News

Morning 9: Do top players feel cheated? | Phil on Distance Report | Ogilvy: More men & women tourneys, please

Published

6 years ago

Feb 6, 2020

Ben Alberstadt

1. Discontent at the top

Geoff Shackelford pulled this juicy morsel from Bob Harig’s breakdown of the PGR and offered his own take…”Said an agent who wished not to be identified: “How can an organization negotiate hundreds of millions of dollars of TV contracts and someone like Tiger or Rory goes out and has the same chance of making the same money as some guy who has come off the Korn Ferry Tour? There is no arbitration panel. And no judge would say that is a fair economic model.”

[Shackelford] “Right or wrong, that has always been a successful model of the PGA Tour. Golf fans have enjoyed the democratic nature of the sport, including the occasional unknown taking down a star. In return, the star has benefited from the opportunity to play via endorsement income that the Tour does not see one penny of after giving them a platform.”

“But in recent years a few things have changed. The schedule is now year-round and the stars are increasingly asked to tee it up more, including “playoffs” after major season when they would like to be recharging their batteries. The top players are called up every year to play a Cup event. In return? A small donation to their pet cause and free merch they’ll never wear again.”

Full piece.

2. Phil on Distance Report

Golfweek’s Adam Schupak…”Phil Mickelson read the USGA and R&A’s distance report that was released Tuesday and took his share of jabs at golf’s governing bodies during his pre-tournament press conference on the eve of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.”

“Mickelson’s biggest beef with the report, which expressed concern for distance gains becoming “unsustainable,” was his opposition to what he perceives as punishing athletes for getting better.”

“I don’t think that we have had massive equipment changes. We have just had athletes that have been able to take advantage of the equipment more so than in the past. And I hate to see that discouraged,” Mickelson said. “You look at what Bryson (DeChambeau) has done getting in the gym, getting after it, lifting weights, and hitting bombs, and now he’s – now you’re talking about trying to roll it back because he’s made himself a better athlete. So, I don’t know if I agree with that. But I also don’t really understand the whole scope of how it affects the game and how it affects agronomy and golf courses and so forth, so I’m not sure I’m the best one to really comment on it. I just know from the small little bubble of the PGA Tour, I hate seeing the athletes be punished or discouraged from continuing to work and get better.”

Full piece.

3. Billy blames developers

The text of an interesting pair of tweets from Billy Horschel…

“I was presented with a vast research a few years that showed in the 90s courses that started being built were being built dramatically longer that before. Developers wanted championship courses. It was believed to be a championship course you had to have length. Also, developers.”

“…wanted more room for houses. The course designers who built these courses went along with the developer because they were being paid a nice sum. So courses were being built longer so OEM had to figure a better way to increase distance quickly. Driver improves. ProV1 is produced.”

4. Why the Pro-Am matters

Golf Channel’s Randall Mell…”While the pro-am format isn’t a favorite for some PGA Tour pros who choose to bypass the event, Phil Mickelson and Graeme McDowell explained this week why they enjoy it so much, and why pros who skip it are missing out.”

“Early in my career, I did miss it a few times, but as I got older I realized what an important event this is in developing relationships with a lot of the decision makers and key players in the game of golf, and developing these kind of emotional connections that lead to better decisions as far as supporting the game,” said Mickelson, a five-time winner at Pebble Beach. “It gets companies and CEOs more inclined to support the game of golf.”

“Now, it’s not for everybody,” Mickelson says of the pro-am experience. “So, I understand when guys don’t want to do it . . . But for me, I’ve always enjoyed it and actually have played some of my best golf when I’m partnered with very interesting players.”

Full piece.

5. Ogilvy calls for more mixed gender tournaments

Golf Digest’s Joel Beall…”However, while there are a handful of mixed-gender events-most notably, Sweden’s Henrik Stenson and Annika Sorenstam are set to host the Scandinavian Mixed this June-the approach has yet to receive global acceptance. According to former U.S. Open champ Geoff Ogilvy, it is time golf’s governing bodies get with the program.”

“There’s more than just guys, you know. It just makes sense,” Ogilvy said at the Vic Open. “We should do this more often. The fact that this happens only once in a year is just nonsense.”

“Ogilvy, known as one of the premier player-scholars in the game, spoke of experience at last year’s event and how it spurred admiration for his female counterparts.”

“All I wanted to do was watch the women and how they went about it,” Ogilvy explained. “Some of them are just machines, they don’t hit bad shots and they hit hybrids on to the green to 10 feet all day.

Full piece.

6. DJ poised

Golf Channel’s Randall Mell on Dustin Johnson gearing up for 2020…”Johnson’s painful finish to 2019 wasn’t so funny. He missed the final three months while recovering from arthroscopic surgery to repair cartilage damage in his left knee. After a second-place finish at the PGA Championship in May, he didn’t have another top-10 finish the rest of the year.”

“I blame it on my knee hurting,” Johnson said.

“Johnson said the knee no longer hurts, but he can feel the repair when his left leg braces hard, as it does when he’s hitting a shot off an uphill lie. He said even though there’s no pain, his brain tells him to ease off.”

Full piece.

7. Mickelson won’t accept U.S. Open exemption

AP report…”The U.S. Open occasionally awards a special exemption to the game’s best players when they are not eligible. Ernie Els has received such an exemption each of the last two years. Jack Nicklaus received eight of them.”

“Mickelson, who has won five majors, is certain to receive at least one if he needs it…But he made clear Tuesday he doesn’t want one.”

“I won’t accept it,” Mickelson said at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where he won last year for his 44th career PGA Tour victory. “So I am either going to get in the field on my own or I’ll have to try to qualify. I’m not going to take a special exemption.”

Full piece.

8. The Dame is 2 back!

AP report…”English veteran Laura Davies played her first competitive round in six months, because of her mother’s illness, and shot a 6-under 67 to be two shots off the lead at the LPGA-sanctioned Vic Open.”

“The tournament features male and female pros teeing off in alternate groups on two courses….The 56-year-old Davies played the Creek course at the 13th Beach Golf Links. She birdied five of seven holes on her final nine – the front nine – but bogeyed her second-last to fall behind the leaders.”

Full piece.

9. Why was it great?

Wanted to point y’all in the direction of an excellent video by our Ryan Barath discussing the popularity of one of my favorite clubs of all time: the Titleist PT fairway wood.

Check it out.

News

Testing Lorem Ipsum

Published

1 hour 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

1 day 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.