Thursday Threads - Rebuilding Edition

Humpty Dumpty will be put back together, though at this juncture it's still a work in process.

The big work will happen early next week, for now we have TV on some old TVs we had lying around.  I'm using the disruption to make a service provider change that's long overdue, so we'll be hopefully building back better, as the kids say.

Monday morning is the service switchover, so I'll keep my options open as to whether there will be time to blog.  I'll try not to keep you hanging on an event as important as Memphis in August.....errr, you do know I'm pulling your leg, right?

Bandon Daze - In case you've been in a bubble, the U.S. Women's Amateur is being contested at Bandon Dunes, and yesterday's round of 64 provided great viewing.  Problem is, try to find a game story or any other coverage, so we'll do the best we can:

Co-medalists, including defending champ, fall in Round of 64 at U.S. Women's Amateur

Arianna Lau didn't know how close Rianne Malixi hit her approach shot on the par-5 18th hole, she just knew it was close.

Roughly 10 feet, to be exact, is how close the defending U.S. Women's Amateur champion hit her 3 wood for an eagle look. Lau knew she had to respond, and she did.

Hitting 3 wood herself, Lau smoked her shot to the front left part of the green and watched it roll to about 13 feet from the pin, just outside Malixi's ball. Then, the 64 seed, who advanced to earn the final spot in match play after a 3-hour, 3-minute playoff Wednesday morning, buried the putt, and Malixi couldn't match.

Lau knocked out the defending champion 1 up on Wednesday afternoon under a blanket of clouds at Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast. She had a 1-up lead on the 17th hole and missed a 3 footer for par for Malixi to tie the match, but she stepped up and hit one of the best shots of her life to knock out the top seed and defending champion on the 18th hole.

That's Lau's reaction in the photo above, and she was hardly the only big name to fall:

Malixi wasn't the only co-medalist to fall Thursday. Asterisk Talley, who lost to Malixi in the championship match last year at Southern Hills, is also heading home.

The No. 2 seed fell to Australia's Ella Scaysbrook 6 and 4, ending an insane run that started last

week with her victory at the Junior PGA Championship in Indiana. Scaysbrook was 2 up after three holes and held that lead until the 11th, where she won four straight holes to knock off one of the best juniors in the world.

Scaysbrook, who is playing in her first USGA event, said she took the underdog mentality in her match, understanding how talented her opponent was. She proved she's worthy of her flowers, too.

"Proud of myself, yeah," she said. "It's pretty big. Yeah, it was very good. Good match."

Both co-medalists have lost in the Round of 64 for the first time in 10 years. Meanwhile, world No. 1 Kiara Romero took her opening match, 4 and 3. The top seed left, Eila Galitsky, a rising sophomore at South Carolina, won her match, 4 and 3.

A few "names" left as per that last 'graph, though none of the names are especially familiar.  But it's match play at a spectacular venue, making for far more interesting viewing than anything that might happen in Memphis.

TV coverage is frustratingly limited, including a complete blackout of this morning's round of 32.  They are back on tonight at 6:00 p.m. EDT with the round of 16.  Worth a watch, if only for the venue.

This additional item informs of some interesting further developments at the resort:

The 125th U.S. Women’s Amateur is under way, the ninth different USGA amateur event held at Bandon Dunes since 2006, including the 2020 U.S. Amateur and 2022 U.S. Junior Amateur.

There are 11 more future USGA amateur events scheduled for Bandon Dunes, dating all the way out to 2045. By then, the trailblazer of modern destination golf in America will likely look vastly different than it does now, but its core will remain unscathed.

Vastly?  Not sure where that comes from, as everything seems quite incremental:

Things are changing, however, as Bandon's profile as the best public golf resort in the country solidifies and demand to play it increases.

Bandon Dunes will host the 2026 PGA Professional Championship, the national championship for PGA of America golf professionals, from which the top 20 players earn a spot in that year’s PGA Championship. The 72 holes will be played across Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes, both of which are ranked within the top 10 public courses in America.

“We’re excited to host that championship and bring a level of pro golf here,” Simonds says. “We’ve never sat down and had a conversation of if we want to have a [PGA] Tour event or host a major before. We’re focused on making it the best experience for our guests week in and week out.”

