19th Hole
This wild tale of legendary football coach Pep Guardiola playing golf at Liberty National proves his coaching obsession
While speaking with GolfWRX, agent Chubby Chandler told a fantastic story about the time he played golf with legendary football coach, Pep Guardiola.
“There’s a soccer coach in Europe and Britain called Pep Guardiola who is the best in the world, and he came to the Masters with us in 2013, I think. He was between jobs Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
“And he his agent rung and said 10 days before the masters, he said, could you, could you facilitate Mr. Guardiola and his son for the Masters?”
“I said, oh yeah, of course, we can because we used to have this big facility and we used to have like 90 people eat, eating every night, family guests, players, everything, but you know, to have Pep there was a big deal.”
“So we looked after him and he was just great with everybody. Absolutely great. And he lived in New York then and I was dating a girl in New York and they said will you be in New York next week?”
“Yeah,” Chubby replied.
“Do you want to play?” said Pep.
“Because I’m a member of Liberty National bizarrely and we went and played Liberty National and he, you know, we were talking in the car going and, and he’s, he’s telling me how it was great for him there because nobody knows him and he can just play, and he says, you know, I used to think the girls like me, he said, but I know now they used to like the badge, not me.”
“And I mean, he’s a handsome bugger and, we get to the golf course and the assistant on the range actually knew who he was, which is quite a surprise. He comes over to me, he says, is that the soccer coach?”
“And we go out and there’s just two of us on a cart with a caddy and we, I’m trying, I’m making conversation about his new job and this, that and the other and we get into the specifics of soccer a bit. And I said, you know, who would you sign, if you could sign one player to go to Bayern Munich, who would you have?
Guardiola replied by saying a guy called Iniesta [Spanish player Andrés Iniesta].
“And then he started going on about why he would sign him. And then he starts telling me that he didn’t understand [how they play] in Britain. ‘Because they play the good players down the edge of the pitch and the edge of the pitch acts as a defender. So that good player can only go one way, he can only come inside, he can’t go outside. He said ‘I don’t understand that’.”
Guardiola then went on to lay all of the headcovers and towels on the fairway, acting as the players on the field to demonstrate what he meant.
“He said, you know, I play in yesterday, he goes down the middle and then next thing we’ve got head covers and towels all over the fairway and he’s showing me the tactics on the eighth fairway at Liberty National. And I’m thinking this is crazy. This guy is the best there is and he’s showing me who actually knows nothing about it.”
“And we got round to the short of 14 and he had to have the photograph with the, with the statue of Liberty in behind us.”
Guardiola is currently the manager of Manchester City.
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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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