News

Morning 9: Oakmont the U.S. Open anchor | U.S. Am medalist | OWGR changes

Published

5 years ago

Aug 12, 2021

Ben Alberstadt

By Ben Alberstadt

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August 12, 2021

Good Thursday morning, golf fans.

1. Anchor Oakmont

AP report…“Already identified by its U.S. Open heritage, Oakmont Country Club was named the second “anchor” course for the U.S. Open in an announcement Wednesday that includes bringing nine U.S. Opens for men and women to Pennsylvania.”

“Four of them will be at Merion, which was chosen to host the 2030 U.S. Open. That will be the 100-year anniversary of Bobby Jones completing the Grand Slam. The final piece of what was called the “impregnable quadrilateral” in 1930 was the U.S. Amateur at Merion”

Full piece.

2. U.S. Am medalist

Adam Woodard for Golfweek…“A day after celebrating his 23rd trip around the sun on Tuesday, Pennsylvania local Mark Goetz earned medalist honors at the 121st U.S. Amateur, finishing the two rounds of stroke play at Longue Vue Club and Oakmont Country Club at 8 under with rounds of 64 and 68, respectively.”

“The fifth-year senior at West Virginia made just one bogey over the 36 holes, and it came on Wednesday morning during the continuation of the second round after play was halted for four hours due to a weather delay and stopped due to darkness on Tuesday night.”

“It’s the most memorable two days of my career by a mile, there’s nothing that will even come close,” Goetz said on Tuesday. “This place can beat you to your core. It’s disgustingly hard. If you play scared out here, you’re a little bit tentative, man it’ll bite you in the butt so fast. So I really didn’t have any expectations this week, and it’s because of how difficult this place is.”

Full piece.

3. OWGR changes

Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard…An overhaul of the Official World Golf Ranking that began in 2019 was announced Wednesday and will feature what officials call a modernized “field rating” calculation based on analytic techniques.”

“Under the new system, the field rating for each event in the ranking will be set by every player in the field, not just the top 200 players in the current ranking, and the minimum point levels and flagship events have been removed from the calculation.”

Full piece.

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4. Rose wins Payne Stewart Award

Helen Ross for PGATour.com…”Payne Stewart noticed a spindly 12-year-old waiting patiently outside the ropes at the Open Championship that day at Royal St. George’s and tossed him a golf ball.”

“Justin Rose, who is now 41, still remembers the feeling when he caught it.”

“That was a cool moment and made my day,” he said.

“So, imagine what it felt like on Monday when he hopped on a Zoom call to do some media interviews and the faces of Tracey Stewart and her son Aaron popped on the screen. Suddenly the cameras in the background made a little more sense.”

“Stewart’s widow and son were on the call to tell Rose that he was the 2021 winner of the Payne Stewart Award presented by Southern Company.”

Full piece.

5. Tight race on the Korn Ferry Tour

Via the Golf Channel Digital Team…”Entering the regular-season finale, the standings are excruciatingly close.”

“According to the Tour’s calculations, it appears as though the top 19 in the standings are safe to earn Tour cards. That’d mean the cutoff falls at Jared Wolfe, and it would take a wild sequence of events for No. 20 Nick Hardy to fall out, too.”

“After that, it gets interesting: Ben Kohles, Brett Drewitt, Curtis Thompson, Taylor Montgomery and Peter Uihlein occupy spots No. 21-25, respectively. Uihlein has only a seven-point lead over No. 26 Austin Smotherman, while 27th-ranked Roberto Diaz is eight points behind.”

“In all, spots No. 24-27 are separated by just 18 points.”

Full piece.

6. J.R. Smith is going back to school — and to play golf?

PGATour.com’s Helen Ross…”The 35-year-old is retired now and about to embark on a new adventure, enrolling at North Carolina A&T State University, one of the nation’s top HBCUs, to pursue a degree in liberal studies. Maybe those NBA scouts were right after all.”

“So, this is whenever,” said Smith, shortly before he split the fairway with his opening drive during the pro-am at the Wyndham Championship.

“The 6-foot-6, 200-pounder starts classes on Aug. 18. He is also waiting on the NCAA and to sort out his eligibility, and when it does, Smith, who plays to a 5 handicap, is looking to join the Aggies’ golf team.”

“It’s a big deal for A&T. It’s a big deal for him,” said Richard Watkins, who coaches both the men’s and women’s teams and was in Smith’s gallery on Wednesday. “It’s not very often that somebody in his position really has an opportunity to have a thought, a dream, an idea, and to be able to go ahead and move in that direction.”

Full piece.

7. Simpson on Zalatoris’ situation

Adam Schupak at Golfweek…”As a Special Temporary Member on the PGA Tour, Zalatoris was able to accept an unlimited number of sponsor invites this season. However, he has accumulated zero FedEx Cup points – unless he were to win this week. But here’s the thing: If he were eligible to earn FedEx Cup points he would rank 26th with 1,270 points.”

“It makes no sense. PGA Tour veteran Webb Simpson went so far as to suggest that there should be a player vote to let Zalatoris play.”

“I think I represent a lot of the players, I mean, that I’ve talked to that we all feel that he should be able to go to the Playoffs. Even if he’s ahead of me in the FedExCup Playoffs, I think he deserves to be in the Playoffs,” Simpson said.”

Full piece.

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8. Will Zalatoris’ putter switch

Our piece for PGATour.com…“When I get some time off, I think this could be a game changer.”

“That was Will Zalatoris’ first thought after rolling a few putts with a Scotty Cameron Phantom X 11 prototype putter in May. He got that time off, unfortunately, following a back injury that forced him out of The Open Championship and kept him on the sidelines until last week. “

“While resting and rehabbing at home following his early exit from Royal St. George’s, Zalatoris, who “hated every minute” of the downtime, decided to engage in some flatstick experimentation.”

“He found the Phantom X 11 prototype putter — with a black topline for added alignment — both rolled the ball a more predictable distance and gave him more feedback off the face.”

“I loved how immediately off the face … I just get immediate feedback,” Zalatoris said. “I was starting to lose that a little bit with my putter. … I can feel that ball exactly where it comes off on the face.”

Full piece.

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.