I think they've gotten it pretty correct in limiting themselves to amateur events, but the big news here is that Pacific Dunes, the most telegenic of their five courses, will get a moment in the sun.  Their courses weren't designed to withstand the PGA Tour, and they'd do well to remember that, not even addressing the town of Bandon's inability to handle the PGA Tour's traveling circus.

Memphis In August - That sound you hear is Hoagy Carmichael spinning in his grave, not that I expect many to pick up on that reference.  How bad are the FedEx Playoffs?  Well, for the first time I can recall since 2007, the first playoff event is being defined by a discussion of that guy that didn't show up.

Here's the Golf Digest take, via Joel Beall:

Rory McIlroy didn't create a problem for the PGA Tour, he exposed one

 How does the PGA Tour sell that the FedEx Cup matters when the actions of one of its biggest stars essentially say the opposite?

That is the legitimate worry surrounding Rory McIlroy's absence this week as the tour's three-event postseason series begins with the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis. But the outrage that has followed reveals little about McIlroy's commitment and is missing the point. The problem isn't the player—it's the product.

McIlroy's decision was hardly spontaneous. He telegraphed this move throughout the year, specifically citing last year at TPC Southwind—where he finished second to last yet dropped only two spots in the playoff standings—as proof that his participation carries minimal competitive consequence in the current structure. This strategic absence is not new; McIlroy did the same in 2015 and 2018, and follows an established playbook. Tiger Woods skipped the inaugural FedEx Cup event in 2007 and went on to claim the tour’s “ultimate prize.” That year, Phil Mickelson, leading the standings after winning the second tournament, passed on the third playoff event in Chicago despite literally playing in a corporate outing miles away.

Yet the McIlroy’s absence sparked reactions this week after player director Peter Malnati told Golfweek he was "very concerned" alluded to possible future measures to prevent players from skipping playoff events—social media quickly ready to label any measure the “Rory Rule.”

Beall captures the zeitgeist with this:

The timing couldn't be more perfect for manufactured drama. August represents the dead zone of the sports calendar, when fans and media desperately grasp for storylines worth dissecting. What should have been a footnote about schedule management has metastasized into a capital-T Thing, with pundits debating what this reveals about McIlroy's character, the tour's authority, and the postseason's legitimacy. Meanwhile, the actual guys competing in Memphis have been reduced to background noise in their own tournament.

Yes, Rory's character has been much discussed over the last few months, and quite the dichotomy has developed between his words and his actions.  But more than anything, perhaps we can reframe our perception of Rory (and Tiger, as well) as we see how they do what they damn well please, undermining years of lectures we've endured.

The irony would be delicious if it weren't so damning. For two decades, the PGA Tour has desperately tried to create buzz around its postseason, only to do so through controversy rather than competition.

That's Joel lowering the bar, but fails to lower it sufficiently for the Tour to actually clear it.....

To be fair, Malnati's concern cuts deeper than optics. McIlroy's absence—and the potential for other stars to follow such a path—undoubtedly creates a cascade of disappointed stakeholders: TV networks that paid premium rates expecting McIlroy and corporate partners who tied their investment to star power. Officials with FedEx, pumping nine figures into the playoffs bearing their name, will watch their marquee event in their corporate hometown proceed without arguably the tour's most marketable player, representing the kind of sponsor relations failure that keeps executives awake. Forcing players to compete in all three Playoff events perhaps solves that. But this crisis illuminates the playoffs' vulnerability—its dependence on individual star power rather than intrinsic competitive value. When one player's absence threatens your entire narrative, the foundation was already shaky.

McIlroy deserves some criticism here. He advocated for signature events in 2022, promising star commitment, then skipped several of those too. His post-Masters year has included multiple PR missteps. But given the personal and professional turbulence he's navigated recently, this strategic absence warrants understanding and grace rather than condemnation.

Wow, Joel, that last 'graph feels quite mad and unsupported to this observer, and that grace you're after seems, unearned.  In that linked piece, Beall unsuccessfully attempts to link Rory's off-putting behavior to Scottie Scheffler's pre-Portrush comments about golf not defining his life:

But Scheffler's words resonate louder than ever because of Rory McIlroy's current plight.

