Scottie Scheffler was again in motion in Texas this week.
Getty Pictures
Welcome again to the Monday End, the place we’re nonetheless attempting to determine if “Davis Riley” has two first names or two final names. To the information!
GOLF STUFF I LIKE
Going again to what works.
As I attempted to make sense of Davis Riley‘s Sunday steamroll over the remainder of a gifted PGA Tour discipline, one element stood out: He’d just lately reunited along with his former swing coach Jeff Smith.
“We haven’t re-invented the wheel or accomplished something totally different,” Riley mentioned after a Friday 64. “I really feel like I’m in a superb head house and cozy there and I really feel like simplicity has been the important thing for me.”
Riley made issues look easy on the weekend, significantly on Sunday; whereas most of his competitors struggled with gusty circumstances and a agency golf course, the gifted Alabama grad plotted his method by a difficult golf course, making a birdie for each bogey and cruising to a five-shot victory.
What’s attention-grabbing about Riley returning to an outdated coach and discovering success? The truth that we’ve just lately heard different prime execs say the identical factor.
Take Collin Morikawa. Earlier than the Masters he talked about being “in transition”; he’d break up along with his lifelong swing coach Rick Sessinghaus within the fall however scuffled within the months that adopted. Forward of the Masters he obtained on the cellphone with Sessinghaus a pair instances once more. Then he completed T3.
Extra good outcomes adopted as they formalized their relationship once more. Ninth on the RBC Heritage. Tied for sixteenth on the Wells Fargo. Then back-to-back fourth-place outcomes on the PGA Championship and the Charles Schwab Problem. One thing is working.
“Significantly better,” Morikawa mentioned post-round on Sunday, requested about his psychological house now in contrast with the beginning of the yr. “I owe plenty of that to Rick. Clearly becoming a member of again up with him, it’s been superior. It’s not like we’ve accomplished something new, it’s simply with the ability to speak.”
Then take Viktor Hovland. He completed 2023 because the FedEx Cup champ and the most well liked golfer on the planet however modified coaches, modified philosophies and misplaced his method — till he reunited with Joe Mayo, the person who’d helped rebuild his quick recreation, the week earlier than the PGA Championship. Then he completed third.
Viktor Hovland made a mysterious teaching change. Now he’s going again
“I assumed this was doubtlessly going to be a bit little bit of a challenge and possibly take six, eight weeks earlier than I’d see type of instant enchancment,” Hovland mentioned. As a substitute he contended for the win all of Sunday. “Yeah, that was type of best-case state of affairs proper there.”
There was additionally Rory McIlroy’s journey to Las Vegas to see Butch Harmon, who at all times appears to set him straight with the identical recommendation.
“The work I did with him wasn’t an incredible quantity of adjusting what he did, it was his perspective and the way in which he performed sure pictures,” Harmon mentioned on the Son of a Butch podcast. From “150 yards and in he made a full swing like he was hitting a driver and I wished him to make extra 3 quarter swings and chop the observe by off a bit.”
McIlroy received the Zurich Traditional with Shane Lowry and ran away from the sphere on the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hole earlier than a T12 on the PGA Championship. His swing appears to be working, too.
It’s straightforward to cherry-pick the teaching adjustments of winners and contenders, after all. If teaching adjustments don’t work out we frequently wouldn’t even hear a lot about them. So it’s powerful to parse out correlation or causation in any significant method. However there’s one thing satisfying about prime golfers shedding their method, returning to one thing important and discovering success. It was in there all alongside.
Tapping into your previous to higher put together in your current? That’s golf stuff I like.
WINNERS
Who received the week?
Davis Riley received the Charles Schwab Problem by 5; it was his first particular person PGA Tour victory, he strikes from No. 250 to No. 78 on the earth and he locks up PGA Tour standing for years to come back.
Richard Bland received the Senior PGA Championship in his first-ever senior tour begin; it was a very intriguing victory given Bland’s standing on LIV. He received’t be eligible for the PGA Tour Champions however will proceed teeing it up for the Cleeks the remainder of the season.
