Weekend Wrap - Day Late Edition

You guys know the rules.  The blogging of golf shall not interfere with the playing of golf and, mostly due to the Spring weather, the latter has been in short supply...

If you've come for my typically trenchant insights about the PGA Tour event at Colonial, you'll leave disappointed.  I didn't watch any of it, save a bit on Sunday with the Yankees in a Rain delay, and you can't make me care about it.

But I found this interesting:

Another week another win for Angel Cabrera, who captures his second major title in just 6 days

OK, we don't exactly flood the zone to cover the round-belly tour, not least because of the back-to-back major thing....  Why not hold all twelve majors in succession?

On this championship Sunday outside the nation’s capital it was the two-time major winner (Cabrera) who topped the three-time major champ (Harrington), with both looking for their second Champions Tour major. Cabrera shot a final-round 69 to end the week at eight-under-par total, one ahead of Harrington and Thomas Bjorn. He just won the weather-plagued Regions Tradition, the first Champions Tour major of the year, on Monday before heading to Washington, D.C.

So, yes, that’s two majors in six days, and three Champions Tour titles in the last seven weeks.

Cabrera’s win at the James Hardie Pro Football Hall of Fame Invitational in early April was his first in 10 years and nine months. The former Masters and U.S. Open champion was jailed for 30 months in Brazil and Argentina for domestic assault and released in August 2023. He had played in 11 Champions events in 2019 and 2020 before his conviction. He returned last year to play some and is now the best player on the Champions Tour and its only three-time winner.

“I thought that I was going to fail, especially after being sitting without touching a club for a while,” Cabrera said. “But I've been working very, very hard and I feel that all the hard works pays off and this is what I'm having right now, like winning this tournament.”

I guess there are, as the saying goes, second acts in life.  One assumes that certain heads will be exploding over Cabrera's success, which I cover recently in connection with his act of kindness to Rory at the Masters (the note in the locker, for those that don't recall).  The thing is that there are many such stories about the Argentine, I still remember his thumbs up to Adam Scott in the reaction to the shot that cost him the Masters, a nice piece of spontaneous sportsmanship.  He seems to have quite the generous spirit, which I'll readily concede is hard to square with the events that left him incarcerated.

NCAA Men's Championship - It's a great couple of weeks on the golf calendar, though I admittedly prefer the young ladies to the gents, for reasons best left unexplored.

The men's individual title was awarded last evening, and they'll begin the team match-play competition this afternoon:

Michael La Sasso is close with Braden Thornberry, the 2017 NCAA individual champion at Ole Miss, and chats with him often.

Coming into the postseason, Thornberry told La Sasso, now a junior for the Rebels, to enjoy the final tournaments of the year and have plenty of fun. Safe to say La Sasso took that advice to heart.

La Sasso captured the 2025 NCAA Men's Golf Championship individual title on Monday at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa's North Course, joining Thornberry as the only individual winners from Ole Miss. He shot even-par 72 on Monday, finishing at 11-under 277 for the week and two shots in front of Texas A&M senior Phichaksn Maichon.

"I felt pretty good out there, kind of walking down that last stretch of holes, and kept my head pretty good."

La Sasso, a finalist for the 2025 Haskins Award, earned an exemption into the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont and the 2026 Masters, provided he remains an amateur, with the victory.

I'm OK with allowing the kids to play in shorts, but shouldn't we require at least a 10" inseam on those shorts?   

The indy comp also qualifies the eight remaining teams into the match-play bracket:

Eight match play teams set

Only eight teams have a chance to win a national title, including defending champion Auburn.

The Tigers, along with Arizona State, 2023 champ Florida, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Virginia and Ole Miss make up the eight teams who will make match play, which begins Tuesday morning.

Golf Digest has an odd thumbsucker up on this topic:

Match play or stroke play to decide the NCAA Championship? We have some strong thoughts

Here's how they frame this rather moot issue:

Deciding the national champion in college golf with match play has brought excitement to the sport since the format was adopted to crown a team winner for the men in 2009 and the women in 2015. Golf Channel came on board to televise the finals, which more often than not come down a dramatic final match and even a final putt.

But with the switch has also brought is controversy.

