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The post ’10 times harder than when I came up’: Veteran pro selflessly surrenders spot in season opener appeared first on Golf.

But he won’t be playing.

According to a report from Monday Q Info, Gainey, now 50, decided to surrender his spot in the event to allow a younger pro an opportunity to forge a career.

Here’s what you need to know.

Tommy Gainey’s unique path to golf stardom

Gainey became a known quantity in golf households long before he showed up on the PGA Tour. He originally got his big break on Golf Channel’s old show “Big Break” (which is returning in 2026). He debuted on the show in 2005, then won the 2007 season.

Over the next few years, he bounced between the Korn Ferry Tour (then known as the Nationwide Tour) and PGA Tour, then captured two Nationwide wins in 2010 to earn his full PGA Tour card.

He reached his PGA Tour peak in 2012, when he shot an incredible final-round 60 to win the McGladrey Classic.

After years of on-course struggles and off-course controversy, Gainey returned to the winner’s circle at the Korn Ferry Tour’s 2020 Bahamas Great Exuma Classic. It was his third win on the tour, and it gave Gainey an exemption into the event through 2026.

But Gainey has designs to play a different tour this year, which brings us to his selfless act.

Gainey gives up spot in Korn Ferry Tour season opener

Next week, the Korn Ferry Tour’s 2026 season begins at the 2026 Bahamas Golf Classic at Atlantis Paradise Island. It’s the beginning of a yearlong quest in which young pros will battle to graduate to the PGA Tour.

Gainey is exempt thanks to his 2020 victory at the event. But two things happened last season that altered Gainey’s future in pro golf.

News

First, he turned 50, thereby becoming eligible for the PGA Tour Champions. Second, he won.

After his birthday last summer, Gainey played nine PGA Tour Champions events. He earned a T5 in his first event, then in October he triumphed at the Constellation Furyk & Friends tournament to earn his first victory on the senior circuit.

By year’s end, Gainey had locked up full eligibility for the PGA Tour Champions in 2026, making the Korn Ferry Tour much less attractive to the veteran. But it also meant his future wasn’t dependent on playing the Korn Ferry Tour.

So when the time came to commit to the Korn Ferry Tour’s season opener in the Bahamas, Gainey decided to sit it out.

Monday Q Info got wind of Gainey’s classy move and called him up to get the full explanation.

“It’s 10 times harder than when I came up. I didn’t want to take a spot from a guy,” Gainey told Monday Q Info.

Korn Ferry Tour events get a big boost when well-known players like Gainey tee it up, so Gainey worried that the tournament might take his decision the wrong way. So, as he told Monday Q Info, he called the tournament director and explained, “I don’t want to disrespect the event.”

He added, “These young guys are so good, any one of them can win, even the last guy in the field.”

Check out the full post below.

So when the 2026 Bahamas Golf Classic gets underway next Thursday, January 11, at Ocean Club Golf Course at Atlantis, Gainey won’t be there. And one young pro who wasn’t expecting to be there will get the chance of a lifetime.

As for Gainey, he’ll likely take a couple more weeks off to prepare for the PGA Tour Champions season-opening event, the 2026 Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai, which kicks off January 22 in Hawaii.

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The post Tour Confidential: Bold predictions, storylines and resolutions appeared first on Golf.

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1. Welcome to the first Tour Confidential of 2026, where we are still a week away from the opening PGA Tour tournament of the year, yet still have plenty to discuss. Let’s get into our first topic: Look into your crystal ball and give us your boldest bold prediction for the year.

Josh Sens, senior writer, (@joshsens): Scottie Scheffler wins at Shinnecock (not bold; just inevitable) to wrap up the career grand slam, and Fred Ridley announces that the Masters will move to a limited-flight ball by 2030. 

Zephyr Melton, associate game-improvement editor (@zephyrmelton): Sens’ first prediction is about as lukewarm as they come, but the second is quite tasty. I’ll say that we’ll see Brooks Koepka on the PGA Tour sometime this year. He may be suspended from certain events, but I’d have to imagine the Tour will allow him back on a limited basis. 

Nick Piastowski, senior editor (@nickpia): Some good ones above! I’ll use Sens’ theme and predict that Jordan Spieth wins the PGA Championship and completes the grand slam. The question wanted bold, so let’s go bold. 

2. OK, now switch leagues from your previous bold prediction and give us one more. 

Sens: LIV offers Bryson DeChambeau a $1 billion contract extension. 

Melton: Jeeno Thitikul wins two majors. She’s been on the doorstep so many times, it’s baffling she doesn’t have one yet. I think 2026 for Jeeno will be much like 2024 was for Xander Schauffele. 

Piastowski: More good ones! Let’s keep it rolling. Tiger Woods wins the U.S. … Senior Open. But maybe that’s not bold. So here’s another: I think we hear more chatter about Australia hosting a major championship. 

3. What 2026 major venue are you most looking forward to and why?

Sens: The U.S. Open at Shinnecock. Always fun to watch the best take on this undeniably great design, made even more intriguing when the course setup gets pushed to the edge for the national championship. 

Melton: Riviera for the U.S. Women’s Open. I’ve seen the men tackle the George Thomas design several times in February, but I’m intrigued to see how it plays with the USGA in charge in June. I have a feeling it could be an all-time great USWO host venue. 

Piastowski: All of the above! I’ll add a couple: Aronimink hosts its first men’s major since 1962,  and the Chevron, according to reports, will be played at Houston’s Memorial Park, a muni, and that’s how you ‘grow the game.’ 

4. And what 2026 storyline are you already salivating over?

Sens: I try not to salivate in public, but I am very curious to see whether/how new commish Brian Rolapp remakes the Tour. Clearly, the old model needs disrupting, but what shape will the new version take?

Melton: I’m eager to see if Sens can improve his understanding of technology (I currently operate as his IT support guy). Outside of that, I’ll be keeping a close eye on the golf-ball roll-back. The issue wasn’t discussed much in 2025, but as we get closer to the 2028 date of pros using the new ball, I’m sure the debate will ramp up even more.

Sens: I’ve drafted a pithy comeback and have sent it out by carrier pigeon. 

Piastowski: LOL! Let’s stay with Sens’ commissioner theme and I’ll say that I’m interested to see how new LPGA boss Craig Kessler continues to build momentum. He’s secured a better TV deal — but now what? I also want to see if Rory McIlroy gets a Guinness tap installed for the Masters Champions Dinner. 

5. Who wins more in 2026 — Scottie Scheffler, or Rory McIlroy and another player of your choice combined?

Sens: Now that Tommy Fleetwood has broken the seal, I’m counting on him to tack on a win or three this year. But even that won’t be enough for him and Rory to combine to top Scheffler, who should be his usual dominant self. 

Melton: Scottie — and it ain’t gonna be close. 

Piastowski: Looks like I need to go the other route here — but I can’t. As of Jan. 4, you can’t pick against Scheffler. But a McIlroy-Thitikul combo might do it.  

6. Finally, what’s your own golfy New Year’s resolution for 2026? And what’s a good one for our readers to adopt to try and accomplish themselves?

Melton: Get more swing speed! I made some progress at the tail end of 2025, but 2026 is the year I’m going to finally break out. 

Sens: With a rigorous strength and flexibility program, I’m confident Zephyr can crack 80 mph by year end. Me? I’ve played golf in 46 U.S. states and would like to push that number to 50. Currently missing Alaska, both Dakotas and Arkansas. 

Piastowski: In another spot, I wrote that I want to be a better loser, meaning that I want to remember my rounds better, no matter the score. I’ll add another: I want to play a few more ‘last-second’ rounds — I play my golf mostly on tee times made a couple days ahead of time; this year, I want it to be more spontaneous. Nice out? Let’s go! 

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The post Rory’s emotional message to his daughter, and a thank you | Best of Weekend 9 appeared first on Golf.

The post Rory’s emotional message to his daughter, and a thank you | Best of Weekend 9 appeared first on Golf.

Thank you, Weekend 9 reader. 

Thank you for letting me opine about golf in this space. And write about Bob Uecker. And even make a bracket. 

Thank you for letting me find stories that interested me. And videos that interested me. Thank you for letting me find instruction tips that may help you. And stories that may make you smile. 

Thank you for emailing me. I read every message. I published a few, too. 

So on weekend No. 1 of 2026, I’m offering you a gift. Below is the Best of the Weekend 9. There are 27 items in all, and each was published at some point last year. Why 27? Simple. No, the reason isn’t golf related, though 27-hole days are always welcome. 

Twenty-seven is simply long. And hopefully this will help get you through Monday No. 1 of the new year. 

Let’s start. 

Stories that interested me 

1. Here, from January, the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay took his turn in reviewing TGL. This was gold: 

“Golf reimagined. That’s what TGL pledges, which should necessitate an adage: Any time you see ‘__________ reimagined,’ investment firms have entered the chat.”

This was also great:

“The night kicked off with the zenith expression of sports enthusiasm: the dramatic walk-out. Low-key men accustomed to quietly stepping from tournament courtesy cars marched into the rowdy ‘SoFi Center’ like gladiators wearing pressed pants. Woods, naturally, got Tuesday’s biggest ovation, walking out last to the rumble of Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger,’ a song old enough to qualify for a discount at most South Florida restaurants.” 

