Golfing News & Blog Articles

Branson’s big moment this week could be upstaged in September when Tiger debuts his first “public” course design, Payne’s Valley. The Golf Channel/NBC/Excel production features Woods and Justin Thomas vs. Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose. I sense some contractually-obligated “days” are getting checked off.

Anyway, for Immediate Release:

ORLANDO, Fla. – NBC Sports and Excel Sports Management announced today the Payne’s Valley Cup, a special 18-hole charity team exhibition match headlined by four of the world’s top golfers to commemorate the grand opening of Payne’s Valley Golf Course at Big Cedar Lodge in Ridgedale, Mo. Payne’s Valley represents the first public golf course design for 82-time PGA TOUR winner Tiger Woods, who will team up with World No. 3 Justin Thomas (Team United States) to take on major champions Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose (Team Europe) in the Payne’s Valley Cup.

Airing live on GOLF Channel on Tuesday, Sept. 22 (3-7 p.m. ET), the Payne’s Valley Cup will feature an entertaining mix of some of the best competition formats seen during Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups: Fourball, Foursomes and Singles matches. NBC will televise a special encore as two separate telecasts on Dec. 26 and 27 from 4-6 pm ET. The four players competing in the Payne’s Valley Cup have an eclectic resume: all four have been World No. 1; are major champions, all have won the FedExCup and have been part of victorious Ryder Cup teams.

The made-for-television exhibition match will be produced by NBC Sports, featuring all four players mic’d up during competition while showcasing Woods’ new golf course that pays tribute to Ozarks-native and World Golf Hall-of-Famer, Payne Stewart. 

Hideki Matsuyama used a 65-foot birdie putt on his final hole to take the lead at the BMW Championship. Tiger Woods went the other way late in his round, finishing with three straight bogeys to finish with a 73 and is 6 shots back of the lead.

Cameron Champ had the word "equality" written on the right side on his Nike hat and wore a black Nike shoe on his left foot and a white Nike one on his right with the words "Papa Champ, Black Lives Matter and Breonna Taylor."

While states like California, Arizona, and Florida may first come to mind when thinking of golf destinations, there are some spectacular courses spread across just about every state in the union – including Iowa. When it comes to carving beautiful and challenging tracks out of the prairie, golf courses in Iowa may have perfected the […]

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Are you looking to take on real golf courses – even when you’re at home? GolfNow is teaming up with Ultimate Golf, the incredible mobile golf game, to give you a chance at playing in virtual tournaments and winning great golf prizes. Ultimate Golf lets you tee off on your mobile phone, playing head-to-head against […]

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The PGA Tour issued this statement in response to yesterday’s social justice protests in other sports, leading to the postponement of several games, including the NBA playoffs.

PGA TOUR Statement - August 27, 2020 

The MLB, MLS, NBA, WNBA and WTA protests are player-led, peaceful, powerful ways to use their respective platforms to bring about the urgent need for change in our country. There have been a number of efforts in the past to send a message that the current climate is unacceptable, and these teams, leagues and players now taking this step will help draw further attention to the issues that really matter. The PGA TOUR supports them – and any of our own members – standing up for issues they believe in.

The PGA TOUR made a pledge over the summer to be part of the solution, and we have been actively working to make deeper and more specific commitments to racial equity and inclusion in the communities where we play, as well as supporting national organizations within this movement that we had not previously engaged with.  However, we understand that now is not the appropriate time to highlight our programs and policies, but rather to express our outrage at the injustice that remains prevalent in our country. 

Sports have always had the power to inspire and unify, and we remain hopeful that together, we will achieve change.

The Bettinardi Hexperimental is a new prototype putter debuting at this week’s BMW Championship at Olympia Fields CC.This new high MOI mallet is an evolution of the Baby Ben that Jim Furyk used to win the 2003 U.S. Open at Olympia Fields CC.This new mallet features Bettinardi’s current iNOVAi design scheme.

I’ve got something special for you to check out today: a Bettinardi Hexperimental prototype putter making its debut this week at the BMW Championship at Olympia Fields CC.

Typically, a prototype putter release might slip through without much fanfare. Putter freaks will always gush over prototypes, but everyday golfers may not even realize what they are looking at.

This Bettinardi Hexperimental High MOI mallet is a little different because it likely looks familiar to many of you. In fact, I bet some of you have already identified its major-winning ancestor.

When Jim and Baby Ben Won the U.S. Open

During a media call to promote the upcoming playoffs, Paul Azinger and Brandel Chamblee swooned over Phil Mickelson’s brief CBS/PGA Championship stint.

From Alan Bastable at Golf.com:

“I listen to every word that’s said on air and check it and cross-check it, and I find myself pulling for the commentators as much as I do the players,” Chamblee said. “I want them to tell me something I don’t know. I want them to tell me something nobody else has thought of, and it’s hard to do that because the whole world is kicking and scratching for the same information and they all have the same information, and I thought Phil did that.”

