News

Morning 9: Knee surgery for JD? | Kang wants to “crush” Europe | Wie joining Golf Channel?

Published

7 years ago

Sep 12, 2019

Ben Alberstadt

By Ben Alberstadt (ben.alberstadt@golfwrx.com; @benalberstadt on Instagram)

September 12, 2019

Good Thursday morning, golf fans. Best wishes to my father, who is recovering from surgery!

1. PGA Tour POY: McIlroy

Golf Digest’s Joel Beall with the report and the response most are having to the news…”To the shock of many, including himself, Rory McIlroy was named the PGA Tour’s Player of the Year. Not as surprising is the debate that has subsequently ensued.”

“This was supposed to be Brooks Koepka’s honor. He already grabbed the PGA of America’s Player of the Year award, and it had been 28 years since the winner of one wasn’t the winner of both. Even McIlroy acknowledged Koepka’s eventual crowning after beating him at Tour Championship last month…”

….As a refresher, the PGA of America’s honor is determined based on a points system. The PGA Tour, though, relies on player voting, with members who played in at least 15 FedEx Cup events during the 2018-’19 season casting the ballots. That process is handled internally; the tour does not publicly release the results.”

“Or, apparently, privately release them either. Given the election’s concealment, the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson asked McIlroy during Wednesday’s media conference call if he knew how close the race had finished. “I inquired,” McIlroy said, “and they are keeping tight-lipped on that.” The call, just seven questions deep, was ended.”

Full piece.

2. Reshuffled schedule has players reshuffling

A window into the calculations players are making when plotting their schedules…

Golf Digest’s Dave Shedloski…”After competing in the Tour Championship for the third year in a row, Marc Leishman figured two weeks off was plenty, so he is entered in this week’s A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier, the opening event of the new PGA Tour season that begins Thursday on the Old White TPC Course at The Greenbrier Resort.”

“His thinking is simple: You can’t start too early accumulating FedEx Cup points for another berth in the season-ending extravaganza that just paid winner Rory McIlroy a $15 million bonus. He isn’t alone. He is joined this week by Bryson DeChambeau, Sungjae Im, who just was named PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, and Jason Kokrak, all who played at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.”

“It’s so important now to get off to a good start early in the season,” said Leishman, who plans to make four official starts before competing in the Australian Open in his native country followed by the Presidents Cup. “I was lucky enough to do that last year at the CIMB in Malaysia, and that’s the plan again this year, is to try and get off to a good start.

Full piece.

3. Daly to have knee surgery

Golf Digest’s Dave Shedloski…”Daly said Tuesday at The Greenbrier that he likely will undergo surgery on his arthritic right knee before the end of the year. He said after seeing his doctor last week that it was recommended he have a partial knee replacement.

“It’s not scheduled yet, but the doctor says it’s got to be done,” said Daly, who is playing in this event for the second time in as many years on a sponsor exemption.

Full piece.

4. Bold predictions

PGATour.com’s Ben Everill makes a number of prognostications about the upcoming season…

“A career grand slam will be attainable with nine holes to go at one of the majors….Will it be veteran Phil Mickelson at Winged Foot, where he famously let a U.S. Open slip from his fingers with a disastrous 72nd hole in 2006? Or will Jordan Spieth be back in form by the time the PGA Championship hits TPC Harding Park? Both are distinctly possible. But the most likely is Rory McIlroy making the turn at Augusta on Sunday with a shot at the green jacket and the career slam.”

“Phil Mickelson will break golf social media at some point with epic content….This might be the least bold prediction of the lot considering how awesome Mickelson’s foray into social media has been over the last year or so. From his Phireside chats to his great stories from yesteryear to his fitness recommendations, Mickleson is fast becoming a Hall of Fame poster as well as player. But we predict somewhere along the line he will do something so epic it will cross into the mainstream and go viral outside of just our sport.”

“We will get a sub-60 round somewhere on TOUR...Last season there were two 60s on TOUR coming from Phil Mickelson and Brandt Snedeker and 11 players shot rounds of 61. As players get better and better and more aggressive with their play, we are certain to see the sub-60 barrier cracked again. Can someone threaten Jim Furyk’s record 58? Well one of the Korn Ferry Tour graduates – Rhein Gibson – once shot a record 55 at his local club. Of course the TOUR set-ups and courses are a little tougher than what Gibson faced but that’s not to say it can’t be done.”

