Does men’s pro golf really need “reunification”?

There have been plenty of social media posts made and column inches written in the golf magazines lately on the issue of healing the rift in men’s professional golf. In a recent Golf.com article, Adam Scott is quoted as saying that a “reunification[1]” agreement whereby LIV Golf defectors[2] would be welcomed back to play PGA Tour events is one way forward. Flip-flop king Rory McIlroy has gone on record saying that reunification would be “the best thing for everyone”[3]—but does the men’s professional game really need the players who have signed on with the Saudi-backed league to come back to the mainstream fold? What is there to be gained from it?

The Saudi pick-up league, initially headed up by the perennially butt-hurt Greg Norman, lured players with promises of big paychecks, which they delivered on, and OWGR points so that LIV players could still earn their way into the four men’s majors, which they have not delivered on. This classic bait-and-switch played on the “have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too” mentality of entitled and/or desperate pro golfers, some of whom may in the near future be looking back wistfully on the good old days scrambling to make cuts and a paycheck.

Let’s look at a few of the golfers who play for LIV Golf and what they bring to professional golf. We’ll start with the chief rabble-rouser:

Phil Mickelson – Fan favorite, multiple-event winner, record-holder for the oldest ever to win a major championship, FIGJAM Phil (as he is known around the Tour) has won more money on the golf course (and lost more betting on sports, including golf) than most people would earn in a dozen lifetimes, but he has for years been at odds with the PGA Tour leadership on the subject of money. As in, why don’t the players, who provide the content, get more of the cash that the Tour rakes in from TV rights, video content, etc.?

Phil raised a storm of controversy when he phoned golf writer Alan Shipnuck in May 2022 and bared his breast concerning his decision to throw in his lot with Greg Norman in his Tour-busting alliance with the Saudi-funded LIV Golf League. The storm increased in intensity when he back-pedaled, whining that the conversation had been off the record (reader, it wasn’t–gkm). He allowed as how the Saudis were “scary motherf**kers” to work with, but he was going that route in order to gain leverage to try to squeeze more gelt out of the PGA Tour (in much the same manner, I imagine, as his bookies might have been putting the squeeze on him to settle his gambling debts.)

Aside from his record-breaking 2021 PGA Championship victory, which truly was a performance for the ages, Phil had been increasingly fading into a non-presence, last playing any non-major events on the PGA Tour in late 2021 and 2022, making only one cut out of three cut events – a T-36 finish at what was then the Fortinet Championship. He hasn’t exactly set the world on fire in his time playing LIV Golf’s team scramble format, either, carding only two Top 10 individual finishes since 2023.

So, does the PGA Tour need to bring this contentious, antagonistic, aging member of the over-the-hill-club back into the fold?

Dustin Johnson – DJ, as he is known, may be the quintessential laid-back, no-worries guy. Long of limb and stride, and long off the tee, Johnson was also fading in the stats when he accepted the Saudi gelt. In his last season playing non-major Tour events he managed two Top 10 finishes and eight cuts made in 10 cut events—not exactly covering himself in glory.

Other issues have clouded Johnson’s PGA Tour career, such as a six-month suspension in 2014 for drug use (marijuana, cocaine), and at the best of times it has seemed that the slow-walking, slow-talking (slow-thinking?) South Carolina native is only out there playing golf as an easy (for him…) way to make a lot of money and support a laid-back Low Country lifestyle. His LIV Golf record is no barn-burner, either, with two wins and eight Top 10 individual finishes in the first two full seasons.

Brooks Koepka – Brooks started his pro career in 2012 busting his hump on the Challenge Tour, the (then) European Tour’s equivalent of the minor leagues. He traveled so much that he had to have extra visa pages added to his passport, won several events, and in 2014 stepped up to the PGA Tour. He enjoyed success, if somewhat focused, in the big league of golf – his nine wins include back-to-back U.S Opens in 2017 and 2018, two Phoenix Open wins (2015, 2021) and three PGA Championship titles (2018, 2019, 2023) with the last coming after he kissed Yasir Al-Rumayyan’s ring in 2022, hauled a wheelbarrow-load of money home, and put the PGA Tour in his rearview mirror.