2. Forget TGL. Oswego, Illinois, may be getting nine holes under a roof, and the concept’s got a sweet name — the Megalodome. In February, Sam Woodworth of WSPYnews.com wrote here that progress is being made. 

3. After Billy Horschel hit a left-handed shot at the Valspar Championship, an interesting back and forth started after popular Golf Twitter user @Top100Rick shared video of the play and wrote: “If you are a 25 year old scratch player and I gave you unlimited time, the best teachers, the best equipment, best fitness coaches…The  odds of you getting a tour card are ZERO.”

The post has 6 million views. Folks have weighed in. 

Including Horschel. He wrote this:

“Umm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but Rick is probably right. Percentages are less than 1%. It’s one thing to get the technical part but then you need the mental which is probably the hardest and don’t forget course management and vital tournament experience….. which guys similar in age would have roughly a decade of experience playing highly competitive tournament level golf.”

4. Here, Viktor Hovland joined … the UAP Files Podcast. What’s a UAP? It’s short for unidentified anomalous phenomena, a term for what have long been called UFOs, short for unidentified flying objects. Hovland has talked about the subject on occasion, and on the podcast, he spent a good portion of his time questioning the host. 

The golf talk was brief, though this was interesting:

“Just to relate this to golf,” Hovland said, “the past couple years have been a little bit challenging for me on the golf course and it’s made me have to question a lot of the things that I’ve done. Because when you make an instinctual move that I’ve done for, I’d say, maybe the past 10 years of my life and the ball is going one direction, it’s going pretty straight, it’s going where I want it to go and then suddenly it’s not doing that, you have to really question everything and look at all the things that you’re doing to re-engineer the golf swing that you had before. 

“And when you do that, it’s quite addicting, really. It might give you some short-term discomfort because you look at things that you regard as facts and then maybe they weren’t as true as you thought they were. And that original discomfort goes away quickly when you realize that on the other side, there’s lessons to be learned and you can actually improve because of that. 

“And then when you extrapolate that to other things in society or how you live your life in general, it’s quite freeing and it almost becomes a little addicting — you just want to question everything, although within reason; you still need to put on your shoes and put on clothes and go out there and work and get better at the things you want to get better at. But yeah, it’s just fascinating so that’s kind of what led me to this topic.”

5. In March, former NFL star JJ Watt said he’d been invited to play Augusta National the day after the Masters, but he was concerned: While he shoots in the 95-to-105 range, he hadn’t played in a year. It made for an interesting scenario.

Here’s how he did:   

6. This was great from longtime French pro Mike Lorenzo-Vera. Speaking on the Sliced Golf Podcast (which you can listen to in full here), Lorenzo-Vera said he had tried to recreate one of Tiger Woods’ more famous plays — his around-a-tree bunker shot at the 2019 WGC-Mexico Championship (which you can watch by clicking here).

Said Lorenzo-Vera: “Those guys can do things that even really good pros cannot do. I can give you one example. You know the shot in Mexico that Tiger hit around the tree from the trap? The year after, I went there and I threw six balls on the Tuesday. And I look at the shot, I couldn’t even get to like 40 meters of the green. The guy almost holed the shot with two clubs less, bending the ball more to the right. Altitude, temperature, it’s impossible to turn the ball, and the guy turns a 9-iron 140 meters 50 yards. And it’s pin-high. 

“Oh, why we don’t have majors in France? Because nobody can do that.”

7. I also enjoyed the thread below from the Golfers Journal (and the complete story can be found at the bottom of the tweets):

8. The Weekend 9 doesn’t go into politics often, but this was good. 

Scott Morrison of the University of California-Berkley, in a story for phys.org, wrote here about a study that looked at whether the play of PGA Tour pros was affected when they played with pros with opposing political viewpoints.  

Videos that interested me 

9. This, from January, is so good (though some words are NSFW). Relatable, too.

10. I’m deeply fascinated by Oz the Mentalist, and he visited Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay and their caddies — and he discovered Scheffler’s ATM pin code. You can watch the clip below. 

11. The Hovland video below, recorded after the captain’s picks were made for the European Ryder Cup team, made me laugh. 

12. The post below did make me at least think. 

13. Min Woo Lee recently accepted sister Minjee Lee’s Greg Norman Medal — considered Australia’s highest individual golf honor — and the acceptance speech might be one of the best things I’ve heard all year. You can watch it below. 

14. In October, I led a Weekend 9 with this:

Why do you want to write this story?

A great question. And one I usually have no trouble answering, as you go to places with at least some understanding of what’s about to unfold. For example, the Masters? Because it’s the Masters. Easy enough. Everyone gets that. But standing in front of a dozen inmates and a superintendent inside their prison, I paused this time. I had encouraged the question — I simply asked: What do you want to know about me? And the query in the paragraph above was the first one I got. 

To take a quick step back here, on GOLF.com, a story headlined “‘I never thought I’d be golfing, let alone in prison’: Here, golf offers a second chance” was published. In a sentence, the story is about how a prison in Washington state is using golf as a rehabilitation tool — but I’d need a few paragraphs to explain fully what that all entails. Maybe you’d wonder:

What does that look like?

How did it start?

Should inmates even be allowed to play golf in prison? Should they be rehabilitated? Or should they be punished?

And why is this being written?

That took a while to answer. I wanted to say the right words. This was my chance to connect, I thought. That I wasn’t there for the benefit of getting a story. That I was there to share it.

I remember saying this then: 

“Because you all are playing golf, too.”

And, over the course of a few days, they did, and GOLF.com videographer Darren Riehl and I were invited in. Cedar Creek Golf Club played on its home turf — an old softball diamond at Cedar Creek Corrections Center — where pitch shots were hit and some drives were deposited over a 15-foot fence rimmed with barbed wire. And CCGC also played their first-ever ‘real’ round, during a day outing to The Home Course in Washington. At times, they wanted to see us hit too, and we did — and we were trash-talked, and we trash-talked them. 

All of that’s golf, right?

And since it is, there’s a chance that some of the inmates will adopt a few of the principles of the game that the sport’s romantics believe in. Tim Thrasher, Cedar Creek’s superintendent, thought that when he started the program.  

All of which sounds like a story. Below, you can watch a video of our time at the prison. 

Best instruction tips of the year 

15. This was good from Robert MacIntyre, when asked in June for one thing he likes about himself:

“Most of the time, I don’t give a … about what’s going on. I don’t really care about what — I really don’t care about other people’s opinions, to be honest with you. If you’re not part of my team, not part of the inner circle, your opinion really doesn’t matter to me.

“I think that’s a massive thing, especially in the sport we play. I think it helps with, when you’re trying to move forward, you’re trying to dissect every part of the game to try and get better. I think, if you take too many opinions in that really aren’t trying to help you, then, yeah, it doesn’t help at all.

“I think something I like is I don’t really care about what others think outside of my team and my friends or my family.”

16. The post below, from Dr. Peter Tiereny, was very interesting. 

Takeaways from the year 

17. In January on the PGA Tour, the talk was existential, interestingly so. On the heels of declining ratings and potentially interest, calls were made — and letters written — for players to be more ‘entertaining.’ But isn’t the product in and of itself ‘entertaining?’ And how exactly does a golfer become an entertainer?

How deep did things get? GOLF’s James Colgan asked one of my favorite questions of the week, to Wyndham Clark.

Is it hard to be actively thinking about being interesting while you’re competing?

Here’s his answer:

“OK, so for TGL, I think the fun thing for me is I treat it more of just when I’m at home playing with my buddies at Whisper Rock where I’m going to talk trash when there’s time to talk trash — I’m going to enjoy things. I might say something that I feel like I put my foot in my mouth, I might say something funny and enjoy, laugh and say man, that was really fun. When you come out here [on the PGA Tour], for me, that actually could be a good way for me to be out here as well. But really when we get inside the ropes on the PGA Tour, I’m really focused on just trying to shoot the lowest score as possible. Because they can’t hear us talk, you’re not as much trying to be entertaining in this way — you’re trying to be entertaining with your golf shots.”

Good points. You should be able to sell world-class golf. But I’ve also been thinking about another recent exchange, on GOLF’s “Subpar,” between host Colt Knost and longtime pro Rocco Mediate.

Said Knost: “You’re one of the best personalities the game of golf has ever seen. And in an age now where we are dying for some of these guys to have a personality, have you always been this way, like since you were a little kid? Like, I’ve known you since I came on Tour in 2007-’08. And you were always this way.”

Said Mediate: “I was not. Well, I was very shy, got over that. I couldn’t look you in the eyes. Mr. [Arnold] Palmer taught me one thing. And I would sit in his office many zillion times. And he said, you look people in the eye. Here’s what he said: If they’re dumb enough to come out and watch you play golf, you better give them something for the money. That’s what he’d say, busting my ass. I’m like, really? He goes, yeah, look at them; say hello, what’s going on; talk to them. I don’t care where you are in the event — say hi. Just give them something. So I learned to do that.”

18. In February in the Weekend 9, I did a Q&A with longtime instructor and CBS analyst Mark Immelman, and below was one of the exchanges: 

The Masters winner is? 

