News

GolfWRX Morning 9: Carner, 79, shoots her age at USSWO | The “problem” with Hogan | Praising slow greens

Published

8 years ago

Jul 13, 2018

Good morning, GolfWRX members. As most of you are signed up for our newsletters, you likely already know that I’ve been sending this little Morning 9 roundup of nine items of note.

In case you’ve missed it, or you prefer to read on site rather than in your email, we’re including it here. Check out today’s Morning 9 below.

If you’re not signed up for our newsletters, you can subscribe here.

By Ben Alberstadt (ben.alberstadt@golfwrx.com)

July 13, 2018

Good Friday morning, golf fans. PSA: It’s Friday the 13th, for what that may or may not be worth to you.

1. JoAnne Carner shoots her age at USSWO

How can this not be today’s No. 1 story? Especially after the USGA took 79-year-old JoAnne Carner’s wedge of 30 years out of her hands the day before the tournament started.

Heck the woman said she doesn’t even walk golf courses anymore and she’s walking her fourth round this week. She’s almost 80! She’s tied for 50th at the U.S. Senior Women’s Open! Only five women were under par Thursday!

And “Big Mama” wasn’t even happy with her round: “I hit some good shots, but I hit some awful shots, really,” Carner said. “I had some 6- and 7-irons into the greens and just really hit awful shots. One went in the water. I was fighting it all the way.”

Cheers to you!

2. Luke List leads after 1 in Scotland, Fowler 1 back

AP Report…”American golfer Luke List equaled the Gullane course record with a 7-under-par 63 to start the Scottish Open on Thursday. List moved into the lead with his ninth birdie on the 15th hole and held it to finish the round ahead by one stroke.”

“He was followed by five players in a tie for second; Rickie Fowler, Lee Westwood, Robert Rock, Scott Fernandez of Spain, and Jens Dantorp of Sweden….Masters champion Patrick Reed was part of an eight-strong group a shot further back following a 65, with Danny Willett continuing his resurgence with a 66, and Olympic champion Justin Rose returning a 67.”

Phil Mickelson opened with an even par 70. He saved his best work for media center.

3. Your first ever U.S. Senior Women’s Open leader is…

Golf Channel’s Randall Mell sets the scene…”Hall of Famer Nancy Lopez couldn’t play after undergoing knee replacement surgery, but she was on the first tee at day’s start. She introduced players as the ceremonial starter.”

Pause. How cool is that?

“Hollis Stacy, whose eight USGA titles include three U.S. Women’s Open titles and three U.S. Girls’ Junior titles, savored starting in the first group with Carner and Sandra Palmer. “It means a lot, because as I’ve said all along, the USGA has been the custodians of golf,” Stacy said. “They’ve done a great job, and they want to do what’s right. Having a Senior Women’s Open is the right thing to do, and they did it in such a first-class way, coming to Chicago Golf Club and making it first class.”

“Laura Davies and Juli Inkster, favorites to win the event, moved into early contention, but Elaine Crosby topped the leaderboard at day’s end….A two-time LPGA winner, Crosby opened with a 3-under-par 70. She plays the LPGA Legends Tour, but she had to play her way into the U.S. Senior Women’s Open. She earned a spot in one of the 17 sectional qualifiers staged around the country.”

4. In praise of slow greens, featuring Rickie Fowler

Interesting thoughts from Rickie Fowler, conveyed by Geoff Shackelford (who certainly has skin in the game)

“While Gullane is playing firm and fast tee-to-fringe, the greens themselves are kept much slower than the typical European Tour course due to the possibility of high winds. Fowler enjoys the challenge of slower greens and even suggested they expose mis-hit putts more than fast surfaces.”

“”I think it’s kind of nice because (you) actually get to hit the putt, you’re not just trying to hit it to a spot and letting it work to the hole unless you have a downhill, downwind putt,” he said. Fowler, who played North Berwick on Monday, enjoys the challenge of greens in nine to ten Stimpmeter-speed range. Especially when the wind blows.”

‘”You have to use your imagination as far as creativity and trying to judge how much the wind will affect it,” he said. “At the end of the day, you just have to hit solid putts.”‘

“Slower greens may accentuate a mis-hit putt more,” he said. “Whereas if you have a downhill putt in the States you kind of just have to hit it to get it going. Here, you mis-hit it a little bit uphill, into the wind and it can be a pretty big difference.”

5. Mucho Mickelson

I wrote yesterday…Coming on the heels of Alan Shipnuck’s superb ride along with Phil (as in, riding in Mickelson’s souped-up golf cart) the other day, Lefty had plenty of noteto say at the Scottish Open (per John Huggan).

Question: Do you think the backlash has been over the top?

“You have to be accountable for yourself,” said Mickelson. “I do a lot of dumb stuff. I had that rules deal at Greenbrier last week. And last year at Greenbrier I picked up my ball in the middle of the fairway, marked it and cleaned it. I have these like just moments where I’m in a ‘cloud.’ I’m not really sure what I’m doing. I’m just going through the motions and not really aware of the moment. I’ve done that a bunch in my career. I keep doing stuff like that. That’s the way my mind works.”