Nacho Elvira received the Soudal Open in Belgium, holding off three golfers by a single shot — together with one other LIV participant in Belgian native Thomas Pieters — to assert the second DP World Tour victory of his profession.
Harry Higgs received in unbelievable vogue for the second consecutive week on the Korn Ferry Tour, draining a 37-footer for eagle on the second playoff gap to basically assure he’ll be again on the PGA Tour subsequent season. he adopted the win with a touching speech honoring Grayson Murray, whose tragic dying hung over the golf world this weekend.
NOT-WINNERS
Not everyone can win every little thing.
Scottie Scheffler made his worst single-hole rating in 9 months on Thursday — a triple-bogey 6 that despatched him to three over par — however he rebounded and performed his method into the ultimate group on Sunday, the place he was outgunned by Riley however nonetheless completed T2.
“I battled again very properly on Friday and Saturday. So far as at this time goes, I simply wasn’t capable of put as a lot stress as I’d have hoped to placed on Davis early within the spherical and he simply type of cruised all day,” Scheffler mentioned Sunday. “He performed nice golf.”
Keegan Bradley completed T2 alongside Scheffler and was delighted along with his gritty remaining spherical, calling it “my greatest spherical of the yr, in all probability.” He’s as much as No. 16 on the earth, mentioned he’s wanting ahead to what he known as mainly back-to-back U.S. Opens with Memorial adopted by Pinehurst and feels usually inspired staring down the summer season season.
“I’m enjoying good golf proper now. I had a tricky stretch there within the Florida swing, and now I really feel like I’m again enjoying the way in which I ought to play.”
Morikawa’s fourth-place end result has him chomping on the bit.
It’s so much higher than the place it was at the start of the yr, and we’re getting there, I simply — clearly you need it sooner reasonably than later, and with two extra majors to go, you realize, I actually need it.
And Kevin Kisner confirmed some promise by three rounds, making the lower and sitting T32 earlier than a Sunday 79 despatched him to T65. Nonetheless, it was considered one of his extra promising showings of the previous yr as he appears to regain kind.
SHORT HITTERS
5 intriguing tales, in short.
1. The Louisville PD launched movies of the moments round Scottie Scheffler’s arrest, yielding few new particulars however leaving me believing two issues are true: First, the video misses a key second within the incident the place Scheffler and the arresting officer first make contact. However second, until there’s one thing actually dramatic that occurred in these few off-camera moments, what’re we nonetheless doing dragging this case ahead? Certainly there are higher makes use of of the judicial system than a trumped-up felony cost based mostly on a misunderstanding. No one wins by this shifting ahead.
2. Mark Flaherty turned the newest member of the PGA Tour’s Coverage Board to step down and did so at an odd time: Sunday night time of the PGA Championship. In his resignation letter he thanked Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and the board chairman Ed Herlihy however, notably, no one else on the board.
3. The brains (and names) behind Bandon Dunes are increasing south: The Keiser household introduced 36-hole resort Wild Spring Dunes will function one course by famed architect Tom Doak and one other by the legendary group of Invoice Coore and Ben Crenshaw.
4. Jim Nantz is constructing one other yard golf gap, this time replicating the inexperienced of Augusta Nationwide’s par-5 thirteenth — and he’s turning a patio on his home right into a tee field.
5. Jon Rahm completed No. 2 on Forbes’ checklist of highest-paid athletes, incomes an estimated $218 million thanks to an enormous signing bonus from his signing with LIV Golf. Cristiano Ronaldo — additionally enjoying for a Saudi sports activities league — topped the checklist at $260 million. Rory McIlroy (nineteenth, $80.1 million whole), Tiger Woods (twenty third, $67.2 million), Scottie Scheffler (twenty ninth, $59.2 million) and Cameron Smith (forty third, $48 million) additionally cracked the highest 50.
ONE SWING THOUGHT
From the U.S. Open champ.
