WE’RE BUYING

Rory McIlroy: The world’s best player put on the best performance overall when it came to showing off his golf game and personality. McIlroy was by far the chattiest player in the star-studded foursome, and while the FedEx Cup trash talk may have induced some cringes, at least he was trying. Oh yeah, McIlroy also delivered in dramatic fashion with the winning closest-to-the-pin effort on the final swing of the day:

When $1.1M is on the line, the World No. 1 delivers.#DrivingRelief pic.twitter.com/4KGNQAtG8r

— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) May 17, 2020

Also, perhaps learning from the mistake of fellow four-time major champ Brooks Koepka, McIlroy had the good sense to not allow his significant other to give him a quarantine hair cut.

Lockdown Rory…. pic.twitter.com/NtYl9bmGzh

— GOLFTV (@GOLFTV) May 13, 2020

Smart man. Although, if he lived in New York, that might be a different story. I’m starting to get desperate.

Rickie Fowler: It’s too bad this guy didn’t play during the Skins Game Era. He could have challenged Freddie Couples as the King of the Silly Season. Taking advantage of the light atmosphere—and some local knowledge as a three-time Seminole Pro-Member winner—Rickie ripped off seven birdies to nearly pull off the upset with partner Matthew Wolff. Fowler’s back was probably pretty sore when he woke up on Monday morning. And not just from carrying his own bag, if you know what I mean.

Seminole Golf Club: If I’m being totally honest, the historic track making its TV debut didn’t come across amazing on TV. But all the architecture geeks were geeking out and they know a lot more about this stuff than I do so I’ll defer to them.

Matthew Wolff’s pop: The 21-year-old was admittedly nervous, but he managed to launch his two best drives when it mattered most, easily winning both long-drive challenges with blasts of 356 and 368 yards.

∙ 368-yard drive
∙ $350K for charity

All in a day's work for Matthew Wolff.#DrivingReliefpic.twitter.com/iPsO1afBF1

— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) May 17, 2020

Wolff made a lot of money for the CDC Foundation with those two drives. He also made a lot of new fans.

WE’RE SELLING

Matthew Wolff’s Fu Manchu: The kid gets his big break on the big stage and he does this?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAShteklOLN/?utm_source=ig_embed

In the words of Curtis Strange, “You’ll learn.”

A closed U.S. Open: The USGA announced there will be no open qualifying for our national championship, which is the reason why it’s called the U.S. Open in the first place. While I understand the decision given the current situation, that doesn’t make this any less disappointing. Local and sectional qualifying provide some of the tournament’s best stories each year. And not to mention, they have produced some winners through the years, including Lucas Glover (2009), Michael Campbell (2005) and Ken Venturi (1964). On the bright side, if you’re a scratch golfer, you can tell everyone this would have been the year you were finally going to qualify.

Greg Norman’s ranch: As in, The Shark is selling his expansive and expensive ($40 million!) Colorado property that is so big a river literally runs through it. Here’s a photo of the 14,000 square foot lodge on the 12,000-acre property from the listing:

And here’s another photo from the listing of Greg and his wife horseback riding through the snow:

Looks nice, Greg, but I’m just not sure if it’s enough space for me.

ON TAP

Another week, another live televised event for charity! This time it’s THE MATCH Part II, AKA The Match: Champions for Charity. And it will feature Tiger Woods partnering with Peyton Manning to take on Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady. What a foursome. Oh, and Charles Barkley will be part of the announcing crew. This should be fun.

Random tournament fact: Phil topped Tiger for $9 million in their first made-for-TV matchup in 2018. While even more money is up for grabs this time, it’s all going to COVID-19 relief efforts so the guys are going to play nice. “It’s his home course, but Tom and I are going to go down there and put it to them,” Mickelson told Golfweek. “And we’ll make it that every time Tiger shows up at his home course, he’ll have a bad memory.” Never mind. The gloves are off!

PROP BETS OF THE WEEK

—Phil won’t mention beating Tiger the last time: 9 MILLION-to-1 odds
—Phil will show off his throwing arm during the event: Even odds
—Phil will wear shorts to show off those calves: LOCK

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Mike Ehrmann

Shorts? Stand bags? What a sight. Pros are just like us! At least, until they put those bags down and start hitting shots.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Brooks Koepka has a dartboard with Brandel Chamblee’s photo on it:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CASS5UOlXEW/

Amazing.

THIS WEEK IN TOUR PRO PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION ABS

Beefcake Bryson caused quite the stir with the following photo:

While the full results of his weight-gaining experiment—now up to 230 from 195!—remain to be seen on the course, you gotta admit the guy looks good. OK, well, I’m admitting it. If the PGA Tour does a shirtless calendar to raise money for charity, you should make the cut.

