News

Morning 9: Wie still injured | Why fans hate Reed per psychology | Shane Ryan: Outlandish 2020 predictions

Published

6 years ago

Jan 9, 2020

Ben Alberstadt

By Ben Alberstadt

Email me at ben.alberstadt@golfwrx.com and find me at @benalberstadt on Instagram and golfwrxEIC on Twitter.

January 8, 2020

Good Thursday morning, golf fans. Just a reminder we’ll be massively increasing our output in 2020, so don’t forget to subscribe to GolfWRX on YouTube.

**Drop me a line (ben.alberstadt@golfwrx.com) if you’d like to talk about getting your message in front of the M9 readership. Banner and native ad possibilities are, well, possible**

1. Wie starts the season on the DL

Golf Channel’s Randall Mell…”Michelle Wie won’t be teeing it up in next week’s LPGA season opener at the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions at Lake Buena Vista, Florida.”

“Sources told GolfChannel.com that she’s also not likely to play in the following week’s Gainbridge LPGA at Boca Rio in Florida.”
“Wie, who turned 30 in October, is still rehabilitating from the lingering hand and wrist injuries that caused her to shut down play early in each of the last two seasons. In October of 2018, she underwent surgery to repair an avulsion fracture, bone chips and nerve entrapment in her right hand.”

Full piece.

2. Explaining why fans have it in for Patrick Reed

With an assist from psychology!

Golf Channel’s Joel Beall…”In a sport like golf where the rules are sacrosanct, that’s a tough label to shake,” says Dr. Sam Sommers, author of This is Your Brain on Sports and a professor of psychology at Tufts University.

…”We operate in the context of our previous actions and the narrative created regarding our tendencies,” Dr. Sommers says. “Once that reputation is in place, it colors everything that comes after.”
On the surface, what’s at hand seems elementary. In A Qualitative Inquiry on Schadenfreude by Sport Fans, authors Vassilis Dalakas, Joanna Phillips Melancon and Tarah Sreboth note the “feelings of pleasure and joy that one party experiences at the misfortunes [of others]” are inherent to watching competition. Reed, well before the Hero, was a player golf fans were prone to root against. This was purely new fodder.

Full piece.

3. An eye on the Middle East

Golfweek Staff report…”While no big names have yet withdrawn from tournaments that are part of the European Tour’s upcoming swing through the Middle East, players and agents are keeping an eye on the situation in light of escalated tensions between the United States and Iran.”

“…Increased tensions in the Middle East have raised questions regarding the safety of players planning to compete in the European Tour’s events in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia later this month.”

Full piece.

4. 10 non-majors to get excited about

Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard with a handful of tournaments we ought to be pumped about…

Two of his selections…

Farmers Insurance Open (Jan. 23-26): Woods seems poised to make his first start of ’20 at a place where he’s won eight professional titles, but the debuts go well beyond Tiger. Jason Day, who withdrew from the Presidents Cup in December with an injury, is currently committed to the event as is last year’s Jack Nicklaus Award winner, Rory McIlroy. Professional golf’s wraparound schedule may keep players engaged all year, but Torrey Pines is where the game’s best return to work.

Irish Open (May 28-31): Following cameos in July the last two years, the event moves back to May, perched perfectly between the PGA Championship and U.S. Open. The move should make the Irish Open more palatable for international players like McIlroy, who skipped the championship last year but has committed to playing the event in ’20.

Full piece.

5. Outlandish predictions for 2020

Courtesy of the inimitable mind of Shane Ryan…

Here’s a good one…”Rory McIlroy will retire from golf...Rory has always been the most enlightened of our great golfers, with a philosophical bent that isn’t shared by most of his colleagues, or by athletes in general. The fact that he’s managed over time to forge a strong work-life balance for himself while still playing at the elite levels of the sport is remarkable, but 2020 will be the year when he has an epiphany that life is short and subjecting himself to the mental and physical rigors of professional golf just isn’t worth it. He’s going to quit, everyone will think it’s temporary, and a few months later he’ll buy a Caribbean island and start a beach-side bar where he spends the next 50 years blowing the minds of locals and tourists by doling out bits of vague wisdom like “golf made me rich, but you can’t put a price on the tides.”

Full piece.

6. Zac Blair

PGATour.com’s Sean Martin talked to the unique quantity that is Zac Blair…

PGATOUR.COM: What do you love about playing there? (at Waialea)

Zac Blair: It’s a cool spot. Any of those par-70s where you get that Bermudagrass, where there’s a real premium on hitting it in the fairway, it’s obviously really nice. I’ve played it a few times where it’s been really firm and I can get it out as far as those longer hitters because they may be hitting hybrid off the tee. The course is fun. It’s a cool way to start the year. I’m excited to get back and see what Tom Doak has done with the restoration. Most of the big changes have taken place the last two or three years since I last played there.

PGATOUR.COM: What do you like about Raynor courses?

Zac Blair: I just find them enjoyable. I really enjoy some of those template holes and green complexes in general. I feel like they offer a large selection of pin positions. You can make the course play a lot different day-to-day. A hole can play completely different just by moving the hole 10-12 steps.

Full piece.

7. Abraham Ancer and the hangover-less tequila

Jason Crook for Golf Channel…”Ancer, 28, is hoping to make 2020 a big year. Not only is he looking to build on a season that saw him make it all the way to the Tour Championship, but he is launching a brand of tequila, Flecha Azul, with partner Aron Marquez.”

“We’re both Mexican. Both love tequila. We just said, You know what? Let’s give it a whirl. It’s been in the works for over a year, and we’re really excited. We’ve been nonstop working on it, so really happy with all the profiles of our tequila and everything.”

Ancer also had this to say.…”It’s just remove the stigma of people like have tequila when they’re in college and they’re already kind of drunk, and then they have tequila shots that are pretty bad and then you mix it and end up throwing up. (Laughter.) You wake up with the worst hangover,” Ancer said. “What you remember is like, Wow that tequila got me.

Full piece.

8. Kuchar keeps his bronze medal…in a sock in his backpack

This is…unique. Golf Channel’s Carson Williams…

“Wherever my backpack goes it goes,” Kuchar said. “Hadn’t found a home anywhere other than my backpack.”

“Kuchar said traveling with it is easy and fun. He doesn’t take it out much other than during airport screenings.”

“They see this big medal blob and always take it out. I always bring it out and it’s in a sock, and you know, even though I’ve put the sock out open in a bin, the screener always grabs a hold of it, pulls it out and [their] eyes kind of bug out.”

Full piece.

9. Mickelson’s great helicopter escape

“One of the trending topics, sandwiched between World War III and Royal Family nothingness, this week was the question, “Tell me a story about yourself the sounds like a lie but is absolutely true.” Someone with the handle “Rick Fil-A” (sigh) replied to the thread with a Mickelson anecdote:”

“Rick Fil-A @rickspeterson…I was in a limo that was stuck in traffic with @PhilMickelson , who called his agent to see if he could get a helicopter to evacuate us.”

“@PhilMickelson…Guns n roses concert 1992. True story”

Full piece.

News

Testing Lorem Ipsum

Published

3 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.