Full piece.

Full piece.

Full piece.

Here are two.

• “Tiger Woods, British Open…Woods had just taken the lead when his tee shot at No. 10 found a bunker. What he did next was unbelievable to watch in real time and likely the best shot he hit all season.”

• “Brooks Koepka, PGA Championship…Clinging to a one-shot lead with three holes to play, Koepka pured a 4-iron from 248 yards out and proved he wasn’t going to flinch down the stretch while securing his third career major title.”

Full piece. 

• “Phil Mickelson...Lefty is perhaps the modern-day poster boy for hitting your stride in his 30s. It’s easy to forget that he didn’t win his first of five majors until he was 33 at the 2004 Masters. Sure, he picked up 16 titles on tour in his 20s, including one while still an amateur, but he nabbed 23 of his 43 PGA Tour wins, including his other four majors, in his 30s.”

• “Justin Rose…The Englishman fared a lot worse than Fowler did early on, missing 21 straight cuts his first year as a pro. He recovered just fine, winning twice in the U.S. and four more times on the European Tour in his 20s. But it wasn’t until Rose’s 30s that his career really took off with seven wins on the PGA Tour, including the U.S. Open at Merion, four more on the European Tour, a gold medal in the Olympics and a spot atop the Official World Golf Ranking. And he still has another season-and-a-half before he turns 40.”

• “Bubba Watson…The long-hitting Watson didn’t even make it to the PGA Tour until he was 27, so naturally most of his success came in his 30s. Watson’s first victory came at 31 at the 2010 Travelers Championship, and he has since added 11 more wins to his résumé, including two Masters titles in 2012 and 2014 as well as a World Golf Championship before turning 40 in November.”

• Here’s one of ’em…”Flagstick…Players will be permitted to leave the flagstick in the hole while playing a shot from the green, and there is no penalty if the ball strikes the flagstick. In the past, players had to pull the flagstick from the hole or have somebody else (a caddie or another golfer) tend and pull the flagstick before the ball struck it.”

• “This rule was changed to help speed up play, but it might have implications beyond pace of play. For example, PGA Tour player Bryson DeChambeau has said he will leave the flagstick in the hole even on short putts because he believes the flagstick will help keep more shots from racing past the hole. There has been research by several players and students of the game, including by short-game guru Dave Pelz, that claimed players have a statistically better chance of a ball dropping into or coming to rest near the hole if the flag is left in place.”

• “It still will be against the rules to position the flagstick in such a way as to create a perceived benefit. That is, you can’t intentionally lean the flagstick forward in the hole to try to deflect a ball downward. The flagstick still must be placed upright in the center of the hole unless a player finds that it is leaning in a certain direction when he or she arrives at the green. In that case, the player could leave the flagstick as they find it or center it in the hole.”

• But now…“He is now at 12 PGA Tour wins following glory at the WGC-Dell Match Play and Travelers Championship and has set his sights on 15 victories, which could get him into the Hall of Fame.”

• “Am I Hall of Fame worthy? I’m going to be dead honest with you – it would be the most joyous occasion in my life when it came to the game of golf,” he said. “I can’t tell you if that’s in or not. But my new goal is three more, see if I can get to 15.”

• From….”Jan. 4: Announces he’ll start season at Torrey Pines…This wasn’t necessarily a surprise; Woods had played-and more importantly, looked-relatively well a month prior at his Hero World Challenge, and the Farmers Insurance Open served as his opening tournament in 2017. Still, given Woods had appeared in precisely one official PGA Tour event in the previous 29 months, the routine announcement was like the first warm day of winter, offering hope that the long, vapid coldness was coming to an end….Tigermania-meter: Prepare the twirls.”

• To…”Sept. 23: Wins the Tour Championship…A birdie at the first pushed his lead to four and cranked the crowd volume to 10. The next 13 holes were part golf tournament, part homecoming parade. The issue became slightly in doubt on the 16th and 17th, but a knee-knocker save on the latter sealed the day, transforming the 18th hole into a coronation. The king, back on his throne, marching down the aisle with his people by his side. The greatest comeback since Hogan was complete: Tiger Woods was a winner once again…Tigermania-meter: I’m not crying. You’re crying”

Full piece.

• “Every year, thousands of used golf clubs go on the market. Some of the clubs had a rough life and some have barely been hit. As an exercise to see what you can get for your dollar, I browsed one of the web’s largest used golf equipment sites (3balls.com) with a budget of $500 for a full set of clubs in my specs. What I found was really interesting.”

• Here’s the big stick he went with...”Driver…Since I play a low loft driver with a low launch, low spin shaft, I knew I was in for a challenge with finding a driver. Once I took a minute to search, I found this beauty of a driver. I remember hitting the Ping G10 back in the day, and it was one of the most forgiving drivers at the time. Plus, it was very close to my specs at standard length, 7.5 degrees, and a mid-launch Grafalloy shaft.”

• “It’s a good thing for Matt Borchert he’s better with his putter than with his math…Borchert thought he had shot a 69 Tuesday and finished a shot behind Bob Sowards until Sowards told him they both had 68s. Borchert re-checked his scorecard and realized his mistake. They were tied at 8-under 136.”

• “Ten minutes later, Borchert drained a 20-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole to win Event No. 4 of the PGA Tournament Series at PGA Golf Club. It was the first PGA Tournament Series victory for the PGA Professional at Isleworth Golf & Country Club near Orlando.”

• “It was too long of a day on the golf course,” Borchert said of the scoring issue. “I was trying to figure out where I stood on 18. I thought we both played great. Bob was solid. I was just lucky to sneak a few more putts in.”

• EuropeanTour.com report...”Dimitrios Papadatos opened up a one-shot lead over defending champion Brandon Stone as round one of the Alfred Dunhill Championship got under way at Leopard Creek Country Club.”