THIS WEEK IN CELEBRITY GOLFERS MICHAEL JORDAN GOLF STORIES

Thanks to colleague Chris Powers for clipping these from the final two episodes of “The Last Dance.” Although they are criminally under-liked, he’ll probably have the Internet police all over him now. Anyway, MJ took a dig at Larry Bird’s golf game after eliminating his team in Game 7 of the 1998 NBA Eastern Conference Finals:

pic.twitter.com/EdoGsKaanP

— Christopher Powers (@CPowers14) May 18, 2020

And then after winning the 1998 NBA Finals, his Airness still had golf on his mind:

Post 91, 7:15 pm, emergency 9 vibes pic.twitter.com/P9ZhkzWMuZ

— Christopher Powers (@CPowers14) May 18, 2020

What a legend.

THIS WEEK IN GOLFERS GOLF MEDIA BEING QUARANTINED

One of my bosses, Ryan Herrington, built this version of the Big House:

Yes, he went to Michigan. And another one of my bosses, Sam Weinman, adopted a small dog:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAQ3rqDlrbd/?utm_source=ig_embed

At first, it seems like Sam has the clear advantage. But Ryan is going to have a lot easier cleanup, so tough call.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Hey, DJ, is this a waste bunker?” —Matthew Wolff provided the dagger of the year on Sunday. It was especially impressive considering Wolff was only 11 when that happened to DJ at Whistling Straits during the 2010 PGA.

THIS AND THAT

Sportsbooks said the action on the TaylorMade Driving Relief was similar to a major. It’s good to see our country is still filled with degenerates, including a few from the office who shall remain nameless. … Unfortuantely, the NBC broadcast didn’t quite reach major-level ratings, but the 2.35 million total audience delivery is nothing to sneeze at. And it gives Tiger/Phil something to shoot for in addition to raising money for charity. … Mike Weir, who recently turned 50, was this week’s guest on the Golf Digest Podcast. The 2003 Masters champ sounds ready to take down the geezers on the senior circuit:

Congrats to Hyun Kyung Park for winning the Korean LPGA Championship:

Chung Sung-Jun

And before you get upset over her hugging her caddie, that’s her dad. … And finally, congrats to Golf Digest supervising producer and Grind video teammate Michael Sneeden on making his first eagle:

I’m so happy for you, Mike—especially since it wasn’t a hole-in-one. Then things would have gotten awkward.

RANDOM QUESTIONS TO PONDER

How many thumbs up will Phil flash on Sunday?
How many people think golf events end with a tape measure now?
What does Bill Murray’s Costco shopping list look like?

The post Rory McIlroy’s walk-off wedge, Bryson DeChambeau’s bold photo, and Brooks Koepka puts his nemesis on a dartboard appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Sam Weinman
On Sunday at Seminole Golf Club, as longtime head pro Bob Ford introduced the contestants in the TaylorMade Driving Relief Skins Game, Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler, Dustin Johnson and Matthew Wolff fanned out in the background, far enough apart they looked like four singles tossed together by the starter.

In another context, the image might have run contrary to the spirit of a charity match designed more around camaraderie than cutthroat competition. Here it was an unspoken endorsement of golf’s new reality.

When first announced, the primary objective of this event was to raise money for COVID-19 charities and to bring live sports back to a competition-starved audience. But not far behind was an opportunity to showcase how golf, even played by the game’s elite, can still exist in an era of social distancing.

Mike Ehrmann
Rickie Fowler, Matthew Wolff, Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson await the start of the TaylorMade Driving Relief charity event.

From how they stood on the tee, to their staggered walks up fairways, to even how they read each other’s putts from respectful distances, McIlroy, Johnson, Fowler and Wolff sought to champion many of the practices that are being employed at golf courses around the country. In the absence of caddies, all four players carried their bags. None of them touched a flagstick or rake. Even after McIlroy stuck his clinching wedge shot in the closest-to-the-hole playoff, the celebration with his partner Johnson was a restrained, mildly awkward “air five.”

“It would have been nice to give him something or a high five, but obviously we can’t in these times,” McIlroy said.

RELATED: Six takeaways from the TaylorMade Driving Relief charity match

Mike Ehrmann

The diversions from the new norm owed to the unique stage. Flagsticks and bunker rakes were tended to by others. Although most golfers these days are asked to show up only minutes before their tee times, players on Sunday were afforded a proper warm-up thanks to an exception to a local ordinance. Perhaps most notable, anyone on site for Sunday’s event was only granted access after testing negative for COVID-19.

