The story went understandably viral last week when a Scott Stallings who is a real estate agent and “90s-shooter” from Atlanta opened his mail and got the Masters invite that was supposed to go to three-time PGA Tour player Scott Stallings, who’d be anxious to make official his first Augusta appearance in nine years. The regular-guy Stallings posted about it on social media and got the attention of the world, and by the time the week was over, Golfer Scott had invited Other Scott to come to a practice round at the Masters.

You maybe figured that the Masters committee might just send out another invitation, but these things are keepsakes and the Green Jackets probably didn’t want to see the invite out there on eBay, so it was apparently arranged that Other Scott would forward the invite to Golfer Scott.

And on a Friday in mid-January, there was Golfer Scott being filmed by his wife, Jennifer, getting out of his Ford Bronco at the end of his (very long) driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee, to retrieve something out of his (very fancy) mailbox. Yes, it seemed a bit staged, but the happiness was genuine. “Finally here (claps hands). It’s been delivered,” Stallings says. “Confirmed. Correct address (fist pump).”

The best part, however, is the next scene, where he’s in the kitchen opening up the familiar Masters green envelope to reveal the invite from Chairman Fred Ridley. Scott doesn’t say a word through all of it, showing just a bit of a satisfied smile. But it’s Jennifer who delivers a hilarious deadpan line that had us watching it over and over again.

“Told you I didn’t have it,” she says dryly, with a tinge of spousal annoyance. And for the perfect ending, the post goes to black before we see the response. So good.

The package has been secured, @stallingsteam ? Can’t wait for April, see you in Augusta… pic.twitter.com/uv3PmLzsiP

— Scott Stallings (@stallingsgolf) January 13, 2023

There was one other thing that caught our attention. When Stallings opens up the shipping envelope, there is a hand-written letter with a business card attached. We were wondering: an apology from Augusta National?

No. With some deep digital forensic work, case solved. The letter is from Other Scott, and though we can’t read the first part that’s covered by his business card, the rest says, “Glad we were able to connect & return this invitation package to you. Now go win that green jacket!”

Well played, Other Scott. Well played.

The post WATCH: Scott Stallings FINALLY got his Masters invitation, and his wife delivered a hilarious dagger when he opened it appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

So you could imagine how Scott Stallings felt when he saw his fellow tour pros posting their invitations last month — and him never finding his. The 37-year-old had a resurgent year in 2022 — posting seven top-10 finishes, including a runner-up at the BMW Championship at Wilmington Country Club, to secure an invitation to the Tour Championship — which (ordinarily) secures a Masters invitation.

Considering Stallings has not played the Masters since 2014, you could imagine how much anticipation the Tennessee resident would’ve felt to receive that coveted piece of mail from Augusta. Alas, it never appeared. That is, until, it showed up — in all places — in Stallings’ DMs.

Yes, the tour pro shared the direct message from a Twitter user on Monday morning. It appears that he shares the name with another way-more-average golfer named Scott Stallings. Have a look at the hilarious exchange:

Literally had been checking the mailbox five times a day and then I got this random DM yesterday ? pic.twitter.com/yMvUYm3ioK

— Scott Stallings (@stallingsgolf) January 2, 2023

We have so many thoughts. Stallings, the PGA Tour professional, is very lucky that his namesake good Samaritan is also a golfer. Someone who might not appreciate the enormity of a Masters invitation might’ve just chucked this in the garbage. Also, Stallings isn’t exactly a common last name … but what are the odds that both Stallings have a wife named Jennifer? Just a wild, wild string of events that now will have a happy ending.

The tour pro can now rest easy — and make his travel plans official for April. If we had to bet, we would imagine Stallings will do his best to make sure his new best friend will also be able to make it to Augusta for the Masters … that way all the Scott Stallingses can enjoy the biggest event in golf.

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Patrick Cantlay’s tee shot that was supposed to stay safe did not, leaving him with a mean, uphill approach from a bunker with the ball above his feet and edging in the way as he clung to a one-shot advantage on the final hole. He would need to slice his ball something fierce to reach the green and anything less than right would put the issue in doubt. But Cantlay took a mighty swipe and the approach looked good, and Cantlay let us know for sure it was by wagging his tongue like a windshield wiper, the ball safely coming to rest 40 feet or so from the pin. Whatever drama remained was erased when his birdie attempt finished inches from the hole, and when those inches covered Cantlay — his stoicism returning with alarming speed — responded with a reserved fist pump and slight grin, signaling this 2022 BMW Championship was officially his.

“I’ve had a bunch of close Sundays this year and not all of them have gone my way, as opposed to last year at the end of the year where I felt like all of the Sundays went my way,” Cantlay said after his final-round 69 and 14-under total were good enough to beat Scott Stallings by a shot. “I think it just drives you to practise a little harder. I’ve been playing great golf all year, so I knew that if I just kept knocking on the door and kept staying in a positive frame of mind and trusting myself that I’d knock off a few victories.”

