News

GolfWRX Morning 9: Tiger turns down Saudi Arabia | Call him Brandel Langher? | What gives, PGA?

Published

8 years ago

Nov 8, 2018

Ben Alberstadt

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

November 8, 2018

Good Thursday morning, golf fans. In the spirit of an election week, I’m pandering to the “bullet point free” readers today.

1. Brandel the next Bernhard?

It sounds like the Golf Channel’s most divisive analyst is keen to get out of the studio to put a peg in the ground on the Centrum Silver circuit.

The Forecaddie reports.

“When Brandel Chamblee entered a qualifier for the Senior British Open last summer it was his first competitive round of golf in a decade. The Golf Channel analyst won that qualifier to earn a spot in the field at the Old Course in St. Andrews, where he missed the halfway cut in his debut on the senior circuit.”

“The experience lit Chamblee’s competitive fire enough that he intends to play a lot more senior golf next year…The pint-sized provocateur told The Forecaddie that his goal is to enter at least six events on the PGA Tour Champions in 2019.”

“Why now? I realized that time is fading, you know?” said Chamblee, who turned 56 in July. “It used to be once you got past 55 the skills eroded. But with the success of numerous players post-55 – not just Bernhard Langer – I kind of thought I have another three or four years where I might be able to compete a little bit. I miss competing.”

Full story.

2. $3.2 million to play in Saudi Arabia? No thanks

The Telegraph’s James Corrigan with the exclusive…”Tiger Woods has turned down his biggest ever potential overseas pay cheque to play in the European Tour’s inaugural event in Saudi Arabia next year, amid the international outcry over the recent murder of a journalist.”

“In the past, Woods has travelled to such countries as China and the United Arab Emirates. Yet it is understood he deemed Saudi Arabia to be an excursion too far – even for at least £2.5m – an amount that apparently dwarfs anything he has received before for an official overseas tournament.”

Full piece.

3. Spieth returns to old driver, 3-wood

PGATour.com’s Cameron Morfit…”Making his first visit to the Riviera Maya for the Mayakoba Golf Classic this week, Spieth, the 2015 FedExCup champion, has gone back to the driver, 3-wood he’d played for the last five years. And it’s gone so well, he said, Vegas is a distant memory.”

“It’s way more positive than that,” Spieth said after his pro-am round on the El Camaleon Golf Course at Mayakoba on Wednesday. “Last week I just, I was looking at something different, and the performance just wasn’t coming out the same. It’s been totally different the last couple days for me here. I’ve been striking the ball extremely well, hitting a lot of the fairways, and the short game has been just-trying to improve a little bit more.”

Full piece.

Spieth had switched to a Titleist TS2 from a 915D2.

4. What is the PGA trying to hide?

Oh boy. Alex Miceli begs an interesting question in his Morning Read missive…

“The PGA of America is holding its annual meeting this week in Palm Springs, Calif. The gathering is being conducted in a bubble, with the media excluded from all aspects, including the likely election of the association’s first female president, Suzy Whaley.”

“The PGA of America issued the following statement about the absence of media coverage:

“The PGA Annual Meeting is primarily about governance and the discussion of Association matters. While there may have been a handful of exceptions over the years based on a specific element of the program (Hall of Fame announcements and celebrity guest speakers, for example), we don’t consider the Annual Meeting to be a media event. In fact, there have been several Annual Meetings with no media in attendance at all. We do invite some media to attend our National Awards Dinner and to interview our leadership immediately following the conclusion of the meeting. We believe this is the best way to manage any media interest without disrupting the governance process of our Association.”

“On its face, the statement seems disingenuous...First, how is it that the anticipated election of the PGA’s first female president doesn’t eclipse a Hall of Fame announcement or a celebrity guest speaker?”

“Second, as one former president told me, the PGA of America would have killed for press coverage in the past at annual meetings. So, why is this year in Palm Springs different?…The U.S. Golf Association allows media into its annual meeting….What is the PGA of America trying to hide?”

Full piece.

5. Melreese in trouble

Brian Wacker with the grim news…”The future of Miami’s lone city-owned golf course became more muddied on Tuesday when local voters approved a referendum that will allow city officials to forego the usual bidding process for public land.”

