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GolfWRX Morning 9: The eternal allure of Tiger Woods | Lincicome vs. the guys | A pair of passings

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

 

July 18, 2018

Good Wednesday morning, golf fans.
1. “Box office” Woods
As he prepares for his return to the British Open, all eyes are on Tiger Woods. Sure, there are Woods’ usual detractors, and those who wish the media would focus more on other players, so it may be more accurate to say–many eyes at Carnoustie are on Tiger physically.
  • The BBC’s Tom English had this to say about merely getting to Woods’ press conference.
  • “When Woods is on his way to the interview room, media folk grow extra legs. They exit their seat like a greyhound from the traps and whizz past you in a blur. Lesson one about covering a major championship: don’t get in the way of a man on his way to a Tiger press conference. Dawdle and you’re dead. Roadkill.”
  • “Woods had a captive audience. We were literally queuing out the door. For reigning Open champion Jordan Spieth on Monday – a healthy attendance at his press conference, but not full. For Masters champion Patrick Reed – a decent turnout. For US Open champion Brooks Koepka – a respectable crowd. For Woods, a stampede.”
  • He said this of the endless scribe and fan interest in Woods…”Put simply, we will never get over Tiger. For good and bad, he is imbedded in our hearts and minds. People wonder whether he can pull off a miracle and win this week – or any week when there’s a major on the line. The miracle isn’t exclusively about him winning, it’s about us wanting him to win. That’s a miraculous event in itself. Despite everything that he has done, we’re still rooting for him ahead of most, if not, all of the field?”
2. Lincicome vs. the guys
Helen Ross checks on Brittany Lincicome as she prepares to tee it up at the Barbasol.
  • “Ten years, to be exact. When Lincicome steps to the 10th tee at 9:59 a.m. ET on Thursday, she’ll become the sixth woman to play in a TOUR event, joining Wie, who was the last, Annika Sorenstam, Suzy Whaley, Shirley Spork and Babe Didrikson Zaharias.”
  • “And Lincicome, who is playing with Sam Ryder and Conrad Shindler, plans to soak it all in. “To be playing in the practice round today, hitting on the driving range, it’s kind of surreal,” Lincicome said. “I just can’t stop smiling. … I can’t wait until Thursday.”
  • “Lincicome has won eight times on the LPGA Tour and played in six Solheim Cups. She narrowly missed getting her ninth victory on Sunday, too, when a birdie putt did a 340-degree spin out of the hole and Lincicome ended up losing on the first hole of sudden death.”
  • “Lincicome’s average driving distance, measured on two holes each week, is 269.520 yards, which ranks her 10th on the LPGA. That’s just 6 yards out of No. 1 – but outside the top 200 on the PGA TOUR.”
3. A pair of passings: Marcia Chambers and Mark Hayes
The golf world lost a fine pair: Marcia Chambers and Mark Hayes.
  • John Strege writes of Chambers: “Marcia Chambers, a Golf Digest contributor who was on the leading edge of writing about gender and race discrimination in golf, died last Friday at Smilow Cancer Hospital in New Haven, Conn. She was 78.
  • “Chambers, a Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School, received the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for her series of Golf Digest articles dealing with gender and race discrimination in golf.
  • “She initially was asked to address discrimination against women in private clubs, but that was tabled when Shoal Creek and its founder Hall Thompson brought race to the fore in the runup to the PGA Championship in 1990.”
  • Jim McCabe on Mark Hayes…“Hayes, whose win at the 1977 PLAYERS was the last of three PGA TOUR wins in a solid 19-year career, died Monday at the age of 69 in Edmond, Oklahoma. Hayes’ death was confirmed by his oldest brother, Larry Hayes, the General Manager at TPC Craig Ranch in McKinney, Texas. He was 69 and had been ill for more than a year.”
4. Fun with skins

An unbylined AP report on some practice round antics at Carnoustie and more from the SB2K crew…in this case a Michael Greller-Justin Thomas bet that he could make par on a hole using just an 8-iron.

  • “The challenge was for Thomas to make par using only an 8-iron…Once he got it in the fairway, Spieth came over to advise him how to navigate the pot bunkers more than 200 yards away. The ball stopped rolling, finally, about a yard short of a bunker to the left of the green. Getting it over the bunker with that club was going to be a problem.”
  • ‘”Where’s my caddie?” Thomas said in mock panic…Spieth was preparing to hit a bunker shot on the other side of the fairway when he looked over and said, “Sorry,” then ran to Thomas for more consultation. He told Thomas to open the face of the 8-iron and slide it under the firm turf. Spieth pointed to a spot on the slope beyond the bunker. Greller watched nervously as Thomas pulled it off to perfection, the ball rolling out to 3 feet…With the leading edge of the 8-iron, he knocked it in for a 4. And then, as usual, they all debated the size of the bet.”
5. The Golf Engine predicts…
Pat Ross and his Golf Engine predict the top 25 finishers at The Open.