Two putts away from defending his title @BMWChamps. pic.twitter.com/PlNEWTECHx

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 21, 2022

They call him Patty Ice, mostly for his perpetually cool persona. It is a moniker that has increasingly applied to his performance. Whereas most of his contemporaries play a go-for-broke style, Cantlay is more calculated, picking his spots and opting for precision over power. Just as importantly Cantlay makes sure there is no mess to clean up, and the result is one of the more well-rounded games in the sport. He can look a bit robotic, for the manner in which he plays — coupled with his deadpan poise in such an emotional sport — appear not human, or at least not of this era. If there was one critique it is that he is a little too level-headed, unable to recalibrate from his game plan. There are moments when it would behoove him to recognise that golf calls for emotion and perhaps a bit of wild cowboy to be the last one standing.

Of course, as Cantlay asserted, a lot needs to go right to finish first, and a lot of that is out of one’s control. On an overcast and occasionally uncomfortable day in Wilmington, Cantlay was able to stay cool while his competition welted. Xander Schauffele, playing in the final group with Cantlay, failed to break 70. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler played his first two holes in two-over, and though he bounced back, the early deficit was too much to overcome. Stallings, a journeyman looking for his first win since 2014, played well and played tough, but missed a 10-foot birdie at the 18th when he and Cantlay were tied at 13-under.

Congrats to my guy @patrick_cantlay on the win! Now on to the Tour Championship @playofffinale pic.twitter.com/42aagoJfob

— Xander Schauffele (@XSchauffele) August 21, 2022

“Man, we read it exactly — it did what exactly we thought it was going to do, it just did it behind the hole,” said Stallings, who despite falling just short, managed to finish high enough to sneak into the top 30 in the FedEx Cup eligibility rankings and qualify for the Tour Championship for the first time in 10 playoff appearances. “Man, I hit a great putt on 17 and a great putt on 18 exactly where we read it, just kind of a later break.”

Cantlay himself stumbled around the turn, bogeying the eighth and 10th to fall two behind Stallings’ lead. But he answered with a birdies on the 11th and 14th, and there was no small matter of providence at the 17th. Cantlay’s drive was making a beeline for a bunker, only his ball to hop at the front edge of the bunker, clear the sand, ricochet off a hill and catapult 40 yards down the fairway. Breaks, good and bad, happen to every golfer in every round, but the timing of this bounce was, well, fortuitous.

To his credit, Cantlay didn’t let that fortune go to waste, hitting his second five feet and cleaning up what remained to take a one-shot lead heading into the final hole. He proceeded to make his own luck with his bunker boldness at the 18^th — and you better believe it took a bit of wild cowboy in him to pull that off — to seal the victory.

“I knew it was a tough shot, obviously, when I saw it. I thought if I could get it anywhere on the green, it would be a really, really good shot,” Cantlay said. “I actually had a good number for the 8-iron that I hit out of the bunker. The biggest challenge was trying to cut the golf ball enough with the ball above my feet in the bunker.

“But it came off almost exactly how I would have pictured it, how I visualised it.”

Cantlay becomes the first player in the 16 seasons of the tour’s postseason to win the same event in consecutive years. Next week he’ll look to become the first FedEx Cup winner to repeat as champion. He’ll be in a good position to do so, starting the Tour Championship’s staggered scoring system in second place, two shots behind Scheffler, and at least one ahead of the remainder of the 30-man field.

Of greater note is that Cantlay is reaching the lofty aspirations placed upon him so many years ago. He now has eight career PGA Tour titles, six coming in the past two years. On Sunday he automatically qualified for the Presidents Cup, marking his third straight team appearance for the United States. There’s a major-sized hole in his resume at the sport’s four big tournaments, but at 30, there is plenty of runway to get plane off the ground.

Cantlay knows this. He wants those championships and the status and respect they confer. As he said multiple times Sunday night, he’s a competitor and when he doesn’t win it “grinds my gears”. Perhaps it’s taking him longer to get where he wants to go, but he believes his sense of direction is true.

“The thing I always remind myself of when I finish second or I’m close is Jack Nicklaus had more seconds in majors than he had wins,” Cantlay says. “That stat will shock you considering he has the most majors ever. No one would ever say he couldn’t close or no one would say that he wilted under pressure, and yet he had more second places than anybody else.

“With that being said, I think putting yourself in position is maybe the thing that you can control in golf. You can’t always control what other people around you do or where you get the right bounce or the wrong bounce. But putting yourself in contention time after time after time, the bounces are going to go your way and you’ll get your fair share of wins.”

Few have put themselves in such positions over the past few years than Cantlay. On Sunday he got the right bounces. He’s never been short on swagger, and when he needed it the most he called upon bravado to back it up. When all those things are fused together it’s enough to lick your lips to think of where he might go.

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The post FedEx Cup: Bold and cold, Patrick Cantlay wins the BMW Championship appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Tod Leonard
These days, it usually takes going exceptionally low to win on the PGA Tour, and it’s apparently no different in qualifying for the US Open.

In the first final qualifier played in North America on Monday at two courses in Dallas, 11-under for 36 holes was the number to be the medallist — and there were four players who achieved that — while seven-under was the score that got players into next month’s major at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts.

