News

Morning 9: Azinger: If Brooks doesn’t like the Ryder Cup… | U.S. RC team targeting unity & birdies

Published

5 years ago

Sep 16, 2021

Ben Alberstadt

By Ben Alberstadt

For comments—or if you’re looking for a fourth—email me at ben.alberstadt@golfwrx.com.

Good Thursday morning, golf fans… I am looking to form a long-term M9 partnership with a coffee company — seems like a natural synergy! — if you’re the right highly caffeinated person, please drop me a line.

1. Azinger: “If Brooks doesn’t love the Ryder Cup…”

Who could have forecast the winds of blowback yesterday? That’s right. Everyone.

Golf Channel Digital team…”Former U.S. Ryder Cup captain Paul Azinger, in an NBC Sports/Golf Channel conference call to discuss next week’s competition, said he read Koepka’s full quotes and didn’t think Koepka was fully invested in the matches.”

“Brooks, when I just read that article, I’m not sure he loves the Ryder Cup that much. If he doesn’t love it, he should relinquish his spot and get people there who do love the Ryder Cup,” the 2008 winning captain said.”

“Not everybody embraces it, but if you don’t love it and you’re not sold out, then I think Brooks should – especially being hurt, should consider whether or not he really wants to be there.”

Full piece.

2. Rahm out of pro-am with stomach bug

The World No. 1 sat out Wednesday.

Golf Channel’s Max Schreiber…”World No. 1 Jon Rahm withdrew from the Fortinet Championship’s Wednesday pro-am because of a stomach illness.”

“Rahm was supposed to tee off at 8:40 a.m. PST and moved his press conference to 2 p.m. But he then canceled his pre-tournament presser altogether and the Tour announced he would not appear at Silverado Resort and Spa’s North Course at all on Wednesday.”

Full piece.

3. Unity & birdies

Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard…”If the team scouting trip to Whistling Straits this week is any indication, there are at least two themes that will define the Ryder Cup – U.S. captain Steve Stricker’s message of team unity and a golf course that will be set up for plenty of low scoring.”

“The majority of the U.S. team spent Sunday and Monday at Whistling Straits playing two practice rounds and attending a relaxed team dinner hosted by Stricker.”

“We understand how much it means to [Stricker], how much it means having it in his home state. I think you are going to see a very cohesive team that’s playing for each other and understands the bigger picture,” Harris English told GolfChannel.com. “We are all a team.”

Full piece.

The Morning 9 Recommends…

Like lightning in a bottle, this jolt of electricity in your coffee cup will vanquish grogginess and “revolutionize your morning.”

A smooth, subtle, never-bitter cherry and chocolate flavor profile, Death Wish’s brew is the only one I count on to hit my 5 a.m. Morning 9 deadline!

Buy here!

GolfWRX may earn a commission of “Recommends” products.

4. Storylines of 2021: The Bryson saga

ESPN’s Bob Harig rounds up the major plot points of the 2020-2021 season. Not surprisingly, one Bryson DeChambeau features prominently.

“No player made more headlines than Bryson DeChambeau. From his six-shot U.S. Open victory in September 2020 to his spat with Brooks Koepka — and that was just the beginning of the Bryson drama — DeChambeau was an overwhelming story in the season just completed.”

“He won his first major at Winged Foot, had a stirring victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, wowed fans with long drives, contended at the 2021 U.S. Open, lost in a stirring playoff at the BMW Championship and continues to approach the game from a different place.”

“But after his March win at Bay Hill, the headlines were mostly for other things. The spat with Koepka that began at the PGA Championship was the biggest one and is still ongoing. That led to on-course heckling and some verbal, social-media sparring between he and Koepka.”

Full piece.

5. Assistant captain Stenson

BBC report…”Sweden’s Henrik Stenson has been named as the fifth and final European vice-captain for next week’s Ryder Cup.”

“The 45-year-old joins compatriot Robert Karlsson, Germany’s Martin Kaymer, Luke Donald of England and Graeme McDowell of Northern Ireland in the role.”

“The 2016 Open champion has played in five Ryder Cups, winning three times.”

“He knows what it takes to win – and that experience and knowledge will be crucial for us,” said European captain Padraig Harrington.”

Full piece.

6. Keeping the dream job

Adam Schupak puts some meat on the “PGA Tour rookies” bone with his item for Golfweek.

“There are 27 rookies in this season’s class on the PGA Tour, the most since 2011 when 35 earned cards, and 26 of them are in the field this week (all but Matthias Schwab). Max McGreevy and Jared Wolfe are making their Tour debut.”

“Some, like Aaron Rai, a 26-year-old Englishman who once holed a record 207 straight 10-foot putts at age 15, needed just three starts in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals to graduate while others such as Scott Gutschewski, 44, is returning to the big leagues full time for the first time since 2011, and had made just two PGA Tour starts in the past 10 years. How did he celebrate his success? He went to Denny’s.”

“It ain’t Applebees, but still pretty fancy,” he tweeted.

Full piece.

7. Furyk to seniors

Listen to Jim! Golfweek’s Tim Schmitt with remarks from the 17-time PGA Tour winner that point to the appeal of the senior circuit for shorter hitters — and the relevance for golfers getting on in years.

“It’s one of the reasons why I really enjoy the Champions tour. Not the only reason, but I joke that I got to know my 4- and 5-iron really well playing the PGA Tour and kind of missed hitting the 8, 9 and wedge into par 4s,” Furyk said on Wednesday. “I get an opportunity now to attack a little bit more at times and get some shorter irons in my hand and make a few more birdies. It’s a lot of fun.”

“But while Furyk was mandated by PGA Tour rules to play the world’s best courses at their very longest, he said it’s a mistake that common players make when enjoying the game in middle age.”

“As amateurs get older, it’s very common that if they grew up playing the blue tees, they want to play the blue tees. It’s hard to move up to the whites,” Furyk said. “When they finally do, they go, ‘Wow, this is fun, why didn’t I do this earlier? I should have been doing this five years ago.”

Full piece.

8. Inbee the best putter in golf?

Our Andy Lack…”The PGA Tour has embarked on a data driven revolution over the past decade, and with the unveiling of KPMG Performance Insights, the LPGA is following suit.”

“Beginning at the 2021 LPGA MEDIHEAL Championship in June, the KPMG team has gathered data from over 240,000 individual LPGA Tour Shots.”

“While there were a number of a fascinating conclusions that Justin Ray this week highlighted for LPGA.com, Inbee Park’s putting stood out the most.”

“Any LPGA Tour fan is familiar with the fact that the seven-time major champion is one of the best putters in the world, but the advanced analytics shed even more light on just how brilliant she has been.”

“Since the start of KPMG Performance Insight tracking, LPGA Tour pros have a conversion rate of 28% on putts from 10 to 15 feet. For context, PGA Tour golfers hover around 30%, with the leaders in that statistic making 10-15 foot putts 40 to 41% of the time.”

Full piece.

9. Photos from the Fortinet

GolfWRX is live from Napa for the 2021 Fortinet Championship. Along with the return of in-hand WITBs (8 players!) we have a number of general galleries for your perusal.

In addition, we got a look at putters from Ping, Bettinardi, and Scotty Cameron — covers, too!

Full piece.

News

Testing Lorem Ipsum

Published

13 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.