“Rory McIlroy,” said Immelman, also the brother of Trevor Immelman, the 2008 Masters champion. “I’ve had him in my group, in contention, and I’ve watched him play the discipline game he’s preaching. And I talked to him about it and asked him about the fact that he’s not going full bore with the irons. He’s crafting shots. He’s flatting the ball a whole lot more. And he said to me, he goes, yes, it’s difficult, but I’m committing to it. And if he plays a more disciplined game, he knows with his length, he’s going to make at least three or four birdies a round. And if you avoid mistakes, that’s adding up to 16-under over four days. So I feel like he’s aware of where the shortcomings are, and he’s being disciplined enough to remain true to that and not sort of gravitating back to what he calls his natural impulse. 

19. In mid-June, I led the Weekend 9 with this:

Since the U.S. Open is great in part because it’s such a test, the man wondered:

Why not play it every week? 

Not at Oakmont, he said at a presentation I was at Thursday night. But he asked why couldn’t that week’s Travelers Championship, for example, have the Open’s knee-high rough and zero-inch-high greens, along with other score-busting defenses. The man also said he was mostly unfamiliar with the pro game, so he hoped for forgiveness if his question sounded funky — and those in the know, of course, can offer some answers, among them being that the U.S. Open, as a major, should be special, and you’d think the pros wouldn’t appreciate the weekly slaughter. But all of it did get me thinking, especially the week the Travelers was played, when there is such a contrast between the high-scoring Open and the typically low-scoring Travelers:

What do you, the golf fan, prefer more: pros looking like world-beaters, or pros being brought to their knees?

Of course, the answer can certainly be that you like a little of both, or that a low score sometimes doesn’t fully reflect a course’s difficulty, as the best in the world are the best in the world for a reason: They’re really freaking good, no matter the park. Earlier this week, Scheffler said as much, when asked if TPC River Highlands, the Travelers’ host, was too easy. His answer was somewhat lengthy. 

“Golf’s funny in that sense,” he said. “People, when they watch golf, it’s not like other sports where you want us to look like y’all when we play golf. It’s one of those funny things. You watch the NBA, and you’re like, I wish they couldn’t dunk, I wish they were scoring less, I wish their shooting percentage was lower on 3-pointers. If you watch tennis, you’re like, man, I wish the ball was going slower so they look like me out there playing tennis. It’s not like that.

“As much as some people want us to feel like them, professional golf is different than amateur golf. We get a lot of time to prepare to go out and play. The guys out here are really good at golf. If you stand here on the driving range and watch a range session, that ball doesn’t go offline very often.

“I think sometimes, especially in this day and age, people get way too caught up in the winning score being what is a proper test. I think a proper test is good shots being rewarded and bad shots being punished. I think this is one of the best golf courses for that.”

Scheffler then reviewed a few of Highlands’ holes. 

“There’s opportunity out there, and there’s also punishment,” he said. “You look at the closing stretch. Fifteen, if you hit a good shot, you’ve got a birdie opportunity; if you try to bail out right, you’re going to be in a bunker short right of the green and have a 40-yard bunker shot, a hard shot. Sixteen, if you hit a good shot, you’re going to have a good look at birdie; if you bail out and go long, it’s a tough chip down the hill. Seventeen, you hit the fairway, you have a chance to hit in there close to the pin; if you hit it in the left rough, you probably can’t get to the green. That’s what we look for in golf courses, in terms of you want good shots to be rewarded and bad shots to be punished. It’s as simple as that.

“The winning score, I think people get way too caught up in. I’m not saying necessarily that even-par is a bad winning score. Some weeks like the U.S. Open, you hit two great shots and you’re going to get rewarded with a par. That’s fine. That’s good, too.

“Across the board, the way we get tested in professional golf is very good. We play different types of golf courses, different types of grass, we play different types of winning scores. We just see different tests, and I think not one is better than the other.

“The most frustrating thing for me when I play a golf tournament is when you see good shots not getting rewarded and bad shots not being punished properly. That’s all we look for. Do we care that 22-under wins this week? No.

“I played good last year, and if they somehow change it to 12-under by making the pins in silly spots and doing things to trick up the golf course, what we want is a fair test. I think having birdies at the end sometimes is a pretty exciting finish. That’s really all there is to it.”

20. In August, I led the Weekend 9 with this:

I promise this won’t get preachy. Or syrupy. 

After all, this starts with a tee shot smacking a 50-foot tree about 100 yards out, then ricocheting off it at about a 4 o’clock angle, before finishing 10 feet below the hole we’d just finished, about 50 yards to our right. The only thing higher than the odds of that happening was the degree of absurdity. And Matt heard about it. It was his golf ball that he’d played more like a billiards ball.

Good stuff. And that’s what my annual golf trip is, which I went on last week. (Should you be interested, I’ve written about it here, here and here.) We go to Green Lake, Wis. (about 90 minutes north from where I grew up), we play the Lawsonia double, Mascoutin and Tuscumbia (which is right down the street from our Airbnb) and we eat, drink and watch old pro wrestling on YouTube (sometimes all at once). Going are Matt and Ethan; they’re college friends. And another Matt; he’s a high school friend. And Todd, whom I’ve known since grade school. You have this group. You have this trip. 

And isn’t that the “point”? 

Remember Scheffler existentially reflecting on that at the Open Championship? About a month after he wondered why he should try to win, and after he wondered why he should try to win when things such as family matter infinitely more, and after he wondered “what’s the point,” I’d still been thinking about it all, too.   

Then somewhere after a bogey and a beer, I was reminded of the answer. Sometimes it gets lost among the emails and meeting invites. But it’s why we respond to all of those messages. It’s why we hustle. It’s why we keep hustling. 

The answer is the thrill of the climb, whatever your climb may be. And the ability to celebrate that, in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. 

Like with golf balls off trees. 

Feet-good moments of the year 

21. Below, from February, is a video of Dean Burmester at LIV Golf’s Adelaide event. The gesture may have been the kindest of the year. (To view the video, click the white arrow in the middle of the photo.)

22. The Instagram post below, shared in January from the Hero Desert Dubai Classic, made me smile. 

23. One of the touching moments from the Masters came when Rory McIlroy spoke to his daughter, Poppy, during the green jacket ceremony, saying: “The one thing I would say to my daughter, Poppy, over there, ‘Never give up on your dreams. Never, ever give up on your dreams. Keep coming back, keep working hard, and if you put your mind to it, you can do anything. Love you.’” On Sky Sports, McIlroy went further, though, after reporter Anna Jackson asked him: “If she ever turns around to you and says, ‘Daddy, why was it such a big deal when you won the Masters?’, what do you think you would say?”

In response, McIlroy said this:

“I think it’s a story of perseverance. And I think that’s what I would tell her, that there was a lot of years that I came here and I wasn’t able to achieve what I wanted to achieve but I never let that discourage me or get me down. I kept coming back and I kept giving it another go. So I think that’s the story that I would tell her and why it meant so much to so many people.

“But she did come back — they have the daycare here and she came back with a T-shirt on Friday and on the back of that T-shirt was all the past champions of the Masters tournament and she asked me, ‘Daddy, why is your name not on the back of this T-shirt?’ So I said to her after I played today, I said, ‘Poppy, next year my name’s going to be on the T-shirt.’”

24. This story here, written by Ben Gagnon of the County Press, is good. It tells how Eldrick Norris of Michigan and his dad recently won $225 for winning a tournament — and how the fourth-grader donated the money to his school. 

Said his principal, Jennifer Christian: “I didn’t know what to say. I asked him what he wanted and what we could do for him, and he said he wanted churros back on the lunch menu and some basketballs and footballs for recess. He’s just a great kid with a great family.”

Best of what you’re emailing me 

25. Here’s one email I received: 

A big part of the reason I’ve enjoyed being a golfer for 60 years is relaxation. I love being on a golf course, surrounded by beautiful, albeit sometimes man-made, views and being away from the cares of real life. The pendulum in the war on slow play has swung too far, in my view, where a round of golf has become a race to see who can finish the fastest. If I’m not holding anyone up, it makes me mad to have a marshal tell me to speed up and that doesn’t enhance anyone’s enjoyment of the round one bit. Sure, there’s a problem with slow play on the PGA Tour, but the bigger impact of the “speed it up” mentality is felt by recreational players who often just want to relax and get some relief from pressure and deadlines they deal with in the rest of their lives.

26. Here’s another email I received:

Max [Homa] is right. The anonymity of social media allows people to show the worst of themselves without consequences. Our society is generally rife with anger these days, and I attribute a lot of it to cable TV “news” shows that are more appropriately called “rage factories” because they build their viewership by enraging people. Viewers get addicted to their rage so they keep tuning in. I stopped watching cable TV news shows a couple of years ago and I’ve been much less angry ever since, which means I’m generally happier. As Max said, when anything important happens, you still find out about it, although perhaps not immediately. 

27. Here’s one more email I received:

It was exactly a year ago that I read your article [headlined] ‘Tom Kim and never-failing Tim Hortons: 50 Presidents Cup observations.’

Cards on the table, hailing from the other side of the pond meant I’d never heard of Tim Hortons. However, one line of your article stood out to me — and I made a point of screenshotting it and occasionally thinking about it during the 12 months leading up to the Ryder Cup:

“13. The Americans should be a lock at Bethpage. The atmosphere will be a carnival, and the home team rolls.”