In a qualifier that featured numerous PGA Tour pros, the top 13 out of 98 entrants advanced, and a six-man playoff was required for the final two spots. Those positions went to Davis Shore and Roger Sloan, while Adam Hadwin and Austin Cook were the first and second alternates, respectively.

The day’s low score was a 62 fashioned by Matthew NeSmith, who made nine birdies in the morning round at Royal Oaks Country Club. NeSmith, a third-year PGA Tour player who has competed in only one major, shot 69 in the second round at Lakewood Country Club and joined Americans Kurt Kitayama (65-66) and Sean Crocker (64-67), and Japan’s Jinichiro Kozuma (68-63) at 11-under.

Among the notables not advancing were 2010 US Open champion Graeme McDowell, Matt Kuchar, Aaron Baddeley, Rory Sabbatini and James Hahn.

The other more recognisable names to advance were Canadians Mackenzie Hughes (nine-under) and Nick Taylor (nine-under) and American Scott Stallings, who was solo 11th at eight-under.

There was one amateur who reached from this final: University of Texas junior Travis Vick, who shot nine-under. Vick was a semi-finalist at last year’s US Amateur at Oakmont.

The remaining nine final qualifiers — eight in the US and one in Canada — will be contested on Monday, June 6.

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The post US Open 2022: These scores were ridiculously low, even in a US Open qualifier appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Sam Weinman
For a few days this week, Scott Stallings became the face of the point-missing professional athlete when he was quoted saying PGA Tour players wouldn’t return to competition if new social distancing restrictions prevented the raking of bunkers in competition. Roasted on social media, including through “some absolutely brutal” direct messages, Stallings said he was characterised as sounding indifferent to the harsh realities of the pandemic.

One small problem: Stallings wasn’t talking about himself.

“From a public perspective it was like ‘Here’s this guy sitting at home in Tennessee doing nothing and now he’s complaining,’’ Stallings said on Friday. “But I was talking in total generalities, not giving my own reasons.”

In fact, Stallings says he falls at the other end of the spectrum.

“I’m ready to play,” he said. “I’ll play holding my bag over my head. I’ll play with one club.”

In an interview with Golf.com, a part of which was also quoted on GolfDigest.com, Stallings said some tour players would draw the line at various limitations being discussed by the tour as it anticipates resuming its schedule next month.

“I just don’t think there’s any way guys are going to do that,” he said. “Guys are not going to play for their livelihood with no rakes in the bunker and no caddies. That’s just not going to happen

“I’m fully confident that there are going to be guys who choose not to play.”

The missing context, Stallings said, had to do with the specific question. He wasn’t asked about his personal reservations, but if he could cite reasons in general tour players might balk at returning to competition.

“The question was presented to me as, ‘Give as many reasons you can think of why players wouldn’t play,’ so I said, ‘There are countless reasons,’” Stallings said by phone Friday morning. “But I wasn’t talking about myself.”

Another player, Adam Hadwin, cited similar concerns in an interview this week saying he would have an issue putting with the flagstick still in.

Stallings says he doesn’t feel as strongly, but he does acknowledge certain outside-the-ropes considerations need to be addressed. Beyond confirming the first few events upon the restart will be played without fans, the Tour has yet to announce specific safety measures it will implement next month, including how players will be tested and where they will be housed. Stallings said most of his concerns relate to those details, especially in the unfortunate event a player tests positive for Covid-19 and all players would be forced to quarantine in the tournament city at their own expense.

According to a PGA Tour spokesman, “health and safety measures as they relate to competition remain under review.” But as Stallings said, it’s complicated.

“Everyone wants golf to be back but it’s not as simple as ‘Let’s go tee off,” he said.

The post Scott Stallings was roasted for citing reasons tour players won’t return. They just weren’t his reasons appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Joel Beall
The PGA Tour is one of the more philanthropic entities in the sports world, recently surpassing $2 billion donated in all-time giving. That altruism isn’t confined to the tour itself, with many players pitching in with their own endeavours. A point echoed in the actions of Scott Stallings.

Stallings, a three-time PGA Tour winner, has launched a program in Knoxville that will allow junior golfers to play for free at two local nine-hole courses, according to KnoxNews.com. The project, called the Scott Stallings Kids Play Free Junior Golf Initiative, will begin in 2018, open to all golfers 18 and under.

“Golf has given me a lot of opportunities both on and off the golf course,” Stallings told Knox News. “Golf needed an opportunity like this, especially in a town that gave me so much opportunity when I was their age. I thought this was a cool way to give back. Golf has taught me more about life than anything.”

Though Stallings implemented a similar offer in 2015, it was limited to just one course and kids could only play on Tuesdays. The new program is hoping to open the window of opportunities for children.

This is not the 32-year-old’s only channel of charity. Stallings also has assisted in an AJGA event, and helped introduce a Ryder Cup-style competition in Tennessee.

“It’s an exciting event and a program that I hope will continue for a very long time,” Stallings said. “Hopefully the kids learn a lot from it and it can expand, that this will just be the beginning.”

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