The post Scottie Scheffler and Nelly Korda had bad weeks — and still made history  appeared first on Golf.

The post Scottie Scheffler and Nelly Korda had bad weeks — and still made history  appeared first on Golf.

You’d be crazy to bet on world No. 1 Nelly Korda missing a cut. But if you had to, this week might have been the time to do it, on the occasion of the Evian Championship, the fourth of five majors on the LPGA calendar. 

For one, Korda sounded tired heading into the tournament at the scenic, hilly Evian Resort in the French Alps. Like most of the players in the field, she was playing her second major in three weeks and adjusting to a new time zone. “Trying to prioritize sleep and rest,” she said. “It’s a lot, definitely.” 

For another, Korda’s record at the Evian has been less than spectacular, with just two top-10s in nine appearances before this week. Asked on Wednesday to describe “her relationship” with the property, Korda said, “I don’t know. It’s Evian. That’s all I’m going to say, is that it’s — I’ve hit some really good shots and ended up in some really bad places and hit some bad places and ended up in good places.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

You’d also be crazy to bet on the other world No. 1, Scottie Scheffler, missing a cut. But if you had to, this week might have been the time to do it, on the occasion of the Scottish Open, the lead-in event to the fourth and final major on the men’s calendar, the Open Championship.

The case against Scheffler was weaker than the case against Korda, but if you were seeking betting ammo, you’d quickly have discovered that Scheffler has never exhibited his best stuff on the Tom Doak design at Renaissance Club. That’s not to say that Scheffler has stunk it up — before this week, he’d had two top 10s and a MC at this event — but he just hadn’t been a world beater. “A golf course I feel like I can play well on,” Scheffler said Friday. “I just haven’t for some reason.” 

Guess what, though? Those crazy bets would have come in.

On one of the weirder Fridays in the modern annals of pro golf, Nelly Korda and Scottie Scheffler both went home early. Korda posted 74-69 to miss the Evian cut by one, marking her first missed cut in 34 starts, a roughly two-year run; Scheffler posted 68-72 to miss the Scottish Open cut by two, marking his first missed cut in 78 starts, a roughly four-year run. According to stats whiz Justin Ray, the double trunk-slam marked the first time since the 2006 inception of the Rolex Rankings that the men’s and women’s No. 1s both MC’ed on the same day. That’s the thing about the great ones: Even when they’re not so great, they still find ways to make history. 

What went wrong? Korda didn’t speak to the press after either of her rounds, but clearly she was undone on Thursday when she played her first eight holes in one under and the last 10 holes in four over, and required 34 putts. On Friday, she bounced back, just not far enough back. Facing crucial birdie tries in the 8- to 10-foot range on 17 and 18, she left both putts short.  

Scheffler did speak to reporters, following his three-bogey 72 on Friday. He didn’t play all that poorly, he said; he just didn’t hit his approaches close enough to give him makable birdie tries. “That’s how you shoot over par,” he said. 

Scheffler added he didn’t have the best luck, either. A gust here, an unfortunate roll off a slope there. On 8, his drive found a divot hole. But that’s links golf. “This golf course can be just tough at times; there’s some humps and mounds out there,” he said. “I didn’t really feel like I played that bad.”  

Scheffler won’t have to wait long for a chance to recalibrate. The Open Championship starts in six days, at Royal Birkdale, on England’s northwest coast. Korda has a bit longer to lick her wounds. She has an off week and then will get back at it at the Women’s Scottish Open at Dundonald Links in Ayshire. 

Looking for another bet? Smart money says both players will use those weeks to start new cuts-made streaks.

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The post Scottie Scheffler’s epic streak is over. Jon Rahm gave it perfect context appeared first on Golf.

The post Scottie Scheffler’s epic streak is over. Jon Rahm gave it perfect context appeared first on Golf.

NORTH BERWICK, Scotland — There once was a time when Scottie Scheffler and Jon Rahm competed against each other constantly. Think back to the spring of 2023, when Scheffler and Rahm were trading wins on the PGA Tour, and the latter snatched the World’s Best Golfer title from the former. 

(What a lovely time that was.) 

Rahm was then in the middle of a Tour-best 25-straight cuts-made streak that expired only because he had to withdraw from the Players Championship with an illness. Scottie Scheffler won that week, by five. In the process, Scheffler made the weekend for the 11th-straight time, and until this week here at the Genesis Scottish Open, he had played every weekend of every one of his starts since. All 67 tournaments between then and now, amounting to a total of 78 straight cuts made, a run that came to an end when he didn’t birdie the 9th hole at Renaissance Club Friday afternoon. 

So … why are we talking about Jon Rahm? Because Scheffler and Rahm are two titans of the game. They may have taken divergent paths since that 2023 season, but this duo can speak to sustaining a competitive baseline as high as anyone else in the world. And more to that point, while Scheffler slumped toward an even-par finish, it was Rahm who climbed back with a second-round 65 to make the cut on the number. He gets two more rounds of tournament prep before next week’s Open Championship. Scheffler does not. And Rahm was surprised to hear about it. 

“He missed the cut?” Rahm asked, sounding baffled when I told him the news. 

“When it comes to Scottie, it’s not the fact that he hasn’t missed cuts,” Rahm added. “It seemed that every single week he had a chance to win. 

“Sometimes you can make the cut and just simply finish 40th and you’re not in the equation of the tournament. It seemed like he was always in the hunt. Like no matter what, come Sunday, the back nine, even if it was an outside chance, he was there with a chance. That was the most impressive part. Including the majors and elevated events. Yeah, it’s incredible.”

It’s true, and while most of the golf world may know it, it bears repeating. Scheffler’s cuts-made streak ended Friday, as did his equally stunning top-25 streak, at 37. The last time Scheffler finished outside the top 25 was 23 months ago at the 2024 BMW Championship. Coming into that week he had won three of his previous five starts. He would win his next two starts. The MC looks like an anomaly now and felt like an anomaly then, but that week of golf at elevation in Colorado, Scheffler finished T33. 