I remember when Brooks was a humble, soft-spoken newbie on the PGA Tour, telling the assembled media at the 2014 Fry’s.com Open about eating horse meat in Kazakhstan, and other tales of the Challenge Tour, in between going through the shots of his tournament-leading second and third rounds. No one could have been more surprised than I was when he morphed into a brash, prickly “big name” in pro golf with a fragile ego and more major wins than regular tournament victories. Koepka has played consistently well since jumping ship, with five Top 10 finishes in 2023 and four in the 2024 season – but would PGA Tour fans (or PGA Tour members) welcome him back?

Patrick Reed – Reed has been a lightning rod for controversy over the years. He came up as a hard-scrabble Monday qualifier, playing his way into six PGA tour events in 2013 to earn his card for the 2014 season, but controversy has haunted his footsteps from the beginning. There were hints, and later outright accusations from his Augusta State teammates, of cheating and marginal off-course behavior, and both on- and off-course controversy in his years on the PGA tour. There was the “embedded ball” incident at Torrey Pines in 2021, his “Captain America” schtick at the Ryder Cup matches over the years, and his wife, Justine, ran a (then) Twitter account called @useGolfFACTS which was a badly disguised Patrick Reed propaganda account. His LIV Golf record is in the upper echelon, with five Top 10 finishes in 2023 and three in the 2024 season, but perhaps the jump to a guaranteed prize, Sunday-scramble, team golf format league has taken the shine off of his “Captain America” persona.

Bryson DeChambeau – What can I say about Bryson DeChambeau that hasn’t been said by scores?[4]Sure, he has won two U.S Opens – the first, in 2020, by dint of a show of bomb-and-gouge golf that gave the lie to the “just grow the rough really deep” school of thought when it comes to reining in modern-day bulked-up big hitters; and the second, just last year at a woefully overmatched Pinehurst #2, by playing well and waiting for Rory McIlroy to make a mistake (which, sadly, he did).

Quirky, mouthy, prone to using (and misusing) big words that most golf fans (and golf writers) don’t understand anyway, DeChambeau has always reminded me of that one nerdy only child with social-skills issues that we all knew when we were kids – the one who spent a lot of time around grownups, vying for their attention by showing off his awkward braininess. A physics major at Southern Methodist University who dropped out after his junior year[5], he was nicknamed “The Scientist” for his meticulous, technical approach to golf, but as a career mechanical engineer with an actual degree to my name I can tell you that a good 50% of the “technical content” he spouts is nonsense.

The quirky kid from Clovis, in California’s Central Valley, is a YouTube star now, embracing video sensationalism to “build his brand” as the kids say these days, and was a fan favorite while still on the PGA Tour. Fans might welcome home back to the home of real competitive golf – but does he deserve it?

Jon Rahm – Let’s wrap it up with the Big Man from Arizona State, the guy who told the world that he had made plenty of money and was staying with the PGA Tour, the organization that had made him, like it had the other players profiled above, a multi-millionaire. (By show of hands, who thinks that his representation team were negotiating with the Saudis at the very moment that he said this?) It has been reported that Rahm, whose physical size (6' 2", 220 pounds) is apparently matched by the size of his ego, has flattered himself that his jump to the Saudi golf league with a contract worth $300 million would be the impetus that would heal the schism and make men’s professional golf one big happy family again, though the last 20 months of ongoing negotiations between the Tour and LIV Golf representatives give the lie to that thought. Can the bitter taste that his “surprise” money-grab exit left in the mouths of players and fans be washed away sufficiently to allow his return?

There are a host of others, notable and not-so, who could be put up as examples, but compiling even the brief list above has left a bad taste in my mouth.

The bottom line is, does the PGA Tour really need these guys back? Like any athletic endeavor, professional golf experiences turnover as players age out of ability, or desire to play. Is the public recognition of the fading stars, pedestrian journeymen, and struggling newcomers that currently inhabit the LIV Golf roster such that losing them to the three-ring (round) circus LIV Golf tournaments will hurt the sport as played in the traditional, and more competitive, manner that it has been for decades?

I don’t think so.

---

[1] (Meaning a common competition pool for all men’s professional golf’s players across different tours or leagues, not necessarily a conjoining of the tours themselves.)

[2] (My descriptor, not his.)

[3] (By “everyone” I think he means his bank account.) 

[4] (Gold stars for those of you who recognize the reference.)

[5] (Because recruiting violations by the football staff brought a lockout of ALL SMU athletics teams from national championships for a year.)

