Pro golf needs more uncertainty on the course

+ is the FedEx Cup the financial Super Bowl?

Author

Sean Melia
August 30, 2024

Kernwood CC

Hey Everyone,

Labor Day Weekend is always a little strange. It’s a holiday. It’s still summer. But it means that summer is essentially over. My teacher's brain still delivers a tinge of anxiety to my body. These next 60 days are some of the best in the area; it just sucks what’s waiting on the other side.

I hope a bunch of you have some time to go watch the FM Global Championship at TPC Boston. I wrote a viewing guide of some good spots to watch. You can read it here.

I also hope you have a tee time this weekend, eat a million hot dogs and hamburgers, and make tons of birdies.

There’s a bunch going on in the golf world between the Tour Championship, FM Global Championship, and Curtis Cup. I could probably do 1,000 words on Jay Monahan’s embarrassing press conference. And here’s how to watch the Curtis Cup and all the golf this week.

This newsletter is a mishmash of things. Kind of representative of the week in general.

Contents:

  • News and Notes

  • Pro golf needs more uncertainty on the course

  • Pulling some quotes from Scottie Scheffler’s Tuesday Presser

  • Kelly Korda and Rory McIlroy… St. Andrews heartbreak

  • Weekly Favorites

News and Notes:

  • FM Global Championship: Three locals teed it up at TPC Boston. High school senior Carys Fennessy (Dover, NH) shot 78 (+6). Megan Khang shot 70 and Alexa Pano shot 72.

  • Chris Francoeur in PGA Tour Americas: A solid first round for the Amsbury native. He shot a 67 at Craguns Legacy Course in Minnesota. Live scoring.

  • Brae Burn hosting the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur: This is a great way to see some very good golf while walking a historic course. It runs from Sept. 7-12. Here’s the USGA homepage.

  • Curtis Cup: There are no Massachusetts connections here, but it's absolutely worth watching this weekend. It’s at Sunningdale in England, and it involves the best women amateur players from Great Britain and Ireland against the USA. Here’s a preview.

I recapped my August in golf. I played seven courses. You can listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I got some pretty great footage of these courses, too. So, I made a YouTube version with some visuals. Watch here. 

I also made an 8-minute video about Stow Acres South.

Uncertainty in golf is entertaining to watch

If you turned on any of the AIG Women’s Open or BMW Championship this weekend, you were treated to golfers trying to figure a lot of things out before hitting a shot.

At St. Andrews, wind and rain played a factor on every single day. The Open Championship at Troon last month also had moments of horrible weather, especially on Saturday. The women were dressed in gear more suited for Aspen in January than Scotland in August. Yes, Scottish weather can suck, but this was not seasonal.

In Denver, the PGA Tour played at elevation. The calculus changes completely, and players have to adjust to the added length and reduced spin the thin air creates. It’s not something they do that often, and it’s a course the Tour hasn’t visited in more than a decade. Adam Scott and Jason Day were the only players in the field who played in the last PGA event at Castle Pines in 2007.

So much of professional golf is predictable. Pinehurst wasn’t predictable. The wire grass, difficult traps, and wild greens made players second guess themselves constantly.

The ball tracer in the Women’s Open was hilarious at times. Crosswinds blew balls from the left of the screen all the way to the right. Players had to take the wind into account on putts and pitch shots, too. Putts into the wind on the slow greens were tough to get to the hole. The size of the greens also made it tough to judge the speed.

The pace of play was horrendous, but that has more to do with the criss-cross nature of the routing and double-green complexes than the challenging conditions.

The volatility in Denver was also great entertainment. Keegan Bradley and Adam Scott had some crazy stretches. On Saturday, Bradley played holes 5-13 in even par. He made three straight birdies then made three straight pars and capped it off with three straight bogeys. Incredible stuff.

It also drove Scottie Scheffler crazy… we need more flummoxed pros not named Tyrrell Hatton (there will be a day when I don’t have to Google how to spell his first name.).

On Monday, a few people were calling for the FedEx Cup playoffs to move around to different venues every year. Make it a traveling circus that hits different golf-starved cities. Just like in other pro sports, successful teams might have to go into different stadiums to win and advance. Imagine if the Super Bowl and NFC and AFC Championship games were always in the same place. It would get boring for those cities. They’d take it for granted. That’s human nature.

We’re about to have an LPGA Tour event here at TPC Boston. It’s been a while since pro golf was here. LIV played at The International’s Oaks Course in Bolton, Mass., in 2022, and that was seen as an inflection point for LIV. They got great crowds and a dramatic finish.

On the other hand, the PGA Tour heads to East Lake, where it always plays the Tour Championship. However, the course will play very differently after an Andrew Green renovation this year.

Scottie Scheffler had this to say about East Lake, “It's basically a new golf course from what it was before. It's not really at all the same. The greens, since they're new, are extremely firm, which I think makes it more challenging. It'll be tough to access some of the hole locations. I think we'll have a bit to learn in terms of golf course setup.”

I think we'll have a bit to learn in terms of golf course setup.

That’s the kind of quote you want to hear from the world’s best players as they prepare for a tournament. He learned pretty quickly after an insane 65 on Thursday.

Not sure we’ll see a 28-3 type comeback in this financial Super Bowl.

When golf is more unpredictable for professionals who thrive in predictable situations, the product is better. The entertainment is better.