What Scheffler’s early departure means for the best golfer in the world isn’t much besides an earlier trip down to Royal Birkdale, on the west coast of England, for next week’s Open. One of the last things Scheffler was asked to do Friday was to speak to the press. I asked him if he was proud of that cuts-made streak, which plenty of the golf world, including the talking head on Friday’s broadcast, will obsess about. The streak may not mean what it once did, as plenty of tournaments in recent years have been held without a cut, but did it still mean something to Scheffler that he always made the weekend? 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he held the same view as Rahm. 

“Yeah, it’s a little different now with some of the Signature Events not having cuts,” Scheffler said. “But you know, I don’t think I finished outside of the top 20 or something like that many times this year.

“I’m definitely proud of the consistency, and wish I had a couple days over the weekend to make up some ground. But overall, get down to Birkdale a little earlier than expected and get used to a new course.”

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The post ‘Right thing to do’: Major winner’s creative gesture awes slumping pro appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘Right thing to do’: Major winner’s creative gesture awes slumping pro appeared first on Golf.

The pictures? Three of them. 

The sentences? Two of them. 

The value? 

Immeasurable. 

That was what Pablo Larrazabal thought. He’s a 22-year pro and a nine-time winner on the DP World Tour, but he’s been slumping. The 43-year-old Spaniard has made just three cuts in 14 starts this year. He’s winless since May of 2023. He’s without a top 10 finish since March of last year. Of course, the margin between that and where he had been — or where someone like Aaron Rai currently is — is thinner than a blade of fairway grass.  

In May, Rai broke through. He won the PGA Championship. He’s a major winner now, and Monday, three days before the Genesis Scottish Open, Larrazabal bumped into his old friend and congratulated him. He’d made it, from the 22-year who was trying to find his way on the DP World Tour eight years ago, to holding the damn Wanamaker Trophy. Rai then wondered how Larrazabal’s season was going. 

“And he said he’d been struggling a little bit,” Rai told the DP World Tour. 

“I hadn’t really checked … so I haven’t really kept track of what players are doing so it was the first that I heard of how his season has been. Then yeah, continued practicing, but it kind of stuck with me a little bit of what he had said. 

“And he’s been — obviously he’s won nine times. He’s been one of the strongest players on the DP World Tour for 15 years now. And I thought those periods can be extremely difficult for anyone, let alone someone who’s been as successful as what he has.”

Rai went to work. 

He’d write a note. He’d ask his brother-in-law, who’s with him this week, to find some trophy photos of Larrazabal. He’d place it all in the pro’s locker. Rai told the DP World Tour that a few players had done something similar for him after winning the PGA, and he was inspired. “I thought he would read it,” Rai said, “and I didn’t think anything else would come from it.”

Larrazabal, though, was floored. You might be, too. 

Thursday morning, the pro shared it to Instagram, writing: “When you recieved a note in your locker room from the @pgachampionship winner @aaron.rai1. True gentleman on and off the course. Thank you my friend, still having some goosebumps.” Below is the post, and below that are the words written on the note. 

Pablo, 

The guy in these pictures is who you are and he is much closer to the present you than you think. Keep fighting, keep working hard and most importantly keep believing – in each tournament, each round and each shot. 

Best wishes, 

Aaron Rai

“It just felt like the right thing to do,” Rai told the DP World Tour. 

Larrazabal thought so.

“To receive a note like that make me very happy that I’ve been doing the right things around for the last 19 years,” he told the DP World Tour. “And a guy like Aaron, he’s a major champion but a true champion. That’s how champions have to behave. When they see a rival or a friend that is down in the ground, they try the best to push us up. It doesn’t matter the pictures, it’s all about what it meant. Aaron is not only one of the best players in the world, he’s a true champion and that’s how they were when I got in love with this game 40 years ago.

“It’s not all about winning, and Aaron knows and his family teach him very very well. It’s not all about winning. It’s all about leaving a legacy. Aaron will be leaving a legacy around the world, not only because of his game, [but because of how] he behaves not only on the golf course but outside the golf course. A true gentleman.”

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The post On Georgia’s Golden Isles, a wealth of world-class golf | Destination Golf appeared first on Golf.

The post On Georgia’s Golden Isles, a wealth of world-class golf | Destination Golf appeared first on Golf.

The dynastic families of the Gilded Age had money to vacation wherever they wanted.

Often, where they went was the Georgia coast.

Then, as now, the barriers islands there were known as the Golden Isles, a moniker coined by early Spanish explorers in search of riches, though the name also fit the landscape itself, where the marshes glow gold beneath the coastal sun.

In time, the islands attracted a different kind of wealth. The Vanderbilts. The Rockefellers. The Carnegies. The Morgans. They came to escape winter, dodge the spotlight, fish, sail, bicycle and, naturally, play golf.

More than a century later, the Golden Isles remain one of America’s great golf destinations, with a concentration of standout courses that ranges from Golden Age classics to modern championship tests. The lineup includes acclaimed layouts at Sea Island and St. Simons Island, along with the newly restored Great Dunes on Jekyll Island, a heralded Walter Travis design.

To experience the area firsthand, GOLF.com recently spent a long weekend roaming the islands with the crew from St. Andre Golf — a dynastic clan of the Instagram-era whose comedy sketches have earned them a massive following. Outfitted by Johnnie-O, which supported the trip, we did our best to look the part.

The itinerary carried us from Sea Island Resort and a round on the Plantation Course (it dates to the 1920s but has since been renovated by local boys Davis Love III and his brother, Mark Love), then on to Jekyll Island for a loop at the reborn Great Dunes.

Golf, though, was only part of the story. We also engaged in Gilded Age cosplay, cruising the Intracoastal in search of dolphins, indulging in fresh seafood and, because no visit is complete without it, stopping at Southern Soul, the famed barbecue joint that’s as much a local institution as any golf course.

