19th Hole
Rory McIlroy rips fellow PGA Tour pro for giving a ‘slap in the face’ to his peers
Rory McIlroy has challenged the absence of a fellow PGA Tour player for skipping a player’s only meeting last Tuesday.
While preparing for the Arnold Palmer Invitational, players were called to discuss the latest changes to the PGA Tour, which now include several ‘designated’ events that many players have called out as being far too in favor of the big guns in the game.
One of the most open in his criticism is James Hahn, who stated that he believes the media has created more of a divide than has been reality, and has also publicly rejected the notion that the changes made by the PGA Tour are for the benefit of all the players.
Morning thoughts on the new structure of the PGA Tour. pic.twitter.com/T7nS4VsKEo
— James Hahn (@JamesHahnPGA) March 5, 2023
However, despite having the opportunity of appearing at the meeting, Hahn’s absence was most noted, even above the likes of Jon Rahm, who said he wanted time with his family.
McIlroy was equally open with his thoughts on the missing Hahn.
At the pre-event press conference, the 2018 API and 2019 Players Championship winner ranted:
“Like, you say all this s— and you’re not even in the meeting? If you want to get informed and be a part of the process—the fact that he wasn’t even in the room was a slap in the face to everyone there.”
Of the meeting itself, the world number 3, who subsequently had the chance to get to 9-under on the 18th green on Sunday, felt players now understood the significant changes to the 2024 schedule.
“I think when more information and data was presented to them, the people that maybe had reservations about it I think came around, or at least were more informed on their opinions, right?” he said, before continuing.
“I think the tour executives did a really good job of basically just walking them through the slides that we saw in the board meeting last Tuesday, obviously not to the same degree of detail.”
“We were in that board meeting for almost seven hours last Tuesday.”
Far from the rumblings on the sidelines, McIlroy saw the meeting as a success.
“Obviously we’re all here trying to get ready for one of the biggest tournaments of the year [the API]. So with that time crunch, we just sort of took the — or they took the sort of most important slides and showed them to the membership.”
“Yeah, I think it was good for them to see that and to see what the thinking is behind what we’re really trying to do here.”
“I think the temperature in the room was nowhere near as hot as I anticipated it to be once the information was sort of laid out.”
Take from the following what you will, but McIlroy certainly believes that the meeting was less “self-serving” than the players meeting held in Delaware last August.
“Yeah, so I said this in the meeting today. The presentation in Delaware was very self-serving for the 20 players in that room. We were looking at fields of 50 to 60. We were looking at only 10 players dropping out of that top 50 every year, so a retention rate of 80 percent,” he explained.
“The tour were like, look, the typical retention rate for the top 50 has historically been around 60 percent, so let’s try to get back to that number. So the structure that has been rolled out here is vastly different from the one that we all talked about and the guys saw in Delaware, and I think for the betterment of everyone” he said, before admitting:
“I think if we had have went down that road, it doesn’t serve the membership anywhere near as well as what this structure does.”
19th Hole
‘Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight’ – LPGA pro offers candid take following rough AIG Women’s Open finish
An opening round of 77 left LPGA pro Jenny Shin with a mountain to climb at last week’s AIG Women’s Open.
However, fighting back with rounds of 69 and 67, Shin found herself six shots off the lead and just outside the top 10 heading into Sunday as she went in search of her first major victory.
Shin, who won the US Girls’ Junior at just 13, couldn’t back those rounds up on Sunday, though, and after playing her opening nine holes of the final round in level par, she then bogeyed three holes coming home to slip down the leaderboard and eventually finish T23.
Taking to X following the final round, Shin offered a frustrated and honest take on how she was feeling, posting: “Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish.”
Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish
— Jenny Shin (@JennyShin_LPGA) August 3, 2025
Shin has made 11 cuts in 13 starts on the LPGA Tour this season, but has been plagued by frustrating Sunday finishes throughout the year. Shin ranks 102nd on tour this year out of 155 for Round 4 scoring in 2025.
Miyu Yamashita won the 2025 AIG Women’s Open with a composed final round of 70 to win her first major of her career by two strokes.
Cameron Young won the Wyndham Championship on Sunday for his first victory on the PGA Tour.
Young dominated all weekend at TPC Sedgefield, running away from the pack to win by six strokes and put himself in contention for a Ryder Cup pick in September.
Ahead of the event, the 28-year-old switched to a Pro V1x prototype golf ball for the first time, following recent testing sessions with the Titleist Golf Ball R&D team.
Interestingly, Young played a practice round accompanied by Fordie Pitts, Titleist’s Director of Tour Research & Validation, at TPC Schedule early last week with both his usual Pro V1 Left Dot ball and the new Pro V1x prototype.
Per Titleist, by the second hole Young was exclusively hitting shots with the Pro V1x prototype.
“We weren’t sure if he was going to test it this week, but as he was warming up, he asked to hit a couple on the range,” Pitts said. “He was then curious to see some shots out on the course. Performance-wise, he was hitting tight draws everywhere. His misses were staying more in play. He hit some, what he would call ‘11 o’clock shots,’ where again he’s taking a little something off it. He had great control there.”
According to Titleist, the main validation came on Tuesday on the seventh hole of his practice round. The par 3 that played between 184 and 225 yards during the tournament called for a 5-iron from Young, or so he thought. Believing there was “no way” he could get a 6-iron to the flag with his Left Dot, Young struck a 5-iron with the Pro V1x prototype and was stunned to see the ball land right by the hole.
“He then hits this 6-iron [with the Pro V1x prototype] absolutely dead at the flag, and it lands right next to the pin, ending up just past it,” Pitts said. “And his response was, ‘remarkable.’ He couldn’t believe that he got that club there.”
Following nine holes on Tuesday and a further nine on Wednesday, Young asked the Titleist team to put the ProV1x balls in his locker. The rest, as they say, is history.
Rickie Fowler fired an opening round of one-under par on Thursday at the Wyndham Championship, as the Californian looks to make a FedEx Cup playoff push.
Fowler is currently 61st in the standings, so will need a strong couple of weeks to extend his season until the BMW Championship, where only the top 50 in the standings will tee it up.
Heading into the final stretch of the season, Fowler has made an equipment switch of note, changing into new iron shafts, as well as making a switch to his driver shaft.
The 36-year-old revealed this week that he has switched from his usual KBS Tour C-Taper 125-gram steel shafts to the graphite Aerotech SteelFiber 125cw shafts in his Cobra King Tour irons, a change he first put into play at last month’s Travelers Championship.
Speaking on the change to reporters this week, Fowler made note that the graphite shafts offer “something that’s a little easier on the body.”
“I mean, went to the week of Travelers, so been in for, I guess that’s a little over a month now. Something that’s a little easier on the body and seemed to get very similar numbers to where I was at. Yeah, it’s gone well so far.”
Fowler has also made a driver shaft change, switching out his Mitsubishi Diamana WB 73 TX for a UST Mamiya Lin-Q Proto V1 6 TX driver shaft in his Cobra DS-Adapt X, which he first implemented a couple of weeks ago at the John Deere Classic.
However, according to Fowler himself, the testing and potential changes are not done yet.
“Probably do some more testing in some different weight configurations with them once I get some time. Yeah, I feel like we’re always trying to search, one, to get better but are there ways to make things easier, whether that’s physically, mentally, whatever it may be. So yeah, I thought they were good enough to obviously put into play and looking forward to doing some more testing.”
Fowler gets his second round at TPC Sedgefield underway at 7.23 a.m ET on Friday.
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