on Homa. This was a controlled club throw. 

35. This club throw, by Wyndham Clark, was not, and Monday, on social media, he apologized. 

36. Mud balls were another topic this week, after the PGA said lift, clean and place wouldn’t be in play. Some pros were bothered by the call. Some thought it was fine, like Padraig Harrington. Speaking to Bamberger on the subject, he said this:

“When I got on the European Tour, I heard it now and again, but not until I came here did I hear it more. I actually thought we were going to have to play lift, clean and place today, but in hindsight, we definitely didn’t need it. There were maybe a very few areas that they could have marked for relief — maybe. Two or three. Five. The golf course in general recovered beautifully.

“Generally, when I’ve got mud on the ball, I am playing the most conservative shot I can play. If the mud is on the ball at 3 o’clock, I play the ball to go left. If you actually are going to catch mud on the face on your shot, it’s going to take spin off it.

“If you’ve got a long second shot and there’s mud on your ball, I’ll sometimes just hood the club, hit something along the ground to the front of the green and that will clean the mud off the ball and the ball’s clean for the next shot.

“It’s a different kind of skill, playing mud balls, but it’s part of the skill of the game.

“It’s like playing in bad weather. Fifty percent of the guys are going to give up in bad weather. Of the remaining half, half don’t know how to play in bad weather. So now you only have to beat one-quarter of the original field.”

37. Speaking of Harrington, this tip was good. 

38. This photo was good. 

39. This video was good. 

40. This video was good, too. 

41. Music break! According to ranker.com, the third-best Charlotte musician or music group is … K-Ci and JoJo, who were two of the four members of Jodeci, mentioned in observation No. 31. (K-Ci and JoJo were actually ranked No. 4, but the singer at No. 3, Coko, didn’t have a Charlotte connection, according to Wikipedia.) Here’s one of K-Ci and JoJo’s hits. 

42. Here are a few of my favorite reads this week from the GOLF.com staff. From my batch, I talked with Dr. Bob Rotella, McIlroy’s sports psychologist. 

43. From Sean Zak, a look at Rahm was a favorite. 

44. From James Colgan, a look at ESPN’s Jeff Darlington, the reporter who witnessed Scheffler’s arrest, was a favorite. 

45. From Josh Schrock, a look at Scheffler’s third round was a favorite. 

46. From Bamberger, a look at on-edge pros was a favorite. 

47. From Johnny Wunder, a look at DeChambeau’s gear was a favorite. 

48. Our “Seen and Heard” franchise is excellent. You can watch the PGA Championship episodes here and here. 

49. I also loved this.

50. A word on the dateline at the top of this article. 

I worked from the home office for the PGA, but I’m a Charlotte fan, after having gone there for the 2022 Presidents Cup. And a lasting memory was the meal I had on the Monday after the event, at Suffolk Punch Brewing. 

I wrote this at the time:

The Suffolk Punch SPB Breakfast Bowl — with two farm eggs my way (scrambled is my way), Anson Mills cream cheese grits, smoked bacon, sausage patties, shredded cheddar and grilled sourdough bread — is one of the better breakfasts I’ve maybe ever had. 

The opinion hasn’t changed.  

Editor’s note: The author also wrote 50 observations from the Masters, and that story can be found here.

The post Scottie Scheffler, hot drivers and 1990’s R&B: 50 thoughts on the PGA appeared first on Golf.

The post Scottie’s hilarious swing fix, Rory’s silence, surprise PGA winners | Monday Finish appeared first on Golf.

The post Scottie’s hilarious swing fix, Rory’s silence, surprise PGA winners | Monday Finish appeared first on Golf.

Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where we’re three majors behind Scottie Scheffler — and he’s looking tough to catch. To the news …

Editor’s note: To get the Monday Finish in your email every Monday (plus a magazine subscription and a bundle of other screaming deals) sign up for InsideGOLF here.

GOLF STUFF I LIKE

PGA’s surprise winners.