And here’s a snippet of an anecdote from Xander Schauffele…”Phil’s about to tee off, and he’s pretending to struggle. He was like, ‘Oh, gosh, it’s so hard to swing.’ I was like, what’s going on? And Phil goes, ‘Here Charley, you mind holding onto this?’ And he pulls this wad of cash out of his back pocket! The whole day, I was sitting in the cart, just lookin’ around, like, ‘I’m not gonna say anything here; I’m just gonna let these guys battle it out.’ And it was so much fun. Phil showed how competitive and fun he can make golf.”

6. DeChambeau injured

I don’t make jokes about athletes’ injuries, but if I did, I would say Bryson DeChambeau poked his eye out with his compass. In reality, BAD injured his shoulder on shot out of the rough and withdrew from the John Deere Classic.

The defending champ offered a decidedly Bryson analysis after the round…”They said there was some instability in the joint,” DeChambeau said. “On 2, I hit the shot out of the rough on the right, and I just didn’t feel right after that. I probably overloaded the muscle, my [deltoid], and that’s something I gotta work on in the future, to get a little stronger so that stuff doesn’t happen.”

He’s hoping with a few days of rest he’ll be good to go for next week’s Open Championship.

7. The “problem” with Hogan

Quotations mine, because, well, how many greats in the world of sport are without their issues, neuroses, and outright disorders? It ain’t normal to be a world-class competitor singular obsessed with winning! And with respect to Hogan, the man was in the house, possibly in the room, when his beloved father shot and killed himself…I think he could have turned out worse saddled with that trauma!

Anyway, John Barton, a “London-based counselor and psychotherapist,” filed a breakdown of the Hawk’s psyche for Golf Digest.

A few morsels…“For many, Hogan is an icon of what it means to be a golfer and a man. Clean-shaven, immaculately dressed, scrupulously honest. Modest. Hard-working. Disciplined. Stoical. A lone wolf, battling nature and the elements, internal ones as well as external.”

“The Austrian psychoanalyst Alfred Adler argued that men often overcompensate for their fear of vulnerability with a lurch toward stereotypical male aggression and competition. What fellow analyst Carl Jung called the anima, the feminine, is denied; the animus is embraced. (To be whole, Jung said, both must be integrated.) The boy-man is pure animus-animosity-shorn of anything that might be considered anima-the animating effects of emotion, creativity, compassion, collaboration.”

“Adler called this the “masculine protest” and regarded it as an evil force in history, underlying, for instance, the rise in fascism in the 20th century. To be taken seriously as a leader one must appear devoutly unempathetic, unfeeling, uncompromising, unflinching. When men get together-in locker rooms, strip clubs, prison movies-often a kind of competitive manliness ensues. The buddies trip degenerates into a PG-version of “Fight Club.” The most macho are the most afraid.”

Full story of masculine protest.

8. I’m practicing, but I’m not getting any better!

Instructor Will Shaw offers some suggestions.

“To super-charge our learning, we must first realize that practice itself does not make us better at golf. This is an empty promise. It is close to the truth but incorrect. Instead, practice, when done correctly, will cause changes in our body to make us more skillful over time. This is a subtle, but important difference. There is no magic type of practice that universally builds skill, however, there are a handful of factors that can speed up, slow down or even stop your progress.”

The most important elements, according to Shaw: Give your body clear and precise feedback, and make your practice suitably difficult.

Read this excellent piece.

9. For your listening pleasure

If you have a bit of time this weekend, as some of us are blessed to, I wanted to call your attention to a couple of GolfWRX podcasts.

First, Michael Williams got a first-hand look at the already legendary goat caddies at Silves Valley Ranch.

Second, the Two Guys Talkin’ Golf talked about the recently spotted TaylorMade GAPR iron as only they cand.

Third, Johnny Wunder talked with Patrick Boyd of National Custom works about what the upstart company has going on, including its work for Jason Dufner.

All three pods can be found here.And remember: No goats, no glory.

News

Testing Lorem Ipsum

Published

7 hours ago

May 13, 2026

Pro Shop

What is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Why do we use it?

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

News

2026 PGA Championship betting odds

Published

2 days ago

May 12, 2026

Gianni Magliocco

Scottie Scheffler leads the betting ahead of the second major championship of the year, with the World Number One a +345 favorite to get his hands on a second PGA Championship.

Rory McIlroy who won the Masters back in April is a +800 shot to complete half of the calendar slam at Aronimink Golf Club this week, while Jordan Spieth can be backed at +5900 to become a career grand slam winner.

Here is the full betting board for the 2026 PGA Championship courtesy of DraftKings.