Day One of the PGA Championship was a tale of two waves

The first round of the 2020 PGA Championship was a tale of two waves—and despite the proximity to the ocean of Harding Park, the San Francisco muni that is hosting this strange golf season’s first major, it wasn’t Pacific Ocean waves lapping at the shore that shaped today’s results, but the weather affecting the morning and afternoon starting waves, and who got to play when.

Australia’s Jason Day, though not much mentioned in the runup to this week’s PGA Championship, is co-leader after the first round, at 5-under 65. (Image © 2020 Darren Carroll/PGA of America)

Golf, being an outdoor game, is at the mercy of the elements, and never more so that when it is played near the ocean. In Northern California that can mean fog, overcast, blowing mist, or just plain wind, and while that famous line likening summer in San Francisco to a harsh winter was not actually written by Mark Twain, it has certainly persisted because there is so much truth in it.

The players in the field this week saw the accustomed mist and chilly weather; long sleeves, knit hats, and even rain gear (for warmth) were in evidence during practice rounds early in the week,  but players who went out in the morning wave on the first day of competitive rounds were greeted by high overcast, milder-than-expected temperatures, and virtually no wind. 

The friendly conditions for the morning rounds resulted in a spate of low scores, despite the lush rough and tightened fairways of the course’s championship setup. The absence of wind made it easier for players to hit those narrow fairways, and soft(ish), receptive greens meant that even fliers out of the sticky rough—a mixture of Poa annua, bermuda, and rye grass—stood a good chance of holding the putting surface.

Conditions changed for the afternoon wave, and though the later rounds were played under clear or only partially cloudy skies, the westerly winds that are usual in the afternoon on San Francisco’s west side made all the difference. Building steadily and gusting to 20+ mph by the late afternoon, the windy conditions made hitting greens a chancy proposition, as well as drying and firming up the putting surfaces.

The difference in conditions resulted in a scoring differential of nearly a full stroke from morning to afternoon, though the first-round co-leaders, Australia’s Jason Day, the 2015 PGA champion, and Brendon Todd, of Athens, Georgia, came from each group; Day playing in the morning and Todd in the afternoon wave. Day and Todd, each finishing with 5-under 65s, are followed by a group of nine players at 4-under—a group that includes defending PGA champion Brooks Koepka and 2010 PGA champ Martin Kaymer; and another eight who are two strokes back, at 3-under. Tiger Woods, who could tie Jack Nicklaus and Walter Hagen for the all-time PGA Championship victory record, at five, with a win this week, came in at 2-under.

With Friday’s forecast looking much the same as today’s, the tide will turn, and Thursday’s morning-wave players, though benefitting from a longer rest period and a chance to sleep in, will have their turn playing in the windy afternoon conditions. Today’s afternoon wave will be up at the crack of dawn on Friday, but if the golf gods smile upon them, they will get their chance to work the course in the mild, calm conditions that today’s early wave enjoyed.

However the conditions turn out, it is certain that golf fans, who have been spoiling for major-championship golf since April, will see another full day of exciting play on one of the Bay Area’s best-known and best-loved golf courses, highlighted by the beautiful views afforded by the broadcast’s camera-drones and the ubiquitous Goodyear blimp.

Mix of old hands and newbies top Round 3 leaderboard at PGA Championship

A mix of experienced “old hands” and fresh-faced newbies crowded the top of the leaderboard after an exciting Round 3 at the 2020 PGA Championship at San Francisco’s TPC Harding Park Golf Course. Among them are NorCal native Cameron Champ, of Sacramento, and former Cal Men’s Golf standout Collin Morikawa, a native of Los Angeles.

Sacramento native Cameron Champ is in contention for his first major-tournament title in the 2020 PGA Championship title at TPC Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco.(Photo by Christian Petersen/PGA of America/PGA of America via Getty Images)

Morikawa, who started the day at two under par, shared low-round-of-the-day honors with 54-hole leader Dustin Johnson and runner-up Scottie Scheffler. His seven-under score after three rounds was good for a T4 finish, which he shares with England’s Paul Casey and 2018 and 2019 PGA defending champion Brooks Koepka.

Cameron Champ opened the current PGA season with an emotional victory at the Safeway Open last October, dedicating the win to his grandfather, Mack, who passed away from cancer soon after the tournament. Morikawa and Champ will be play together tomorrow in the second-to-last pairing, behind Dustin Johnson (-9) and Scottie Scheffler (-8).

Scheffler, 24, of Dallas, has a place in Northern California golf history himself, having won the 2013 U.S. Junior Amateur Championship at Martis Camp Resort in Truckee.