Was it spotless social distancing? In the same way armchair rules officials relish spying a questionable drop, they could have flagged a fleeting exchange inside the six-foot circle of trust, although rarely by players at the heart of the action. But considering how public health officials cite these guidelines as ways to minimize risk, it’s hard to think of anything specific from players on Sunday that would have raised their ire.

When Golf Digest recently consulted a trio of infectious disease specialists to understand the transmission risks of golf, all three spoke to the game’s relative safety due to number of factors: because it’s played outside, because players are spread out over a broad playing field and because the number of shared surfaces are manageably few.

Where it gets tricky is when you sprinkle in everything else: carts and locker rooms, beers and nachos in the 19th hole. And that’s not even factoring the myriad complications of staging a grand-scale professional tournament, where players are expected to gather from around the world, with support staff in the hundreds necessary to pull the whole thing off. It’s no wonder the proposal the PGA Tour sent to its players about its resumption of competition was nearly 40 pages long.

“This is actually how it’s going to be a little bit, for the most part,” Johnson said. “There’s going to be no fans, it’s just going to be us and some TV cameras. It was kind of nice to get out and kind of see and feel what it will be like a little bit.”

There will be plenty more questions before the tour resumes play in Fort Worth at the Charles Schwab Challenge on June 11, but none would be worth asking without first determining if the core game was safe. Sunday offered the first serious test, and golf passed.

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By Keely Levins
As we gear up for live golf to resume with the TaylorMade Driving Relief skins game and The Match: Champions for Charity, another star-studded charity event has been added to the calendar. Two of the top three players in the world will play against each other in a skins game to benefit the charity of their choice, Golf Channel’s Randall Mel reported. Jin Young Ko, who is currently No. 1 in the world, will play Sung Hyun Park, No. 3, in the Hyundai Card Super Match on May 24 in Incheon, South Korea.

The course, SKY72 Ocean Course, was a stop on the LPGA Tour, with the LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship played there from 2008-2018.

Ko and Park will compete for a 100 million won prize, which is about $82,000. The sum will be donated to the winner’s charity of choice. There’s also the opportunity to win some extra money for charity: Each player will pick two holes before the match begins. If she wins the hole that she chose, another $8,200 will be donated.

Due to concerns over the spread of COVID-19, there will be no fans in attendance at the event.

Sung Hyun Park plays a shot during the second round of the 2017 Evian Championship. (Stuart Franklin)

Though LPGA Tour tournaments haven’t been played since February, Ko and Park’s match won’t be the first time Park plays competitively. The KLPGA is playing an event the week before the skins match. The KLPGA’s re-start could be advantageous for LPGA Tour members who are currently in South Korea, as it gives them the opportunity to compete nearly two months before the LPGA Tour is scheduled to resume on July 15 at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational.

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Architecture experts marvel at Seminole’s compact yet complete routing. On a trapezoid of land of just 140 acres, Ross positioned his 18 so that golfers must contend with wind from a slightly different direction on nearly every shot. His remarkable layout lies on three levels. Closest to the seacoast is a lateral sand dune parallel to the beach, on which two greens (the 13th and 18th, the latter later added by Dick Wilson) and three tee complexes now rest. Inland is a wide, low basin, just a few feet above sea level, previously swampland that Ross’ crew drained and graded into eight holes now edged by palms, bunkers and lakes. On the far west edge of the site is a wide sand ridge some 40 feet higher than the basin. It contains three complete holes and the tees and greens for seven others. Its topography is reminiscent of Scotland’s Royal Dornoch, where Ross was born, raised and first took up the game.

Competitive players have long admired the subtle challenges of Seminole. Most fairways are comfortably wide, but deceptively so, because on windy days and when turf is firm and fast, drives can trundle off a fairway and into one of the more than 70 fairway bunkers or, on some holes, into a sandscape rough recently enhanced by the design team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. The true test lies in shots onto the greens, putting surfaces that range from long and skinny to wide and shallow. Unless hole locations are toward the centre, flag-hunting is risky, as the perimeters of most greens slope gently toward deep bunkers that frame most greens and encircle several. Once on the greens, most contours are imperceptible at first look and make for deceptive putts. Some of today’s finest players, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff will take on these challenging elements during the recently announced TaylorMade Driving Relief Skins Game, to take place at Seminole on May 17, 2-6 p.m. on NBC.

Carlos Amoedo

While Ross had the reputation of mailing in many of his blueprints to be built by others, there are newspaper clippings that document his presence on site supervising construction of Seminole, which was built in seven months and opened Jan. 1, 1930. Ironically, whatever attention to detail Ross gave to greens and bunkers have been lost, as a regrassing effort some 50-plus years ago showed little regard to his original rolling contours. Even before that, the bunkers had been reshaped and rebuilt by Wilson in 1957 (not 1947 as repeatedly misreported in the past by this writer). There is no desire to reclaim the original Ross greens because members like what’s there now, but in recent years, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have restored the look and purpose of many original bunkers.

