News

Morning 9: Back2Golf guidelines | Schupak: How golf “whiffed” during lockdown | Greatest COVID-19 era golfer

Published

6 years ago

May 7, 2020

Ben Alberstadt

1. Back2Golf

Our Gianni Magliocco…“This week, the game’s allied organizations introduced ‘Back2Golf’ – a three-stage national framework outlining operational guidelines for golf’s 16,000-plus facilities that adhere to nationally established protocols and best practices.”

“Reviewed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), golf leaders and medical experts, the three-phase approach focuses on prolonged social distancing and enhanced sanitization practices – using measures set out by the CDC and The White House’s ‘Guidelines for Opening Up America Again’ plan.”

“The framework will progress at various paces depending on geographic location. Here’s a rundown of the three phases”

Phase 1

“Vulnerable individuals should continue to shelter in place. Members of households with vulnerable residents should be aware that by returning to work or other environments where distancing is not practical, they could carry the virus back home. Precautions should be taken to isolate from vulnerable residents”

“All individuals, when playing golf, should maximize physical distance from others. Social settings of more than 10 people, where appropriate physical distancing may not be practical, should be avoided unless precautionary measures are observed.”

“Avoid socializing in groups more than 10 people in circumstances that do not readily allow for appropriate physical distancing (e.g., golf leagues, golf events, club meetings).”

Phase 2

“Vulnerable individuals should continue to shelter in place. Members of households with vulnerable residents should be aware that by returning to work or other environments where distancing is not practical, they could carry the virus back home. Precautions should be taken to isolate from vulnerable residents.”

“All individuals, when playing golf, should maximize physical distance from others. Social settings of more than 50 people, where appropriate physical distancing may not be practical, should be avoided unless precautionary measures are observed.”

Phase 3

“Vulnerable individuals can resume public interactions but should practice physical distancing, minimizing exposure to social settings where distancing may not be practical unless precautionary measures are observed.”

“Low-risk populations should consider minimizing time spent in crowded environments.”

“All golf operations may resume as normal including unrestricted staffing of worksites.”

Full piece.

2. Mass courses remain closed

Golfweek’s Jason Lusk…“Massachusetts is the last state to have neither opened its golf courses nor announced when they can open after governors in Maryland and Vermont said that courses in their states will be allowed to resume play Thursday.”

“The governors of Maryland and Vermont made their announcements Wednesday, following on the heels of several other states to recently announce when golf could open in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Washington allowed the game to resume Tuesday, and New Hampshire’s courses are allowed to reopen May 11. Alaska remains closed because of seasonality.”

Full piece.

3. PGA Tour 2K21

Daniel Rapaport at Golf Digest…“Ever since the discontinuation of the Tiger Woods PGA Tour video game series-and the one-off Rory McIlroy PGA Tour game from 2015-golf fans have been clamoring for a high-quality console video game option.”

“It appears that, amid this pandemic that has put the professional game on hold, our prayers have been answered.”

“A verified Twitter account called PGA Tour 2K released a 17-second preview for PGA Tour 2K21, and the account says full details on the game will be coming on May 14. The official PGA Tour Twitter account re-tweeted the announcement shortly thereafter. The preview features the famous island-green 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass, and we’re so excited for this potential game that we’ll overlook the ball being teed up driver-height for a 130ish-yard shot.”

Full piece.

4. How golf “whiffed”

Interesting take from Golfweek’s Adam Schupak…“The news on Monday that four PGA Tour pros will be competing in a made-for-TV charity skins game warmed my heart like Linus from Peanuts being swaddled in his blanket. Oh, live professional golf – or at least something resembling it – how I’ve missed you.”

….”As one of my industry friends pointed out to me, how is it every musician has managed to play a concert in their living room but we can’t get one cameraman to follow one of her favorite players around the golf course for a day to play a match? Show us how you practice. Show our government leaders in the remaining states opposed to golf course openings that fresh air on the course isn’t a bad thing. We are 50+ days into lockdown and we have one match lined up and another Tiger-Phil match on the horizon. Is that really all the industry has to show for itself (plus a country club showdown in Dallas that we didn’t get to see)?”