The Stanford women’s golf team finished this past season undefeated in stroke-play tournaments. During the 72-hole stroke-play portion of this year’s NCAA Women’s Championship at Omni La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, Calif., the Cardinal posted the lowest score in the history of the event, outpacing the next closest team by 21 shots. Yet after rallying for comeback wins in the quarterfinals and semifinals, Stanford fell in the championship match, 3-2, to Northwestern—a team it had beaten by 29 strokes earlier in the week.

So, did the best team really win the national championship?

Is that the right question?   How often does the best player win a golf tournament?  But somehow the test is whether the best team wins?  In golf?

Greg Gottfried, Web Producer: As much as I love chaos and upsets, it just doesn’t make much sense to have an NCAA Championship decided by match play. All love to Northwestern—they made the best of a weird decision—but finishing an entire season with such a fluky outcome feels a little wrong. I guess March Madness is similar in that it turns the postseason into bedlam, and yet, it feels a bit more random and odd when it comes to golf, a sport that centers on consistency. I still think there would be unpredictable outcomes with stroke play, so it’s not as if stories like Northwestern’s women’s team would disappear completely. Nor should they! There’s nothing better than an 11th seed making a historic run.

Joel Beall, Senior Writer: Match play strips away months of consistent performance to a handful of volatile head-to-head battles where anything can happen. Yet March Madness has built its status on this same fundamental flaw—the tournament's refusal to reward the most deserving team in favor of the most opportunistic one. Golf desperately needs this kind of beautiful chaos. In a sport obsessed with precision, where players methodically grind through stroke-play rounds in relative isolation, match play injects something almost revolutionary: direct confrontation. Suddenly, a perfectly struck iron shot means nothing if your opponent holes out from the bunker. A player's internal scorecard becomes irrelevant when they're staring down a must-make putt to stay alive. This mano-a-mano format transforms golf from a meditation on personal excellence into genuine psychological warfare, where momentum swings wildly and mental fortitude matters as much as technical skill. The sport's traditions rarely allow for such raw, unfiltered drama—making match play's volatility not a weakness to be endured, but an essential jolt of unpredictability.

There's another metric on which to judge this conundrum.  When contested at stroke play, the NCAA champions did not have a TV contract and nobody cared.  Since implementing team match play, the event has eclipsed the U. S. Amateur as the premier amateur event in golf, and folks such as your humble blogger eagerly await the event each year.  Can't let that stand, can we?

U.S. Open, Distaff Edition - The ladies are at Erin Hills this week for their Open, and Shack has an endless version of his event preview by the numbers:"

80th: Playing of the U.S. Women’s Open Championship Presented by Ally.

3rd: Time in Wisconsin (first at Erin Hills)

5th: USGA championship at Erin Hills

4th: Course to have hosted the U.S. Open, U.S. Women’s Open, U.S. Amateur and U.S. Mid-Amateur (Hazeltine National, Cherry Hills, Atlanta Athletic Club)

16: Courses that have hosted the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open

156: golfers in the 2025 U.S. Women’s Open

90: Players full exempt into the field

8: Former champions in the field (In Gee Chun (2015), Allisen Corpuz (2023), Ariya Jutanugarn (2018), A Lim Kim (2020), Minjee Lee (2022), Jeongeun Lee6 (2019), Sung Hyun Park (2017), Yuka Saso (2021, 2024))

1: Field member who played the 2008 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links at Erin Hills: Allisen Corpuz (at a record-young age of 9!)

19: Most U.S. Women’s Open Appearances in the field: Lexi Thompson (19), Amy Yang (19)

13: Years since former World No. 1 Yani Tseng played (qualified in Arizona)

40: First-time competitors

26: Amateurs in the field

30: Countries represented in the field

25.98: Average age of the field

$12 million: Purse

222: Days since the course was open for public play (10/18/24 to 5/27/25)

6,829 Yards: U.S. Women’s Open yardage for Erin Hills

72: Par (36-36)

2006: Course opened for play

2010: Course receives major renovation

3: Architects of record (Mike Hurdzan, Dana Fry, Ron Whitten)

620: Total acres

40: Acres of fairway

10: Acres of rough

150+: Acres of native rough

1756: Yards from the clubhouse to the 16th tee (1 mile)

132: Bunkers

0: Water hazards penalty areas

6,500: Average green square footage

.090”: Mowing height for A4 bentgrass greens

.300”: Mowing height for 007 bentgrass fairways (fine fescue in 2017 U.S. Open)

25-30: Yards of average fairway width

3.5”: Fine fescue rough height

19: Years at Erin Hills for Director of Maintenance/Co-Manager Zach Reineking, GCSAA

35/75: Full-time employees/U.S. Women’s Open volunteers

1: Golf course dog (Bob, 5-year-old Bernedoodle)

555: Yardage for the par 5 18th this week

I did say that it was a bit long....