The late stages of today’s third round resembled a game of Whack-A-Mole as players rose through the rankings only to be knocked back down by poor play or just plain bad breaks. The changeable Lake Merced-area weather had the players contending with wind, then calm, then increasing misty and chilly conditions that sapped distance from tee shots, demonstrating that the bucolic Arcadian beauty of the lakeside region can conceal an iron fist in its foggy velvet glove.

Second-round leader Haotong Li found tree trouble off the tee at the 13th hole when one of the notorious Monterey Cypress trees that line the Harding Park fairways grabbed his ball and kept it, as they sometimes do. The resulting double-bogey was followed by a bogey on #14, and another at #16, the drivable par-4 on the Lake Merced shoreline. Five dropped shots and two birdies left him with a 3-over 73, and 5-over, T13, going into the final round.

Brooks Koepka, who unlike Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth, is going into the final round with a shot at a new line in the history books for a third consecutive PGA Championship, got a big dose of “leaderboard gravity” with a string of bogeys on holes 13, 14, and 15. Only a well-executed birdie on #18, the result of a 170-yard approach shot to six feet above the hole, and the clutch birdie putt that followed, pulled him out of an eventual six-way cluster of players at six-under.

Arguably leading that group of six-under finishers sitting T7 after 54 holes is Clovis, California’s, Bryson DeChambeau. The former SMU golfer won the 2015 USGA Amateur Championship, and was NCAA champion as a junior, but dropped out before his senior year and turned pro when SMU was suspended from NCAA championship competitions for recruiting violations.

DeChambeau posted a 4-under 66 today to finish the third round at six under par. Known for his length off the tee after undertaking a “bulking-up” regimen of weightlifting and protein shakes during the PGA Tour’s hiatus, it was, ironically, a 95-foot putt from the front edge of the 18th green that was the highlight of his round today, for a final birdie that lifted him into the top dozen finishers after 54 holes.

Final-round play gets underway tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. local time, with online coverage on ESPN+ beginning at 10 a.m., switching to ESPN online and on television at noon, with CBS-TV taking over from ESPN at 3 p.m.

Record hopes still alive for Woods, Koepka, and Spieth in PGA Championship

The three players I highlighted in my pre-tournament story, Tiger Woods, Brooks Koepka, and Jordan Spieth—all of whom were coming into this week’s PGA Championship with a line in the history books hanging on a win this week—are all still alive, so to speak, in the pursuit of their respective accomplishments. But much like what Magic Max said of The Dread Pirate Roberts—“It just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead, … mostly dead is slightly alive.”—there are varying degrees of “still alive”.

Brooks Koepka, the 2018 and 2019 PGA champion, is in good position to successfully defend his title going into the final two days of the tournament.

 (Photo by Darren Carroll/PGA of America)

Tiger Woods, who is chasing the PGA Tour all-time wins record and a co-leader spot on the all-time PGA Championship wins podium; and Jordan Spieth, who would lay claim to the Career Grand Slam with a win this week, just scraped their way into the weekend today.

Tiger, after an opening-round 68 in which he made nearly 115 feet of putts with the backup Scotty Cameron putter he brought out for the occasion, couldn’t buy a putt today; his Strokes Gained-Putting score dropped from 1.249 to -1.671. He hit more fairways—nine of 14, vice seven yesterday—but fewer greens; indeed, his SG scores were worse across the board except for off the tee. He scraped into the weekend at even par, one stroke to spare against the +1 cut line, and unless the Big Cat scares up a Big Change in his game on Saturday and Sunday his pursuit of those records will have to wait for another weekend, and another year, respectively.

Jordan Spieth, on the other hand, who cut it even more fine, making the cut on the number with rounds of 73 and 68, saw an uptick in his play today. His stats improved across the board, compared to Thursday—he gained 3.3 strokes on the field today, overall—and a lone bogey at the par-four 18th hole was the sole black mark on his round. Still, going into the weekend trailing the leader, China’s Haotong Li, by nine strokes, and with 57 guys above him on the leaderboard,  his chances of eking out a win aren’t looking good.

And then there’s Brooks Koepka. The man who has won more majors (four) than regular PGA Tour events (three) saw his game dip a bit today, but rounds of 66 and 68 put him squarely in the pack of six players who are two strokes back of the 36-hole leader, Li. Koepka was getting on-course work done by his trainer during today’s round, for a tight adductor muscle—“It’s no problem,” he said in a post-round interview—and his stats slipped across the board from Thursday to Friday, Tee-to-Green and Putting most significantly. 

