Good Thursday morning, golf fans, as day one of the RSM Classic and LPGA season finale gets underway.

1. Harman defends new OWGR system

Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard…”The new system uses what officials call “modern statistical techniques” to more accurately evaluated tournaments relative to each other. That has led to a few double takes in recent weeks, including Wednesday when Jon Rahm was asked about the strength of field comparison between this week’s DP World Tour Championship and the RSM Classic, the final official event on the PGA Tour in 2022.”

• …”“The depth of the field’s very important because there’s guys that are ranked outside of the top 100 that are in this field that aren’t going to be ranked outside the top 100 very soon, so I think the size of the field does matter,” Brian Harman said. “I haven’t done a deep dive into the semantics of the world golf ranking, but to me, it seems like there’s less floor and less ceiling and it’s more about who’s actually in the field.”

2. Klayman strikes again

Jamie Hall for Bunkered…“The PGA Tour, DP World Tour and OWGR are alleged to have colluded to “eliminate LIV Golf”, according to a fresh lawsuit filed in Florida.”

• “Attorney Larry Klayman has lodged the Amended Class Action Complaint, which claims PGA and DP World tour chiefs Jay Monahan and Keith Pelley – who both sit on the OWGR board – broke competition laws by conspiring to restrain trade.”

• “Klayman’s lawsuit alleges the rankings body, together with the tours, attempted to kill off the upstart league “in its infancy”.

3. World’s best golf destination

Mike Hall for Bunkered…“Following a year where the spotlight has been firmly on Scotland, it has now been named Best Golf Destination in the World at the prestigious World Golf Awards.”

• “The award follows a momentous 2022 for the game in Scotland. It has hosted several high-profile tournaments, including the PGA Tour and DP World Tour’s co-sanctioned Genesis Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club, the final women’s Major of the year, the AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield, and the 150th Open Championship at the Home of Golf, St Andrews.”

• “The winner of the award is determined by golf fans, the media and tour operators, and it is the first time in the nine-year history of the awards that Scotland has claimed the honour. As well as that accolade, Scotland also received the Best Destination in Europe award in a separate category. That made it the first time a country has won both awards in the same year.”

4. Blown out of proportion

Via the Golf Channel Digital team…”On Tuesday, an article from Golfweek quoted Korda’s coach, Jamie Mulligan, detailing Korda’s agonizing diagnosis.”

• “The next day, it rained during The Players Championship and we were hanging out at the house where we were staying,” Mulligan said. “Patrick’s (Cantlay) physio David Sunderland was working on the girls and Patrick. I was upstairs working and David came upstairs and said, ‘Hey, there’s something the matter with Nelly.’ And I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ He goes, ‘I can’t really put my finger on it.’ A little while later I called Nelly to see how she was doing, and Nelly’s not usually emotional and she was sounding emotional and she said, ‘My hands are turning weird colors.’ And I said, ‘Give me a minute, and I hung up.’ I called (PGA Tour Commissioner) Jay Monahan, who’s my longtime friend, and he opened with ‘Hey, I heard that Nelly was in town.’ I said, ‘That’s why I’m calling you. We have a problem. I think she might have a blood clot and I need your help. He called in the cavalry and he helped us so she immediately got to see a doctor and then they ended up doing a procedure, but Jay was a catalyst on that and it was really, really cool that he did that.”

• “However, on Wednesday in a pre-tournament press conference at the CME Group Tour Championship, Korda pushed back on those details.”

• “I was not very happy with that article because that was a very — I think that was blown out of proportion a good bit,” she said.

5. The search for an 8-year-old putter shaft

Our Andrew Tursky writing for PGATour.com…”Although seemingly nothing had changed with his putter – he was still using the same exact putter head and grip – something was off with the shaft. It just wasn’t performing or feeling the same anymore.”

• “I never believed shafts made much of a difference in putting, but I lost that feel,” Hardy told GolfWRX.com on Tuesday at The RSM Classic.

• “Eventually, after a long period of exploration, Hardy tasked Nate Brown, the Director of Tour Operations for Swag Golf, to help him figure out what was wrong. Prior to working for Swag Golf, Brown was a longtime Tour rep for Bettinardi, and he worked closely with Hardy for nearly a decade on all of his putter needs.”

• “Brown was able to identify that Hardy’s original Bettinardi putter was equipped with a steel shaft that is no longer in production. Hardy couldn’t find the shaft he needed because it doesn’t exist on the current market.”

• “Brown wasn’t letting up easily, though. Motivated to find a stock of those specific shafts, Brown got in touch with one of his contacts to see if they had any of Hardy’s old stepless shafts.”

6. Maltbie

Golfweek’s Adam Woodard…”Maltbie was originally told 2021 would be his last year before Jim “Bones” Mackay left his on-air role with the network to caddie for Justin Thomas. He returned as an on-course reporter for 2022 but wasn’t renewed for 2023. A five-time winner on the PGA Tour, Maltbie, 71, had been covering golf for NBC Sports since 1992.”

• “Does it hurt when you hear the words? Sure. ‘You’re not in our plans.’ Thirty-one years I spent with NBC. ‘You’re no longer in our plans and you’re not part of our future. We need to go young,’ which is a nice way of saying you’re old, and I understand all that,” said Maltbie. “But you know, there’s hurt feelings and there’s also a lot of gratitude. They were great to me for 31 years. I don’t have a complaint.”

7. McIlroy aiming for a heckuva double

AP Report…”Rory McIlroy has been in this position many times. For Ryan Fox, it’s a new experience.”

• Two golfers with very different profiles are vying to finish atop the DP World Tour’s season-long points standings entering this week’s season-ending DP World Tour Championship on the Earth Course in Dubai.

• McIlroy — who recently won a record-setting third FedExCup and sits atop the world ranking — leads the Race to Dubai standings as he bids to be the DP World Tour’s leading player for the fourth time in his career (2012, ’14 and ’15). McIlroy could be the first player to end a year as the FedExCup champion, DP World Tour champion and No. 1 player in the world ranking.

• Fox is only narrowly behind McIlroy in second place — the points difference is just 128.1 — after the best year of his career that has seen him win two events, the Ras al Khaimah Classic and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, and be runner-up four times. Last month, the New Zealander reached a career-high ranking of No. 23.

• “Rory is the best player in the world,” Fox said Wednesday. “He’s obviously the favorite but to be in this position is great and I’ve got nothing to lose this week.

8. DL3: LIV needs to say “we give”

Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard….”Tuesday in Dubai, Rory McIlroy suggested that LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman should “exit stage left” to make room for an “adult” to work things out with the PGA Tour. A day later, Davis Love III didn’t see that as an option.”

• “If they (LIV Golf) say, ‘Hey, maybe we made a mistake and maybe we should drop a lawsuit and maybe we should quit stealing your players,’ then we might want to talk to them, but I don’t think that’s their model,” Love said Wednesday at the RSM Classic…”

• “They’re recruiting college players, they’re recruiting PGA Tour players, they’re recruiting DP World Tour players. As long as they’re actively trying a hostile takeover, take our players away, get them to break the rules and go somewhere else, I don’t think it matters who’s running it,” said Love, who played Wednesday’s pro-am with Tour commissioner Jay Monahan. “I don’t think we sit down with anybody unless they say, ‘Hey, we give.’”

9. Photos from Sea Island

• Check out all of our galleries from this week’s Tour stop!