Scottie Scheffler‘s PGA Championship victory was impressive. It was dominant. And it was historic. But it wasn’t shocking. Neither was Bryson DeChambeau finishing second — he’s making a habit of contending in majors. Two of the top three favorites ended as the two top finishers. No surprise there.

But there were some big-time surprises behind them.

Consider Harris English, who began Sunday T36 and then shot 65, low round of the day by two, to post the clubhouse lead; by day’s end he was T2, which meant his final round was worth more than a million bucks. (My only question: Had Scheffler gotten DQ’d, arrested or played the Green Mile in a hundred over par, would English have been able to return for the playoff? Or was he long gone from property?)

Davis Riley was lost. Earlier this year he was shooting 80, WD’ing, missing cuts — but in his last several starts he says he’s embraced his swing DNA and found his way back. His Sunday required a bounce-back, too: He went bogey-triple on 6 and 7 before playing three under par the rest of the way to post an improbable, impressive T2. Now he’s in this year’s U.S. Open and next year’s Masters and sits just outside the top 50 in the world.

Jon Rahm had a nightmare finish, falling from a share of the lead to seven shots off the pace, but he was Scheffler’s biggest Sunday threat and still finished T8. After all the criticism Rahm took for his 2024 major championship record, he’s quietly finished top-15 in each of his last three majors — and the next two set up quite well for him.

Things got really wild elsewhere in the top 10, though:

This was the first made cut at a major for Ben Griffin and Joe Highsmith, who finished T8.

It was the first top 50 at a major for Ryan Gerard, who finished T8 alongside them.

It was somehow the first top 30 at a major for J.T. Poston, who slid in at T5.

And despite his four PGA Tour wins, this was the first top 20 at a major for Jhonny Vegas, who held the 36-hole lead and hung in for a T5.

It was also the first top 10 for Si Woo Kim (T8), for Taylor Pendrith (T5) and somehow for Joaquin Niemann (T8), too. Something to build on.

Matt Fitzpatrick has been open about his struggles — a top-10 here (he finished T8) was a much-needed confidence boost.

When Matt Wallace finished third at the PGA in 2019, it was easy to project him as the sort of guy who’d contend at every major. But it hasn’t been that easy. This week’s T17 was his best major finish since that year.

And then there were the Ryder Cup captains. Keegan Bradley (T8) is this year’s U.S. captain, but Scheffler was the only guy from the 2023 Ryder Cup team who beat him this week.

And European captain Luke Donald faded after a hot start to finish T60, but this was his first made cut on the PGA Tour in a full year.

So, big win for Scheffler. But he wasn’t the only one leaving Quail Hollow happy. Celebrating the little wins — that’s golf stuff I like.

WINNERS

Who won the week?

Scottie Scheffler won the PGA Championship by five shots, reminding the golf world of its current pecking order. He’s No. 1 and everybody else — even the recent-career-grand-slam-winning Rory McIlroy — is fighting for second. Magnificent win, magnificent finish, magnificent command of the golf ball throughout the finishing stretch on both Saturday and Sunday, when Scheffler dominated the easy holes (Nos. 14 and 15) and the brutish Green Mile (16, 17 and 18) en route to a comfy final margin. One quote from the PGA Tour chaplain Brad Payne, Scheffler’s good friend and frequent pickleball partner, from this Scottie story I wrote:

“I’m a good athlete,” Payne says, “but he’s on a different level. Usually we don’t lose, but if it gets close, he starts pushing me farther to the sideline. He goes from taking up 50 percent of the court to 65 to about 90 percent. Then, when we get up by about six points, he’ll let me back in.”

Angel Cabrera won the Regions Tradition, the first senior major of the year. The former Masters champ returned to the PGA Tour Champions last season after serving more than two years in prison in Brazil and Argentina for charges related to domestic violence. It’s clear his golf game came right back; he’s now won two of six starts this season.

S.H. Kim won the Korn Ferry Tour’s AdventHealth Championship, his first win in an event under the PGA Tour umbrella; the South Korean pro has conditional PGA Tour status this year but is looking for a full-time return to the big show.