“By a 60-40 margin, residents have provided a way for famed soccer star David Beckham and his wealthy real estate partners, Jorge and Jose Mas, to negotiate a deal with the city to use the land now occupied by International Links Melreese Golf Club and build a 25,000-seat Major League Soccer stadium, along with a hotel, offices and retail space.”

“The decision, understandably, hit the golf community in the area hard. The course has been around for more than a half century, has hosted the PGA Tour Latinoamericano Championship the past two years and is home to the Miami-Dade chapter of the First Tee, a program with 5,000 kids. It also helped produce tour players Cristie Kerr and Erik Compton.”

Full piece.

6. Rose to Honma is…happening?

Our Oct. 26 Forum Thread of the Day centered around Justin Rose’s potential defection from TaylorMade and move to Japanese luxury club brand Honma. Golf Digest’s Mike Stachura, the Morning Read, the Irish Times, and the Sun Times, have all added fuel to that fire.”

“And on the subject of fire, asked about the potential change following his Turkish Airlines Open win, Rose said..”Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.'”

Speculation had been rampant in the GolfWRX forums for weeks, with several members with connections to the company indicating they’d heard Rose would soon be a Honma man. For example, mallrat said: “A teaching pro at our club is on staff with Honma and told me the same thing on Weds.

Beyond the Englishman’s seeming admission that the rumor is true, his agent, Mark Steinberg is mum. Likewise, neither TaylorMade nor Honma has commented.

Suspicion as to why Rose, a long-time TaylorMade staffer and the No. 1 golfer in the world, would defect to a Japanese luxury brand with little presence on the PGA Tour centers around Mark King. The former TaylorMade president and CEO joined Honma as a consultant in August.

My full piece.

7. CNCPT

Our Andrew Tursky…”In recent weeks and months, we’ve seen photos and information surface regarding new “Titleist CNCPT-02” irons. That begged the question, “What about CNCPT-01 irons?” Well, it appears we may now have that answer.”

“A photo, allegedly of the “Titleist CNCPT-01” iron in question, was posted on Instagram today by user Chris92009, with Titleist Performance Institute in Oceanside, California as the tagged location.”

“Judging by the photos, it appears the CNCPT-01 irons will be the more forgiving option of the two CNCPT irons. As such, you’d expect the 01 irons to have slightly thicker soles and toplines, offering more forgiveness across the face, a higher launch, and higher ball speeds than the 02 irons. But, of course, that remains to be seen.”

“As some GolfWRX Members have speculated, it’s also likely these irons will come with a hefty price tag; one member, John Golia, said his inside information tells him $4,000 for an 8-piece set. That is simply speculation and rumor, however, until we have confirmation about the irons and their availability from Titleist itself.”

Full piece, including photos.

8. Desert Inn prevails

Geoff Shackelford notes…”The Strip’s historic Desert Inn course, rebuilt by Steve Wynn and then closed, is going to get new life after Wynn Resorts decided to abandon an ambitious expansion project. Oh, and they found out golfers were taking their money elsewhere.”

Quoting Richard Velotta’s Las Vegas Review Journal report…Company executives discovered that removing the golf course resulted in some loyal customers going elsewhere. Maddox estimated the company lost $10 million to $15 million of domestic casino business from people coming in for golf trips who decided to go elsewhere.

Full LVRJ report.

9. After airline loses his golf bag, Wesley Bryan…takes a spa day

Golf Channel’s Jason Crook…”An increasingly big part of being a professional golfer is having your golf clubs lost or broken by a commercial airline and then having a meltdown about it on social media.”

“Which is what makes this story so refreshing. Leave it to Wesley Bryan to show the world there’s another way…Bryan made it to Mexico early this week for the Mayakoba Classic. His clubs, however, didn’t get the memo.”

“But instead of tagging the airline and complaining to his thousands of Twitter followers, the 28-year-old took the bad break in stride – sending a heartfelt thank you to the airline from his day at the spa.”

Full piece.

Bryan posted this photo featuring the official garment of all spa days: the white bathrobe.

News

Testing Lorem Ipsum

Published

12 mins 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

1 day 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.