The Golden Isles still attract their share of wealth, including a leaderboard’s worth of PGA Tour pros. But for all the luxury, the place has retained its laid-back, salt-air spirit.

Watch the video above for a taste of an excursion to one of America’s richest golf destinations — in every sense of the word.

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The post ‘Weight lifted off my shoulders’: Brooks Koepka reveals best part of PGA Tour return (and worst) appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘Weight lifted off my shoulders’: Brooks Koepka reveals best part of PGA Tour return (and worst) appeared first on Golf.

Despite an erroneous WD scare, Brooks Koepka is in the field at this week’s 2026 Genesis Scottish Open. And based on his pre-tournament press conference at the Renaissance Club, he couldn’t be happier about it.

This week’s event is the 14th start of Koepka’s surprise PGA Tour return following years playing on LIV Golf.

While his comeback hasn’t been completely smooth, the five-time major champion is feeling better than his results so far have shown, both on and off the golf course.

On Wednesday, an open and talkative Koepka revealed what he’s most pleased about so far in his PGA Tour return, while also naming the thing that’s disappointed him most.

Koepka says PGA Tour return has brought him ‘happiness’

When news broke in January that Koepka was rejoining the PGA Tour via the Returning Member Program, it shocked the golf world.

But it wasn’t a surprise to Koepka and his wife, Jena. As Koepka revealed at the Scottish Open, they had been working on his comeback, and keeping their plans secret, for a while.

Koepka admitted it wasn’t “the easiest thing” to keep such a monumental career and life change under wraps. But the relief Koepka experienced when his Tour return became a reality, and the happiness that has followed, are the things he’s most pleased with regarding his comeback.

“What have I been most pleased with? I think — yeah, I think I’ve been most pleased with — this is probably going to come across a little selfish, but just the happiness that I have,” Koepka revealed to reporters on Wednesday. “Maybe a weight lifted off my shoulders, or it’s not — kept it a secret for a little while. So it’s not the easiest thing.”

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His play on the course — including four missed cuts and only one top 10 — is not the source of his newfound satisfaction. Instead, it’s Koepka’s wife and son — and the ability to spend more time with them on the PGA Tour compared to LIV — that has brought him “happiness.”

“But I just see the happiness. I look at I’m able to be around my son a lot more. Jena is able to be around and they are able to travel to a lot more events. Things like that, that stuff brings me happiness,” Koepka explained. “Whether I play good or whether I play bad, I walk off the 18th green, my wife and son are standing right there and, it’s cool, no matter — my son doesn’t care if I shoot 80 or 65, he doesn’t know the difference. It’s ‘Da-Da’; he goes that way and runs towards me. That’s cool. Having them around has been amazing and takes a little bit of the pressure away from when you’re playing.”

As for the thing he’s least pleased with since returning to the PGA Tour, Koepka quipped “my putting,” before admitting that his game along with his life are turning around after feeling like he couldn’t “catch a break” on or off the course during his last season with LIV Golf.

“I feel like last year I wasn’t in the head space to actually play good golf, and now that everything is kind of cleared up and I’m in a better — we all have that, right? It’s life,” Koepka said. “Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s difficult. There’s a lot of stuff, like I said, off the golf course, on the golf course, didn’t matter. Didn’t feel like I could catch a break, as a player, as a person, as a family. Yeah.”

That happiness served him well in Thursday’s opening round at the Renaissance Club, where Koepka fired a four-under 66 to get near the top of the leaderboard early at the Scottish Open.

Koepka mum on LIV pros returning to PGA Tour

While Koepka was long-winded when talking about himself, he had few words to spare when the topic of LIV Golf came up.

Some LIV Golf pros are permitted to play this week’s Genesis Scottish Open due to the fact that it’s co-sanctioned by the DP World Tour and PGA Tour.

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'It's great to be here': LIV star Jon Rahm has rare chance at PGA Tour win this week

By: Kevin Cunningham

Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm, the latter of whom just settled a dispute with the DP World Tour, have taken up the rare opportunity to win a PGA Tour-sanctioned event as current LIV players.

When asked whether his former LIV tour mates being allowed to tee it up was a sign of pro golf’s future reunification, Koepka said simply, “I’m not a part of those conversations, so I don’t know.”

He was then pressed if he’d like to see a “return to normality” in pro golf, and he again refused to supply an opinion, instead saying that he was “more focused” on himself.

“I don’t have an opinion either way. I’m more focused on myself. I think that’s the one thing I think I’ve learned through all of this is if I can just focus on myself and be the best golfer, best father, husband, whatever, I’m doing more than I want to do right now, and being present with them and play good golf,” Koepka said. “I feel like that’s all that matters to me. What happens to everybody else, I’m not so concerned with.”

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The post Feeling cynical about golf? The U.S. Adaptive Open will restore your faith appeared first on Golf.

The post Feeling cynical about golf? The U.S. Adaptive Open will restore your faith appeared first on Golf.

ROCKVILLE, Md. — When was the last time you believed in golf?

I don’t mean enjoyed it. Golf, like late-night food and cold beer, is good even when it’s bad. I mean believed in it. In what it stands for. In its ideals and principles. In not only what it is but also what it is supposed to be.

If you would like to believe in golf, I know a place. The practice range on Monday morning at Woodmont Country Club here at the U.S. Adaptive Open, where about half of the field of 96 mostly amateur golfers was preparing for the opening round at golf’s biggest event for disabled players.

The players come from all over the world, and for all kinds of reasons, but money is not one of them. The Adaptive Open has no purse or payouts, and is operated at a heavy loss by the governing body that runs it, the USGA. In a refreshing inversion of the current professional golf climate, everybody at the Adaptive Open loses money, and nobody feels too badly about it.

That’s because of who’s on the tee sheet.