NOT-WINNERS

The list of cut-missing pros was particularly juicy this week, including last week’s winner (Sepp Straka, +2), the Grand Slam hunter (Jordan Spieth, +2), one of golf’s most consistent contenders (Shane Lowry, +2), the Masters contender and Next Big Thing (Ludvig Aberg, +3), one of the hottest players in the world (Justin Thomas, +3), one of its most consistent ball-strikers (Hideki Matsuyama, +3), some of LIV’s biggest names (Patrick Reed, +4, Cameron Smith, +7, Brooks Koepka, +9, Dustin Johnson, +12) and several other U.S. Ryder Cup contenders (Patrick Cantlay, +6, Will Zalatoris, +6, Russell Henley, +10). Grisly!

SHORT HITTERS

Five quotes from guys who didn’t win the PGA.

1. Bryson DeChambeau (T2) wants a better golf ball:

“What I really think needs to happen, being pretty transparent here, is just get a golf ball that flies a little straighter,” he said.

Feel free to eye-roll at that one — Oh, you want a straighter golf ball? Same, Bryson! — but DeChambeau’s outside-the-box thinking has unlocked efficiencies through the bag and it’s reasonable to think he could push some engineering team to break new ground with the ball, too, which he explained presents extra challenges at his speed and trajectory.

“Everybody talks about how straight the golf ball flies. Well, upwards of 190 [mph ball speed] like Rory and myself, it’s actually quite difficult to control the golf ball,” he said. “The ball sidespins quite a bit and it gets hit by the wind quite a bit because our golf balls are just in the air longer. So I’m looking at ways of how to rectify that so that my wedges can be even tighter so it can fly straighter.”

2. Jon Rahm enjoyed the chase:

“God, it’s been a while since I had that much fun on a golf course, 15 holes,” he said. He added this, from Sir Charles:

“I always like to go back a little bit on something that Charles Barkley likes to remind basketball players all the time. Like, I play golf for a living. It’s incredible. Am I embarrassed a little bit about how I finished today? Yeah. But I just need to get over it, get over myself. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not like I’m a doctor or a first responder, where somebody if they have a bad day, truly bad things happen.

“I’ll get over it. I’ll move on. Again, there’s a lot more positive than negative to think about this week. I’m really happy I put myself in position and hopefully learn from this and give it another go in the U.S. Open.

“Sorry for the long answers. I’m trying to process things right now.”

(We like long answers, Jon.)

3. J.T. Poston relished his first time in major contention:

“It’s definitely a momentum boost,” he said. “I think the big thing is it was a learning curve for me this week. You know, it’s the first time I’ve really been in this position in majors and I feel like I held my ground pretty well overall. I think I’ve proven to myself that I can win one of these things, which is very exciting. I feel good about where my game is at. Played well on a hard golf course. That definitely can carry over into the weeks to come and the rest of the season.”

4. Xander Schauffele, defending champion, whose 12-major top-20 streak finally ended (he finished T28):

“After getting kind of a decent round going, the goal was to try to backdoor a top 10. I’m still in need of points. So that was my motivation today,” he said, then added this: “If we had four more days stacked up right now, I feel like I’d have a pretty good chance. Just kind of was in better form, and then I had a few things go awry in my swing and made my approach pretty bad. Just kind of lost control of the golf ball there midweek, unfortunately.

“Yeah, just didn’t have enough to score well, but I feel like I’m playing a lot better than what I’m doing. So just got to hang tough.”

5. Rory McIlroy, who didn’t speak:

On the one hand, this is the collision of two stories you have my permission not to care about at all — 1. McIlroy’s driver failing a test that drivers fail all the time and 2. McIlroy declining to answer questions after any round, continuing the ongoing conversation around whether pros should be required to do post-round media.

But forget whether it’s right or wrong for McIlroy to skip the press. It’s kind of strange, no? In his pre-tournament availability he made it sound like everything the rest of the way will be gravy, and it’s not like four middling rounds take away from last month’s career-capping accomplishment. There’s also plenty to talk about; he could have reflected further on returning to major championship competition, broken down his tournament play and added context that would shut down any manufactured firestorm around this driver-testing story. Mostly fans just like to hear from McIlroy, its latest, greatest champion. A week’s-end wrap after his Sunday round would have solved all of the above, and I’m curious why he skipped out on that. But the irony of him not talking is that we don’t get to satisfy that curiosity; nobody got a chance to ask.

