News

GolfWRX Morning 9: What Tiger hopes to accomplish with Jackson Park redesign | Another take on equipment stories of the year

Published

7 years ago

Dec 28, 2018

Ben Alberstadt

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

December 28, 2018

Good Friday morning, golf fans.

1. Tiger on Jackson Park: “Time to do something significant”

Woods’ has high hopes for his Chicago redesign.

Dylan Dethier at Golf.com…”Woods is lead architect on the proposed renovation of 18-hole Jackson Park and nine-hole South Shore, two historic, beloved munis that sit at the western edge of Lake Michigan. Under the plans laid out by TGR Design (Woods’s design firm) the two courses would combine into a 7,341-yard 18-hole championship track.”

“On Dec. 12, the Chicago Park District met to approve a resolution to fund services for an engineering firm, the Smith Group, for the next three and a half years. The decision represented a commitment from the city and a huge hurdle cleared in the process of breaking ground on the renovation. What began four years ago as a pie-in-the-sky reevaluation of Chicago’s city-owned courses is nearing fruition as something altogether different: a likely PGA Tour host with striking views of the city and a brand-new concept of what it means to be an urban public golf course.”

“I first learned the game on public courses playing with my Pop,” Woods told GOLF in a statement. “I hope this course will be more than just golf and also make a positive impact in the community. We are eager to proceed toward groundbreaking at Jackson Park and South Shore.”

More on the layout TW favors…”Woods emphasized the course’s adaptability in a statement to GOLF. “We have developed a plan for a public golf course that will be fun and playable for golfers of all abilities, but still challenge the best players in the world,” he said.”

“Welling laid out the feel of the place in greater detail: It’ll be relatively wide and not overly bunkered off the tee, but the greens will have some stronger defenses. It’s intended to be a course of angles. If you’re really trying to score, it’ll require a very accurate approach shot, set up by a well-placed tee ball.”

“Around the greens, Welling expects to use plenty of short grass. That can make things easier for less experienced chippers, who can pull putter and do just fine, while putter from well off the green can be hard for a better player. There’s a lot to that idea at Bluejack National, Woods’s Texas course, and Payne’s Valley, his brand-new Missouri track.”

Full piece.

2. 2018’s top equipment stories

Another day, another curation of the top equipment stories of 2018. This time, it’s Andrew Tursky at PGATour.com doing the assembly.

“Tiger Woods…Here’s a recap of the notable Tiger equipment stories from the year.”

“His backup Scotty Cameron Newport 2 sold at auction for $44 grand. His backup!”

“He switched from TGR blades — confirmed to have been made at Nike’s “The Oven” before shutting down its operation – into TaylorMade TW Phase 1 irons that remain shrouded in mystery. Hopefully we get more answers about these irons in 2019. And is there a “Phase 2″ on the way?”

“His putter saga saw a happy ending at the TOUR Championship. Woods has won 13-of-14 major championships using the same Scotty Cameron Newport 2 GSS putter, but his relationship with it hit a rocky road in 2018. He switched into a TaylorMade Ardmore 3 putter and then a TP Black Copper Juno putter in the second half of the year. He finished second in the PGA Championship using the Ardmore 3 mallet. But at the TOUR Championship, it was the familiar Scotty he had in the bag to capture his 80th PGA TOUR victory at the TOUR Championship. A fairytale ending for the duo.

“Cody Blick overcomes club robbery to qualify…Before the final round of the Web.com Tour qualifying event, with guaranteed Web.com Tour 2019 starts on the line and needing to mount a comeback, Cody Blick’s golf clubs were stolen. Q-School is enough pressure as it is; then add in the headache of being robbed, coupled with playing the final round without your own clubs! The odds were stacked against him, and his Instagram post offering a $5k reward for information on the whereabouts of his clubs was fruitless.”

“Amazingly, Blick pieced together a set with the help of Titleist, and he actually played well enough in the final round, shooting a 9-under 63, to move up 49 spots and capture eight guaranteed starts.”

Full piece.

3. No Tiger in paradise

ESPN’s Bob Harig…”Tiger Woods will not begin the new year in Hawaii after all.”

“After considerable speculation that he might play the Sentry Tournament of Champions for the first time since 2005, Woods has elected to forgo the tournament he qualified for by winning the Tour Championship in September.”

“Alex Urban, the tournament’s general manager, said they had heard from Woods’ representatives and that he is “spending more time with family and friends over the holiday and will start his season at a later event.”

Full piece.

4. How much are caddies pocketing?

Golfweek’s Dan Kilbridge explored the world of caddie earnings.

“Nowadays, a select few caddies can make seven figures in a single season on the PGA Tour thanks to bonuses and a cut of the massive prize purses. They also can go weeks on end struggling to break even after expenses.”

