For comments: ben.alberstadt@golfwrx.com

Good Tuesday morning, golf fans, as we inch closer towards the holiday season.

1. KFT members now able to earn points for making U.S. Open cut 

Golf Channel’s Brentley Romine…“Nine Korn Ferry Tour members made the cut in this year’s U.S. Open at The Country Club…If it had been 2023, those players would’ve earned KFT points for their play.”

• “The Korn Ferry Tour announced Monday morning that starting with next year’s U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club, KFT members will earn KFT points equivalent to the non-member FedExCup points earned for completing 72 holes at the major championship. The rule change, which was approved by the PGA Tour policy board and KFT player advisory council, is meant to avoid penalizing KFT members for qualifying for the U.S. Open, which often coincides with the KFT’s Wichita Open and forces players to miss a valuable week on their main tour.”

2. Tiger’s new normal for 2023

Golf Digest’s Luke Kerr-Dineen…“In many ways it was a fitting end for the 2022 season for Tiger, and a reminder of what’s ahead of the man who turns 47 next week. Teeing it up at all during the Masters in April was a victory in itself, and a platform to build upon that was never quite realized. In obvious discomfort at the PGA Championship in May, Tiger withdrew after three rounds and skipped the U.S. Open. The Open returning to St. Andrews in July, where he missed the cut, proved another false dawn, as did his planned return at the Hero World Challenge, the tournament he hosts and which he pulled out of just three days ahead of the opening round.”

• “It was a tough year,” he said on Sunday, “but also one of the more rewarding years I’ve had in a while.”

• “…Now I get to truly recover and heal and progress forward on this,” Woods said, “because there’s so many good things that I’ve been able to do physically, be able to hit the golf ball and practice and do everything in a standstill. But I haven’t been able to get from point A to point B, and we’re obviously going to work on this.”

• “It’s a cliché to call this Tiger’s new normal, but that’s what it is. His offseason will be filled with work to get his body back into shape, as he prepares to fight through another season.”

3. Rory: Closer to winning a major than I’ve been in a long time

Eric Haughan for RTE Sport…“After a mostly satisfying year on the course – and a tumultuous season off it – Rory McIlroy this week declared that he hasn’t “felt this good ahead of a major championship campaign in a long, long time”.

• “I’m really excited for the Majors next year,” McIlroy concluded. “I haven’t felt this good going into a season – especially a Major season – in a long, long time.”

• “[The St Andrews disappointment] was really tough at the time. I thought ‘this is the chance. I’m going to win that fifth Major finally after seven or eight years’, or whatever it was.

• “It didn’t happen and it’s really hard to see the picture clearly at that time,. But a week or two after that, you reflect on it and think ‘I’m way closer to winning a Major now than I have been in a long time.

4. Daly: Riding in a cart is a disadvantage

Via our Matt Vincenzi…”Daly, who’s taken a cart via exemption in the past, argued that taking a cart isn’t an advantage, and is actually a disadvantage in competitive golf.”

• “I’m not embarrassed to take a cart. It’s not helping my golf game by any means,” Daly said. “I would rather walk and play golf because then you have time to settle down on a good hole or a bad hole and you’re walking instead of just getting in the cart and going up and hitting the shot. It’s actually a big disadvantage. But if I could walk, I’d definitely do it.”

5. Lynch: Why Greg Norman would rather run his mouth than run the numbers

Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch…“In the cagey language of consultancy, the report was a throbbing, neon stop sign. McKinsey created a decision matrix that was then ignored, and LIV was launched with no market research to determine whether it was a product craved by anyone other than Norman and the players and agents who would burrow into MBS’s purse. That McKinsey’s assessment was ignored illustrates just how few people in Riyadh needed to be sold a bill of goods for LIV to get this far. Concomitant to that is how few people must lose faith before the plug is pulled.”

• “Regardless of whether their ultimate ambition was to use golf for reputational enhancement rather than commercial returns, even the Saudis have an inflection point at which they will no longer be taken for fools. It’s farther along the road than most, but it exists. For all of his indefatigable bluster in public, Norman must realize that LIV is moving inexorably toward a reckoning when his words will cease to matter against the sobering reality of the numbers.”

6. Daly’s interesting lifestyle claim

Our Jason Daniels…”This week’s PNC Championship has seen some of the most worthy of personalities miked up, with none of Lee Trevino, Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth ever afraid to speak their minds. Daly may be the most polarising of those, but he is nothing but honest.”

• “Many years ago he blamed former coach Butch Harmon for demonising him as a drunk, forcing an opinion to the golfing world that “kind of destroyed my life for a little bit,” but in his PNC interview, Daly proudly spoke that: “If I knew that I was going to live this long, I would have taken worse care of myself.”

• “The words ‘flawed genius’ may never have been put to better use for a golfer.”

7. Youngest NIL deal in history

Our Jason Daniels…”Much has been written about the attention placed on Charlie’s (Woods) shoulders at such a young age, something the 15-time major champ is keen to protect against, so imagine his thoughts at the news that a six-year-old golfer now has a NIL deal. Yes, SIX YEARS OLD!”

• Golf gear company Sunday Golf recently held a press conference showcasing Patton Green with his father Matt, discussing the revelation that the golf phenom has signed the Name-Image-Likeness deal, making this the youngest such partnership in sports history.

8. TrackMan’s golf tour

From a press release…”TrackMan, the world’s leading developer of golf performance tracking technology and indoor golf simulators, announced today the launch of a new professional indoor golf tour: The NEXT Golf Tour Powered by TrackMan.”

• “For nearly 20 years, we’ve stood behind players as they chased their dreams in professional golf,” said Klaus Eldrup-Jørgensen, TrackMan co-founder and CEO. “With the launch of NEXT, we’re creating a new way to play professional golf — on virtual courses, in a TrackMan simulator.”

• “Launching January 4 with a six-event schedule, each stop on the NEXT Golf Tour consists of one 18-hole individual stroke play round on a select TrackMan Virtual Golf course. The guaranteed minimum purse for each tournament is $100,000. Men and women will compete straight-up from different tee boxes, and players with a handicap of 3.4 or better are encouraged to join. Tournament rounds can be played on any TrackMan simulator worldwide.”

• “The entry fee is $130 (including 25% Danish VAT and a small handling fee) per tournament. The field will be capped at 250 players for the first two events. $100 of each entry fee is added to the purse, so the more players in the field, the greater the payouts. For example, the winner’s share of a 250-player NEXT Golf Tour event will be at least $17,000, and the top 30% of the field will receive a paycheck.”

9. Tiger Woods: Christmas choir leader

• “No, it isn’t the start of the 2023 golf season, it’s the release of the Taylormade Golf Christmas card video.”

• “In the video, we see Tiger Woods acting as the conductor of the chorus while Rory McIlroy seemingly forgets the words to “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”.

• “The ad also features TaylorMade athletes Collin Morikawa, Tommy Fleetwood, Scottie Scheffler and Charley Hull.”