Rory McIlroy wanted to win the Memorial Tournament badly.
It’s a tournament Tiger Woods won five times.
Watson, Nicklaus, Couples, Vijay, Normanall past champions.
Winning at Muirfield Village means something.
It’s been coming for a while.
Hovland has been an elite ball striker from the day he turned professional.
From there, an up-and-down par meant he needed some help from McCarthy.
So it would be kind of a double whammy for me before.
So you’re just always grinding.
Hovland played first and ripped one down the left side.
He played it beautifully to give himself a 12-footer for par.
It caught the low lip but didn’t fall.
I guess the golfer always knows.
Scottie Scheffler’s hard-to-believe week
So Scottie Scheffler’s putting is officially a thing.
He leaned into the bit this week at Muirfield Village.
Which brings us to our next point.
Think about that for a moment.
The man finished one shot out of a playoff despite spotting the field 8.5 shots with Edward Scissorhands putting.
“I feel like I’m making progress,” Scheffler said of the flatstick.
I felt like at the Masters and was it Hilton Head?
It’s something that I’ve been working on.
It helps me release it and I do that from time to time, yeah."
That’s an old-school practice method that Tiger Woods is a big fan of.
And it’s not like he’s playing a cupcake schedule.
Rose Zhang’s star debut
She was, without exaggeration, the most decorated amateur golfer since Tiger Woods.
She won everything there is to win in amateur golf.
She turned professional because there was literally nothing else for her to win.
Augusta National Women’s Amateur?
Back-to-back, the first woman ever to do it.
For three straight years.
Her first order of business was making the cut, which she accomplished easily.
A third-round 66 gave her a two-shot lead heading into a final round that was difficult to get through.
Not because of Zhang, of course, but because of a horrifically slow pace of play.
That meant a playoff between her and the first-ever winner of the ANWA, the now-major champion Jennifer Kupcho.
“What is happening right now?”
is how Zhang summed up her emotions right after the final putt dropped.
It was just two weeks ago that she won the NCAAs with her teammates.
Predictably, Golf Twitter lost its mind.
Winning your pro debut isn’t something people do very often.
And Zhang clearly knows her game inside and out.
She never beats herself.
The one question I have about her game going forward is her length.
Or, more specifically, the lack thereof.
It’s obviously a dream start to her career and a very exciting time for the women’s game.
That doesn’t mean she’s going to win every tournament she plays.
“I was really happy for him.
For 20 years old he showed so much composure.
And, yeah, just so happy and so proud of him, really.
I’ve known Tom since he was 10 years old.
They’re willing to vastly overpay aging superstarsBenzema is 35to make that happen.
It’s all Monopoly money at this point.
But he did nothing of the sort.
“My largest tournament win on the Regular Tour was the Masters in 1986.
You guys are way overpaid.
I think it’s great to see what’s happening in the game.
I have no regrets for it.
I love seeing that we were the guys that were the forerunners that helped make that happen.
We always had to go win golf tournaments to make a name to go make a living outside.
The guys today can make a living on the golf course.
And the tours that you got?
I think it’s fantastic.
I hope next year we pay him 7.2 million.”
A picture surfaced Sunday night showing Hideki Matsuyama in line to board a Spirit Airlines flight.
Hideki Matsuyama, Masters champion, with a gazillion dollars, flying Spirit.
Columbus airport is pretty small, and a bunch of the direct flights to major markets are Spirit.
Phil Mickelson simply won’t quit the Twitter machine.
“Because I know things that other people don’t,” he said.
“And I want to verify people are held accountable.”
It’s schoolgirl stuff, from both sides, and Phil knows this.
I guess some people truly can’t help themselves.
Loved this raw emotion from Billy Horschel, who’s taken his fair share of heat throughout the years.
He bounced back from that embarrassing opening-round 84 with a very respectable even-par 72.
There seems each week to be a new LIV-adjacent question that makes appearances throughout interviews.
A few weeks back we went through ahow would you react if a LIV guy wanted to returncycle.
This week it was about the Ryder Cup.
“I’m going to miss him,” Rahm said.
“We had a great partnership at Whistling Straights.
I’m going to mention history again one more time.
Look with Seve and Ollie were able to do throughout their partnership, right.
Again, it’s the best Europeans against the best American, period.
It’s whoever is best suited to represent the European side.”
Then there’s Rory McIlroy, who echoed those guys…but only for the American side?
Anyways, Rory seemed to take a step back from his hardline policy.
At least, for his opponents.
“I mean, I certainly think Brooks deserves to be on the United States team.
But Brooks is definitely a guy that I think deserves to be on the U.S. team.
What this tells me: it’s absolutely personal between McIlroy and that group.
How else do you explain being okay with LIV guys on one side and not the other?
He’s entitled to that opinion.
Still, it’s certainly an interesting line to draw.
My two cents: I’m with Cantlay and Rahm.
But those rules were made in a different golf ecosystem, before the emergence of LIV.
Surely it would only bring more attention to the week?
Luke Donald, the European captain, could well get lucky by not having to address the issue.
At least for one week.
Ludvig Aberg, the recently graduated top collegiate player and world No.
1 amateur from Texas Tech, makes his professional debut at this week’s Canadian Open.