Let’s start with what happened between the ropes.

I can only assume when you wrote this that you were giddy at the success of a routine Presidents Cup pummeling of the Internationals. Or maybe at Keegan Bradley proclaiming: “We are going to Bethpage to kick their f***ing ass.” Instead, the U.S. team was comprehensively dismantled in their own backyard for the first four sessions, although great credit to the U.S. for their Sunday fightback.

Each time the Ryder Cup rolls around, one thing never fails to surprise me. It’s the unerring confidence with which Americans predict a U.S. victory — or, in your case, overwhelming victory. This is despite the record now showing that Europe has triumphed in 11 of the past 15 editions — including five of the past 10 stateside.

I grant you that futurology can be tricky when it comes to predicting sports results — so let’s look at your prediction of the event’s vibe.

I wasn’t there and you were — but where do you even start with this horror show. Perhaps the emcee kicking off Saturday morning by encouraging 5,000 spectators (including children) to chant: “F** you, Rory”? Or what about other obscene remarks, often made mid-swing? Or what about a squadron of state troopers being called in to police the McIlroy-Lowry fourball match on Saturday? This was nothing less than a significant minority reveling in an unrelenting campaign of hatred and cruelty.  

And you foresaw … a carnival atmosphere? 

I mean, given the depravity of what transpired, that must be one of the most erroneous predictions in the history of golf.

Yet even here in the UK, people knew Bethpage was a car crash waiting to happen. Your ‘carnival atmosphere’ was presumably predicated on a U.S. landslide — but did you think that would make the crowd nicey-nicey to Europe? 

Now I don’t want to be holier than thou about this. I’m well aware European crowds aren’t perfect. There is a depressing trend over here over unpleasant comments being made toward players. But it barely registers compared to what went down at Bethpage. And even when it comes to the Ryder Cup, the European banter is at least born from creativity and humour, such as the “hats off to your bank account” chant at Patrick Cantlay in 2023.

Of course, Keegan Bradley desperately tried to invent some alternative facts about “violence” in Rome. The only violence I saw was Rory being restrained from Bones!

From a personal perspective, my lasting impression from Bethpage should have been celebration at a European triumph. But you know what? It wasn’t. As the TV director cut to the thousands of U.S. fans departing while matches were still out on the course, my thought wasn’t about the golf. It was about how a number of these fans had been happy to dish out non-stop filth to the European players and their wives — yet when faced with their own adversity (namely a European win), these ‘supporters’ showed their true colors by fleeing for the exits and scuttling back home at the earliest opportunity. They were the real losers – not Team USA.

And, ultimately, it felt like there was an even bigger loser — the spirit of golf. Knocked down and kicked into the gutter.

Some carnival.

Let’s hope for better things at Adare Manor in 2027!

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The post The Brooks Koepka-PGA Tour question? For Rory McIlroy, the answer is easy appeared first on Golf.

Koepka became the first big name to split with the Saudi-backed league. His exodus has many asking the obvious questions about the five-time major winner’s professional future. Will he try to return to the PGA Tour? Should he be allowed to? What would be his punishment if and when he elects to make his return?

For Rory McIlroy, the answer to the Brooks Koepka-PGA Tour question is quite simple.

“Does it make sense if Brooks wanted to play the PGA Tour again to get him back as soon as possible? Absolutely,” McIlroy told The Palm Beach Post on Friday after his Boston Common Golf team won their TGL match over Los Angeles Golf Club. “What Brooks has done in the game of golf, it would be good for everyone to have him back.”

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McIlroy, of course, knows that Koepka’s road back to the PGA Tour might not be that easy. The PGA Tour has forced others who have played on LIV to serve severe suspensions before being able to make their way back to the PGA Tour. Hudson Swafford, who played on LIV for three seasons before being relegated, told GOLF’s Subpar Podcast that he is currently in the midst of a five-year suspension from the PGA Tour. He said he won’t be eligible to return until 2027.

McIlroy understands that the PGA Tour can’t give Koepka special treatment, even if they want to. The slope is slippery.

“It’s hard (because) you can’t treat one person differently than you treat others,” McIlroy said. “And as much as the Tour would like to treat Brooks differently, it sets a legal precedent, because of the lawsuits that have been going on and everything else behind the scenes. He’s still exempt on Tour because of his major wins. That’s not the hurdle. The hurdle is how they have treated others that have tried to come back, serve suspensions, or whatever it is. That’s the difficult thing.”

McIlroy was once the frontman in the PGA Tour’s battle against LIV Golf. But the five-time major champion has since receded into the background of the ongoing civil conflict and believes it’s time for professional golf to put aside its differences and come back together. To McIlroy, the LIV defectors have already been punished in the public eye.

“I think they’ve already paid their consequence,” McIlroy told The Overlap’s Stick To Football Podcast. “They’ve made the money, but they’ve paid their consequence in terms of the reputation and some of the things they’ve lost by going over there. “If it made the overall Tour stronger to have Bryson back and whoever else, I would be OK with it, but I recognize not everyone is in my position. It would be up to the collective group of PGA Tour members to make that decision.

“For golf to be relevant I think we need the best players together more often than that.”

Back in February, McIlroy explained how he went from an outspoken LIV critic to someone who just wants this all to be over with.

“Whether you stayed on the PGA Tour or you left, we have all benefited from this,” McIlroy said at the Genesis Invitational. “I’ve been on the record saying this a lot: We’re playing for a $20 million prize fund this week. That would have never happened if LIV hadn’t come around. I think everyone’s just got to get over it, and we all have to say, OK, this is the starting point, and we move forward. We don’t look behind us. We don’t look to the past. Whatever’s happened has happened and it’s been unfortunate, but reunification, how we all come back together and move forward, that’s the best thing for everyone.

“If people are butt hurt or have their feelings hurt because guys went or whatever, like, who cares? Let’s move forward together, and let’s just try to get this thing going again and do what’s best for the game.”

As for Koepka’s professional future, GOLF’s Dylan Dethier learned that Koepka’s representatives informed the PGA Tour of his plan to leave LIV prior to the split becoming public. Koepka did not renew his PGA Tour membership after leaving for LIV in 2022, so he’d have to reapply for membership and then have the PGA Tour and new CEO Brian Rolapp decide on any disciplinary measures.

As for LIV, Koepka’s departure has given Bryson DeChambeau even more leverage in contract renewal negotiations. DeChambeau told Flushing It that Koepka’s exit has, at the very least, added a wrinkle.

“It’s a scenario that is very unique,” DeChambeau told Flushing It. “With Brooks leaving, it definitely throws in some unique things. And look, I mean, like I’ve said all along, I want to do this, I want to grow team golf across the globe. But it has to be right. And there’s a lot of things that have to be done in order for it to be right, you know? 

“Things have got to change. Things have got to improve. And I think [CEO Scott O’Neil] has done a fabulous job with the year that he’s had. And I think this year’s going to be even better, now he’s got the right people in place, and he can run the organization the way he wants to do this here. So it’s going to be interesting to see, especially with the new branding coming on. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. I don’t run this thing at all. I don’t really have much say, to be honest with you. Which is funny, but it is what it is, right? And, you know, I sometimes wish I had more say, but that’s life and I don’t run the organization and I trust them to do that.”

When Koepka officially parted ways with LIV, his representatives released a statement saying he made the decision to “spend more time at home with his family.” But the statement also made it clear that this seismic move was not the end of the Brooks Koepka story.

“Brooks remains passionate about the game of golf and will keep fans updated on what’s ahead,” the statement said.

What’s ahead very well could be a PGA Tour return. Rory McIlroy is in favor of a quick return, but the path forward is murky at best at the moment.

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The post 10 Ryder Cup revelations from Rory McIlroy’s latest podcast appearance appeared first on Golf.

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Rory McIlroy recently visited the “Stick to Football” podcast, where hosts Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Jill Scott, Ian Wright and Roy Keane peppered McIlroy with Ryder Cup questions for more than half of McIlroy’s hour-plus appearance. And if you thought you’ve already heard everything there was to be said about the various goings-on at Bethpage, here are 10 fresh pieces of McIlroy commentary from the group’s conversation.

Europe’s continuity

McIlroy explained to the group how important it is to get off to a good start in the team portion of the Ryder Cup, which Europe has historically been able to do. Neville wanted to know why.

“We have a lot of continuity within our team,” McIlroy said. “Same captain, same vice captains. I feel like there’s a lot of turnover on the American team year to year.

“Over the years I would say that Europe, to win the Ryder Cup, have had to be more cohesive and more together because, on paper, [the Americans] are stronger, they’re deeper, all the way down the line,” he continued. “But we outperform our baseline pretty much every time we go and play. This year, even more so.”

‘The worst feeling’

Sunday singles was uncomfortable for McIlroy, who played in the fourth match out and lost to Scottie Scheffler on the final hole. The Americans came close to mounting an historic comeback, but ultimately fell short.

“As a sportsperson, that 90 minutes where you’ve finished your match and you’re watching the other guys come in, and you have no control of the situation, it’s like the worst feeling,” McIlroy said.

Europe was hoping for a record-matching day on Sunday

Heading into Sunday singles with a big lead, McIlroy said that Europe was hoping to cruise to a record-matching winning score.

