News

Morning 9: HV3, JT, Rickie | DJ surges in Saudi Arabia | A theft at the WMPO

Published

7 years ago

Feb 1, 2019

Ben Alberstadt

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

February 1, 2019

Good Friday morning, golf fans.

1. HV3 (and JT and Rickie)

Harold Varner III overcame an early bogey with three straight birdies, moving himself in position to tie for the lead.

He got it with a long putt and a dab on the loudest hole in golf.

Varner snaked in a long birdie putt on the par-3 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale on Thursday, capping off a 7-under 64 to tie Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas for the first-round lead at the Phoenix Open.

Varner set off the rowdiest roars of the afternoon with his 31-foot putt at the hole turned into a stadium, celebrating with the dab toward the sky.

“I love entertaining people and what better hole to do it,” Varner said.

Varner, who missed the cut at Torrey Pines last week, blew his first putt past the hole on the par-4 second hole for a three-putt bogey, but bounced back with three straight birdies on the front nine. He had a two-putt birdie on the par-15 13th and got up-and-down from a greenside bunker at the other back-nine par 5, the 15th.

Full piece.

2. Wolff!

Oklahoma State sophomore Matthew Wolff, another iconoclast who in his TOUR debut settled his nerves and shot a 4-under 67 in the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.

“It was awesome,” Wolff said after going 1 over for his first five holes before making five birdies the rest of the way. “It’s probably more than I hoped for, especially at this tournament, which is unlike any other tournament. … I was really nervous at first but settled in and played nice.”

Wolff has made a lot of noise in amateur circles of late. He won the Phil Mickelson Award as the nation’s top freshman while leading OSU to the NCAA title last season. This season, in the fall, he reeled off wins in three straight tournaments, joining Scott Verplank as the only OSU golfers to accomplish that feat.

All of this with a funky move in which Wolff does a little shimmy to trigger his swing, picks the club straight up off the ground, points his left toe, and then hits every angle seemingly just right as he comes through the hitting area with eye-popping speed.

Full piece.

If you haven’t seen Wolff’s unique action, check it out here.

3. DJ surges in Saudi Arabia

EuropeanTour.com report… “Dustin Johnson laid down a daunting marker for the rest of the field as he soared into a three-stroke lead at the Saudi International powered by SBIA.”

“The World Number Three produced a flawless second round of nine under par after taking advantage of calmer conditions on Friday morning to move ahead at the Royal Greens Golf & Country Club.”

“Johnson rolled in seven birdies and a terrific eagle to get to 11 under for the tournament, with Zander Lombard three shots adrift alongside China’s Li Haotong”

Full piece.

4. Theft at the WMPO pro-am

Golfweek Staff report…”On Wednesday at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, Bradley’s day started off like any other. In fact, probably better than most.”

“Bradley finished fourth in the pro-am, while being caddied by his dad who sported a matching beard and a similarly vibrant Hawaiian shirt. His group beat out Patrick Peterson and Michael Phelps among others stars. He beat his own manager, Torey Lovullo, who spoke highly of Bradley while meeting with the media that morning. He got to hold the Phoenix Open gopher.”

“By all accounts, he seemed to have a blast….But the day took a devastating turn, when Bradley realized he couldn’t find his golf bag. The momentary panic of misplacing it quickly gave way to a darker possibility: Bradley believed his bag to be stolen.”

Full piece.

5. Criteria change: 2020 USWO exemptions

Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols…”The main takeaway: Beginning next year, exemptions will be given off the Rolex Rankings rather than money lists from various tours. In 2012, a similar change was made for the men’s U.S. Open.”

“Exemption modifications for the 2020 U.S. Women’s Open:

* Removes top 75 off the money list from the previous year

* Removes top 5 from the LET, Korea LPGA and Japan LPGA money lists from previous year

* Removes top 3 from China LPGA money list

* Increases Rolex Rankings qualifiers from top 50 to 75 at close of entries

* Increases Rolex Rankings qualifiers from top 50 to 75 prior to current year’s championship

* Adds a new exemption category for top 30 from the CME Globe points list as of the Monday prior to the previous year’s CME Group Tour Championship”

Full piece.

6. Electromagnetic pulses!

Golf Digest’s Coleman Bentley…”If you even know how to spell “golf,” chances are you’ve seen the now-viral video of Bryson DeChambeau’s Bill Nye-approved shot process at the Dubai Desert Classic last weekend. The 30 For 30 short, which finds Bryson and his caddie analyzing air density and adjusted distance for an agonizing 74 seconds before hitting a 126-yard approach, has generated Flamin’ Hot Cheeto takes from around the golf world, including Brooks “Don’t Think Too Much” Koepka and now Matt Kuchar, who unleashed this expert troll job of the Artist Formerly Known as the Mad Scientist at the Phoenix Open on Thursday morning. Watch your necks out there, kids.”

“Of course, Kuchar has recently been the subject of his own controversy, but in this case, we’ll leave his glass house intact because, well, it’s just that funny. Going full deadpan, Kuchar cites “electromagnetic pulses” for his ball’s spin, nailing Bryson square between the eyes without even having to check the barometric pressure first.”

Full piece.

7. TM/PXG settle patent infringement suit

If you recall, PXG accused TaylorMade of infringing on several patents when the company launched its P790 irons…

Here’s the announcement…”Parsons Xtreme Golf (PXG) and TaylorMade Golf Company jointly announced today that they have reached a settlement of the pending patent litigation and related patent disputes between the parties. Under the terms of the agreement, each company will have specified rights to make club products under patent cross-licenses.”

“David Abeles, TaylorMade Golf’s CEO, said, “I’m pleased that we were able to reach an acceptable and amicable resolution to put this this case behind us so we can continue focusing on bringing industry leading equipment innovations to the golfer.”

“Bob Parsons, PXG’s CEO, said, “As a golf equipment innovator, PXG will continue to pursue research and development and obtain patents for our novel club designs in the iron technology space. We will not hesitate to assert those patents in the future.”

Details of the settlement are confidential.

8. Hot List

While I’m loathe to include it from a direct competition standpoint, I’m obligated, given the mission of this newsletter (calling attention to stories of note in the golf mediaspace) to mention that the Golf Digest Hot List is now live.

Check it out, here (and you’re welcome, GD)

9. Knudson & Barath’s deep dive

Just wanted to call y’all’s attention to Ryan Barath and Brian Knudson’s work breaking down new equipment releases. These gentlemen know their stuff, and if you want to get really granular, you’ll want to hear what they have to say.

Check out their breakdown of the new Ping G410 series of woods, hybrids, and irons.

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.