News

Morning 9: Australian Open postponed | Terrible news: Villegas’ daughter dies | New Renee Powell Grant | Chris Como’s living room

Published

6 years ago

Jul 28, 2020

1. Australian Open postponed

Disappointing, but ultimately not surprising stuff. With COVID-19 trending upwards in Australia since the beginning of the month and the impossibility, essentially, of international players arriving for the tournament by air, Oz Open postponement was inevitable.

AFP report…”This year’s Australian Open Golf Championship was postponed Tuesday because of the coronavirus pandemic but officials said they were hoping to restage the event early in 2021.”

“Melbourne’s Kingston Heath Golf Club had been due to host the 105th edition of the historic championship, the world’s fifth oldest professional golf tournament, in November.”

“But with the country battling a surge in COVID-19 cases and the game’s stars facing major tournaments moved to later in 2020, Golf Australia operations manager Simon Brookhouse said they would instead look at a “January to March 2021 window”.”

“Coupled with COVID-19 travel restrictions and quarantine measures, that means it would be almost impossible to assemble a world-class field in Melbourne.”

Full piece.

2. Awful news: Villegas’ daughter, 22-months-old, dies

Condolences, to Villegas and family, first and foremost. What can you say about such wretchedness-the death of a child whose short life was permeated by pain and suffering? Words fail.

The news, via an AP report…“Camilo Villegas’ daughter, Mia, has died at just 22 months old after cancerous tumors were found in her brain and spine.”
“Four-time PGA Tour winner Villegas revealed last month that he and his wife, Maria, took their daughter to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami for scans in March as they suspected she was not well.
“Mia underwent surgery after the tumors were found, and the Villegas family was informed more treatment would be required due to persisting issues.”

Full piece.

3. Renee Powell Grant

Golf Channel’s Randall Mell…“The LPGA today announced the first recipients of the newly established Renee Powell Grant, which is designed to assist LPGA*USGA Girls Golf sites in creating partnerships and outreach opportunities with youth organizations serving Black girls.”

“Powell followed Althea Gibson as the second Black player to compete in the LPGA. Powell is currently the head professional at Clearview Golf Club in East Canton, Ohio, the course her father built with a “Golf for Everyone” vision.”

“I think this grant program might help to bring young girls, African American girls and other minorities into the game of golf and to show them that there are people who played before them and that it’s a great sport,” Powell said. “We need to really do a little more to change the culture of what golf is all about, in particular growing our Girls Golf programs and being very inclusive.”

“Initial grants totaling $25,000 will be awarded to five LPGA*USGA Girls Golf programs in Ohio, Powell’s home state and the site of the LPGA restart amid the coronavirus pandemic, with this week’s Drive On Championship to be followed by next week’s Marathon Classic in the Toledo area.”

Full piece.

4. Homa isn’t leaving Twitter after all

Golf Digest’s Ryan Herrington: “Max Homa Twitter fans, you have reason to rejoice: Your man’s Twitter sabbatical is over. On Monday afternoon, the 29-year-old let his voice be heard once again on the social-media platform.”

Homa tweeted…”Had a nice little detox from Twitter. Felt kinda like a juice cleanse but with fewer bowel movements. Still some, no doubt, but fewer. Anyways, it’s good to be back. Hating hours are closed indefinitely, myself included. This is gunna be a positive place in this pit of despair”

Full piece.

5. Blunt assessment from Pete Cowen

Derek Lawrenson for the Daily Mail…“You can always rely on Brooks Koepka’s short-game coach Pete Cowen for a straight-shooting verdict.”

“Asked about the struggling American’s prospects of successfully defending the season’s first major in San Francisco next week, or his WGC title defence starting in Memphis on Thursday, the blunt Yorkshireman replied: ‘If I was a racehorse trainer, I’d say he had absolutely no chance!'”
“After he had stopped laughing, Cowen added, in a more serious vein: ‘We all know Brooks is the man for raising his game at the big events – and this is going to be his biggest test yet, because he knows he’s not swinging the club well and he’s not happy with his game. But we all know golf, so let’s see if we can help put him back together again.”

Full piece.

6. More of the dumbest things in golf

Good work by E. Michael Johnson at Golf Digest to round these up…

“Having to play a ball from a divot in the fairway…You’ve ripped the tee shot down the middle and your playing companions admire it with comments along the lines of, “That’s only good if you like perfect!” Except it’s not. Some dumbass before you took a divot the size of Montana and failed to replace it or fill it in with divot mix, leaving you muttering WTF and cursing your bad luck. The USGA has done a solid job in trying to make the rules fairer and easier to understand but failing to include a divot as “ground under repair” is a failing in need of fixing. Like yesterday.”

“14-way dividers in golf bags…I know I’ll get roasted for this one and I simply don’t care. As I said once before, bag companies tout these abominations of humanity by stating how much wear and tear they’ll save your clubs. We’re sorry, but we don’t need to coddle implements that we strike into the ground and into a hard ball at close to 100 miles per hour with regularity. Plus, how can you slam your club back into your bag after a poor shot when you have to have pinpoint accuracy to do so. Give me an old-fashioned five-way divider any day.”

“Cozying up to the beverage cart girl…Yes, you’re absolutely right. That lovely 20-something young lady is absolutely in love with your 40-, 50-, 60-something pot-bellied self. Yeesh. It is perfectly fine to be polite and engage in conversation, but stop the overt flirting tactics and realize that $10 tip you dropped in order to impress her is as useful as setting money on fire. Stop being creepy, order a drink, chat for a moment and drop her a couple of bucks for the effort. Proper, as the Brits might say.”

Full piece.

7. Chris Como’s living room

Excellent stuff from Sean Martin at PGATour.com writing about a place central to Bryson DeChambeau’s transformation during the pandemic: his instructor’s living room…

A morsel from a great piece well worth reading in full…”This wasn’t a decision about acoustics or interior design. Como, one of the game’s most innovative instructors, wanted to build something unprecedented. He created a unique space that’s served as a catalyst for the transformation that has captivated the golf world.”

“While sales of at-home training aids skyrocketed during the pandemic, Como took it to another level. He loaded his new home in the Dallas area with thousands of dollars’ worth of gadgets that would make any golf academy green with envy. There’s also a squat rack, free weights, a basketball net and hockey goal in the living room.”

“It’s like a golf bachelor pad,” said University of Texas junior Pierceson Coody, the world’s 16th-ranked amateur and a longtime student of Como’s.

“It’s not all for fun and games, though. The room has an austere aesthetic, with bare, brown walls and windows covered in protective foam. That’s because Como’s Living Room Lab, as it’s been termed, is the site of serious study. It’s golf’s version of DriveLine, the high-tech baseball training facility that started in a Seattle warehouse and has transformed the game at the highest level.”

Full piece.

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.