Full piece.

5. Na’s sabbatical

Helen Ross on the birth of Kevin Na’s son, Leo LeeWoo Na, and dad’s time off.

“I tried to push the name Kevin for the middle name, but it didn’t work,” Na said, laughing. “My wife, she shut me down. … I thought I had more pull in the house, but no.”

“Na said the decision not to play wasn’t an easy one but in the long run, family is the most important thing. And as it turned out, he enters his title defense at A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier more rested than he might otherwise have been.”

“It was weird having that much time off,” Na said. “… It’s rare you get four weeks off in August. Like I said, I feel fresh. I’m ready to go and excited about this new season. Not only am I excited, the first tournament of the year I’m defending so there is more excitement.”

Full piece.

6. Get ready to hear even more about Viktor Hovland

Steve DiMeglio with a few words on Viktor Hovland…

“Put it all together and yes, he could be the next big thing on the PGA Tour. Just consider this: Hovland, who turns 22 next week, is making his first start as a full member of the PGA Tour at this week’s Military Tribute at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and is one of the favorites. It’s the opening event of the 2019-20 season.”

“I would say I was a little anxious going into my professional career, even though I played really well in college,” Hovland said Wednesday. “I played well this summer, but I wasn’t really happy with the way I was hitting it.

“But where I got way better this year was with figuring out how to just shoot a score regardless of how I was hitting it. But I realized over time this summer when you just play every single week, your mind just switches off a little bit and you just get into golf mode. Suddenly, the more weeks I played in a row my shots kind of started coming back again, and then the confidence came.”

Full piece.

7. Michelle Wie joining Golf Channel…temporarily

Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols…“Wie will join Golf Central on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (Sept. 13-15) following live competition. She will debut at 1:30 p.m. ET following Friday’s action alongside former LPGA pro Paige Mackenzie in the Orlando, Florida, studio.”

“Wie will also contribute to Golf Channel’s digital and social media platforms, including Instagram story takeovers.”

“I’m excited to join the Golf Channel crew to give my views and inputs on a great event that means so much to me,” Wie said in a release.

Full piece.

8. Kang wants to “crush” Europe

Derek Lawrenson writes…”American Danielle Kang has stirred the pot nicely with some provocative remarks about wanting to ‘crush’ the Europeans and make the home supporters cry when the Solheim Cup begins at Gleneagles on Friday.”

“…Kang said: ‘You’re going out there to make people cry at this point, and crush the other team.”

‘You’re trying to take souls, you know. That’s the fun of it. I loved my first Solheim in Des Moines, it was amazing hearing all the “USA, USA” chants.

Full piece.

9. Dufner’s custom shaft

One for the gear junkies! Our Ryan Barath…”This week, on the range at the Military Tribute at The Greenbrier, the inaugural event of the 2019 – 2020 PGA Tour season, we spotted Jason Dufner with a very custom LA Golf Shafts long iron shaft.”

“We reached out to LA Golf Shafts Chief Product Officer John Oldenburg to get the inside info, and John did not disappoint in the details and the story behind the switch by Jason.”

“Duff reached out to me shortly after he put our new OLYSS 65 Tour X prototype in play in his driver last season. He was looking for something for his 4-iron that would get the ball up in the air a bit easier, but maintain (or increase) distance, and keep the spin close to where it was with his existing shaft which was a TT Dynamic Gold AMT S400. What I worked on providing him was a shaft that had an overall stiffness/frequency and weight that were comparable to his current set up, but with a softer tip section. And to improve accuracy (decrease dispersion), I wanted to get him something with lower torque than the TT AMT shaft. So, in a nutshell, that’s what I designed for him. It’s a 125 gram shaft with a frequency close to the AMT S400, but with a tip that is pretty significantly softer and has 0.3 degrees lower torque. The combo of a softer tip with lower torque will help him to launch the ball higher but maintain his accuracy. The “Duff 4-iron”, also has a higher balance point than the AMT S440. That way Duff can use a heavier head, get the same swingweight he is comfortable with, and put a little more mass behind the ball at impact to get an increase in ball speed and thus distance.”

Full piece.

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.