“[The Americans] beat us by a record margin in 2021,” he said. “So our thing was, all right, let’s beat them by the same score line. That was our motivation. Obviously that didn’t materialize.”

Team Europe considered keeping their partners off property

One of the Ryder Cup’s biggest storylines was the verbal abuse that the European team endured from fans onsite — particularly McIlroy and his wife, Erica. When the topic of fan behavior came up during the group’s chat, McIlroy revealed that it has been suggested that the team’s partners spend time in New York City instead of onsite at Bethpage.

“We knew going to New York that we were gonna get a lot of stick, a lot of abuse,” McIlroy said. “I was saying, like, why don’t the girls just go into New York City for the week, have a good time, we’ll see you on Sunday night? Because we knew what was going to happen.

“But in fairness to them, they were like, no, we want to be out there, we want to support you, which is really nice.

“My thing was, I just didn’t want, if one of the partners heard something that they didn’t like, that then that affected the mood in the team or in the team room, so I just didn’t want them to bring that into the team room at all,” he continued.

“And in fairness to all the wives and partners, they didn’t do that.”

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The Bethpage crowds were the worst Rory’s ever experienced

“2016, we played Ryder Cup in Minnesota, and I thought that was [the worst],” McIlroy said. “I compare this year to 2016, and like 2016 was nothing compared to some of the stuff we heard.”

Rory expected more crowd control from Keegan Bradley

“Keegan and I have talked about this,” McIlroy said. “I think you have to play into the home field advantage, absolutely. But I think, during the competition on Friday night and Saturday night, after the stuff that we heard on the course, I think there was an opportunity for either Keegan or some of the teammates to be like, you know, let’s just calm down here, let’s try to play this match in the right spirit.

“And some of them did that, but obviously Keegan had the biggest platform of the week of being the captain, and I feel like he could have said something on that Friday or Saturday night and he didn’t,” he continued. “But in fairness, Sunday was a little bit better, it seemed like the rhetoric was sort of calmed down a bit.”

Ryder Cup pressure

Is there more pressure in team events than individual tournaments? Jill Scott wanted to know.

“Absolutely,” McIlroy replied. “And I probably struggled with that my first two Ryder Cups. “I didn’t play with freedom, because I didn’t want to make a mistake or let others down.

“It honestly took me my third Ryder Cup in 2014 to actually feel like I could play like myself and not have that fear of letting the team down or, you know, because as an individual sports person, you never really have that.”

Emotional aftermath with opposing players

Is there any post-Ryder Cup beef between players?

“There is a coldness for a few weeks or months after the Ryder Cup,” McIlroy said. “But I think because it happens every two years, you know, we see each other every week, I feel like a lot of the bad stuff is forgotten. These are shared experiences and like, yeah, we have disagreements or there’s things that I probably didn’t like that some of the Americans did … I’ve had chats with them before about things, saying, look, I really didn’t like what you did there or, you know, whatever it is.

But that’s all walks of life, you know, it doesn’t just happen with people you’re playing against. You have to be upfront and honest and at least be open to communicating to people and say like, look, I don’t want anything like, bad between us here, and let’s just sort it out and move on.”

Foursomes strategy

McIlroy praised Luke Donald’s leadership, and the analytics incorporated into Europe’s team pairings.

“The most strategic format of golf is foursomes,” McIlroy said. “And if you look at our foursomes record over the last two Ryder Cups, we’ve played 16 foursomes matches, and I think it’s like 13-3 [Europe]. So we’re killing them on that.”

Hitting the wall during Sunday singles

McIlroy went 3-1-1 at Bethpage, with his Sunday singles loss to Scottie Scheffler the only blemish on his record. In retrospect, McIlroy said the mental fatigue of the week finally caught up to him.

“I felt OK, I’d say for the front nine on Sunday,” he said. “And then I just, I felt like I hit a wall. I completely lost the feeling of my swing.

“I was trying to hit, say, 5-yard fades. I was trying to hit it left or right, and the ball was coming out and curving 15 yards right to left. And I was just like, what? It hasn’t happened to me like that.

“You’re used to seeing the ball come out in a certain window, a certain shape, a certain trajectory, and this, I just, I felt like I was making a swing to hit a fade, and I just was not, and then at that point I just had to play with it.”

For more from McIlroy — including a deep-dive on his Masters win and clinching the career grand slam, check out the full episode of Stick to Football. You can listen here, or watch the episode on YouTube below.

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We’ll see about that — plus nine other things, in one sentence each and in no particular order — as we take stock of professional golf heading to 2026.

1. Is the blade putter actually dead?

A couple months after 2025 breakout star Ben Griffin called our attention to the dearth of blade putters among the PGA Tour’s putting elite (the entire top 10 in the OWGR were using mallets at one recent check), our antennae are up for signs of life going forward.

2. Will LIV get OWGR points?

World Ranking points would elevate LIV to a new level of acceptance from the golf establishment; given Brooks Koepka’s departure, the league’s format changes and continual questions about its future, that would be an important win.

3. What will Bryson DeChambeau do next?

The biggest winner of Brooks Koepka’s LIV departure may have been DeChambeau, whose leverage jumped from sky-high to intergalactic; as the prince of YouTube Golf, he could demand a mega-contract or take his future elsewhere.

4. How soon is the new PGA Tour schedule coming?

This may be the biggest question of all, as the Tour is still the center of pro golf’s universe; when will Brian Rolapp, Tiger Woods and the powers-that-be in Ponte Vedra release a schedule that (hopefully) clarifies and simplifies what it means to be a PGA Tour player, event and fan?

5. Where will the LPGA Tour find its star power?

After 2024 was the Year of Nelly and 2025 had a late turn from the Year of Everybody to Kinda the Year of Jeeno, the LPGA’s new leadership has doubled down on its product; will one of these two recent No. 1s take center stage, or will the LPGA’s next star come from elsewhere?

6. Are we about to get another Grand-Slam winner?

We’re talking about Scottie Scheffler, who’s just a Shinnecock U.S. Open win away from all four — although a Jordan Spieth PGA would be something special (as would a Phil Mickelson U.S. Open, not to mention a double-major season from the likes of Xander Schauffele, Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa, Brooks Koepka or Dustin Johnson, who each own two of ’em).

7. What’ll be Rory McIlroy’s follow-up act?

After a year in which he completed the career Grand Slam, won at iconic courses like Pebble Beach and TPC Sawgrass, led his team to an away Ryder Cup win, won his home Irish Open, went barnstorming to India and Australia and launched an investment fund, a production company and a golf league, what does McIlroy have in store for 2026 — and what story will his playing schedule tell us.

8. When — and how often — will we see Tiger Woods?

Will the now-50-year-old Woods appear as an administrator, tournament host, TGLer, Masters competitor, Champions Tour member, Golf Dad — or all of the above?

9. What’s up with the DP World Tour?

Everybody loves golf’s self-described “global tour,” which features some of golf’s great characters, some of golf’s great locales and some of golf’s stories tournaments — but it’s still not crystal-clear where the DPWT slots in alongside the PGA Tour and LIV, which compete for talent, attention, money and so much more.

10. Who’s next?

This was the year of Rory and Scottie but also of first-time-winners Tommy Fleetwood and Cameron Young plus late-bloomers Ben Griffin, J.J. Spaun, and Andrew Novak — so who’s next?

We can’t wait to find out.

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The post The Trump-D.C. muni golf controversy, explained. 9 questions and answers appeared first on Golf.

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On Wednesday afternoon, the Department of the Interior revoked the lease of the nonprofit organization responsible for renovating several of D.C.’s municipal golf courses, clearing the way for the president to take control of the courses as part of a larger effort to reshape the capital city’s public spaces.

The administration’s decision comes just weeks after the president himself floated the idea of seizing the municipal golf courses in Washington from the National Links Trust, the nonprofit tasked with restoring and maintaining them.

“If we do them, we’ll do it really beautifully,” Trump said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

The news marks the president’s most significant decision in the golf world in his second term, raising questions about the future of some of the country’s most historic municipally owned golf courses. With that significance in mind, we answer some of the most important questions below.

Explain it to me like I’m five: What’s happening?

The Trump administration has fired the people in charge of Washington D.C.’s three taxpayer-owned golf courses (Rock Creek, East Potomac and Langston Hughes).

Based on the president’s words and reporting from several outlets, we believe the White House is planning to take control of those golf courses itself. Trump, who owns more than a dozen golf courses worldwide, has stated he has big plans for D.C.’s public golf under his stewardship. He hosted longtime course design counterpart, Tom Fazio, for a two-hour lunch meeting at the White House in November 2025 — though Fazio said they did not discuss plans for D.C.’s munis.

Who did the Trump administration get rid of?

The National Links Trust, a nonprofit organization started by several golf lifers with the core mission of “positively impacting our community and changing lives through affordable and accessible golf.” The NLT won a 50-year contract to control, restore and renovate Washington D.C.’s public courses in 2020 from the first Trump White House.

How has the National Links Trust been doing?

Pretty stellar! To date, the NLT says it has more than doubled rounds played and course revenue at D.C.’s municipal courses since assuming control of the lease from the Parks Department. It has also invested more than $8.5 million in “capital improvement projects” to the courses while maintaining rock-bottom pricing for peak tee time rates.

