News

Morning 9: Delicate dance of player/caddie disagreement | Reed’s favorite green jacket memory | Tiger’s build to Augusta

Published

7 years ago

Mar 19, 2019

Ben Alberstadt

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

March 19, 2019

Good Tuesday morning, golf fans. On this day in 1993, 63-year-old Arnold Palmer made the cut for the last time on the PGA Tour at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

1. The delicate dance

You saw the agonizing tango of tensely talking it over Jon Rahm and caddie Adam Hayes engaged in before the Spaniard ultimately ignored his looper’s advice and sent his hopes of winning The Players to a watery grave at the 11th hole, Sunday.

Now, here’s some additional post mortem, courtesy of Golf Digest’s Sam Weinman and veteran caddie Kip Henley.

Henley: “Ninety-eight percent of America looks at that and knows Adam was making the right call,” Henley said. “Birdie is great, but par doesn’t kill you, and a good caddie is able to look at the situation without as much emotion as the player.”

Weinman: “So Hayes does fight-at least to a point. As Henley said, the odds are always stacked against a caddie when player digs in his heels as well. He says a caddie wins these arguments about 10 percent of the time, so at some point, a caddie has to contemplate caving. That’s what you’re seeing when Rahm starts explaining why he doesn’t feel comfortable laying up because it will leave him an awkward lie. At that point it doesn’t matter that Hayes is still in the right. He knows he can’t win.”
Henley: “The whole time you’re fighting you better be aware where your guy is leaning because if you know he’s not coming over, you need to start backpedaling. You then need to make him feel like it’s a good decision. Everybody does that. You read your guy, and you find a way to change your tune.”

Full piece.

2. A fresh mental approach for McIlroy

Credit to Brian Keogh of the Irish Independent for including this Rory McIlroy quote in his piece on what’s going on between the Ulsterman’s ears…

“It’s just another step in the journey. I’ve been preaching perspective, and I feel like I’ve got a pretty good handle on that perspective.

“It’s a glimpse. My career is hopefully going to last another 15 or 20 years, so one tournament or one day or one month in those 20 years is nothing. It’s just a glimpse. So it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change who I am.

“It’s another step in the right direction. But that’s all it is to me. It’s a huge tournament to win.

“I’ve just got to do my thing, and if I go and I concentrate on me, control what I can do, good golf and good attitude takes care of the rest.

“And if I go to Augusta with a similar golf game to what I have now and the attitude I’ve shown over the first few weeks of the year, I think I’ll have a great chance.”

Full piece.

3. Tiger’s slow build to Augusta

ESPN’s Bob Harig with a lengthy look at the state of the Tiger with the Masters less than a month away…

“Woods had no three-putts, which is an improvement from six three-putts at both Riviera and Mexico City.”

“But he was just 70th in the field in strokes gained approach, an unusually poor number for him. Woods hit 52 of 72 greens for the week and had fewer than 30 putts in only the final round.”

“And yet, he had one of his best weeks of the year off the tee, finishing fifth in the field in strokes gained and taking some confidence with him.”

“I’m excited the way I drove it,” said Woods, who dropped from 11th to 13th in the world ranking. “I drove the ball well this week. I drove it not quite as long on the weekend with a little bit cooler temperatures, but I was driving it pretty straight, and I was able to shape the golf ball both ways with all three of my woods, which was good to see.”

Full piece.

4. Reed’s favorite green jacket memory

Per Tara Sullivan at the Boston Globe (and from Reed’s Monday conference call)

“Asked his favorite memory in the jacket, Reed told a story about his young daughter.”

“It would have had to have been right after we won and right after I got done talking in the press conference, right after we finished,” he said. “I went back to Butler Cabin, and my daughter was there, and she just came over and gave me a big hug and told me I did it and told me she loved me. That is by far the best experience I’ve ever had with the green jacket. That’s a memory and a moment that I’ll never forget, no matter if I were to win multiple other green jackets, any other tournament I were to win, or anything like that. It’s going to be hard to be able to top a moment like that that I was able to cherish with the little one.”

Full piece.

5. Surprised? You don’t know Jim!

John Feinstein on Jim Furyk, who nearly won The Players, and his passion for proving doubters wrong.

“At this point in his life, Furyk should be counting down the 14 months left until he’s eligible to play with the 50-and-older set on the PGA Tour Champions, where his accuracy and putting ability will more than offset his relative lack of distance off the tee.”

“But that’s not how Furyk’s built. He almost enjoys being doubted-which he has been ever since he was playing junior golf. “Never really bothered me,” he has often said of people making fun of his swing. “As long as I played well, what did I care what people said about my swing?”

“Furyk went more than 4½ years without winning after winning three times in 2010 and remained undaunted until he broke the skein at Hilton Head in 2015. He’s done just about everything you can hope to do in golf: He’s won a major (the 2003 U.S. Open); he’s won the FedEx Cup (2010); he’s played on nine Ryder Cup teams and captained one; he’s won 17 times on tour; he was the first player to ever shoot 58 in a tour event (2016 Travelers) and-as Tabitha witnessed at that long-ago Memorial-has always been one of golf’s good guys.”

Full piece.

6. From Ryder Cup captain to…Ryder Cup player?

On the subject of Furyk…

Golf Channel’s Brentley Romine notes…”Just two events into Team USA’s 2020 Ryder Cup qualification, the projected eight automatic qualifiers feature seven past Ryder Cup players, including Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas.”

“Jim Furyk is also currently on the team courtesy of his runner-up finish at The Players, which moved him to second in the standings.”

Full piece.

7. Hoping for a Women’s Masters

Via BBC Sport…”England’s Georgia Hall hopes the staging of a women’s amateur tournament at Augusta National could pave the way for a Women’s Masters.”

“The final round of the inaugural 54-hole tournament will be played at the Masters’ home on Saturday, 6 April.”
“It’s another step towards having some equality,” Women’s British Open winner Hall told BBC golf podcast The Cut. “The Masters could be women. Maybe we can have an event like that, it would be cool to play it on the same course.”

Full piece.

8. A well-earned respite

Our Gianni Magliocco…

“Legendary golf instructor Butch Harmon is retiring from tour life according to a report from Golfweek.com”

“Per the report, sources say Harmon has told his players that he is “done on tour.” The 75-year-old will continue teaching in Las Vegas where he lives with his wife, Christy, but the man who currently coaches the likes of Rickie Fowler, Dustin Johnson, and Gary Woodland will no longer be a regular on Tour with his stable of players.”

“Harmon will also be scaling back his appearances as an analyst on TV, after working extensively with Sky Sports UK over the last two decades.”

Full piece.

9. A welcome to the Wedge Guy!

We’re pleased to have Terry Koehler joining GolfWRX as a Featured Writer. If you’re unfamiliar with the 40-year golf equipment industry veteran, check out this release.

“GolfWRX has announced that industry veteran Terry Koehler will resume his weekly blog as “The Wedge Guy”, beginning Tuesday, March 19, 2019 as an exclusive feature of GolfWRX. The column can be found at www.GolfWRX.com/TheWedgeGuy. In his regular weekly column Koehler will share insights, observations and opinions gleaned from a 40-year career in the golf industry. Koehler introduced his bi-weekly blog columns at TheWedgeGuy.com in 2003 and wrote until 2010, having to pause when his life’s pace was accelerated by the creation of SCOR Golf and then the resurrection of Ben Hogan Golf Equipment Company.”

Full release.

Look for Koehler’s first item for WRX later today

News

Testing Lorem Ipsum

Published

9 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.