News

GolfWRX Morning 9: What Tiger benching his putter would mean | RIP Phil Rodgers I The French don’t care about the Ryder Cup?

Published

8 years ago

Jun 28, 2018

Good morning, GolfWRX members. As most of you are signed up for our newsletters, you likely already know that I’ve been sending this little Morning 9 roundup of nine items of note.

In case you’ve missed it, or you prefer to read on site rather than in your email, we’re including it here. Check out today’s Morning 9 below.

If you’re not signed up for our newsletters, you can subscribe here.

By Ben Alberstadt (ben.alberstadt@golfwrx.com)

June 28, 2018

Good Thursday morning, golf fans.

1. The decline and fall of Tiger’s putter

Tiger Woods vaunted weapon, his Scotty Cameron Newport 2 GSS, has betrayed him, as we know (surely it’s the arrow and not the Indian!).

Adam Schupak elaborates on the significance…”This isn’t just any putter. Woods played in the pro-am with David Falk, the longtime agent for Michael Jordan, and this putter change felt like the equivalent of MJ playing hoops in tennis shoes rather than his signature high-tops. Aided by a sense of the moment that always seemed to allow him to will the ball into the hole, Woods’s putter has been his sword and his shield throughout his illustrious career. How many times have we seen him strike a putt and the ball die just at the right moment and curl in? The answer is too many times to count.”

However, as Schupak writes, those days are distant memories…”It’s time to characterize this for what it is: a full-fledged putting slump. He ranks 89th on Tour in Strokes Gained: Putting and 118th in total putting. His best putting performance was arguably his debut at Torrey Pines, when he hit the ball all over the lot and his putter was his salvation. So what’s changed?”

“I don’t know,” Woods said. “That’s been the frustrating part.” MORE

Frustrating, indeed. We’ll see which putter Woods uses today and how he putts with it.

2. RIP Phil Rodgers

The five-time PGA Tour winner turned teacher who rebuilt Jack Nicklaus’ short game passed away yesterday after a 15-year fight with leukemia.

Rodgers helped Nicklaus retool his short game in early 1980. The Golden Bear went on to win the U.S. Open and PGA Championship that year, and he credited Rodgers.

“My heart hurts today after the passing of dear friend, Phil Rodgers,” Nicklaus tweeted Tuesday. “I knew Phil for almost 65 years. Terrific ball-striker and great short game, he became a gifted teacher. Phil reinvented my short game in 1980 and I won two majors that year. Miss him already.”

3. A big week for Woods

Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard spelled out the importance of this week in Tiger Woods’ year (beyond needing to get his putting back on track).

“He has, after all, played well enough so far this season to at least qualify for the first two post-season events, if not the Ryder Cup; and by all accounts seems pleased with his progress during this current comeback from injury.”

“But there’s more on the line for the 14-time major champion this week at TPC Potomac than one might expect.”

“Although Woods’ climb in the World Golf Ranking has been nothing short of meteoric, moving from outside the top 600 late last year to 82nd, he still has plenty of work to do, primarily his quest to play the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational which will move to Memphis next year.”

Full article.

4. Ko among the favorites entering a major again

Robert Van Royen of Stuff.co.nz points out the Kiwi is getting back to where she belongs.

“She’s finished inside the top-10 in four of her last six tournaments, including a ninth (tied) placed finish at the NW Arkansas Championship earlier this week, and a third placed finish at the Meijer LPGA Classic earlier in the month.”

“Ko hasn’t missed a cut since March, and appears to only be getting more comfortable with the tweaks coach Ted Oh has made to her swing since taking over at the start of the year.”

Full article.

5. Inbee Park burglarized

An inauspicious start to the Women’s PGA Championship for the World No. 1, Obviously in Illinois for the tournament, Park’s Las Vegas home was robbed.

“Talking to police, talking to insurance,” Park said. “It’s so hard when you’re not there trying to figure out what’s lost. I mean, this is the life we get on the road.”

Fortunately, she keeps most of her trophies (and her Olympic gold medal) in South Korea.

6. Nobody in France cares about the Ryder Cup?

An interview with French pro Michael Lorenzo-Vera on Tuesday ahead of the French Open certainly painted a dire picture of the state of the game in the country.

“Golf is not a good thing here. It’s for rich people and spoiled kids. That’s the image we have,” Lorenzo-Vera told the Times. “Golf is a very private thing for people in France. Private courses for only rich families or rich people – that’s it.”

Oh, and apparently, nobody cares that the Ryder Cup is coming to France. “People don’t care about the Ryder Cup. Honestly, nobody knows there’s going to be a Ryder Cup in France. Only the golfers know. That’s it. There won’t be many French there.”

Yikes.

7. Tour Authentic

I talked with Alexander DePallo, Brand and Marketing Manager for Callaway Apparel about the company’s new high-end clothing line.

BA: Where did this collection come from? It’s a departure from Callaway’s usual apparel philosophy. What was development like?

AD: Basically, over the past year-and-a-half we…as Callaway Apparel, pivoted in our strategy in adjusting our business model. In the past, we had been very focused on department stores and wider outlets, versus now, we’re pivoting and implementing that pricing, we’ve closed up our distribution we’ve made it more focused on selling full-priced products, golf specialty…honing on on where golfers are going to buy product and elevating the full platform for Callaway Apparel.

“We’ve really been building up our green grass presence…We’ve found that at these high-end green grass locations, we didn’t have products that were meeting their needs. Our design team went out and had the task to build a luxury golf line that’s build for high-end green grass. That is what Tour Authentic is.’

“They spent 18 months developing the products. They went to five different countries; pulling fabrics from Japan, from Germany, from Switzerland, finding the right materials and coming up with product construction that was not in the market. Looking at the solid poly with the Japanese yarn or the Mongolian cashmere sweaters or the Schoeller fabric in the pants…there’s so much technology but still a refined craftsmanship.”

Full interview.

8. Pod alert!

For your listening pleasure: Johnny Wunder talked with the great Bob Bettinardi about a range of topics, including making Matt Kuchar’s putter and working on Tiger Woods’ putters back in 1996.

Michael Williams talked with Bobby Clampett on the 19th Hole podcast. Clampett discusses the one thing absolutely every golf swing must have to be successful.

9. Maverick McNealy’s childhood home for sale…for $100 million

If you can just get approved for the mortgage… Maverick McNealy’s father, former Sun Microsystems CEO, Scott McNealy, put the family home on the market. Backyard golf hole, 7,300 sq/ft indoor hockey rink. Gym. Climbing wall. Movie theater. The Silicon Valley crib has it all.

More about the pad in the Wall Street Journal.

News

Testing Lorem Ipsum

Published

4 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.