ONE SWING THOUGHT

Scottie Scheffler’s complex tip.

Scheffler has said plenty of times that the things he works the most on are pretty basic setup adjustments. It was fitting, then, that this was the story of the mid-round tweak that saved his Sunday, which came from caddie Ted Scott:

“On 7, 8, 9, I felt like I hit the shots really solid and it was coming out left,” he said. “And I told Teddy walking off 9 tee, I was like, ‘That one felt pretty good. I don’t know why that was left again.’

“He was like, ‘Well, maybe you’re aimed over there. Just try and hit a little further right.’

“I was like, okay. So I got on 10, and felt like I squared up my shoulders and hit it right up the middle.”

Hitting it left? Make sure you’re not aimed left! Sometimes simple is best.

RYDER CUP WATCH

Major points…

It’s not yet June and already if I was Keegan Bradley I would be tempted to flip out at every reporter that asked about a potential role as playing captain at this fall’s Ryder Cup. With that said, it’s an increasingly intriguing possibility. Bradley’s T8 — which included a missed shortie on No. 18 that would have left him T5, and points-rich — was the latest in a string of solid finishes, and he’s now up to No. 17 on the U.S. points list, though in reality he’s playing better than that.

The U.S. team’s biggest movers came from off the radar, headlined by Harris English (who jumped five spots to No. 7), Bradley, Ben Griffin (up five spots to No. 18) and then Poston and Riley, who have now cracked the top 25. The top five spots on the team seem secure, but even Russell Henley‘s recent slide has him in limbo and we’re in prove-it territory as we cruise towards summertime.

On Team Europe, Matt Wallace and Viktor Hovland each posted solid finishes and picked up a few points. Matt Fitzpatrick picked up his first meaningful points, too, as did Jon Rahm, whose status went from “definitely on the team” to “definitely, definitely on the team.” Sergio Garcia made the cut but finished near the bottom of the leaderboard; he admitted after the round that he doesn’t currently deserve a spot on the squad.

Here are the current standings:

TEAM USA

1. Scottie Scheffler, 21490 pts

2. Xander Schauffele, 11747

3. Bryson DeChambeau, 10318

4. Justin Thomas, 9343

5. Collin Morikawa, 8917

6. Russell Henley, 7878

–

7. Harris English, 6282

8. Maverick McNealy, 5921

9. Andrew Novak, 5858

10. Brian Harman, 5808

11. J.J. Spaun, 5162

12. Patrick Cantlay, 5156

TEAM EUROPE

1. Rory McIlroy, 2982 pts

2. Shane Lowry, 1124

3. Rasmus Højgaard, 1034

4. Tyrrell Hatton, 1004

5. Sepp Straka, 943

6. Justin Rose, 870

–

7. Tommy Fleetwood, 845

8. Ludvig Åberg, 819

9. Thomas Detry, 650

10. Matt Wallace, 638

11. Niklas Norgaard, 608

12. Viktor Hovland, 541

ONE THING TO WATCH

Tiger Woods talking Scheffler, specifically their similarities, is really cool stuff.

NEWS FROM SEATTLE

Monday Finish HQ.

We have a little garden box outside our front door and apparently last year at some point planted some snap peas that never grew. This year, though? Suddenly there’s one massive vine that has sprung out of the earth and is winding its way towards the sky, Jack-and-the-Beanstalk style. Incredibly excited to harvest about a half-dozen snappers in the next week or so. What a thrill!

Also, thanks to those of you who chimed in with Pacific Northwest hidden-gem (or hidden disaster) golf options — still accepting suggestions at the email below.

We’ll see you next week.

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

The post Scottie’s hilarious swing fix, Rory’s silence, surprise PGA winners | Monday Finish appeared first on Golf.

