News

Morning 9: Earl Woods’ most significant bit of advice? | Happy (slightly belated) Birthday, Tiger

Published

7 years ago

Dec 31, 2018

Ben Alberstadt

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

December 31, 2018

Good Monday morning, golf fans, and a very happy New Year’s Eve to you all.

1. Return of the Roar

The Tiger Woods comeback season doc (szn, as the kids say) aired on ESPN last night, and there’s a little related content at this early hour.

A few morsels…

Golfweek’s Kevin Casey writes…”Later in the documentary, Woods related that tale of the pressure mounting as his father’s death neared. But the 43-year-old also revealed some sage advice at that time from Earl that stuck with him, even having an impact on the attitude he took during his 2018 comeback”

‘”I’ll never forget the lesson that (dad) told me. That year at the Masters, I tried to win it for him. I knew it was the last tournament he was ever going to watch me play. I need to win one for dad, so he can actually see this before he passes and I tried and I put too much pressure on myself and I went back to California after that to be with Pops and he (was like), ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ And I said, ‘Well dad, I tried to win it for you.’ He said, ‘Haven’t I taught you anything in the game of golf? You do it for the inner joy that it brings, you don’t do it for anyone else.’ And (I was like), ‘Yeah, I took myself out of what you taught me.’ Looking back on this year, at the core of it all is that I wanted to do it again. I wanted to do it for myself that I could climb the mountain one more time.”‘

Full piece.

Golf Channel’s Brentley Romine with this bit on the loyalty of Joe LaCava

“Joe LaCava didn’t caddie much while his boss, Tiger Woods, was recovering from four different back surgeries. He logged fewer than 20 tournaments with Woods in 2014-17. At one point, Woods even told LaCava that he was OK if LaCava found another golfer to loop for.”

“But LaCava, speaking during the ESPN documentary “Return of the Roar,” which aired Sunday night, said that he was prepared to wait a long time for Woods’ return.”

“If I could live another hundred years, I’d wait another hundred years,” LaCava said. “I was never not going to work for Tiger as long as he was going to have me. I just wanted to work for him and no one else. And I think that helped a little bit, knowing that he had a friend that thought that much of him as a person and with his game.”

Full piece.

2. Tiger’s birthday wishlist

With TW turning 43 yesterday, the crew at Omnisport assembled what ought to be on his birthday wishlist.

“An injury-free year…With his well-documented back problems seemingly behind him, Woods steadily improved in 2018 but will be wary of taking anything for granted having endured years in the wilderness with his physical struggles. Staying fit must be top of Woods’ wishlist for his 44th year.”

“A 15th major…Woods was twice in contention to end his long wait for a 15th major in 2018 but failed to get over the line at The Open and the US PGA Championship. Time is running out for Woods to break Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors but, after a 2018 that delivered plenty of promise, he can afford to have hope of cutting the gap in 2019.”

“A number one ranking….Woods last topped the world rankings in May 2014. Now ranked 13th, a return to the summit appears an ambitious target given the queue of younger and more consistent golfers ahead of him. Yet if Woods does stay healthy and starts stringing performances together, it is not out of the question he could find himself at the top of the game once more.”

Full piece.

3. Tiger turns 43…but can he make history and return to No. 1 at that age?

Erik Matuszewski writing for Forbes…”As Tiger Woods celebrates his 43rd birthday today, it seems like a good time to ponder what the upcoming year will bring and whether it’s possible he might ever regain the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking.”

“It seemed a preposterous notion a little over a year ago, when Woods had slipped to 1,199th in the world and himself questioned whether he’d play again competitively as he recovered from a fourth surgery on his back. But Woods has climbed 1,186 spots in the past year and now enters 2019 ranked 13th in the world, ahead of players such as Jason Day, Patrick Reed, Bubba Watson and Jordan Spieth following his successful 2017-18 PGA TOUR season.”

“That said, no player has ever held golf’s No. 1 ranking at the age of 43, at least not since the advent of the Official World Golf Ranking in 1986.”

“Greg Norman was the game’s oldest No. 1 at 42 years of age back in 1998. Norman, who held the top spot in the rankings 11 different times, was actually one month shy of his 43rd birthday when he was unseated in January of 1998, by a then 22-year-old Woods. Woods had first ascended to the world’s No. 1 ranking in 1997 at the age of 21.”

“Vijay Singh was also 42 when he was No. 1 back in 2005. Singh was supplanted by Woods, who then went more than five years atop the rankings.”

Erik Matuszewski weighs Tiger’s odds. Full piece.

4. Tiger’s top 10 performances

We’ve done this already this year, but no harm in a second opinion. Golfweek’s Kevin Casey assembled his top-10 Tiger Woods performances.

His top 3…

“2008 U.S. Open…Woods needed 19 playoff holes to finish this one off, but we all know why this win is so high on this list. Woods made it to extra holes and outlasted Rocco Mediate in that playoff despite playing the tournament with a torn left ACL and a double stress fracture in his left leg. This one was unbelievably dramatic and the greatest example of how seemingly nothing could stop Woods in his prime.”