All three played early-late for the first two days of the tournament, and the extent to which the afternoon conditions—generally windier, and with greens firmed up by a day’s worth of sun (mild, San Francisco-by-the-sea sun, but still sun…)—affected their results is open to speculation. Tiger and Spieth will be going off earlier on Saturday; 9:50 and 8:40 a.m., respectively; but Koepka, with his high finish over the opening two days, will again be playing in the afternoon, with a 2:40 start time. With no significant changes in the weather forecast being predicted, those early start times may prove to be the more favorable.

Still, it’s Koepka, with a red “-6” next to his name on the scoreboard going into the weekend, and a history of coming from behind in majors—he was three shots back going into the final round in five of his last eight majors, and finished outside of the Top 10 in all but two—who stands the best chance of coming out of this weekend with the Wanamaker Trophy, and another line in the history books, in hand.

Who’s chasing history at the 2020 PGA Championship?

The circumstances under which the 2020 PGA Championship is being played—a global pandemic, no spectators on course, a timeframe reversal back to its usual August time slot, and a first-time appearance at an iconic San Francisco venue—are enough to afford the event a highlighted spot in the golf history books. Beyond those circumstances, though, there are three players in the field this week who are chasing history above and beyond a single major championship victory: Tiger Woods, Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth.

(Image © 2020 Christian Petersen/PGA of America)

Coming into the tournament Woods stands on the threshold of an all-time wins record with the possibility of breaking his tie with Sam Snead at 82 total victories, and maybe even more significant than that, a win in San Francisco this weekend would bring him one step closer to equaling Jack Nicklaus’ major victories record.

Woods tied Snead’s long-standing record of 82 PGA Tour victories in grand fashion in 2019 when he recorded his fifth Masters win after a 14-year drought in the event; the 2019 Masters chop also moved Woods one step closer to sharing the top step on the all-time major-victories podium with Jack Nicklaus, marking his 15th major victory—three less than Nicklaus, with 18; and four more than Walter Hagen, who with 11 majors is the only other member of the double-digit-wins club in professional majors. A win this week would also elevate Woods to the top step of the “PGA Championship wins” podium, which he would share with Nicklaus and Hagen.

Another player who will be spotlighted this week for the potential of an historic achievement is Brooks “Mr Majors” Koepka. With two consecutive PGA Championship victories in his pocket, Koepka is going for a hat trick this week, and while not a record, a win at Harding Park would make him only the second player, after Walter Hagen, to take the PGA Championship title three years running.

Hagen, by the way, was PGA champion four years running, 1924 – 1927, after having won it in 1921. The cup awarded to the winner, the Wanamaker Trophy, mysteriously disappeared after his 1927 victory at Cedar Crest Country Club, in Dallas; Hagen claimed that he gave it to a cabbie to deliver to his hotel. Leo Diegel, who won the PGA Championship in ’28 and ’29; and Tommy Armour, the 1930 champ, had to make do with a firm handshake and a smile from then-PGA president Alex Pirie.

The trophy resurfaced in the fall of 1930, a few months after that year’s event, when workers clearing a warehouse in Detroit found the massive silver cup in a trunk. The owner of the warehouse? The Walter Hagen Company. Hmmm…

Last but not least comes Jordan Spieth, who is chasing probably the most elusive of the potential records that are in the mix this week on the shores of Lake Merced—the Career Grand Slam.

Spieth jumpstarted his run at this career goal in 2015, his third year on the Tour, when he took home the Masters and the U.S. Open titles and served notice that the others were within his grasp with a T4 finish in the British Open at St Andrews, and solo second, three strokes back of Jason Day, in the PGA at Wisconsin’s Whistling Straits.

After a T2 finish in the 2016 Masters, the result of an infamous meltdown at the 12th hole, Spieth went into something of a tailspin where the majors were concerned; he didn’t crack the Top 10 again in any of the Big Four until the British in 2017, where he edged the majorless Matt Kuchar for the win at Royal Birkdale.

Since that time, however, Spieth has sputtered. His record in the majors in the interim ranges from a third-place finish in the 2018 Masters to a T65 at last year’s U.S. Open, just down the coast from Harding Park at Pebble Beach Golf Links, with only two other top-ten finishes in that time. He hasn’t won a regular PGA Tour event since the 2017 Travelers Championship, and is 12-for-49 for top-10 finishes since 2018.