The post Scottie Scheffler gamed a 7-wood at the PGA Championship. Here’s why you should too appeared first on Golf.

The post Scottie Scheffler gamed a 7-wood at the PGA Championship. Here’s why you should too appeared first on Golf.

The best player on the planet just won his third major title while playing a 7-wood in his bag. So, please tell me why you have a 3-iron in yours?

Scheffler removed his 3-iron this week at the PGA Championship and inserted a new TaylorMade Qi35 7-wood he originally had built for him in February for the Genesis Invitational at Torrey Pines.

“This week may be more of a 5-wood [it’s a 7-wood head built to 5-wood spec to hit the proper yardage gapping he wants] week just because, like you said, the golf course is going to play really long, the rough is thick, and the run-up areas after this kind of rain are going to be really soft, and the greens are still going to be really firm because they’re new,” Scheffler said Tuesday. “You have to be able to land the ball up on the green. You can’t really run it up around this golf course. That’s one aspect that you’ve got to think about.”

In testing, the 7-wood launched 1.5 degrees higher than Scheffler’s 3-iron, which he uses most weeks, and had 1500 RPMs more spin.

Scheffler went with the 7-wood to give him more stopping power on Quail Hollow’s firm greens and to help escape the thick rough. It’s that dual purpose to both increase launch that makes high-lofted fairway woods so valuable, said TaylorMade Senior Tour Manager Adrian Reitveld, Scheffler’s fitter.

The 7-wood in Scheffler’s bag is bent 1 degree strong (20˚) and about a half-inch shorter shaft than standard and fills his need for a 240-yard carry. He used the club on Sunday on No. 10, where he his approach into the long par-5 set up birdie and allowed him to take the lead for the final time.

The TaylorMade Qi35 features a new chromium carbon crown and a new profile and CG location, making the club versatile from both the tee and the deck.

TaylorMade Qi35 Custom Fairway Wood

$349.99 $299.99 from Fairway Jockey

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ALSO AVAILABLE ON: PGA Tour Superstore, TaylorMade

When you purchase from Fairway Jockey, you also get the option for dozens of premium shaft options to chose from, allowing you to dial in your new 7-wood to your exact specifications.

Take one last look at your 3-iron and remember the last shot you hit that came off like a low bullet and skipped over the putting surface. Now, click the link above and order your new 7-wood today; this will bring you one step closer to Scottie Scheffler.

Want to overhaul your bag for 2025? Find a club-fitting location near you at True Spec Golf.

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The post Major champion apologizes for ‘inappropriate’ outburst at PGA Championship appeared first on Golf.

The post Major champion apologizes for ‘inappropriate’ outburst at PGA Championship appeared first on Golf.

Wyndham Clark took to social media on Monday and apologized for a club fling after a poor drive during the final round of the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club on Sunday.

Clark, the 2023 U.S. Open winner, was three over when he reached the par-4 16th hole. He hit his drive into a fairway bunker, briefly paused to watch it and then slung his driver, striking an advertising board behind the tee box. (There appeared to be no spectators behind the tee area.) The driver head also snapped off, and Clark tossed the shaft off the tee box.

“And he is going to be using…not driver,” the TV analyst deadpanned.

Clark was coming off a bogey on 15 and also made bogey on 16, the first of the three treacherous Green Mile holes at Quail Hollow. He finished with pars on 17 and 18.

“I would like to sincerely apologize for my behavior yesterday on Hole 16,” Clark wrote on an Instagram story on Monday. “As professionals, we are expected to remain professional even when frustrated and I unfortunately let my emotions get the best of me. My actions were uncalled for and completely inappropriate, making it clear that I have things I need to work on. I hold myself to a high standard, trying to always play for something bigger than myself, and yesterday I fell short of those standards. For that I am truly sorry. I promise to better the way I handle my frustrations on the course going forward, and hope you all can forgive me in due time.”

Clark opened the PGA with rounds of 72, 69 and 73 before his 74 on Sunday. He finished four over overall and tied for 50th, winning $40,674.

On the season, Clark, who is ranked 20th in the World Ranking, has one top 10 in 13 starts.

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