As part of the National Links Trust’s original agreement with the Parks Department, the NLT also secured pro bono design work from some of the country’s top golf course designers, including Gil Hanse, Tom Doak and Beau Welling, to handle renovations of each of D.C.’s public courses. Work had just begun on the largest of those projects to date — a wholesale renovation of Rock Creek — when the Trump administration stepped in.

More than golf access or tax revenue, though, the NLT’s most prolific work has involved its commitment to maintaining the D.C. muni scene’s affordability and accessibility. Tee times at each of D.C.’s three muni courses have remained well below market rates in five years since the NLT took over, amounting to less than $50 per 18 holes in most instances, while course maintenance decisions have aimed to ensure upkeep costs are low. In doing so, the NLT appeared to prove it could have its cake and eat it too: steadily improving the quality of D.C.’s public golf without driving up the cost on taxpayers.

If the NLT hasn’t done much wrong, why’d the Trump administration get rid of them?

That’s a good question. The Department of the Interior pointed to $8.8 million in unpaid rent as its justification for revoking the National Links Trust lease — a categorization the NLT vehemently denies.

According to the details of the National Links Trust’s publicly available lease, rent payments from the NLT can be offset by capital improvements to the courses. And, according to the National Links Trust’s statement on the administration’s decision, the National Park Service approved rent offsets for an amount equal to the Department of the Interior’s calculation.

Is there a better explanation for the decision that the Trump administration isn’t saying?

Yes. Perhaps the simplest explanation for the administration’s decision involves President Trump himself.

The president is a fanatical golfer and an obsessed golf fan. He has also recently focused much of his attention on the physical legacy he will leave behind in the nation’s capital, renaming the Kennedy Center after himself, announcing plans to build a Triumphal Arch, and demolishing the East Wing of the White House to construct a new ballroom. (The latter of the three projects resulted in the administration’s first foray into the D.C. muni scene in 2025, when dump trucks delivered piles of soil and debris from the East Wing to East Potomac Golf Links.)

The municipal golf courses would give Trump one more place to make his mark on the shape of Washington, D.C. in his final years in office.

What is the NLT saying about the Trump administration’s decision?

Here are excerpts from the National Links Trust’s statement:

“We are fundamentally in disagreement with the administration’s characterization of NLT as being in default under the lease. We have always had a productive and cooperative working relationship with the National Park Service and have worked hand in hand on all aspects of our golf course operations and development projects.”

“At our in-progress Rock Creek Park rehabilitation project, construction has been stopped and our general contractor is in the process of demobilizing. After five years spent navigating the complex Federal permitting processes, this development is extremely disappointing for all who have supported the project.”

What is changing about the D.C. muni scene right now?

In the immediate future, not too much. The National Links Trust has signed on to steward the D.C. munis through the transition period back to federal government control. It has also halted all progress on the Rock Creek renovation project.

What might change in the future?

It’s hard to say definitively, but it seems likely that any Trump-operated changes to the muni scene could have downstream effects on the wallets of D.C. golfers. The average cost of a peak tee time across the president’s public-access golf portfolio is around $300 per 18 holes, or more than six times as much as the current tee time cost at D.C.’s three munis. Rates for the cheapest Trump public access course, Trump National in Los Angeles, start at $112.

The president has said he would lower the green fee cost for locals, even in the event of a prolific renovation project at the East Potomac Links site, which has reportedly been the subject of Trump’s D.C. muni interests. Irrespective of the eventual cost to locals, those from the National Links Trust agree their vision for D.C.’s munis — unstuffy, cost-conscious havens of great golf — is likely to be forgotten.

“When you design a course with a $250 green fee for visitor play and $50 for locals, it still has to fulfill the expectations of the golfer paying $250,” NLT founder Will Smith told GOLF’s Michael Bamberger last month.

What else is President Trump doing in golf right now?

In addition to his efforts on the muni scene, the president has taken on a significant role in pro golf in his second term in office, hosting regular meetings with the Saudi leaders behind LIV Golf and PGA Tour leadership, including one joint White House meeting in early 2025 that failed to generate any significant momentum toward peace between the two parties. Trump’s business ventures in the golf world have also benefited from his time in the White House: In 2026, the PGA Tour will return to Trump Doral for the first time in a decade, while the president’s home course in Bedminster, N.J. has been rumored as a potential LIV venue.

The return of the Doral event represents a full-circle moment for the president, who saw PGA Tour golf leave the longtime Florida host in the midst of his first successful run for office a decade earlier. In 2015, as Trump’s first presidential candidacy was generating headlines for his remarks about Mexican immigrants, Cadillac ended its sponsorship of the event held at Doral, and the Tour chose to leave Doral behind for a new venue. Then-PGA Tour chief Jay Monahan insisted that the decision was driven solely by sponsor interest, but the optics were telling: The Tour had left an event at a Trump course in favor of a tournament held in Mexico.

Now, in 2026, the PGA Tour is back at Doral … and Cadillac has signed on once again to serve as the title-sponsor of the event.

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Since the layout had recently suffered through a significant water crisis, was closed for a couple of months and had just reopened, I expected to see stressed and sun-baked turf, dead spots and ugly scars from malnutrition. Instead? Green grandeur in every direction. Wall to wall perfection. Not a blemish in sight.

The Plantation Course, located on Maui’s northwest tip, is one of Hawaii’s flagship courses; one of the top public venues in not just the state, but the entire country; a longtime staple to host and kickoff the PGA Tour’s January schedule with The Sentry (formerly the Tournament of Champions).

The stunning seaside course, which opened in 1992, is also considered an early masterpiece by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and the layout that really kickstarted the career of, arguably, the greatest architectural duo of all time. Although famous for its closing run — which features a diabolical downhill par-4 followed by a stunning and reachable 660-yard par-5 — the Plantation Course is peppered with wild and one-of-a-kind golf holes that simply could not be replicated elsewhere.

So, given its status and history, naturally, the golf world was stunned when the PGA Tour announced the cancelation of the 2026 Sentry at the Plantation Course (scheduled for Jan. 8-11) due to drought conditions and logistical challenges. And even more shocking were the images that began to emerge of a brown and water-starved course that looked to be on the verge of an eternal exit.

But that was September. Come mid-December, when I teed it up here, and a different tune was being sung. The dirge has turned to dancing. Hula, that is.

“I’m still in awe at how our agronomy team was able to pull off The Plantation Course recovery,” says Kevin Kammien, a senior marketing manager at Kapalua Resort. “The turf was walking that fine line between life and death.”

The problems at the Troon-managed Kapalua Resort began when the Maui Land & Pineapple Company, which owns the water rights in the area, basically shut off the taps to the golf resort in September. (A lawsuit between the parties is still unresolved.) Partial water flow — still 60 percent restricted — has since been restored, but not enough to keep both of the courses at the resort (Plantation and Bay) operating at an acceptable standard. A decision had to be made.

“We had to shift all of our water allotment from The Bay Course to The Plantation Course or we certainly would have lost both courses,” says Kammien. “No one on staff or other industry experts knew whether Plantation would recover or not until we tried. There is no manual for this type of recovery. Our team needed to rely on their vast experience and make numerous decisions on the fly as we progressed with this ambitious recovery plan.”

Kammien said they even lost the 1st and 8th greens on the Plantation Course and had to repropagate them with thousands of plugs from their nursery. And while the Bay Course remains closed, he said conditions on the Plantation Course are “fantastic.”

Unquestionably, the drought-tolerant Celebration bermudagrass (on tees, fairways and rough) and TifEagle bermudagrass (greens) also proved to be a major factor in the recovery.

“We converted to these grasses in 2019,” says Kammien. “And during the past six years they established deep root systems. These strains really proved their worth, especially during the period of 100 percent water restrictions.”

While the durability of the turf was absolutely critical in Plantation’s recovery, their scientific-grade weather stations, soil moisture meters and crop sensors that have the ability to adjust precipitation rates for each individual head on the property also contributed significantly.

And, of course, the key people behind the entire project — director of agronomy Andrew Rebman and superintendent Bryan Pierce — have done a stellar job. Interestingly, during the closure, the entire turf team remained on staff (43 people) and many projects — such as cart path renovations, new guard rails throughout, brush removal and extensive tree trimming — were enhanced.

But what I quickly noticed during my recent round (Dec. 15, 2025), besides the uniformity and consistency of the turf, was the absence of ball marks, divots and other wear marks from play. Clearly, even though the course did reopen in mid-November, very few people have played. (The day I played, approximately 50 golfers were booked on the tee sheet; $475 per player.)

As it was my maiden voyage around The Plantation Course, I was also keen to experience the fabulous finish. I was tickled pink to run a ball way down the hill on the 18th and give the green a go in two. No birdie, but, hey, given how much fun I was having — and the turnaround of these course conditions — I felt like hula dancing all the way around anyway.

Andrew Penner is a freelance writer and photographer based in Calgary, Alberta. You can follow him on Instagram at @andrewpennerphotography.

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The decisions, however, are at least partly related, because LIV Golf has its eyes set on receiving world ranking points now more than ever. And the OWGR continues warming to that prospect. 

“Since the end of June, the Governing Board has endeavored to thoroughly evaluate the LIV Golf application,” Trevor Immelman, OWGR chairman, said in a press release. “We remain committed to the OWGR’s mission, which requires honoring the meritocracy woven into the professional game. 