Still—coming to the shores of Lake Merced for the first West Coast PGA Championship since Sahalee, in the Seattle area, in 1998; and the first in California since the 1977 event at Pebble Beach Golf Links; and with Masters, U.S. Open, and British Open titles to his credit, the 27-year-old Dallas native has his sights set on the tournament he needs to win to put that last notch in his tally stick.

“It’s probably the No. 1 goal in the game of golf for me right now…. I’d love to be able to hold all four trophies, and this is the one that comes in the way right now.”

– Jordan Spieth 

Spieth is already keeping company with some pretty big names, men who lack just one of the four majors in their CVs —

• Walter Hagen, Masters
• Lee Trevino, Masters
• Tommy Armour, Masters
• Sam Snead, U.S. Open
• Phil Mickelson, U.S. Open
• Byron Nelson, British Open
• Tom Watson, PGA Championship
• Arnold Palmer, PGA Championship

—and a win this week at Harding Park will vault him into even more illustrious company, that of the five men who have claimed each of golf’s major titles at least once: Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, and Gene Sarazen.

Some compelling storylines for the 119th U.S. Open

More so than the usual week in/week out PGA Tour events, the majors lend themselves to speculation about possible outcomes well in advance of the event itself. With the biggest of the three North American majors, the U.S. Open,  just around the corner, three compelling potential story lines arise:

• Brooks Koepka wins his third consecutive U.S. Open (and second major in a row)
• Phil Mickelson completes his “career slam” with a U.S. Open win (after six second-place finishes)
• Tiger racks up his sixteenth major

In an informal poll that I conducted on Twitter, Phil completing his slam was ranked “most compelling” storyline by 39% of respondents, narrowly beating out a Koepka three-peat, at 37%; only 24% ranked a possible 16th major for Tiger the most compelling story. When asked what they thought of the likelihood of any of these storylines coming to fruition, my Tweeps ranked Koepka as the most likely to come through, with 63% picking the three-peat; only 11% felt that Phil would come through for the win.

Let’s take a look at each of these potential headline-makers:

Brooks Koepka “three-peat” 

Brooks Koepka is on a hot streak. He has won three of the last five majors, and four of the past eight that he has played (he missed the 2018 Masters with a wrist injury). This run of major victories includes an amazing “double-double” – back-to-back wins in the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship. The inevitable question that arises is “Can he keep it up?”

To be honest, it doesn’t look good. Koepka’s only history at Pebble Beach is a T-8 in the 2016 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. With its small, subtly contoured greens and variable weather, Pebble is a course that rewards familiarity. The fairways have been narrowed, and skewed to take away the best angles into some of the more difficult greens, and the rough will be lush and deep. Koepka’s brute strength may get him out of some deep green next week, should the need arise, but you don’t win at Pebble—especially in U.S. Open nick—out of the rough.

Purely from a number-crunching point-of-view, the odds against a Koepka three-peat are pretty long. Winning the same event three years in a row has happened, and probably more often than most golf fans are aware of—in the post-WWII era only Gene Littler, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Billy Casper, Johnny Miller, Tiger Woods, Stuart Appleby, and Steve Stricker have all done it. In fact, Palmer did it twice, at the old Texas Open, and the Phoenix Open; and Tiger four times, at the Memorial, the WGC-Cadillac, and two runs of three at the WGC-Bridgestone.

As far as majors go, there have only been two “three-peats” since 1900: Willie Anderson’s run in the U.S. Open, from 1903 to 1905; and Walter Hagen’s remarkable four-year run in the PGA Championship, from 1924 to 1927. The talent pool was much smaller in those days, so there was a better (but still small) likelihood of a really dominant player going on that sort of run.

So what about Brooks? Koepka has demonstrated a remarkable affinity for the big events (coupled with a relative disdain for non-majors, where he has recorded only two PGA Tour wins: the 2015 Phoenix Open, and the 2018 CJ Cup, an offshore PGA Tour event held in South Korea), but will he pull off a three-peat in the U.S. Open and  back-to-back majors? He has already shown the capability to bust up the record books, so we will just have to wait and see.