And while Phil has no plans to retire to the booth anytime soon, the two NBC stars are anxious to see where his TV career goes.

“I thought it was hilarious; some of the most compelling golf I watched was watching Mickelson in the booth,” Azinger said. “I loved it. “

THIS..IS..RIGHT..ON! We are playing the same great courses that @jacknicklaus @ArnoldPalmer & Peter Thomson won on. I’m excited for our future because technology has ruined these great course for the elite men. All the best for us girls! https://t.co/jELjCz94JR

Andy Johnson wins the analogy award for summing the contrast between last weekend’s AIG Women’s Open at Troon and the slugfest at TPC Boston, aka the Northern Trust won by eleven by Dustin Johnson.

During the 2020 Women’s Open, played at a windy, 6,632-yard Royal Troon, we saw just that. Cunning and shotmaking came to the forefront. The competitors’ typical trajectories and spin rates brought slopes on and around the greens into play. Fronting bunkers were intimidating, often prompting players to aim away from a pin if they had a poor angle.

As a diehard golf fan, I felt how a diehard baseball fan must feel during the postseason. In playoff baseball games, the margins are slim, and the most successful teams manufacture runs in nuanced ways: hit and runs, safety squeezes, pitch-outs. Similarly, the Women’s Open highlighted precise driving, well-struck long irons, varied short-game play, and patience. This is the kind of stuff that tragics love and obsess over. And in golf, despite advances in equipment, the intricacies we crave can still be found in women’s tournaments because the scale of the players’ games fits the scale of the venues.

At the PGA Tour’s Northern Trust, on the other hand, those scales were completely mismatched.

The news isn’t too encouraging these days but for golf the signs are positive. And while we’re all sleeping better knowing the never-happy manufacturers are selling clubs and balls, it’s the course operators and lower-level clubs that form the backbone of golf. It seems, based on National Golf Foundation data, that the pandemic has freed people up for more afternoon and evening golf, a surefire way to hook and retain participants.

From the NGF report:

Golf course operators report that afternoon and evening tee times have been popular, which seems right given that Covid-19 has changed the contours of the work day for many. Sorting through recent NGF golf participation and engagement research, the number of short loops (as a percentage of total loops) is up over 15% in 2020.

Core golfers report that 33% of their rounds this year have been of the nine-hole variety, while occasional golfers tell us that nearly half (48%) of the rounds they’re playing are nine holes. This will be seen as good news by many, especially the USGA given their PLAY9 initiative, and would indicate that the “time barrier” to golf is being overcome by more golfers.

And I loved this perfect summation from the NGF:

We’ve talked about the increase in beginners and youth golfers, so clearly the late-day tee times aren’t just for the work-at-home crowd.

With late summer days, those nine-hole twilight rounds present the perfect opportunity for families to get to the course after an early dinner, or newcomers to get more comfortable with the game.

We all love watching Phil Mickelson Bomb It! He loves to do it too, especially when he wants an extra 25 yards. Phil normally plays conservatively with a soft fade to ensure that he can hit the fairway. But when he knows that he needs some extra distance he plans for a lower spin rate and a nice looping draw. Should we be trying to copy Phil?

It was interesting to follow Phil’s drives on his bogey holes in the first 2 days of the WGC FedEx St Jude Invitational. He had 6 bogeys. 4 out of those 6 drives were in the left rough but all 6 were short drives of about 270 yards. His most amazing shot was a bomb where he hit a perfect draw around a dog-leg 338 yards to the right. Yes that was his perfect BOMB!

Narrow, tree lined fairways don’t always give you the chance to create BOMBS but judging by the success that Bryson DeChambeau is having we should all put more effort into creating long bombs that land in the fairway. Bryson gained 40 pounds to put more muscle (or weight) behind his drives. On the other hand Phil has lost weight and worked on building up his strength.
Phil’s Fade is his Go-to-Shot
He sets up for a fade when he needs to land it in the fairway (even though it knocked him out of contention at the FedEx St Jude Invitational). He tees his ball lower to cut his ball to create a higher spin rate for more control and a soft landing.

Phil’s BOMB is a Draw
He tees it up higher and a little further forward in his stance so that he can hit up on the ball at about a 5.5 degree angle. He even uses his taller black tees to commit to this shot. His spin rate drops from his fade shots but he picks up well over 25 yards.

If it is difficult for a seasoned pro like Phil to hit every drive the way it was planned, how can we expect the same out of our games? As a recreational players you need to work on a consistent draw or fade so that you know where to aim for each drive. Consistency is so much more important than powering it into Never Never Land.

