By Ben Alberstadt with Gianni Magliocco.
For comments: [email protected]
Good Thursday morning, golf fans, as day one of the 2023 Mexico Open gets underway. |
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1. How Rahm raised his game
Justin Ray writing for PGATour.com quantifies Rahm’s improvements this season…”On the surface, Rahm didn’t seem to have much to clean up in terms of ball-striking one year ago. Entering the 2022 Mexico Open at Vidanta, Rahm led the TOUR in both Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and greens in regulation. In four of his first five full seasons on TOUR, he wound up in the top-10 in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green. Nobody could characterize Rahm as anything less than elite when it came to his game off the tee or with his irons.”
- “Perhaps, though, that’s what makes his approach play improvement even more impressive. Rahm has made a quantum leap this season from a very good approach player to arguably the best in the sport. The TOUR’s current leader in Strokes Gained: Approach per round, Rahm is gaining half-a-stroke more per round in that metric than he was at this time one year ago. On approaches from the fairway, Rahm is averaging 29 feet, 4 inches from the cup. That’s 16 inches better than this time last year, and about three-and-a-half feet better than the TOUR average.”
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2. Duffy: Improved PGA, LPGA Tour partnership needed
Patricia Duffy for Golf Channel…”Monahan played the front nine with Korda and LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan. He was able to play two holes on the back nine with current U.S. Solheim Cup captain Stacy Lewis before he had to catch a flight back to Florida.”
- “Even though his visit was short and he wasn’t able to stay for the tournament, the PGA Tour’s leader made an effort, and the LPGA’s stars took notice.”
- “I think he realizes that they need to do more,” Lewis told Golfweek. “He said that to me multiple times … it’s just now whether we can push it forward and actually do something about it.”
- “Financially, professional golf is growing.”
- “You see it on the PGA Tour, with its new designated-event model and ever-increasing purses; you see it in the pecuniary premise of LIV Golf; and you see it in the creation of non-traditional golf-related products, like the TGL golf league that’s set to launch in 2024.”
- “But all of the above are benefitting men.”
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3. Bubba Watson: Golf was kind of stale
Elliott Heath for Golf Monthly…”Bubba Watson revealed some bold plans for LIV Golf that involve teams having their own golf courses, or ‘stadiums’, while he claimed that the professional game had become “stale” prior to LIV arriving on the scene last year.”
- “…I know what our business plan is and business model is. We are talking about having teams from different parts of the world,” he said.
- “We are talking about having our own golf courses that, basically, we’ll call them our stadiums. We are talking about having golf academies to help young golfers, but also young golfers that want to play at our level, just like any other sports team around the world. So there’s a lot of dreams and aspirations and a lot of things that we’ve already accomplished in less than a year, but we still want to keep going forward.”
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4. Phil’s OWGR workaround
Evin Priest for Golf Digest…”Mickelson has an idea for an alternative.”
- “We have to come up with a qualifying mechanism that is inclusive, and if the [OWGR] isn’t going to be inclusive, then they have to find another way,” he said Wednesday ahead of LIV’s Singapore event. “Maybe they take the top five or top 10 [in LIV’s individual points standings], or winners on LIV? They’re going to have to find a way to get the best LIV players in their field if they want to have the best field in golf and be what major championships are about. So they’re already looking at that.”
- “The top 10 on LIV’s current points standings four tournaments into their 14-event 2023 schedule are: Peter Uihlein, Charles Howell III, Gooch, Carlos Ortiz, Patrick Reed, Sebastian Munoz, Koepka, Danny Lee, Brendan Steele and Dean Burmester.”
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5. Rahm the winner
Golf Digest’s Shane Ryan…”What’s more interesting is that by Strokes Gained, Rahm wasn’t even the best player of the past 12 months! That honor goes to Rory McIlroy, who, according to Data Golf, averaged 2.66 strokes gained over the field in 22 events in that span, while Rahm was just behind at 2.62. McIlroy had four wins in that same stretch, including the Tour Championship (where he won both the actual tournament and the lowest 72-hole score), but couldn’t capture any majors. If nothing else, this highlights just how good Rahm is at winning; seven wins in 15 top-10s means that when he was anywhere close to the lead, he managed to ring the bell about half the time, while McIlroy had the exactly same number of top-10s—15—but won at about half of Rahm’s rate.” |
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6. Back-to-back aces?
Dan DeLuca for the Naples Daily News…”John Nicholson and George Rand were playing in a foursome last Thursday at The Glades Golf & Country Club in Naples when something amazing happened.”
- “The septuagenarians sank consecutive holes-in-one on the 15th hole of the club’s Palmetto course, a feat nearly unheard of, and for good reason. The National Hole in One Registry puts the odds of consecutive aces by two different golfers on the same hole at 17 million to 1.”
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7. Like signing Zava
AP report…”Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney are making an audacious — and very public — bid to entice Gareth Bale out of retirement to play a season at Wrexham.”
- “Bale, a Wales great who retired after the World Cup at age 33, offered his congratulations to Wrexham’s celebrity owners following the team’s promotion to the fourth tier of English soccer at the weekend.”
- “In a response to Bale’s video message, McElhenney wrote on Twitter: “Hey Gareth Bale let’s play golf, where I totally won’t spend 4 hours trying to convince you to un-retire for one last magical season.”
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9. KFT Photos
- Check out our galleries from this week’s Korn Ferry Tour event!
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