Some players are missing limbs, either because they were born that way (Juan Postigo) or because life decided it was a part of their story (Jordan Thomas); others have custom-fit prosthetics (Meredith Dwyer). Some have swings meticulously grooved to find the slot with only one arm (Andy Austen); others play despite remarkable physical challenges (Max Togisala tied his own PR on Tuesday with a 67 … shot from the seat of a three-wheeled VertaCat golf cart). Still others compete under the category for intellectual impairments (as was the case with Kody Conover — otherwise known as “Kody with a K” — perhaps the field’s most joyful competitor, who has Down Syndrome).

Some shot scores as low as nine under par (Kipp Popert, who won his fourth straight Adaptive on Wednesday afternoon with a closing 63); others carded putt-’em-all-out 113s (Kellie Valentine, a legendary adaptive golfer who competed for three decades before the Adaptive Open came around, and who won’t stop competing anytime soon if she has any say in it).

Some came even though they weren’t in the field at all, driving or flying to Maryland only for the chance to spend a few days supporting their people … and maybe to feel a little bit supported, too. (Matt Parker, an adaptive player from Chicago, failed to qualify for the Open but came anyway, to caddie for Jordan Thomas.)

They — along with the USGA — are united by a single word: community. For too many years, these golfers existed on the fringes of the sport. Hidden from the people and places and competitions that mattered. Shunted into ceremonial roles, forced to compete under archaic rules explicitly rejected by the USGA or, worse yet, forgotten about altogether.

Now, these athletes annually convene at the Adaptive Open, an event with all the trappings of elite tournament golf: ritzy player dining, designated parking, travel stipends (courtesy of Deloitte) and old-school mantle-worthy trophies. For three days, they compete for overall men’s and women’s prizes, and also against others with similar disabilities, in one of several categories stipulated by the USGA.

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All for national-title bragging rights.

“This is incredible,” said Jordan Thomas, a double-leg amputee who won the low score for the men’s lower-leg category. “Adaptive golf is on the rise. I have friends who I see all the time at events. And, yeah, we have events now, and some of those events are even paying money. It’s not much, but it’s something.”

It is something. It hits you on the practice range, which is filled not only with golf clubs but also with wheelchairs and motorized scooters, with crutches and canes, with prosthetic legs and seeing-eye caddies. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen on a golf course — or that many of the players themselves have seen.

“It’s absolutely our Super Bowl,” Thomas says. “Are you kidding me? Look around at this. There is nothing else like this.”

For so many of the competitors, the point isn’t even about representation or ability — it’s about the simple joy of time outdoors competing with oneself. You can’t know how good those simple miracles feel until you’ve genuinely wondered whether you’ll ever have them again.

Asked Tuesday what message she had for her fellow paraplegics, Annie Hayes, a 63-year-old in the seated ladies category, said, “You should play the game. You don’t have to give it up.”

Hayes was speaking soon after a round in which she had made her first-ever eagle.

That sense of perseverance applies far beyond just the seated ladies category, where Hayes was the lone competitor this week. It also applies to those who wondered if golf could ever ascribe to its highest calling as a unifier and connector without falling victim to its pitfalls of exclusion and cloisteredness. At the Adaptive, you don’t have to give up that dream, either. You can believe.

And when it hits you that golf can be this way, that it can be this good? It’s a bit overwhelming.

“When you talk about the unifying power of golf, is there a better event than this one?” USGA president Kevin Hammer said Wednesday. “This is the single most joyful event I’ve ever attended.”

My job for this week has been simple: To cover golfers playing in their national championship. To open our increasingly clouded and dispassionate and cynical eyes to a golf tournament that is none of these things. To tell the stories of players who have overcome towering challenges, and who have chosen compassion over bitterness. I could not tell every story in the field. Not even close.

I can tell you that this week felt like community. Like something to care about. Like belief.

When was the last time you believed in golf? When was the last time sports made you believe in anything?

If it’s been too long, there’s a quick fix: Visit the range at the U.S. Adaptive Open.

You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com.

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The post Cameron Young taught me 10 lessons in 45 minutes. Here they are appeared first on Golf.

The post Cameron Young taught me 10 lessons in 45 minutes. Here they are appeared first on Golf.

Cameron or Cam — he doesn’t care.

An oddity of golf on TV is that when Young’s name appears on a leaderboard it often shows up in full. SCHEFFLER, MCILROY and CAMERON YOUNG. That’s because of the existence of Carson Young, whose name necessitates more than just a simple “C. YOUNG” distinction. But why CAMERON vs. just CAM? I’ve always been vaguely curious. So I asked just before we started rolling. Cameron — or Cam, if you’d prefer — said he doesn’t care either way; nobody’s really asked him about the leaderboard thing. So, yeah.

Here are 10 other things I learned from a 45-minute “Warming Up” range session with Young.

1. He starts with a 62-degree wedge

Young has started taking the beginning of his warmup more seriously, he says, once he realized that half-wedge shots are a hole in his game.

“I used to start with the 57 degree,” Young says. “But we kind of noticed that my partial wedges, like real short stuff with [the 62], statistically I was not any good. So I’m kind of trying to passively improve by just starting with 62, because I never really hit it except for on the course, like from 70 yards.”

2. He’s not lifting heavy pre-round

We’ve heard more and more from pros in recent years who are going through legitimate workouts pre-round. Not Young, though.

“I see a physio [for] a little stretching, a little bit of like soft tissue. A very simple warmup I would say. A couple bands, but nothing major,” he says. No big weights? “No, absolutely not. And then I putt and I chip and go to the range.”

3. He wears AirPods … and sometimes listens to nothing.

Young wearing AirPods is a familiar sight — particularly since he went viral for leaving one in while he played the first hole at Bay Hill last year. So what’s the story with the AirPods? It turns out they’re not even always playing something.

“I have them in most of the time. Sometimes I have something on, sometimes I don’t,” Young says. He’ll get a daily message that he’ll listen to through the earbuds as he warms up; that’s the only sure thing.