Preventing a slice on the course? Wyndham Clark has a tip for you: Tee up your wedges on the vary. Attempt to hit attracts, which is a bit simpler to do with the ball’s teed up. That’ll assist zero you out.
“I are usually steep,” Clark mentioned on our newest episode of Warming Up. “So beneath stress … I begin swinging actually left, huge divots, swipey cuts. And so what I’m attempting to do right here is neutralize that and do the alternative so once I get into competitors [my ball flight] is the place I would like it to be.”
Right here’s the remainder:
ONE BIG QUESTION
Will we’ve any PIF-PGA Tour readability by June sixth?
The one-year anniversary of the framework settlement quick approaches. So … now what?
We mentioned this in Tour Confidential, too, however what indications do we’ve {that a} deal is shut? Rory McIlroy mentioned there’s been no progress made. Tiger Woods mentioned there’s a protracted approach to go and that the scenario is fluid. Jimmy Dunne was so pissed off with the shortage of progress that he stepped down from the board. Mark Flaherty stepped down, too. Jordan Spieth known as tales of stalled talks a “false narrative,” which can be true, however Spieth additionally mentioned earlier this yr that he’s okay if a deal doesn’t get accomplished immediately. Immediacy doesn’t appear to be a precedence.
So is a deal shut? It doesn’t look like it. What appears extra probably is that no one is aware of what’s going to occur. Within the occasion of some type of reconciliation between excursions, it’s nonetheless up within the air about what would occur to LIV. And with out some type of reconciliation, what’s the purpose of any of this? Within the meantime, Spieth and his friends are centered on not making a foul deal. That’s precedence No. 1: not ceding management to an unpredictable investor. Perhaps there’s an in-between stopgap resolution right here the place they safe a PIF funding for the PGA Tour with out significant change within the skilled golf panorama. But when I’m a golf fan rooting for LIV stars to return to the PGA Tour by the top of this season or subsequent? I’m not holding my breath.
ONE THING TO WATCH
Patrick Reed tells his aspect of the story.
Some pointless context: We launched this Patrick Reed interview across the Masters but it surely was such a busy time that we by no means printed the condensed Q&A model that ran within the journal. However now? That’s reside, too!
What’s within the interview? I wished to ask Reed about his background and about his breakthrough moments and about his fame — each good and unhealthy, from Captain America to guidelines controversies to lawsuits and extra — and whether or not it’s deserved. Right here’s that full sitdown:
NEWS FROM SEATTLE
Monday End HQ.
Seattle has been within the {golfing} information left and proper. Bryson DeChambeau, coming off a terrific runner-up end on the PGA, credited a lot of his latest success to Washingtonian caddie Greg Bodine. RJ Manke simply Monday-qualified into final week’s Korn Ferry Tour occasion and completed inside the highest 20. Max Herendeen, repping the Pacific Northwest on the College of Illinois, begins Monday in prime place on the NCAA Championships — and he’s group’s main with one spherical to play. Plus there’s a significant coming to city in lower than a month!
REFLECTIONS ON GRAYSON MURRAY
Gone too quickly.
It was touching to learn and listen to tributes after the tragic lack of Grayson Murray, who died Saturday on the age of 30. A press release from his household confirmed that Murray had taken his personal life. “Life wasn’t at all times straightforward for Grayson,” the assertion learn. “We all know he rests peacefully now.”
I’ve been struggling to wrap my head round of Murray’s sudden loss and it was clear his friends had been, too; from Scheffler to Bradley to Webb Simpson and extra they described the eeriness of seeing him someday and figuring out he was gone the subsequent, whereas his identify nonetheless sat on a placard within the locker room and on the underside of the leaderboard. There’s no making sense of it, not likely. However the perfect factor I learn this weekend was a strong essay by Gary Williams, who displays on his personal journey with alcoholism, his bond with Murray and the harmful powers of habit — crafty, baffling, highly effective — that at all times lurk.
You’ll be able to learn that right here.
Be nicely, friends. We’ll see you subsequent week.
Dylan welcomes your feedback at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