“1997 Masters…Obviously Woods’ first major win – a seminal 12-shot beatdown of the field at the 1997 Masters – is going to be near the top. We don’t need to explain much else here, it’s all been told many times by now.”

“2000 U.S. Open…This top spot should surprise nobody. Woods’ 15-shot demolishing of the field at the 2000 U.S. Open is the gold standard of golf performances. It’s widely considered the greatest showing in the history of the game. So yeah, No. 1 is fitting here.”

Full piece.

5. The Open effect

Dermot Gillece at the Irish Independent examined the impact felt around Royal Portrush with The Open coming to town this year through some interesting lenses.

A morsel…”Though the big event is still seven months away, Royal Portrush is already experiencing The Open effect. The year just ending has delivered record green-fee revenues of £3m, which is twice what they might have expected before landing their coveted prize.”

“My marketing budget has now been reduced to zero,” the club’s secretary/manager Wilma Erskine memorably remarked three years ago when news of 2019 was confirmed. As a bonus, the modified Dunluce links is drawing rich praise not only from tourists, but from television crews who arrived recently from both sides of the Atlantic and who are expected back in the New Year.

“The only downside for those enriched by Ms Erskine’s expertise is her scheduled departure. “Yes, I’m stepping down after it’s over,” she said last week. “I think it’s the right time to embark on something else. After 35 years, I think I’ve done my bit.”

“Then typically, she couldn’t resist adding: “I’ve managed to survive a lot longer than a lot of people. Now it’s time for someone new, with fresh ideas. Having had The Open, what more could I ask for?” What indeed.”

“She will be greatly missed. At the risk of drawing down the wrath of the sisterhood, for a woman to have charge of the financial fortunes of such an historically conservative establishment can have been achieved only by brilliant stewardship.”

Full piece.

6. Fun at non-traditional courses

Jason Lusk reflects on good times he had in ’18 away from the standard 18-hole track.

“Too many courses were built in recent decades to challenge, not invite. There are too many long par 4s meant to knock recreational golfers to their knees, to repel shots instead of receive them. Too many five-hour rounds across the traditional 18 holes. The game is often too much quest, not enough quip.”

“Thankfully, a handful of folks are working coast-to-coast to put the giggle back in hit-and-giggle. Their efforts include reversible 18-hole courses, nine-hole courses that beg for another loop, par-3 courses that take less than an hour and offer some of the most fun greens in the game, even a 7-hole hilltop course that redefines rustic and offers goats as caddies. Different can be good … very good.”

“The best part of my year in golf was getting to visit a few of these spots. From Florida to Oregon with stops along the way, there were several new layouts, or even recently redesigned and repurposed spots, that eschew the traditional 18-hole, par-72 layout to offer breezy, engaging and different opportunities to swing a club and prove that the game can be more than the same old same old.”

Full piece.

7. The evolution of golf recruiting

Kevin Casey, undisputed MVP of today’s Morning 9, wrote about the changes in the junior golf and college golf recruiting landscape.

“Even as national attention has jumped at the junior level, names such as Bryson DeChambeau, Aaron Wise and Maverick McNealy thrived despite playing a more localized junior schedule. Suh himself played sparingly outside his native California as a junior, yet he has been college golf’s top-ranked player at times.”

“Ricky Castillo has had to play a limited national schedule, but that didn’t stop the Florida signee from ranking No. 1 in the Class of 2019.”

“Forces for a big national schedule are strong, but expect local junior golfers to continue to find success.”

“One reason is financial. Playing an extensive national schedule quickly gets expensive. One payoff for all the travel would seem to be much higher odds at a big college scholarship, but those aren’t as plentiful as one might assume.”

Full piece.

8. Why golf coaching works

Our Matthew Lindberg...”In 2017, I heard a podcast featuring Will Robins who was talking about the same concept and making the distinction between coaching and instruction. I believed in what he was talking about, and what separated a coach from a traditional instructor. It is exactly what I thought all along. I joined Will’s consulting group in 2017, and started to better implement what it meant to be a coach. With Will’s guidance the results I was able to achieve by fully committing to the Coaching Model speak for themselves. Coaching clearly works at all levels, let me tell you why.”

Among his reasons: “It gives the student what they need, not what they want…Traditional golf instruction became so heavily focused on “customer service” and giving the student what they wanted, that it lost sight of the overall result. In order to achieve those great results, I believe in giving my students what they need. A perfect example of this is a personal trainer. Let’s say you have a wedding to go to in 2 months and you need to lose 10 lbs. That trainer is going to get you up early, make you stick to eating healthy, and make you sore after every workout to achieve the desired result. Then at the wedding, you love your personal trainer because you look and feel great. However, if that same trainer lets you dictate what you will eat, what you’ll work on during workouts, and when you’ll come back next, the trainer will fail miserably. In other words he is paid to give you what you NEED, to get you the result you want.”

Full piece.

9. Digest’s best illustrations of ’18

Fun stuff from the folks at GD as they round up some of the best artwork from the magazine this past year.

The image below is from their ranking of the best athlete golfers.

Full piece.

News

Testing Lorem Ipsum

Published

2 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.