“My mental coach, he sends me something to focus on that day. And usually from that point, [they’re] off … it’s kind of like a separation point of like, okay, things have started.”

As for the first-hole incident? Young says what’s crazy isn’t that he left it in — it’s how he found out.

“The only reason that I noticed it was because I hit my first ball out of bounds left and then I hit the second one so far right that when I went to collect my first one it disconnected from my phone and made the sound,” he said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have known … only saved by the fact that I hit two awful shots. Otherwise, it would have stayed.”

4. He has a few “stock” wedge numbers

It’s interesting to hear how different pros blend feel vs. pre-rehearsed swings, but one thing is consistent: they know how far their wedges fly. Young has different numbers for different clubs depending on how far back he takes the club.

“Just about the hardest I hit [my 62 degree] normally is what I call an 11 o’clock [swing], which for this is 88 to 90 yards. I can probably hit it 100 or 102, but I don’t very often.”

That’s because his 57-degree wedge slots in nicely there.

“One of my kind of stock numbers with 57 is 100 [yards],” he says. “So I don’t have any need to really hit [62] hard unless it’s really downwind or the greens are super firm or something.”

That’s a 10 o’clock 57-degree wedge that’s flying 100, if you’re keeping track at home.

5. He didn’t live on the range as a kid

Young had a dream golfing childhood: he grew up on the short course at Sleepy Hollow, just north of New York City, where his father was head pro. Young said he spent his hours chasing daylight on the course rather than grinding it out on the range.

“I probably chipped more than I spent time at the range,” he says. “I loved chipping. But I played a lot. I would get out on the course and play as much as I could, especially late in the afternoon. Go out there with my father or with my mom and just see how many holes we could play.”

6. He’s committed to the draw lifestyle

For a while Young was trying to hit the perfect shot for every situation. But he found some real comfort in getting back to his swing DNA, which meant embracing the draw. That’s the case with driver, with his irons — and even with his wedges.

“You watched Tiger in his prime hit [every shot shape],” he says. “And in theory, if you want to be as good as you can be, you want be able to hit every shot. But I think for most people, it probably just isn’t practical.”

In Young’s debut PGA Tour victory, a runaway at the Wyndham Championship, he says he was actually hitting big hooks. But he’s hoping to settle into a manageable draw shape. “And now I’ve kind of like just gone back a little more neutral.”

What’s the comfort of the consistent shape? He summed it up like this: “I like generally knowing that I’m not gonna start it left and it’s not gonna curve right.”

7. He’s obsessed with process.

Young works on his mental game “consistently,” he says. Even if it’s not a thrilling thing to do.

“I think it’s one of those things, it gets boring when it’s good,” he says. “I mean, you hear Scottie Scheffler talk about it all the time. All he’s concerned about is what he’s doing at the moment, trying to hit a good shot. At the end of the day that is the most effective way to do it. But to do that day in, day out over the course of a season, a week, you know, whatever it is, it gets tedious for sure.”

Young adds that process talk has spilled over to cooking with his 3- and 4-year old sons.

“In our household, we joke about being committed to your process, whatever it is. Making eggs,” he says.

8. You don’t need to keep your lead arm straight

Young’s trademark move is a pause at the top of his swing, although interestingly he doesn’t really think of it as a pause. But what’s also interesting is the way Young’s left arm breaks down at that point in his swing, defying one old-school “rule” of the golf swing.

“I’ve tried to change it,” Young admits. But ultimately he thinks it’s probably fine, and that he’s in good company with a bent left arm. “I think in my case [the arm] bends and then by the time I get back out to [the start of his downswing] it’s at full length … as far as bent at the top, there’s a lot of guys, Scottie’s up there like that. Jordan [Spieth]. All kinds of guys have a little bend in the arm up there.”

9. Pulling 3-wood doesn’t guarantee you’ll hit the fairway

There’s still an old-school line of thinking that hitting 3-wood off the tee is a safer, smarter way to operate. Young’s 3-wood mentality is different. It’s also simple.

“It’s mostly a club to leave short of stuff,” he says. “I don’t find that I hit it that much straighter than the driver. You’re not necessarily trying to maximize distance because you’re hitting it to maybe lay short of a bunker. I just kind of want it to go to a number and stay.

“So I don’t take out 3-wood because I’m nervous about hitting it straight. If anything, I’m probably more comfortable hitting driver [straight].”

10. Everybody can set up properly

Young has plenty of complex swing feels, but what he thinks about most often — and the advice he doles out most often to amateur playing partners — is to lock in on a good neutral setup.

“Everybody can set up properly,” he says. “There’s nothing keeping anybody from setting up with pretty square feet, shoulders, hips … but they just don’t practice it.

“Most people’s concept of reality is pretty off. Even mine. I fight it; you’ll see me like twist in all kinds of different ways.”

Young demonstrates his left foot shooting forward and his left shoulder shooting open, essentially closing hips relative to his target. He spends plenty of time at the range just trying to find neutral, rehearsing the very beginning move in his swing and making sure he’s lined up correctly.

“It’s just a constant battle,” he says.

Ain’t that the truth.

Watch our video with Cameron Young in the player above, or on YouTube below.

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NORTH BERWICK, Scotland — One year ago, Chris Gotterup arrived at the Scottish Open the same way he arrived this week: not-so-fresh off a redeye from the American Midwest. He was ranked 158th in the world. Obviously, a lot has changed since.

You could say something similar for most of the field. You could say something similar for yourself. You were probably somewhere similar a year ago; a lot has changed since then, too. This time of the golf calendar seems to underline that message more than any other month. And shouldn’t it? We’re playing the national open of the sport’s founding country and following it up with the game’s oldest championship. If any month feels like golf’s birthday, it’s July, where we can celebrate the game’s core characteristics — penal bunkers, firm turf, sandy soil, wispy fescue, the ball in the wind and the ball on the ground. Our annual pilgrimage into this state of golf fittingly serves as a reminder of all that can change in 12 months. 