“The amount and manner in which caddies are compensated is one of the most frequently asked questions in golf. The answer is complicated, but there are some general guidelines most player-caddie relationships follow in some form.”

“By most accounts, the average weekly base pay for caddies on the PGA Tour runs in the neighborhood of $1,800-$2,000 per week. On the LPGA, it’s closer to $1,200. The majority of those funds go toward travel expenses, which are almost never covered outside of the weekly wage. Some of the top players will foot the bill for costly trips outside the United States, say for the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai, but that’s not always the case. If a particularly stingy player misses the cut overseas, chances are his caddie is losing money.”

Full piece.

5. Death of the yardage book?

Golf.com’s Josh Sens suggests apps will soon replace yardage books (not at the professional level, obviously)

“Just as you once said goodbye to balata, you’ll soon by bidding farewell to the yardage book. In tomorrow’s brave new world, every drive you strike and every pin you seek will depend on data gleaned from Jetson-like devices that will offer not just distances but also club suggestions, based on wind and weather and elevation changes. Ask them nicely and they’ll read your putts.”

“Already, apps like Golf Logix and 18Birdies and AI platforms such as Arccos Caddie contain detailed renderings of some 40,000 courses, an ever-growing archive for a fast-expanding audience. In a recent National Golf Foundation survey, more than half of respondents said they’d downloaded a golf-related app (up from 37 percent in 2011), and 41 percent said they used those apps for yardages. So take that booklet you picked up in the pro shop and reserve it for posterity – a dog-eared relic from a distant past.”

Full piece.

6. “Non-traditional lifestyle amenities”

Martin Kaufmann talks to the CEO of ClubCorp and others about the future of private golf clubs.

A morsel…

“They’re not going to join a club that’s a golf club,” Pillsbury said. “There’s not enough breadth of experience for growing young families.”

“Start with the clubhouse. DeMore said that more than 50 Troon properties are “reimagining” their clubhouses. “I see an expansion of fitness almost every single time we do a private-club renovation,” he said.”

“Pillsbury estimated that more than 40 percent of ClubCorp members have separate fitness memberships. He doesn’t want them leaving the country club to work out.”

“Even some of the most hardcore golf clubs are embracing the new reality…PGA West in La Quinta, Calif., has been billed as the western home of golf in America, but in recent years the staff saw members switching from full golf memberships, which are $1,400 per month, to $450 sport memberships that still allowed them playing privileges.”

“Adding the sports membership was to attract multigenerational (families),” said Jennifer Jenkins, PGA West’s director of marketing and membership sales. “The main reason we were losing our golf members wasn’t because of health or finances, it was because of the grandkids.”

Full piece.

7. Golf cart accident leaves 2 dead

Wild, unfortunate stuff in Thailand.

CNN Report...”Two men have died after one of their golf carts rammed the other into a river on a course in northern Thailand.”

“The men, who were visiting from South Korea, were golfing with their wives Tuesday in northern Thailand’s Phitsanulok province. While mounting a raft in order to cross the river that runs through the course, a cart carrying one of the couples crashed into the other, propelling the first cart into the river, police said.”

“The man driving the second cart dived into the river in an attempt to rescue the first pair, Police Major Chucheev Phumchiaw told CNN. Earlier reports suggested that the women were driving the second cart.”

“A local fisherman rescued the woman who ended up in the water, but the bodies of the two men — Sung Jun-yong, 68, and Ha Jae-oong, 76 — were found in the Nan River, downstream from where the incident occurred.”

Full piece.

8. Brooke Henderson again

Golf Channel report...”Henderson was named the Canadian Press female athlete of the year. It’s the second year in a row she has won the award, the third time in the past four years.”

“Henderson won two times on the LPGA in 2018, including the Lotte Championship, which she dedicated to the people involved in the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team bus crash in Saskatchewan. She also became the first Canadian to win her national open since 1973, when she prevailed at the CP Women’s Open.”

“Henderson earned 30 of 54 votes in a poll of Canadian broadcasters and editors, according to a TSN report. Figure skater Kaetlyn Osmond and short-track speedskater Kim Boutin tied for second place with 10 votes each.”

Full piece.

9. For your listening pleasure

We assembled the brain trust, or at the very least, a bunch of guys who like to talk golf and golf equipment. Johnny Wunder, Brian Westphal, Brian Knudson, Rob Miller, Michael Williams, and Ben Alberstadt talk through everything from Tiger, to the Ryder Cup, to the explosion in boutique equipment makers. The podcasters share what’s ahead for their various pods, we talk plans for the PGA Show, and what you can plan on reading, watching, and listening too on GolfWRX.com in 2019.

(That’s right, folks, you can listen to my inglorious podcast debut in all it’s awful wonder)

Listen here.

News

Testing Lorem Ipsum

Published

8 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.