Stephen Szurlej

Any number of Seminole’s holes are classics of the craft. Crenshaw’s favourites are the sixth and 15th (above). No. 6 is a straightaway 390-yard par 4 that plays like a dogleg because of a diagonal string of bunkers that eat into the line of play from the right. The 15th is the second of back-to-back par 5s (a rarity for Ross) and features alternate fairways (also a rarity), a gambling right-hand route along a water hazard separated by bunkers and palms from the longer, safer left-hand one.

Jon Cavalier

An equal share of Seminole’s majesty is provided by its timeless clubhouse, a pink stucco structure of Spanish American flavour built in 1929, with its original lockers of California knotty pine still in use. Positioned in the southeast corner of the property adjacent to the coastal dunes, it has no window to the sea. The story goes, when asked why, Ross replied, “This is a golf club, not a beach club.” As Ross had nothing whatsoever to do with the design or construction of the clubhouse, the tale is likely apocryphal.

Although it hosts a top-level amateur competition each year (the Coleman Invitational), Seminole has never before hosted a professional event witnessed by hundreds of thousands of television viewers, so most golfers around the world have known Seminole only by its reputation. How it will stand up to the rigours of the power game that dominates professional golf today is a great unknown. The four combatants in the TaylorMade Driving Relief Skins Game are capable of reducing Seminole’s par 4s and 5s into a succession of short-iron approach shots, but if the wind blows, that’s doubtful, and if the pins are tucked, the targets will become much smaller, even if approached with short irons.

In a way, the Skins Game will serve as a prelude to next year’s Walker Cup Matches, which are scheduled to be held at Seminole in early May. That event is expected to be open to spectators. For now, we’ll cherish this moment to admire Ross’ masterpiece, all for a good cause.

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Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson will team up to take on Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff in a skins game on May 17 that will be televised live from Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla. Officially announced on Monday, the “TaylorMade Driving Relief” event features a $3 million purse provided by UnitedHealth Group—all of which will go to the American Nurses Foundation and CDC Foundation to aid in their efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. An additional $1 million is being donated by Farmers Insurance for a birdie and eagle pool that will go to Off Their Plate, an organization that provides meals to healthcare workers.

The 18-hole match, scheduled from 2 p.m to 6 p.m. ET, will be televised by NBC, Golf Channel, NBCSN and Sky Sports. Free streaming will be available on PGA Tour Live, GOLFTV, Golfpass and Golf Channel.

“We are excited about the safe and responsible return of live golf and the opportunity to raise significant funds for those on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic,” PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement.

The organizers said strict safety measures will be taken, including no spectators and FDA-approved testing to ensure the health and safety of the golfers and production crew. In a sign of the times, NBC golf anchor Mike Tirico will lead the commentary from his home in Michigan, while analysts Paul Azinger and Rich Lerner will join him from an off-site production facility. Commentators Steve Sands, Gary Koch and Jerry Foltz will be on the ground at Seminole, a 1929 Donald Ross design that is considered among the classics of American golf course architecture.

The participating players are all TaylorMade staff members. McIlroy and Johnson, with 38 PGA Tour wins between them, figure to be the betting favourites against two former Oklahoma State All-Americans—Fowler, a five-time Tour winner, and Wolff, the 2019 NCAA individual champion who, at 20 years old and in his third Tour start as a pro, won the 2019 3M Open in July while playing on a sponsor’s exemption.

McIlroy, the current World No. 1, said in the statement, “it’s been difficult to witness what so many are enduring over the last several weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m excited and thankful to TaylorMade and UnitedHealth Group for making this event possible and providing us with the opportunity to show our support of those on the front lines.”

On a competitive note, the Irishman added, “Dustin and I will have a lot of fun together, and our games will fit well.”

Fowler said, “When I heard about this event, I couldn’t get involved fast enough. It’s special to be able to have an impact and raise charitable contributions through our sport and to do it with Matthew as my partner. I know how much I have missed sports, and golf especially, so to be one of the first events returning to television is very exciting.”

The TaylorMade event follows the announcement of “The Match: Champions for Charity,” which will pit Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning against Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady. TNT has been announced as the broadcast partner, but a date and venue have not been identified.

The PGA Tour hasn’t staged any competition since halting play on March 12 after the first round of the Players Championship. Official tournament play is scheduled to resume on June 11 at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, with the first four events of the revised slate to be played without spectators.

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