Gotterup is the most obvious example, who says last year taught him that his game truly travels. Beating Rory McIlroy amid a crowd largely rooting against him was a launching point for three wins since. But there was a notable third player in that final group last year: Wyndham Clark. Has anyone’s 12 months of golf ridden more of a rollercoaster than his?

Jon Rahm could make a claim, given the upheaval of his employer, LIV Golf. His last 12 months haven’t been drastically different, but his next 12 will be. He’ll almost certainly be back here at the Scottish Open in 2027 — where, he says, “the game comes alive” — but where he plays before it, not even he knows. 

There’s Brooks Koepka, who last year was in Europe but competing in a different country. This week, he’s a sponsor’s exemption from the DP World Tour half of this field, about as far away as one can get from “salaried LIV golfer.” Koepka spent part of Wednesday’s press conference reflecting on 2025 and how life away from golf intersects with life on the course.

“I feel like last year I wasn’t in the head space to actually play good golf,” Koepka said, “and now that everything is kind of cleared up and I’m in a better [place] — we all have that. It’s life, right?”

Right. Life is cyclical. So is pro golf. Koepka was once a Scottish Open mainstay, back in his twenties when he was competing on the DP World Tour and its feeder, the Challenge Tour. He called those days “some of the funnest times I’ve ever had playing golf,” flying economy with fellow pros, squeezing into taxis. He said the familiar nature of those times is one reason the European Ryder Cup team does so well. Perhaps unsurprisingly, European Tour’s production company has jumped into action with all its big hitters in the field, using this week to acquire the final interviews of its documentary on last year’s Ryder Cup.

McIlroy has been playing the Scottish Open for — gulp — 21 years now, the last three of which came at Renaissance Club. In 2023, he won in Scotland for the first time. In 2024, the Scottish marked his return from a gutting finish at the Pinehurst U.S. Open. In 2025, it seemed to be his first joyful press conference in months. Only he could tell you where his mind was during those weeks, but golf fans are observant enough to know how different he seemed. In 2026, maybe not so much has changed. He’s still holding the Masters champion’s green jacket, only this year he’s taking it fewer places, like to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. (That’s Wimbledon.)

“If you can’t wear it there,” he quipped, “where can you wear it?”

At a time when McIlroy’s annual schedule seems to be shrinking, this tournament isn’t going anywhere. On Wednesday, he called it the blueprint for national opens and the “perfect lead-in” to next week’s Open Championship. McIlroy stays in the same house on-site every year, right next to the Fleetwoods. While Argentina battled Egypt Tuesday night, Rory kicked around with Frankie Fleetwood in the backyard. 

As for the author of this article, this is the fifth straight summer I’ve taken a United Airlines redeye from Chicago into Edinburgh, followed by the ScotRail train into nearby North Berwick. Two years ago, I hopped off that train and raced to Renaissance Club’s lovable neighbor — North Berwick’s West Links — only to find a shirtless caddie walking across the fairway. The sun was out, the sky was dotted with clouds, he had just taken a dip in the Firth of Forth. Life was good.

But only the luckiest pros and their caddies get to walk those North Berwick fairways each year. Last July, I walked along with Joel Dahmen and Geno Bonnalie during a sunset round on the West Links. They played a hearty match against each other before we popped into town for fish and chips. Neither of them knew it for sure, but that was the final week of their player-caddie partnership, a breakup that shocked the golf world. They remain close as ever, but the proof of what can change in a year is right there on the caddie registry this week. Bonnalie is here, looping on a one-week gig for Harris English (whose regular caddie is once again caught in visa issues). Dahmen is in Louisville playing the ISCO Championship.

“I miss that place,” he said of North Berwick, when reached via text. “Have a beer for me.”

Joel would rather be in Scotland than sweaty Kentucky, and thanks to a run of last-minute withdrawals from the field, he could have been. But he’s in hot pursuit of FedEx Cup points and figures he’d have a better chance domestically than across the pond.

“Week 2 of getting better at golf,” he texted. “Onward we [climbing emoji].”

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ROCKVILLE, Md. — The baggage lingered for a long time, circling Meredith Dwyer like the last stragglers on an airport conveyor belt.

She didn’t share it after the initial match on Hinge. Not in the several months of casual messaging. Not even after the plan, at long last, to meet for drinks.

Meredith knew she would eventually have to address it, and figured that it would probably have to happen on the first date. She knew in her gut that it was only fair to broach the subject quickly; she might not like baring her soul to a relative stranger, but it was better to do so before they became somebody with feelings and stakes and commitments and dreams.

But there was something holding her back, something she wasn’t quite expecting: She really liked this guy.

He seemed so kind and so gentle, so sincere in his interest and earnest in his intentions. Some small part of Meredith wanted to be selfish, to enjoy the attention and the interest from a man unencumbered by her burden. She wanted to live for a short while in a state of suspended reality, the kind she saw so many of her twentysomething peers bask in before the universe had rendered the same joy impossible for her.

Meredith’s “better angels” about the opposite sex had been sharpened into a ruthless bullshit detector, a sixth sense that told her she had ample reason to be concerned. Sharing the most vulnerable version of herself might rob him of his kindness, turning him into the same kind of cruel individual who took photos of her on the New York City subway and made leering comments as she made her way through the world committing no crime other than existing. Worse yet, the boy might prove to be exactly as kind and sweet and gentle as she believed him to be . . . but her past might scare him off anyway.

Plus, it wasn’t like she was hiding it. Most of it was right there in her Hinge profile. She had uploaded a few photos, some from before and some from after — careful not to intentionally mislead anyone. In the prompts, she made a few self-deprecating jokes, hoping the suitors in her messages would put two-and-two together without requiring a painstaking explanation. Hoping that one suitor in particular, the boy from the first date, would get it.