• “Papadatos is playing on an invite after narrowly missing out on gaining his card via the PGA Tour of Australasia and made four birdies in his first 12 holes to move to four under.”

• “Home favourite Stone was also bogey-free after nine holes to sit a shot ahead of Spaniard Adri Arnaus, Scot David Drysdale, Swede Robert Karlsson, Welshman Stuart Manley and South African Erik van Rooyen.”

• “He became the first man in almost 30 years to successfully defend the U.S. Open. At the PGA Championship, he joined Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and Padraig Harrington as the only players in the last two decades to win two majors in a season. He was voted Player of the Year, an honor he promptly celebrated by winning the CJ Cup and ascending to No. 1 in the world.”

• “Anyone else, they’re on the cover of a Wheaties box,” said Claude Harmon III, Koepka’s longtime coach….There won’t be a Wheaties box, of course.”

• Also…”The lazy rap against Koepka is that he doesn’t win often enough on Tour. The 2015 Waste Management Phoenix Open – the first of his five Tour wins – is his only non-major victory in the U.S. It’s an anomaly that puts him in rarefied statistical company with Andy North as players who have more wins in majors than in regular tournaments. It’s not a ledger imbalance that troubles his team.”

• “The Forecaddie is pretty certain Rory McIlroy won’t quit golf’s European Tour in 2019, despite what he said during the DP World Tour Championship, Dubai.”

• “European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley has taken steps to make sure his star player keeps his status.”

• “If it were to be that I don’t fulfill my membership next year, it’s not a Ryder Cup year so it’s not the end of the world,” he said…Not the end of the world for McIlroy, but pretty close to it for the European Tour and Pelley, The Man Out Front thinks.”

• “Pelley wasn’t about to hang around to let McIlroy make a decision detrimental to the tour. Pelley jumped on a plane to Northern Ireland and McIlroy’s home in Holywood for an emergency meeting with his star player.”

• On getting started doing golf course art…”Right. Well, I was known as the artist in Attica. I spent, out of the 27 years, I spent 25 of those years in Attica. So over the years I had publicity on my case because the local newspaper had came to believe in my innocence, but there wasn’t a judge in Buffalo that would do anything about it. So the warden and the officers in Attica knew that I was innocent of the crime and would always check in on me and look in and see if I was all right and everything like that, but they knew that I drew also. So the warden came to me one day and asked me could I draw his favorite hole, which was Augusta, the 12th hole at Augusta.”

• “I’d never golfed before. I mean, I’m from the inner city. So it was like all right, I guess I can do it. I knew nothing about golf. I drew the Augusta 12th hole. He loved it. Other inmates loved it and one of the inmates encouraged me to draw more golf holes. I said, “What are you talking about? What for? That doesn’t even makes sense.” He says, “I love the golf course, I think you should draw more.” He planted the seed.”

• “A week later I went around and I got some old golf magazines, Golf Digest magazines, and I start pulling out the pictures that I loved. The guy gave me some really old ones that he had in his cell. So I start pulling out the ones that I liked, the ones that I thought was pretty and then from there I started drawing them. Whenever I put my mind into something, I just go in and really hard. So for months and months, all I did was draw golf courses. Okay. “

• “Eventually I started reading the columns out of the Golf Digest magazine and I came across Max Adler’s, called Golf Saved My Life. I kind of put the two together because it was like golf was saving my life because being there was really, really stressful and hard and every day was a challenge. I have friends that committed suicide. I didn’t know if I was going to be the next person that my mind was going to snap.”

• “Enigma Award. It was an eventful year for Patrick Reed….He won the Masters for his first major and unabashedly torched his former team partner Jordan Spieth and U.S. captain Jim Furyk following the Americans’ loss at the Ryder Cup….”The issue is obviously with Jordan not wanting to play with me,” Reed told the New York Times, adding, “For somebody as successful in the Ryder Cup as I am, I don’t think it’s smart to sit me twice.”…You know the deal; it’s not me, it’s him. But if we learned anything about the former “Captain America,” it’s that there is definitely an ‘I’ in Patrick.”

• “Armageddon Award. Just after 8 a.m. on Jan. 13, a quiet Saturday in Hawaii was shattered by an emergency message sent to cell phones across the islands: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

• “It would take 38 minutes for officials to confirm to the public that the message was a false alarm. For those preparing for the third round of the Sony Open, it felt like an eternity…Jordan Spieth said he hid in his bathtub for a few moments before giving up on his “shelter” plan. “I just felt stupid,” he admitted.”

• “But the award for having the best attitude when faced with the end of the world goes to Charles Howell III, who told reporters, “We sort of looked at one another. Part of you thinks you grab a Mai Tai, go to the beach and grab a front-row seat. Part of you thinks what are you going to do?”

• A morsel…”There are approximately 20 phases to a modern Ryder Cup cycle-scholars disagree on the exact total-and while I won’t bore you by listing them out here, I will say that somewhere around Phase 9 or 10, there is a three-day golf exhibition. The rest of the phases revolve around this event, and they range from aimless speculation to strategy to pre-tournament second-guessing to shock to dread to post-tournament second-guessing to lengthy evaluations to national hand-wringing to dramatic but ultimately feckless reform … and back again.”

• “The cycle lasts exactly two years, and although the 20-ish phases encompass an impressive and diverse array of existential conditions, there is absolutely no phase called “nothing is happening right now” or “hey, the next Cup is two years away, why are we worried about this?” or “seriously, we’re not talking about the Ryder Cup for at least a month, please leave me alone.” It’s rumored that such a phase existed once, in the fog of history, but in the current golf climate, the Ryder Cup is as ubiquitous as an American election-it’s never over, even when it’s over. Especially when it’s over.”