Phil finally wins the U.S. Open

There are a number of factors weighing in both for and against Phil Mickelson finally achieving his career “slam” – a win in each of the four majors – with a victory at Pebble Beach next week. In the “For” column is his record at Pebble Beach – five wins in the AT&T Pro-Am, two in the last five years—including the 2019 event; a sentimental attachment to the course, where his maternal grandfather was one of the first batch of caddies when the course opened in 1919; and the knowledge that he is running out of time, at age 48 (turning 49 on Open Sunday), to close the door on his career Grand Slam.

Oddly enough, the last last item in the “For” column is the first one in the “Against” column. Only seven players have won a major at age 44 or older:

• Harry Vardon, 44, Open Championship – 1914
• Roberto de Vicenzo, 44, Open Championship, 1967
• Lee Trevino, 44, PGA Championship, 1984
• Jerry Barber, 45, PGA Championship, 1961
• Hale Irwin, 45, U.S. Open, 1990
• Jack Nicklaus, 46, Masters, 1986
• Julius Boros, 48, PGA Championship, 1968

This accomplishment occupies even more rarefied air than winning three of the four majors—a feat that has been achieved by 16 players in history.

Also working against Phil is his recent playing history: five missed cuts out of 13 events since the Safeway Open, in October; only two Top 10s (the AT&T win, and T-2 in the Desert Classic); and only one of the remaining finishes inside the Top 20.

A win in this U.S. Open for Phil—to close out his career slam, at the golf course where his grandfather caddied as a 13-year-old, on his 49th birthday (which is also Father’s Day) to make him the oldest to ever win a men’s major—would eclipse even Tiger’s recent Masters win as the golf story of the year, and maybe even the decade. At the end of the day on Friday, June 14th we will know if he’s got a shot (by making the cut), and if he accomplishes that, the eyes of the golf world will be watching his every move on the weekend.

Tiger gets his 16th major

There are people out there who are putting Tiger Woods at the top of their list of potential winners next week at Pebble Beach. Much of the reasoning that is being used to support this view is based on the accomplishments of a very different person than 2019 Tiger: the blowout 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, when he won with a score of 12 under par, an amazing 15 strokes ahead of second place. Some of this support for a Tiger win is based on his having won the Masters last April, and the rest is rooted in pure fanboy-ism.

From where I stand, all of these lines of reasoning are spurious.

First, there’s age. Forty-three-year-old Tiger is not 24-year-old Tiger. Sure, he just won the Masters, but the Masters was always the best bet for Tiger to notch up another major victory. It’s a course he knows well, where he had won four times before. (To be honest, he didn’t win the 2019 Masters so much as Francesco Molinari lost it with his back-nine-Sunday collapse.)

Second, there’s his history of injuries. As Indiana Jones told Marilyn, “It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage”. The violent action of Tiger’s golf swing has, over the years, resulted in back problems (and three corrective surgeries), knee problems, and even a stress fracture in his left tibia (the larger of the two bones in the lower leg.) Injuries add up, and athletic injuries can force changes in a motion sequence, to avoid pain or re-injury, which result in unaccustomed stress in another part of the body, leading to new injuries.

Tiger has played eight four-round events since December–who can say when (or if) the accumulated stress will catch up with some part of his battered body? One lunge at a ball buried in the deep, lush U.S. Open rough may be all it takes to push yet another tendon or ligament past its capabilities.


The fanboy enthusiasm that inundated the world of golf after Tiger’s Masters win earlier this year was tempered somewhat by his missed cut at the PGA Championship, but the embers flared again with his T9 finish at the Memorial, two weeks before the U.S. Open, when a fourth-round surge (70-72-70-67) shot him up the board from 25th to T-9, sending his fans into fits of ecstasy.

It must be remembered, however, that Tiger doesn’t really like Pebble, despite the events of June 2000. He has cited the late-in-the-day bumpiness of the poa annua greens as one reason, and the lengthy rounds typical of the pro-am format have kept him away between Opens. Taken on balance, the factors working against Tiger taking the win in the 119th U.S. Open are tipping the scales away from this Open becoming Tiger’s 16th major.

Only time will tell

All of this pre-event prognosticating may turn out to be for naught, of course. Pebble Beach has a history of turning up early-round leaders who have the media folk looking around and asking, “Who  is that guy?”, and turning to their players guides for background details—and sometimes one of those guys wins (remember Vaughn Taylor, in 2016, and Ted Potter Jr. in 2018?). And it can even happen in the U.S. Open, as it almost did in 2010, when Frenchman Gregory Havret came within a stroke of taking eventual champion Graeme McDowell to a playoff. All I know for sure is that I can hardly wait to see it all play out.