That boy, Brett Gray, said nothing on the first date. The couple had a delightful conversation that touched on what seemed like all topics except for Meredith’s baggage. They immediately clicked. They made plans to meet again.

“Second date was Topgolf,” Brett recalls now.

Figured it’d make him look athletic and manly. He didn’t know that Meredith had played a little . . . and had plans to start playing a lot more.

“She shows up and just rips a 300-yard driver — and what I didn’t find out was that was her first time golfing since her surgery,” Brett says. “I can’t imagine how nerve-wracking that was for her.”

At one point during the night, Meredith cornered Brett on The Big Stuff.

“She just said, ‘Do you want kids? What do you want?'” Brett says. “I was like, cool, same page, let’s do this.“

Except for one thing: Still no baggage.

Finally, on the third date, Meredith had enough. Brett tried to lead with small talk, and Meredith cut him off. She was tired of suspended reality. She was ready for the real thing.

“Are you gonna ask me about my leg?” she asked, equal parts relieved and exasperated.

She gestured in the direction of her left leg, or, rather, where her left leg might be. Just months earlier, Meredith had undergone an amputation to remove everything beneath her knee — the result of a lifetime with a clubfoot that had required eight procedures in eight years.

She wasn’t sure what to expect from Brett in that moment, but she knows she wasn’t expecting the response she got.

“I remember feeling like, who’s gonna want to date me?” Meredith says. “I didn’t even like how I looked, missing half my leg.”

Instead, she got a smile. A real, genuine smile. And then the words that changed the rest of her life.

“I knew,” he said. “I wanted you to tell me when it was time.”

THE YEARS SINCE that conversation have taught Meredith Dwyer a lot about baggage.

She has learned to lead with vulnerability — to talk about her leg and her experience and her struggles and her hopes and her dreams. She has learned to own her weaknesses, and to try to love them. Mostly, though, she has learned the best way to deal with a burden is to find someone who helps you carry it.

In this case, the metaphor is particularly apt. Meredith has become an accomplished golfer since that Topgolf date, breezing her way through qualifying for two straight U.S. Adaptive Opens (including this week’s edition at Woodmont Country Club), and quickly ascending to the top ranks of the rapidly growing adaptive game. Brett, meanwhile, has become Meredith’s literal baggage-carrier. He’s her caddie.

“I’m not a golfer,” he says. “I’m more of the emotional support caddie. I’m mostly there to make sure she stays calm. It sounds silly, but I’m here to help her stop caring about each shot. To realize that we’ve got bigger goals than just one golf shot. And when you stop caring about each shot, you get better.”

That is sage wisdom for a looper with limited experience, particularly on a bag like Meredith’s. She relies upon a swing that utilizes the forces of physics and momentum more than brute strength, and upon a prosthetic that can shift stability and comfort without warning, particularly on hot, humid days like on Monday and Tuesday at the Adaptive. It is Brett’s job to keep Meredith on task and on time — two skills that require a deft hand around the boss, who tends to treat mountains and molehills with equally withering gusto.

“We’re both so competitive; we butt heads, ” Brett says. “But it really hasn’t carried past the third hole. Same at home — I think how you’re cleaning the dishes is wrong, but you’re gonna do it your way. It just works.”

In golf and in life, opposites attract. Life has taken part of Meredith’s leg, but it has given her spectacular willpower and courage. Life has given Brett the levity to temper those flames when they get too hot, and the warmth to keep the fire burning when Meredith runs cold. In place of the highs and lows, Meredith has found something surprising: compassion for herself.

“He understood what he was ‘taking on,'” Meredith says with finger quotes. “He knows there are going to be days when I need more help, and I’m okay taking it.”

With Brett’s help, it is not uncommon to hear Meredith discuss her baggage in considerably different terms — terms that she herself would not have dared to think about around Brett or anyone just a few years ago.

“In the adaptive golf community, a lower leg amputation is like a paper cut,” she says. Realizing how unfathomable that framing might sound, she laughs. “I’m serious!”

This is the mindset of a champion. At least, that’s what Meredith hopes. From the hospital after her amputation, she began to dream of a life as a Paralympian — the ultimate proof, she says, that she could be successful not in spite of her amputation but because of it. Outside of golf, she has started training for discus and shot-put competitions, leaning on an elite training team based in her native Teaneck, N.J., and as far away as San Diego.

Brett is among those trainers, occasionally tapping into his experience as a high school shot putter and discus thrower, but more often providing emotional support.

“The thing I was most attracted to was her confidence,” Brett says. “She knew who she was, she knew what she wanted. I’m a realist, so I’m always saying, let’s slow down, be realistic — I don’t want you to get crushed.”

As with all good relationships, the emotional transformation has worked both ways.

“She always crushes those expectations and gets everything she says she will,” Brett continues. “I just stopped doubting her, because I know she’s gonna end up getting whatever she wants — because she’s so determined. Once track is done — whatever that means — something’s coming next. I don’t know what it is, but something’s coming next.”

Belief. It’s a magical thing in the heart of a caddie, and can mainline straight into the player’s psyche.

Meredith does not always excel, but with Brett on the bag, she never fails to believe. You don’t have to be a romantic to see the love in that.

“He just accepted me,” Meredith says. “He loved every part of me.”

Meredith spends less time thinking about her baggage these days, and for good reason. She might have lost a limb, but she found the person of her dreams.

And that, it turns out, is the biggest surprise of this love story: The person of Meredith’s dreams. It’s not at all who you’re thinking.

You see, Brett taught Meredith that love does not begin on a Hinge profile or on a first date. It does not even begin with a boyfriend. It begins with baggage.

“Everyone has baggage. It’s how you carry the baggage that matters,” Meredith says. “Are you dragging it behind you, or are you putting it on your back and climbing up that damn mountain?”

Meredith learned that true love usually does come with a savior. Sometimes it just takes a few dates to realize they’re staring you right in the mirror.

The author welcomes your thoughts at james.colgan@golf.com.