Double Click(s)

  1. I watched Scottie Scheffler’s press conference on Tuesday. He had some interesting things to say.

    First, he spoke about the length of the season and how taxing it is. I’ve said this before, but golfers might be the worst people at “putting the clubs down” because we all have this horrible fear that whatever feelings or skills we have will disappear. Basketball players don’t take a month off and worry that they’ll lose their jump shot. But golfers always worry their skills won’t be waiting if they take 2 days off, let alone two months. The professional schedule feeds on that fear because players will always want to play.

    For what the PGA Tour wants the FedEx Cup to be, the Scottie quote below is not great. This isn’t how players speak before a Super Bowl or NBA Finals. Imagine Jayson Tatum running through the tough schedule of the NBA season before game 1 of the NBA Finals.

I think everybody is dealing with a little something at the end of the year. It's been a long season. Especially now with the way the new schedule is, it really is a sprint to get here. There's not really places in the schedule to take large breaks. You have the beginning of the year where you're kind of getting warmed up in a sense, even though you've pretty much got to start the year ready to go. Then March you have THE PLAYERS; April, Masters; May, PGA; June, U.S. Open; July you have The Open Championship; and then you come to Augusta and you've got the FedExCup Playoffs.

Second, he shared some thoughts on sponsors. Pretty honest answer. It doesn’t come down to the fans. Or the product. Or even the competitors… it comes down to… sponsors.

So really, it comes down to the guys putting up the money for us to play with. At the end of the day, we have sponsors for our tournaments, and they're going to want it a certain way, and if FedEx putting up the kind of money they're putting up at this event, we're going to have to play it the way they want to play it. It's just as simple as that.

We'd still have a great tournament that's the TOUR Championship, but I'm not sure if that's what the sponsors want, what the TOUR would want. At the end of the day, this is more of an entertainment product and we have a lot of other traditional events throughout the year that we play. Coming into this event it's just something that's a bit different.

Third, The FedEx Cup is golf’s financial Super Bowl…

I don't know if the FedExCup is the equivalent of our Super Bowl, but financially I would say yes, but in terms of history in the game, maybe, maybe not. You'll have to ask the players. But at the end of the day, I want to win the golf tournament we're playing, and right now I have a two-stroke lead, and that's pretty cool.

It is worth watching the whole press conference.

  1. There was a great story about Scottie Scheffler’s hat collection in his home gym. I wish I could track down the quote. As a junior, he’d wear one hat all summer and beat it to shit in the Texas heat. He kept those hats, and now they’re hanging up in his gym to remind him what it took to get to No. 1 in the world. It took hours in the sun and a whole lot of sweat. Those hats are a reminder. I loved the idea of having a physical representation of the hard work he’s put in.

  2. The recent careers of Nelly Korda and Rory McIlroy are starting to feel intertwined. The heartbreak at the Old Course on Sunday for Korda felt like Rory’s U.S. Open collapse. Rory has also had his own tough Sunday at St. Andrews when Cam Smith hit the turbo button and flew right past him. It was actually looking like Korda was going to play the role of Cam Smith as she blitzed the middle of the course and made birdies on hole Nos. 5, 7, 9, and 10. A double bogey on the 14th erased all the hard work.

    After Korda won the Chevron in April, she said something that I bookmarked in my brain (and luckily found on the internet).

I was definitely starting to feel it on the back nine, just the nerves setting in. It's a major. It's everything that I've always wanted as a little girl, to lift that major trophy… I can finally breathe now and just enjoy the moment because I was definitely really nervous. I feel sick to my stomach

Have to appreciate the honest moment following a win; it certainly feels appropriate to bring up following her double bogey on 14 this past Sunday. The tournament flipped during those 30 minutes. There are different types of double bogeys; this one felt like things sped up on her. That happens when a player is nervous or sick to their stomach (See: McIlroy on 16 at Pinehurst).

Golf is hard. It’s even harder when you’re nervous. We’ve all stood over a putt on 18 for a little cash or needed to hit a good iron shot with a little pressure. We’ve all hit a tee shot on the first tee with a few people watching.

Take all of those nerves and multiply them by a million and then have them last for 2.5 hours. I’d imagine that’s how golfers feel coming down the stretch.

It’s hard to believe that Korda’s last win came in May. She won six of seven events in the spring, and the Chevron win capped off five wins in a row. It almost feels like that 10 she made on the 12th hole at Lancaster CC in the U.S. Women’s Open flipped her entire summer.

Anyone who upgrades to Support or Founder before Oct. 1 will receive a free desk calendar with 12 golf course photos I took this year.

When I’m not golfing…

I’m reading…

  • The Golfer’s Journal No. 29 arrived this week. Enjoying some of the articles in there right now.

  • I’ve given Say Nothing a shoutout here before. I just saw they are releasing a show in November on Hulu, so now is the time to read it!

I’m listening to…

  • With the announcement of Oasis getting back together, had to give “What’s the Story Morning Glory” a listen this week.

  • This “Dark Academia” playlist is something I threw on a couple of times this week and just let it play instead of podcasts.

I’m drinking…

  • Nantucket Pina canned cocktail from Triple 8 distillery is very good. We discovered it last month. It’s low ABV, unlike some of those rocket fuel 11% canned cocktails.

  • Another good late summer drink is Long Drink.

I’m watching…

  • We watched the Netflix Laci Peterson documentary this past weekend. Wild story.

  • Dancing for the Devil was another crazy documentary. They had me at “cult.”

  • The R&A does such a wonderful job making these behind the scenes videos. This video solidified what I already knew, Megan Khang is a good hang.

  • Finally, this No Laying Up film about playing the Old Course in reverse was outstanding.

New here? Reached the bottom?

Hell Yeah.

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