 Shall we see what the Tour Confidential panel has on their mind?  Yeah, that was mostly rhetorical...

The U.S. Women’s Open kicks off this week at Erin Hills in Wisconsin, which will be the course’s biggest event since it hosted the 2017 U.S. Open (won by Brooks Koepka). All eyes will be on top-ranked Nelly Korda, although in the last five years she’s missed three cuts and has just one top 10 at this tournament. Why hasn’t everything clicked for her on women’s golf’s biggest stage? And how do you like her chances this week at Erin Hills?

Sens: I wouldn’t make too much of that relatively small statistical sample. There’s nothing about Korda’s game that makes her ill-suited for this particular event. She also has two top 10s in the

U.S. Women’s Open. It’s no secret that Korda went through some struggles in recent years, so a handful of missed cuts isn’t a shocker. Funny game, golf. That’s just how it goes. She’s obviously righted the ship since. This week, it is more likely that she contends than not.

Marksbury: Well said, Josh. The game is fickle. Look at Lydia Ko’s ups and downs over the last several years. Erin Hills seems like a good fit for Nelly, and after skipping this week’s stop in Mexico, I expect her to be ready with all cylinders firing for the Open.

Dethier: You’re both right, but if there’s a hole in Korda’s resume, it’s that she hasn’t played as well at the LPGA’s toughest tests. I believe our Zephyr Melton looked into this and found that all of her stroke-play wins have come when the winning score is 9 under par or better; this will be a good week to keep the wheels on the track and grind her way into contention. The course should set up extremely well for her game.

It just reinforces how untenable the LPGA is, because these allegedly sophisticated golf writers only know two names  in the field.  

Besides Korda looking for her first win of the season, what’s your favorite storyline for this week at Erin Hills that viewers need to be aware of?

Sens: Extreme bias here but any women’s major offers the treat of watching Lydia Ko, a generational talent and one of the great kind-hearted people in the game. Enjoy her now because she has said she doesn’t plan to stick around for too much longer.

Marksbury: Lexi Thompson — in her “step-away” season — will be making her 19th consecutive U.S. Women’s Open start. That’s incredible. There’s obviously something she’s still seeking from her professional golf career. A U.S. Women’s Open win — a championship where she’s endured heartbreaking near-misses — would mean everything.

Dethier: Jeeno Thitikul has been playing like she’s ready to challenge Korda for the No. 1 ranking and she’s coming in off a win; meanwhile, her trophy case is missing a major championship. That pursuit will be intriguing to watch.

Lexie?  Yeah, that's the ticket....

I know about this gentleman:

Speaking of the LPGA Tour, last week it announced Craig Kessler as its 10th commissioner, and on Thursday he laid out his four “building blocks” he wants to focus on. What’s his biggest challenge moving forward and, if you are Kessler, what’s first on your to-do list?

Sens: The main challenge strikes me as a kind of catch 22. Kessler’s pillars include shoring up the circuit’s financial future and showcasing the game’s biggest stars. Hard to argue those. But to draw more sponsors requires proof that the events are reaching a large audience. And drawing a large audience is tough when TV/media exposure is so much more limited than it is for the men. This is an old narrative. Changing it is easier said than done. Player personalities are key for sure. We know that people are drawn to stories, rivalries — they want to follow the arc of compelling performers in big events. How you get those stories out there given the obstacles — I don’t have the answer.

Marksbury: All excellent points, Josh. I would add that I’m also not opposed to shortening tournament yardages a bit. Sometimes the length of the courses seems excessive. What’s wrong with a birdie-fest every once in a while? The more these women can shine, the better.

Dethier: Theirs is a different version of the same challenge every professional golf league faces: How do you make it entertaining? There’s no simple answer, but the most entertaining tournaments are the most meaningful events, they’re played on the memorable courses, they involve big-time players and their TV productions help elevate all of the above. As for Kessler’s role? He needs to think outside the box and he needs to be a hype man. Excited to see how he tackles the gig.