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On Wednesday at the 2026 Genesis Scottish Open, Rory McIlroy talked himself into a conundrum.

For years, McIlroy has sung the praises of golf’s National Opens, making a genuine attempt to raise their profiles by playing the tournaments himself.

Along with the U.S. Open and the (British) Open, the six-time major champion has been a fixture at the Scottish Open and the RBC Canadian Open (until this year). Last season, he won the Irish Open in September and competed in the Australian Open in December.

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McIlroy, however, is also the biggest star in the modern PGA Tour, and his love for National Opens and loyalty to the PGA Tour could come in direct conflict soon.

That’s because the PGA Tour is overhauling its tournament structure. Beginning in 2028, the Tour will divide itself into a Championship Series, for the top 130 or so pros, and a Challenger Series, for everyone else.

A key tenet of the new structure is that the Championship Series will be closed: no one can move in or drop out of it within a season. Conversely, National Opens by nature are open: pros have multiple avenues to play their way in. Furthermore, the Scottish Open is co-sanctioned by the DP World Tour.

One big question arises from those two realities: how do National Opens like this week’s Scottish Open fit into the new PGA Tour schedule, if at all?

On Wednesday, Rory was pondering that question, too.

McIlroy praises National Opens in light of new PGA Tour structure

During his pre-tournament press conference at the Genesis Scottish Open on Wednesday, McIlroy argued the decision by the PGA Tour to co-sanction the Scottish Open has raised its profile and improved the event significantly.

“Yeah, so I think since this event has been co-sanctioned, it really has went from strength-to-strength,” McIlroy told reporters at the Renaissance Club. “You look at the quality of the field this week, you get a great sponsor like Genesis on board. They have kept making improvements to the golf course and the facilities each and every year.”

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McIlroy went on to praise “strong National Opens” as a “blueprint” for the future. He even suggested the two tours should co-sanction a second National Open on the current PGA Tour schedule: the Canadian Open.

“So I think for like these strong National Opens, this, to me, is the blueprint of what it can be and what can happen,” McIlroy argued on Wednesday. “Yeah, I think it’s a perfect lead-in to the Open Championship. You know, I’ve thought could the Canadian Open become co-sanctioned, as well, leading into the U.S. Open as well. That could be interesting, as well, trying to build out this series of National Opens that have a bit more meaning behind them.”

But a project to “build out this series of National Opens,” as McIlroy suggested, could be very difficult come 2028 when the new-look PGA Tour debuts.

“Yeah, I don’t know how that fits into the Track 1 and Track 2 and all that stuff. But I see this event and I see how well it’s done over these past few years, and I definitely I feel like it’s the blueprint for a lot of the other National Opens.”

McIlroy’s warning about new PGA Tour schedule: ‘These events need to be treated differently’

The threat the new Tour schedule poses to the National Opens McIlroy loves seemed to become apparent to him during his press conference on Wednesday. McIlroy warned that changing these events to fit into the new schedule could mess with the “fabric” of the National Opens.

“We’ve got to be careful with that because then these National Opens lose the fabric of what they are, right,” McIlroy warned. “You can’t call yourself a National Open anymore if it’s a closed off tournament and there’s a certain number of guys.”

The closed, limited-field makeup of the PGA Tour’s future Championship Series is one way it could conflict with National Opens. The other is the number of events envisioned for the Tour’s top circuit.

PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp announced that PGA Tour’s top tier will feature around 20 tournaments. The 2026 PGA Tour schedule features over 40 tournaments. So events like the Canadian Open and Scottish Open could hypothetically get left out of the Championship Series altogether.

If that happens, they could still be a part of the Challenger Series, but that would mean top players like McIlroy wouldn’t be in the field, which would drastically devalue these long-running events.

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By: Josh Schrock

Challenger Series events will also feature purses of $4 million, far lower than the $20 million Championship Series purses, and less than half of this year’s Scottish Open purse of $9 million.

That all led McIlroy to call for the National Opens to be “treated differently” than other PGA Tour events within the new schedule.

“I think these events need to be treated differently than, you know, the Travelers Championship or RBC Heritage or whatever else that are going to be in the Champions Series,” McIlroy said, referring to the PGA Tour’s future top tier. “These tournaments need to have — there’s a little bit more nuance with these tournaments for sure.”

World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler similarly sang the Scottish Open’s praises on Wednesday and expressed his hope that it will make the cut for the Championship Series.

“I think it needs to work within the new schedule that they are setting up,” Scheffler told reporters. “This is a tournament I think, like you see, the field is great. I think it’s an important one that we keep in the Championship Series just because you get so many guys that come over here and play the week before.”

“Personally, I believe it’s a great way to get ready for the Open Championship. It’s a great golf course, and the people here are great and they do a really good job of taking care of us at this tournament. I’m hoping that it can fit in the right way.”

Scheffler also touched on another key feature of the new PGA Tour schedule: getting all the best players to play all the same tournaments.

“One of the things that’s important in our new schedule is getting the same, golf is so difficult to rank players when they are not playing together all the time. That was something we ran into a lot during junior golf and amateur golf is it’s very tough to rank who played better when you are not playing against each other each week,” Scheffler argued. “Having similar guys playing against each other on great golf courses week-in and week-out I think is the best way to set up our schedule. To have this tournament fit into that mold would be really nice.”

But one thing that wasn’t asked of either McIlroy or Scheffler was how either pro would fit the new PGA Tour schedule into their lives, with or without the National Opens.

Players qualified for the Championship Series will presumably be expected to play all 20 events. That does not include the four major championships. When the majors are included, top players will be faced with a packed schedule of 24 tournaments.

That could be an issue for the modern-day McIlroy. Heading into the Scottish Open, McIlroy has only played nine PGA Tour-sanctioned events in 2026, and that includes the first three majors. Take those out, and he’s only competed in six PGA Tour events this year.

Scheffler has played 11 non-major PGA Tour events this season.

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