 

How does it work? “In this model, we use machine learning to evaluate 1,500 different statistics for every golfer on the PGA Tour over each tournament since 2004. The analysis of this massive dataset allows gives us an opportunity to predict players that are sitting on low round scores.”
  • A taste…”The field for the 147th British Open is set at the historic Carnoustie Golf Links. The Golf Engine modeled over 1,500 statistics tracked by the PGA Tour for every tournament dating back to 2004. We looked at how each stat contributes to what we can expect from players on this stage, at this tournament. It’s a complex web of information that can only be properly analyzed by a machine, yet yields some objectively surprising results.”
  • “This year’s British Open is no exception as the model is calling for Webb Simpson (125/1 odds) to make a run into the top 10 at least.”
  • Some surprises…Back-to-back U.S. Open winner Brooks Koepka (22/1) inside the top 5…Webb Simpson (125/1) and Phil Mickelson (66/1) inside the top 10….Emiliano Grillo (100/1) inside the top 15…Kevin Na (175/1), Luke List (125/1), and Ryan Moore (150/1) inside top the 25.”:
  • “Perhaps just as surprising are the golfers that may under-perform this week. Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood don’t make the top 10 cutoff. Alex Noren, Francesco Molinari who finished T2 at TPC Deere Run last week, and Sergio Garcia are all projected outside of our top 25.”

 

6. Confessions of  Yipper
More specifically, a confession from Kevin Na that he contracted a strain of the yips.
  • “I went through the yips. The whole world saw that. I told people, ‘I can’t take the club back,'” Na said on Tuesday at Carnoustie. “People talked about it, ‘He’s a slow player. Look at his routine.’ I was admitting to the yips. I didn’t use the word ‘yip’ at the time. Nobody wants to use that word, but I’m over it now so I can use it. The whole world saw it.”
  • “It took time,” he said. “I forced myself a lot. I tried breathing. I tried a trigger. Some guys will have a forward press or the kick of the right knee. That was hard and the crap I got for it was not easy.”
7. Hello again, John Peterson
He’s back! (Sort of). Golfweek’s Kevin Casey (former GolfWRX writer!) with the details.
  • “It was less than two weeks ago that John Peterson seemed to say farewell after he just missed out on conditional status following the end of his major medical extension…The 29-year-old had for months stated that if he did lose his PGA Tour status by the end of the medical, he would retire and go into real estate development. After his lost status came to fruition, Peterson seemed to indicate he was indeed going through with this plan.”
  • “But now – at least for one week – he’s back…Despite having no status, Peterson was on the alternate list for the Barbasol Championship – the opposite-field event being played during Open Championship week…He quickly moved up the alternates, too, due to field changes and has now earned a spot in the event!”
  • “How did he get in this field? Peterson apparently earned his spot via being in the “50 finishers beyond 150 on prior season’s money list through Wyndham Championship” category.”
8. BioMech and the future of putting analysis
Michael Williams chatted with the CEO of BioMech Golf among others. BioMech Golf is, well, I’ll let Michael tell you…
  • “A couple of years ago, Dr. Frank Fornari and BioMech created a stir with the BioMech Acculock ACE putter, a radical new putter design that integrated the principles of biometrics, the science of motion. The putter was designed to be used with a specific type of putting stroke that would be proven by the BioMech team to be the ideal method for putting. The putter developed a cult following, but the BioMech team is back with a tool that just might break into the mainstream.”
  • “Fornari’s team has developed the BioMech putting sensor and app. The sensor attaches to any putter and transmits data about each putt to an app that can run on any iPhone or iPad. It provides key data on what the player is doing, when they are doing it and why they are doing it, making the BioMech sensor effective whether you are a player, an instructor or even a manufacturer. With the golf industry driven more than ever by technology, the BioMech sensor could become as essential to putting and the short game as Trackman is to the full swing.”

 

9. Phil’s phantastic flop
Do yourself a favor if you haven’t checked out Phil Mickelson’s insane full-swing flop from a tight lie over the head of a man two yards in front of him. Imagine trying this shot? Heck, fluff up the grass and place the ball perfectly, and you’re still killing the guy or robbing him of his ability to father children. Mickelson’s short game is a trope that gets more discussion than it should, but this is just crazy.

 

Ben Alberstadt is the Editor-in-Chief at GolfWRX, where he’s led editorial direction and gear coverage since 2018. He first joined the site as a freelance writer in 2012 after years spent working in pro shops and bag rooms at both public and private golf courses, experiences that laid the foundation for his deep knowledge of equipment and all facets of this maddening game. Based in Philadelphia, Ben’s byline has also appeared on PGATour.com, Bleacher Report...and across numerous PGA DFS and fantasy golf platforms. Off the course, Ben is a committed cat rescuer and, of course, a passionate Philadelphia sports fan. Follow him on Instagram @benalberstadt.

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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).

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2026 PGA Championship betting odds

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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
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  • 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
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  • Max McGreevy +46000
  • Billy Horschel +48000
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  • 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
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  • Lucas Glover +62500
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  • Jhonattan Vegas +75000
  • Emiliano Grillo +80000
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  • Adrien Saddier +100000
  • Bernd Wiesberger +100000
  • Elvis Smylie +110000
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  • Kota Kaneko +130000
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  • Adam Schenk +200000
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  • Davis Riley +225000
  • Martin Kaymer +400000
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  • Braden Shattuck +500000
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Photos from the 2026 PGA Championship

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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.

General Albums

WITB Albums

Pullout Albums

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