“As such, discussions have been regular and remain ongoing. To be clear, progress has been made, but there is no decision to share at this time. We will continue to work closely with LIV Golf as it continues to evolve to ensure its application is handled with fairness, integrity and consistency, as stated previously.”

And while that may mean LIV starts its 2026 year with no change to its point status, that “progress” is not insignificant. The league decided during this offseason to shift its events to 72 holes, bringing it in alignment with the vast majority of pro tours that receive OWGR points. It has also expanded access to its $25 million-events. 

LIV’s Dec. 30 announcement focused on the addition of three extra “wild card” slots in its fields, all coming from next month’s LIV Golf Promotions event held in Florida. Eighty competitors will be narrowed to three, each of whom will earn a full season of starts, playing exclusively for themselves, not as members of a LIV franchise. 

While the list of names in the Promotions field is modest, the existence of those pathways onto the once-very-closed circuit signals another way in which LIV is leaning in the OWGR’s direction. One of the main tenets of the OWGR’s meritocratic policies is ensuring that the tours it awards points to have pathways for golfers worldwide.

Will it be enough for LIV to receive OWGR points soon? The league spent much of 2025 believing it would receive points by year-end, which it will not. That said, the OWGR has shown itself capable of change, as traditional and slow-to-adjust as it may be. On Tuesday morning it announced that scheduled 54-hole tournaments will receive 75% of the world ranking points awarded to 72-hole events, and that any event shortened to 54 holes or 36 holes — from an originally intended 72 — will receive 75% and 50% of the original amount of points. 

This move will protect the ranking from over-rewarding events cut short by weather, for example, like when Wyndham Clark’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am ended after 54 holes. Clark received the full amount of points that he would have normally received during a 72-hole event at Pebble Beach, but would not under the revised policy.

The adjustment, of course, can be viewed independently of LIV Golf, but look no further than the second press release quote from Immelman:

“In its extensive review of Ranking, the Governing Board determined that events comprised of less than 72 holes needed to be addressed.” 

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MORE “TIGER @ 50” COVERAGE: How much is Tiger actually worth to golf? | Will Tiger tee it up on the PGA Tour Champions? | Why Tiger’s 2000 bag still feels untouchable | Explaining Tiger’s famed “gate drill” | Tiger stats you’ve never heard | Was this the end of Woods’s career? | The 1 part of Woods’s legacy we’re waiting to understand | Tiger’s hidden gear hack

***

If you have invested any emotion in Tiger Woods, and millions of us have, you know that Butch Harmon plays a major role in the movie that is Tiger’s sui generis life. Harmon was Woods’s swing coach when Tiger was (by far) the best amateur golfer in the world and later when Tiger was (by far) the best professional golfer in the world. Tiger turned 50 on Dec. 30. Butch is 82. You’re whatever you are. Nobody’s getting younger here, though whole industries are devoted to eluding that fact of life. Tiger in the gym is a piece of this. Nothing about his physique hints at middle age. A neat trick and a lot of work. But every year he has a birthday and this year is no exception. He was born in 1975. Jerry Ford was president.

Butch Harmon’s closest friend is a man named Sam Reeves. Anybody who knows Sam — Fred Couples; various coastal caddies; Sam’s wife and their four daughters — will tell you that Sam is an uncommonly insightful person. Tiger has been with Sam, here and there and over the years. Sam played in one U.S. Amateur — and one validating U.S. Senior Am — and can break his age regularly. He’s 91, and he swears by Butch, as swing instructor and man. 

When Sam turned 60, newly retired from a long career in the cotton business, he started to see his life in three distinct chapters. His first three decades, he realized, were his preparation years. In his next 30 he was implementing what he had learned in the first 30. Then came 60, 60 on out, and the chance to validate all he had learned, for his own benefit and for those he knew and loved. Validate, and share. Preparation; implementation; validation.

I know, I know: This is getting heavy, here on the eve of New Year’s Eve. I should probably point out that Sam has a mile-wide fun streak. As each of his daughters married, the new sons-in-law got the same tip from Sam: “Go see Butch.” For Sam, as well as for Butch, playfulness is an elemental part of life. Elite players have always liked taking lessons from Butch for his swing insights — and his stories.

In your validation years (as I have processed the concept), you’re sorting through your life experiences while adding to them. You know a thing or two because you’ve seen a thing or two. You’re picking through the pile, looking for keepers, for your own benefit and to benefit others, too.

This timeline is nothing like one-size-fits-all. When you’re talking about a prodigy — a Leonard Bernstein, a Pablo Picasso, a Tiger Woods — timeline adjustments are especially necessary.

Tiger completed his preparation years by 20 and turned pro. (He was 21 when he won his first Masters by 12.) His second act, his implementation years, are impossible to summarize in a tidy way. He was a study in greatness; he was an inspiration; he was a cautionary tale. From 20 to 45, despite long stretches on the IR list, he won like nobody’s won in golf before: 82 PGA Tour wins, 15 of them majors. He implemented, all right. Ask Vijay, Davis, Ernie, Phil. For a long while there, Tiger Woods was implementing like a man on fire. He was 43 when he won his fifth Masters and his 15th major.

You could say that Tiger’s validation years began at age 45, and not at a birthday party. On a still Tuesday morning in February 2021, in a semi-rural section of sprawling Los Angeles County, Tiger Woods, driving alone in a loaner SUV, inexplicably drove across a raised median on a four-lane, 45-mile-per-hour road, across two empty lanes and down a hill, the gas pedal (per the sheriff’s report) virtually floored. The vehicle’s black box recorded his speed at approximately 80 miles an hour until his battleax SUV was stopped by a tree. He was wearing a seat belt and the air bag functioned. Lucky man. He owes his life (in anybody’s telling, including Tiger’s) to the EMTs and medical professionals who tended to him, at the scene and in the coming weeks, along with Tiger’s own will and whatever other grace you may want to add to this harrowing scene.

As a golfer — the golfer we knew — Tiger’s run was over. A body, even his, can withstand only so much. In the 20 majors held since that crash, Woods did not play on 12 occasions, withdrew from two without finishing, missed four cuts and had two near-the-bottom finishes. His play in tournament golf is no longer anything like his highest priority. It can’t be.

But Woods, a single father dating Vanessa Trump, has watched his teenage daughter, Sam, play innumerable minutes of high school soccer. He has watched his teenage son, Charlie, play innumerable shots, in golf tournaments and outside them. He has attended to a thousand details related to Tiger Woods learning centers and various golf courses bearing his stamp, both public and private. He has devoted uncountable hours in an effort to ensure that the sports organization that fueled his childhood dreams and defined his adult life — the follow-the-sun pro golf circuit — has a future that is nearly as rich as its Hogan-Palmer-Nicklaus past. The Tour. 

***

WOODS’S VALIDATION YEARS, HIS THIRD ACT, is a work in progress. Two young people, Sam and Charlie Woods, know best the life lessons that come from being Tiger Woods. They know what he shares and why he shares it. Few others could say the same. We all know that Tiger runs private. His choice, of course. Charlie is a junior in high school and Sam a freshman at Stanford, where Tiger went to school for two years. Years ago, Woods told the interviewer Charlie Rose he regretted not staying at Stanford longer. Interesting. Maybe, here on out, he’ll share more. 

Woods made the biggest decision of his life in a Los Angeles hospital, late winter ’21, a decision shaped by the core trait of his first 20 years (the preparation years) and the next 25 (the implementation years): He would not quit. If the man stands for any one thing, that’s it. He does not quit. (His cuts-made record serves as testimony.) In mid-March 2021, just after Justin Thomas had won the Players Championship, Erica Herman (then Tiger’s girlfriend) and Joe LaCava (then his underworked caddie) flew to Los Angeles, went to a hospital, collected one of the most famous people in the world and brought him home to South Florida. Five years ago, almost. His validation years were underway.

And now Tiger’s 50.

A nice round number, and a meaningful one for any tournament golfer with an eye on the Champions tour, the pro circuit for the 50-and-over crowd. A half-decade into his validation years, Tiger Woods unwrapped a birthday gift: by dint of his playing record and his birth certificate, in 2026 he can play in his first Senior PGA Championship, his first U.S. Senior Open, his first Senior British Open, along with any other senior event he decides to play in. 

He’s been aware of those three senior majors for years. Woods, a golf-history buff, broadly knows what Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino (to cite three players he genuinely admires) did in them. He knows what his buddy Mark O’Meara was doing, week in and week out, in his 17-year career on the senior tour. Tiger’s admiration for Bernhard Langer, the greatest of all senior players, is not a state secret. When Langer and his son defeated Woods and his son in a playoff at last year’s PNC Championship, Woods said something like, “Bernhard? You’re the best. You’re the best, dude. Awesome.” In defeat! When Woods won the 2019 Masters, the last person he shook hands with before entering the clubhouse and the scorer’s room was Langer. They did not chest bump or engage in a joint primal scream or do any other stupid thing. They shared a few meaningful words and a heartfelt handshake. Just two men who know — craftsman to craftsman, digger to digger, lifer to lifer — how hard it all is. It was beautiful.