Phil Mickelson’s eye-opening—if you could see behind the aviators—22-under-par PGA Tour Champions debut outside Branson was impressive. That’s even if the competitive setting more closely resembled afternoon cart games at The Bridges than big boy golf, but Mickelson proved he’s still got something special during a four-stroke win over Tim Petrovic.

Jay Busbee with this on the win and Tiger’s assessment…or was it a dig?

Look, it’s easy to laugh off Mickelson’s achievement as an unfair matchup, the golf equivalent of LeBron James rolling over a neighborhood pickup basketball game. Mickelson’s odds to win the tournament were as low as +220 (bet $100 to win $220); that’s getting in the neighborhood of prime Tiger right there.

Woods himself knows just how much of an advantage Mickelson currently owns. “He was already one of the longest hitters out here [on the PGA Tour],” Woods said Wednesday at the BMW Championship, “and now he goes to where he’s going to pick up a huge advantage off the tee ... There’s no reason why he can’t win every event he plays out there. He’s got such a big advantage over the rest of the field just with sheer length.”

That’s right, he could win every week “out there”!

More importantly, buried lede here: Phil is putting with a blade and making putts. I feel the Golf Gods at work here. The entire bag of Callaways for Mickelson including a nice shot of his old school putter.

An unbylined AP story sent to me by reader Steve details legendary broadcaster Vin Scully’s plans to sell off much of his memorabilia, including golf items right down to his clubs.

Vin Scully sat outside watching two sets of his golf clubs being loaded into a truck. He thought of afternoons teeing off at Bel-Air Country Club or with President George H.W. Bush.

Those left-handed clubs had produced a lot of shots over many rounds, some good, some bad. Traipsing the fairways was a way to relax and swap stories away from the ballpark through the years. Seeing them go stirred emotion that surprised the 92-year-old Hall of Fame announcer.

"Wow, there is a chapter of my life that really hurts," Scully told The Associated Press, "but at my age and after some physical problems, I knew I'd never be able to hold them again. I heard a door close in my life."
Scully took a bad fall in April at the end of his driveway while retrieving the mail, breaking his nose and ribs and suffering a concussion.

"It was a learning experience," he said. "I hold on to my walker."

Scully is spreading the proceeds between family members to pay for home schooling and to UCLA for neuromuscular research.

Jason Day has been talking with Tiger Woods for help on ways to deal with the back issues both players face.

Phil Mickelson closed the Charles Schwab Series at Ozarks National with a 66 to win his PGA Tour Champions debut by four strokes and tie the tour's record for lowest 54-hole score.

Looking ahead to his 2020 Masters defense this November, Tiger Woods noted a couple of key elements that will be different.

Beyond the roars giving you an idea where another player stands, he also referenced the loss of basic distractions (backing off a shot due to a noise) and the lack of confinement. Presumably, as he said at the PGA, this favors players not used to everything that comes with playing on the biggest of stages. He’s not wrong.

From Ryan Lavner’s GolfChannel.com report:

“When you put 40,000 people on such a small piece of property – I know there’s no rough, but it gets confined,” he said. “But this will be very different. This will be a fun Masters, and I’m looking forward to defending.”

Some players have mentioned difficulties focusing without fans and plenty more are enjoying it. Pace of play has improved but the idea of being less confined is fascinating. For some players, having fairways lined by players might be a positive in helping to focus on the job at hand, and perhaps, for others not having the fan presence makes things trickier.

Anyway, it’s an oddity of 2020 that cannot be quantified.

Tiger Woods said Wednesday he knows he'll have to earn his way to the next round of the FedEx Cup playoffs with a strong performance at the BMW Championship.

Your ability to focus on what you choose – when you want to – is the single most important factor in your performance and your progress. Improving focus for golf is something that you take seriously if you plan to become as good as you can be.

Too many of us are under-performing, losing time, productivity and dealing with more stress and anxiety because we are losing the ability to focus every day. Buddhists call it not being able to control the wandering “monkey mind”.

Recent studies suggest that our reliance on digital technology is the main reason the monkey is wandering more today than it ever has. In today’s world, we are rarely in the present moment – focused on just one task for long enough to get the best out of ourselves. Instead, we are constantly distracted by our phones, messages and social media feeds.

Scientists are hired by companies such as Facebook specifically to develop algorithms to keep us clicking, watching and swiping for as long as possible. How many times do you start a task, see a notification, and then spend 5 minutes away from the task before you realize it?

We are spending more and more time being impulsive and less time being intentional. The effect of it is weakening our ability to focus with every minute we spend doing so, and it’s even worse for our kids’ developing brains.

Coming off Dustin Johnson's runaway win, the FedEx Cup playoff field is down to 70 as play shifts to Olympia Fields in Illinois. Here are our experts' best bets.

Daniel Berger might win the FedEx Cup. That won't get him a spot in the Masters. He could win next month's U.S. Open. Still won't get him into the Masters. How is that possible? Blame a revised schedule and a global pandemic.