It's a hard position to be in, but I often feel that their so focused on  copying the men's tour that they lose sight of their actual audience.  They can't compete with them, heck they can't even really compete with the Korn Ferry Tour, so good luck there.

Wither Golf, Eamon Lynch Edition - Eamon's been kinda quiet recently, but he's got thoughts on the current impasse:

The most tediously unshakable assumption about the division in men’s professional golf is that

responsibility for resolving it falls to those who didn’t create it, while those who did just keep dealing from a seemingly inexhaustible deck of victim cards. The Framework Agreement was announced 719 days ago and the expectation ever since has been that the PGA Tour must engineer the reunification of a game it didn't fracture, and that its members must make concessions to facilitate the return of guys who split to LIV of their own accord.

Count Scottie Scheffler among those finally pushing back publicly against that ersatz sentiment.

A few days ago, he was asked about the state of negotiations, in which he isn’t involved. "If you wanna figure out what's going to happen to the game of golf, go to the other tour and ask those guys," he replied. "We had a tour where we all played together, and the guys that left, it's their responsibility I think to bring the tours back together. So go see where they're playing this week and ask them.”

Scheffler’s comment generously grants LIV players agency they don’t actually enjoy. Having sold their services, they are hostages of Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chief of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. What they want is irrelevant and what Al-Rumayyan wants is unclear since he hasn’t engaged with the Tour since a fractious meeting at the White House on February 20. And that’s why the Tour should forget about any onus to build bridges and focus exclusively on what will help its business.

To coin a phrase, guys like Jon Rahm have sworn fealty (anyone remember that phrase from the Waybasck Machine?) to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, so we wish them the best with that.

But this is the Eamon I've been missing:

Which leaves players as the only thing LIV owns that the Tour does want. Just not all of ‘em.

Most of the 50-odd guys on LIV used to compete on the PGA Tour. How many of them are missed? Jilted loyalists might insist on none, but that’s untrue. A handful are clearly missed, though the reasons why vary. Take Patrick Reed. Every entertainment product could use a villain who needs a slab of bacon strapped to his face to get a dog to lick him. Or Sergio Garcia, since it’s always useful to have a reminder that age and maturity are mutually exclusive. Only a few players left a real void because they competed at a high standard and had obvious commercial value. Should the Tour be presented with an opportunity to welcome them back—whether via a deal, a defection, the demise of LIV or a contract expiration—it should do so.

He certainly took care of two of your humble blogger's favorite piñatas',  so I'd be happy to give Eamon the rest of the day off.

That needn’t mean the Tour alienating its loyal members (beyond the unavoidable) since the only

guys it would want back could be argued to have status that didn’t expire during their LIV sojourn. Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith have all won major championships since 2022. The only other unquestionable status belongs to Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson, lifetime members with more than 20 wins. Beyond that, it’s a grey area. For example, being top 50 or top 25 on the career money list is good for a one-time season pass; Garcia and Reed were deleted from that list when they split but would still rank 14th and 30th, respectively.

The rest of the LIV roster are discards for the PGA Tour but not without utility for the DP World Tour, which likely sees value in Messrs. Hatton, Kaymer, McDowell, Stenson, Westwood and Poulter. Perhaps too for the Aussie contingent. But if any of them want status in the States, go earn it back.

Yeah, don't miss Poults at all....

All good fun, that bacon bit might be an all-timer.  But this might be the more significant factor:

Golf executives have spent years deliberating how to share in Saudi riches without upending the entire structure of the sport. A PIF-PGA Tour deal would be driven by money, regardless of any grandiloquent waffle about unity and a shared future. But the Tour doesn’t need their conditional investment—it hasn’t yet spent a dime of the $1.5 billion infusion it obtained 16 months ago from Strategic Sports Group. Nor does it need any component of the LIV product. There’s no market of scale for team golf to exploit, no broadcast audience to co-opt, no revenue to redirect, no sponsors to covet (unless Jay Monahan has an undisclosed craving for Freddy’s Frozen Custard). There’s literally nothing that should entice the Tour to jettison its current model or commercial partners to make space.

Is it true that they're not experiencing a high burn rate?  Because if they've funded these higher purses without touching that investment, they might be in better shape than I've thought.  But I just don't see how that's possible....

That'll be it for today.  I'll try to get back later in the week, though there are some scheduling challenges.  Check back early and often just to be safe.