The past three months were not what anyone envisioned for McIlroy. The Ulsterman had finally been liberated from the exhausting quest to prove he could reclaim his former greatness. The

career Grand Slam was complete, lifting a burden whose true weight only he could measure. Instead, McIlroy's post-Masters victory lap became a disorienting spiral—marked by media confrontations and behavior that seemed jarringly out of character. When he finally acknowledged his frustration with press coverage, insisting on his right to act as he pleased, it felt like watching someone burn down the very foundation of their public identity. For a player whose enormous popularity rests largely on the perception that he serves as golf's moral north star, it appeared to be not merely incompatible with who we think he is but almost willfully self-destructive.

Much has been dissected about McIlroy's recent months—waves of criticism, indignation, disappointment, and concern washing over a sport struggling to understand what is up with Rory. This is emphatically not the player, the person, that golf has proudly positioned as its standard-bearer. Yet perhaps insufficient attention has been paid to the direct line connecting his green jacket triumph to the chaos that followed. As McIlroy himself has acknowledged, this pursuit had consumed him for so long that he never contemplated what would happen after. What was meant to be his ultimate destination instead stripped away his navigational compass. For all the grace McIlroy has extended to the game throughout his career, the golf world may have failed to offer him the same patience as he grappled with fundamental questions: What comes next, what truly matters, and why any of it should matter at all?

If I understand Joel correctly, Rory deserves grace and is allowed to be a hypocritical asshat because, well here it gets a little hard to follow, he wasn't ready to succeed?  Boy, that bar is so low as to be subterranean....

To me it's pretty simple.  Rory used his status in the game to push for these elevated events, sorry, money grabs, because we the fans needed to know when he was playing.  Yet he feels entitled to skip four of these events in 2025, confirming that he was playing us all along.  

Yet, you likely don't me to understand that Joel's arguments for "grace" means he wants to avoid a troubling question, to wit, did we misjudge Rory all along?  I see a man who can't be bothered to show up or do the things necessary to promote an event (speaking to the media being the most obvious), so I take him to be just another in an endless series of touring professionals who are entirely self-absorbed....  He does what he wants to do, not what needs doing by his own definition.  Noted.

TC Silliness - Looking mostly for low-impact blogging at this juncture, and you'll be amused that this is how the lead this week's Tour Confidential panel:

With the FedEx Cup Playoffs finally here, it means there are only three events left to

influence the race for Player of the Year between the two obvious front-runners: Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler. McIlroy has won three times, which includes the Players and Masters, the latter completing the career Grand Slam. Scheffler has won four times, highlighted by his PGA and Open Championship major titles. Who should win?

Josh Schrock: Who should win is Scottie. Even Rory admitted at the Open that he won three times while Scheffler wasn’t at full flight due to a hand injury. But winning the Players and the Masters, especially in the fashion he did to win the career Grand Slam, might make the voters give it to Rory.

Josh Sens: The career Grand Slam was an epic achievement for McIlroy, emphasis on career. We are choosing the better season. Scheffler has not only won more often this year. He’s won more majors. Case closed.

James Colgan: Golly, I’d love if we chose POTY by accolades alone, but this is a toughie because of the way the Tour structures its ballots and the two different stretches of dominant play we saw this season. Scottie is clearly the best player in the world, with clearly the best resume, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Rory won it in a “Lifetime Achievement” fashion.

Given the discussion above, Rory winning POY would tell us all we need to know about this clown show....which also reminds us why actual PGA Tour golf has become so unwatchable.

And would you ever believe they could milk this subject further?

Is there anything that could happen in the playoffs that would flip your decision?

Schrock: Zero. The meaningful golf was wrapped. Apologies to the sponsors and partners.

Sens: No. Unless we are voting on the guy who most increased his net worth.

Colgan: No, but if McIlroy wins the Tour Championship, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Tour’s players (aka, the POTY voters) disagreed.

The better question might be as to what might happen in the playoffs that we'd even care about, but I'm also a hard no.

Given that these guys are typically Tour sycophants (access, and all), those answers should be devastating to the Tour, putting the lie to their season coda.  But everyone is too invested in the current system, so we'll all continue to live the Big Lie.

That's it for today.  I'll be back as time and events permit.  Have a great weekend.