Full piece.

5. Return of the Wie?

Golf Digest’s Alex Myers….“The LPGA star is eying the 2020 U.S. Women’s Open as a possibility for her first tournament back. The event originally scheduled for June has been moved to Dec. 10-13 at Champions Golf Club in Houston due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.”

“Logistically, it opened my eyes and I was like, ‘Whoa, like maybe it could happen,'” Wie West told ESPN. “I’m not making a decision right now, but my ears definitely perked up when I heard that the U.S. Open is going to be in December. Suddenly, it’s something that seriously needs to be discussed.”

Full piece.

6. The greatest golfer of the Covid era

Shane Ryan profiles the wild run of Nicolo Galletti, who is currently a force to be reckoned with on the Outlaw Tour. How he wound up teeing it up on the circuit is a plenty wild story…

“…There were the three injuries that derailed the slim lefty for months, starting in the late summer of 2019 while he was playing on the PGA Tour Latinoamerica. Galletti had netted a pair of top 10s the year before, and he finished second at a tournament in Argentina that April, but while practicing in August, he felt a strange sensation in his leg that turned out to be a torn oblique. It would derail him for the entire second half of his season, and that alone would have been a tough pill to swallow for the 25-year-old who had never dealt with a serious injury or been forced to take time away from the game.”

“It got worse. When he came back in November to play in the second stage of the Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying School, he was sitting on a bag stand watching a friend hit balls after his second round when the entire structure collapsed and he threw his arm out to catch himself. The pain wasn’t overwhelming at impact, but the next day, after a few holes in the third round, he couldn’t move his wrist. He had to withdraw and soon found out the wrist was fractured. When he tried to come back in December for the final event of the Latinoamerica Tour, in the hopes of qualifying for the Korn Ferry, it was too soon, and he finished near the bottom.”

“If that felt like a major stroke of bad luck, what came next was almost absurd. Galletti spent his college years at Arizona State, and his roommate was Jon Rahm. He was invited to Rahm’s wedding in late February, just as he was on the verge of returning to the game. The day before the ceremony, Rahm had a bunch of games planned for his guests. At one point during the day, Galletti and a friend put on giant novelty sumo suits and prepared for combat. Galletti didn’t want to aggravate his wrist injury, so he was on the back foot when his friend knocked him over. As he went down, he rolled his ankle, and the result was a serious sprain.”

Full piece.

7. World Amateur Team Champ cancelled

Julie Williams at Golfweek...”Despite being six months away, the World Amateur Team Championships have been taken off the 2020 calendar. The event scheduled for the second half of October had already been moved from Hong Kong to Singapore after concerns over social unrest in its originally scheduled location. Now, the event has been canceled entirely.

Dating back to 1958, the World Amateur Team Championships include up to 72 countries competing in 72 holes of stroke play competition. Each country fields two or three players with the two lowest scores counting per round.

Full piece.

8. Pros in AZ Open

Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard…“Next week’s Desert Financial Credit Union Scottsdale AZ Open isn’t a PGA Tour event but it will have plenty of Tour flavor with two-time Tour winner Kevin Streelman, Alex Cejka, Joel Dahmen and Nate Lashley scheduled to play the 54-hole event beginning Monday at Talking Stick Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.”

Full piece.

9. The Justin Thomas Foundation x Lee Wybranski

From Lee Wybranski’s website…“Help support No Kid Hungry and Team Kentucky’s heroic work with a purchase of this limited-edition artwork inspired by Justin’s most recent win in Hawaii.”

“Overnight, our world suddenly changed. Life doesn’t look the same as it did last month, last week, or even yesterday. We are all facing challenges, and we are here to help. We want to be a part of the good that comes out of uncertain times. Justin Thomas and Lee Wybranski have partnered to develop limited edition custom artwork for sale to raise funds for No Kid Hungry & Team Kentucky for their efforts in the fight against COVID-19.”

Full details & how to buy

News

Testing Lorem Ipsum

Published

58 mins 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.