Scottie Scheffler +345 – (Check 0ut his WITB here)

Rory McIlroy +800 – (Check out his WITB here)

Jon Rahm +1300
Cameron Young +1500
Bryson DeChambeau +1700
Xander Schauffele +1850
Matt Fitzpatrick +1950
Ludvig Aberg +2000
Tommy Fleetwood +2600
Collin Morikawa +3500
Brooks Koepka +3900
Justin Rose +4300
Russell Henley +4600
Si Woo Kim +4700
Justin Thomas +4800
Robert MacIntyre +5300
Patrick Cantlay +5300
Viktor Hovland +5400
Tyrrell Hatton +5500
Jordan Spieth +5900
Sam Burns +6000
Hideki Matsuyama +6200
Adam Scott +6400
Rickie Fowler +7000
Chris Gotterup +7400
Patrick Reed +7400
Min Woo Lee +7800
Ben Griffin +8000
Sepp Straka +8400
Shane Lowry +9000
Akshay Bhatia +9200
Maverick McNealy +9200
Joaquin Niemann +9200
Jake Knapp +9200
Jason Day +9600
Kurt Kitayama +10000
J.J. Spaun +10000
Harris English +10500
Nicolai Hojgaard +11000
Gary Woodland +11000
David Puig +11000
Michael Thorbjornsen +12000
Jacob Bridgeman +12000
Keegan Bradley +12500
Corey Conners +14000
Alex Fitzpatrick +15000
Sungjae Im +15500
Sahith Theegala +15500
Harry Hall +15500
Alex Noren +16000
Thomas Detry +16500
Marco Penge +16500
Kristoffer Reitan +17000
Alex Smalley +17000
Wyndham Clark +17500
Sam Stevens +17500
Keith Mitchell +17500
Daniel Berger +18500
Ryan Gerard +20000
Nick Taylor +20000
Rasmus Hojgaard +21000
Dustin Johnson +21000
Pierceson Coody +23000
Aaron Rai +24000
Jordan Smith +24000
Angel Ayora +24000
Bud Cauley +25000
Matt McCarty +26000
Jayden Schaper +26000
Brian Harman +27000
Taylor Pendrith +27000
Ryan Fox +27000
J.T. Poston +27000
Cameron Smith +29000
Ryo Hisatsune +29000
Michael Kim +29000
Max Homa +29000
Denny McCarthy +29000
Tom McKibbin +30000
Rico Hoey +32000
Matt Wallace +32500
Ricky Castillo +33000
Haotong Li +33000
Michael Brennan +34000
Max Greyserman +36000
Stephan Jaeger +37500
Christiaan Bezuidenhout +37500
Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen +39000
Aldrich Potgieter +40000
Andrew Novak +42000
Patrick Rodgers +42500
Daniel Hillier +42500
Max McGreevy +46000
Billy Horschel +48000
Chris Kirk +48000
Ian Holt +49000
Casey Jarvis +49000
William Mouw +50000
Steven Fisk +50000
John Parry +50000
Nico Echavarria +52500
Garrick Higgo +52500
John Keefer+55000
Matthias Schmid +57500
Austin Smotherman +57500
Sami Valimaki +60000
Andrew Putnam +60000
Lucas Glover +62500
Daniel Brown +62500
Jhonattan Vegas +75000
Emiliano Grillo +80000
Mikael Lindberg +85000
Adrien Saddier +100000
Bernd Wiesberger +100000
Elvis Smylie +110000
Stewart Cink +130000
Kota Kaneko +130000
David Lipsky +150000
Chandler Blanchet +150000
Andy Sullivan +150000
Joe Highsmith +180000
Adam Schenk +200000
Travis Smyth +200000
Davis Riley +225000
Martin Kaymer +400000
Brian Campbell +400000
Padraig Harrington +450000
Kazuki Higa +450000
Jordan Gumberg +450000
Ryan Vermeer +500000
Austin Hurt +500000
Tyler Collet +500000
Timothy Wiseman +500000
Shaun Micheel +500000
Y.E. Yang +500000
Michael Block+500000
Mark Geddes+500000
Luke Donald+500000
Bryce Fisher+500000
Jimmy Walker +500000
Jason Dufner +500000
Jesse Droemer +500000
Jared Jones +500000
Garrett Sapp +500000
Francisco Bide +500000
Zach Haynes +500000
Paul McClure+500000
Derek Berg +500000
Chris Gabriele +500000
Braden Shattuck +500000
Ben Polland +500000
Ben Kern +50000

Tour Photo Galleries

Photos from the 2026 PGA Championship

Published

2 days ago

May 11, 2026

GolfWRX Staff

GolfWRX is on site for the second major of 2026: The PGA Championship from Aronimink in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.

The tournament’s location, just outside Philadelphia, and its status as a major championship mean GolfWRXers are in for a treat: WITBs from a strong field, custom gear celebrating the PGA Championship, and the rich culture of the City of Brotherly Love — we have noted a relative absence of cheesesteak-themed items thus far this week, but most of the rest of the usual suspects are well represented.

Check out links to all our photos below.