The guess here is that Woods will play the three senior majors in 2026 if his body allows him to, and if he can’t, over the next decade he’ll play in as many as he can. Not to pad his record but for a reason far more basic. Tiger Woods is a competitive golfer. Competitive golf is like oxygen to him. Also, his ultimate escape.

He’s not beating Rory and Bryson and Scottie on the world’s hardest courses anymore. But defeating Stewart Cink and Ernie Els and Padraig Harrington on serious courses with handsome hardware waiting in the wings, the trophies bearing the names of legends? Woods will be all in. He once said (again, to Charlie Rose) that winning by one was good “but it’s a lot better if you win by five or six.” Demoralize the competition for next time. That instinct doesn’t just shrivel up and die. As a golfer, Woods was always an assassin.

Hogan was different. Hogan was obsessively looking to perfect the art of striking a golf ball, a grail all its own. Palmer lived for the adulation of strangers, which kept him playing and playing. Woods is most like Nicklaus. Nicklaus needed to compete and Woods needs to compete, probably even more than Big Jack ever did. Competing meaningfully in regular majors is asking too much of Woods. Competing in senior majors is not. If you want to see Tiger Woods playing for keeps, there will be opportunities, and there will be blood. That’s how Tiger rolls. He leaves pools of sweat, and puddles of blood. It was never pretty. Heavyweight title fights never are.

Nicklaus at tournament press conferences, through his 50s, 60s, 70s and into his 80s, has offered repeated opportunities to learn something about golf and really about life. Trevino, the same. You could say both have been taking their validation years seriously, but the more basic thing is that, at some point, you can’t help yourself. You know a thing or two and you want to share. It would be most excellent, to hear Tiger Woods just relax, hang out and . . . pontificate. Maybe that’s coming. 

I can’t imagine Woods ever being a Ryder Cup captain. Too many meetings for too little reward. But Tiger as a Walker Cup captain? Especially if Charlie were even remotely in the running to make his team? Yes. Why not? Woods (I think) would relish the chance to lead a group of hot-shot American kids (and Stewart Hagestad) over the course of one intense week at a great course and club. The 2032 Walker Cup is at Oakmont.

***

WHAT ELSE? WHAT ELSE, FOR TIGER, 50 on out? Arnold Palmer had his invitational at his course. Jack Nicklaus has his, at his. Tiger is already the host of the Genesis Invitational, the old and semi-sacred L.A. Open at the old and semi-sacred Riviera Country Club. Tiger will want more. (More is in his DNA.) His tournament on his course. Maybe he’ll buy a piece of Riviera, where he played his first PGA Tour event, as a 16-year-old amateur, an hour by car from his childhood home, traveling predawn before the northbound 405 roared to life. Nicklaus and Palmer created tournaments, courses and clubs in their own images. Woods will want to do the same. Your validation years are loaded with opportunity, in ways both modest and grand. 

Like Nicklaus and Palmer, Woods will build courses. He’s built a few already. He has two projects that will be available for all to see and sample in the new year, at the Cobbs Creek golf course in Philadelphia and at The Patch in Augusta, Ga. Each will have a Tiger Woods short course, ideal for beginners, attached to a municipal course where, and this is not a coincidence, Black golfers have left a vital mark. (Charlie Sifford, to cite one prime example at Cobbs; Jim Dent and dozens of Augusta National and Augusta Country Club caddies at The Patch.) There’s already a par-3 course designed by Woods next to the driving range at Pebble Beach. There will be driving ranges at The Patch and Cobbs Creek, too. But also Tiger Woods learning centers, with labs and classrooms and teachers and tutors. Tiger’s father, Earl Woods, was one of 10 kids. He graduated from Kansas State, where he had been an ROTC student and a starting catcher on the baseball team, at 21. (His preparation years were over.) His education changed the course of his life, and Earl Woods preached the benefits of stay-in-school all through his own validation years. He was a piece of work and loaded with insights. 

This is from the Tiger Woods Foundation website, and it may read like a boilerplate press release, but it actually packs a lot of punch: “Built on Tiger’s belief in the power of education, the TGR Foundation is making a positive impact on the lives of students from under-resourced communities. We have served more than 217,000 students through our education programs and TGR Learning Labs, providing them with the knowledge, confidence and tools needed to discover their passions and unleash their potential.” The kids here are climbing a ladder leaning on a tree of life. Earl and Tiger would both say that.

Tiger will try to make piles of money, here on out, and maybe he will. Forbes reported this year that Michael Jordan is worth $3.8 billion. It put Woods’s wealth at $1.3 billion. (Those numbers alone, even with their built-in guess work, tell you something about the chasm between basketball as a global sport and golf as its shy cousin on the world’s sporting stage.) A golfer in his validation years who wants to make money has to sell and Woods is trying to sell, even though he’s by no means a natural at it. He has, among other enterprises, a clothing line, Sun Day Red. You want an old-timey glorified windbreaker like the ones baseball managers used to wear at spring training? Tiger will sell you one, for $350. It’s in his 1992 Collection.

That’s the year he played in the L.A. Open for the first time. Fred Couples won that year, in a playoff over Davis Love. Tiger missed the cut. He was still in his preparation years. This was the old Tour, glorified fundraiser car washes featuring Huey Lewis at Wednesday pro-ams and Nick Price on Sunday afternoons. For some decades, starting in the late 1990s, Davis was a sort of tutor for Tiger on the secret handshake of Establishment Golf. Davis and Tiger are all in on the PGA Tour and always have been. Fred, too. Fred and Tiger hang at every opportunity. 

Everybody in Tiger’s circle was and is all-in on the Tour. His longtime agent, Mark Steinberg. Tiger’s buddies Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas. The trainers and physios and instructors in Tiger’s life, they’re all all-Tour, all the time. Woods is on the PGA Tour policy board. He’s the chairman of the Tour’s Future Competition Committee. He’s on the Tour’s Enterprises Board, the for-profit arm of the mothership. You know the Tour’s logo, a white silhouette of a swinging golfer with a Reverse C finish? You can imagine it as the wallpaper theme in his Jupiter Island kitchen. Tiger probably hates that C finish. Bad for the back. But it looked super-cool on Tom Weiskopf. Weiskopf played and Tiger watched. The golf was on ABC or CBS or NBC.

The PGA Tour is one of the true constants in Tiger’s life. He watched it, in person and on TV, all through his preparation years. “Eighty-two PGA Tour wins” is a perfect shorthand summary of his implementation years. All through those 25 years he showed us a level of excellence and domination we had never seen before. We saw the costs of his drive, too. Not in an intimate way, not the way his kids and his mother and his former wife did. But we saw more than enough.

The hydrant thing in 2009; the roadside DUI in 2017; the smashed Genesis SUV in 2021. Various episodes of rulebook weirdness in 2013. (He could have dropped out of the 2013 Masters after signing an incorrect Friday scorecard; he took a drop en route to winning the Players that was, to my eye, off by a football field; at a September tournament in Chicago, in the woods and with no spectators in sight, he should have seen his ball’s slight movement as he attempted to move a twig. Slugger White had to call the penalty when Woods would not call it on himself.) For a long stretch there, I saw Tiger Woods as a desperate man. I wondered about the underlying issue behind his chip yips in 2014 and 2015. He’s had some tough times on the road to 50. Who among us, done pushing 50, would not say the same? Scottie Scheffler has 21 years to go. A lot will happen. He’s in the early stages of implementation, his Act II.

***

AND HERE’S TIGER IN ACT III, with a new benefit just coming online, the standing invitation to play senior tour golf. Other than that, 50 is not the milestone that the birthday-card industry would have you believe. “50 IS THE NEW 40!” Nope. This is older and truer: 40 is the old age of youth; 50 is the youth of old age. That’s Victor Hugo, 19th-century French writer, who lived to the ripe age of 83. Ben Hogan, 20th-century American golfer, made it to 84. Given the many unfiltered Chesterfields he smoked, the many adult beverages he drank and the one demon Greyhound bus that plowed into his Cadillac, Hogan led a surprisingly long life. He died in 1997. All these years later, Hogan still looms over golf and informs any serious consideration of the life and times of Tiger Woods. (The dirt, the dirt, the dirt.) Butch Harmon will tell you that Greg Norman was the hardest-working golfer he ever taught and the best golfer he ever taught until Tiger came around and blew by Norman in both categories.

Maybe you were around for those few thrilling seconds when Tiger played that pitch shot from over the 16th green, Sunday at Augusta, at the 2005 Masters. Those few seconds when his Nike golf ball trickled on down the green’s famous slope, bound for the hole for several seconds before sitting on the lip for an eyeblink until the inky weight of its logo gave it the final nudge it needed to go four inches under. For a long, delicious moment there, nobody could breathe. Not Tiger, not Stevie beside him. Not Tiger’s playing partner and opponent, Chris DiMarco. Not Verne, in the booth. Not you, not I. Tiger was 30. Every single eye was on one of two things, there at 16: Tiger’s ball, or Tiger his own self. For Tiger Woods, the artist who created that moment, nothing again will ever be that intense, that exciting, that everything. Not in his golfing life. That’s OK. That’s how it goes: X moves out, Y moves in, the beat goes on.

Happy birthday, Tiger. Here’s to your future. Pack shades. You’re gonna need ’em.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.

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