Weekend Wrap - Tuesday Edition

I appreciate your patience in allowing me to wrap the weekend a day late....  Not that there's much to wrap until, checking calendar, April.  

The Dunhill - I'm chastened to inform that I didn't watch any of it after Thursday, as baseball, football, actual golf and life intervened.  Though I've not deleted the tape of Sunday...  In any event, Geoff has a nice game story:

Meronk's fifth DP World Tour victory secures his card for next year. He’d arrived in St Andrews 141st in the Race to Dubai Ranking with one event to go.

The 33-year-old from Poland birdied the first, second, fifth and ninth holes while making vital par-saving putts at the sixth and eighth to turn in 33. Meronk separated himself from overnight leader Jarvis with a birdie at the ninth, before the 23-year-old South African bogeyed the short par-4 that’s normally a must-birdie in Old Course championships.

Meronk made his pro debut in the 2016 Dunhill, yet had reached Sunday’s final round just once before. But this time the exiled LIV golfer was attempting to win with his career on the line. So naturally, it all came down to the Road hole and all of its idiosyncrasies. A drive in the light lefthand rough meant he faced a 209-yard approach. The shot dribbled just over the green and onto a patch of thin turf between the dirt path and road. Meronk played safely over the green’s sideslope and past the hole, took his bogey, and then walked over to the 18th tee to wait.

Moments later, Meronk had driven to the front edge before Jarvis also bogeyed the Road after missing the green long and left. That re-opened what became the final two-stroke cushion after Jarvis was unable to eagle and force sudden death. Watching the final group play the Home hole in scoring, Meronk took several congratulations before bending down and crying in relief.

“After my drive on 18, I was quite happy with the position I was in,” Meronk said I was just trying to enjoy the walk. It's an amazing walk when you cross the bridge. You look around, the people, the history. Actually, when I was crossing the bridge, I talked to myself. I was actually thinking about Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus walking on the bridge and I was asking for good energy from them. It was just a great feeling. I really enjoyed that.”

Best. Polish. Player. Evah!  Pop Quiz:  Who is the second best Polish player ever?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Isn't this why we have AI SI? 

Adrian Meronk and Mateusz Gradecki are widely recognized as the two best Polish professional golfers in history, as Poland has a very young and developing golf tradition

Unsurprisingly, a bit of a falloff from No. One to No. 2:

Top Polish Golfers

Golfer	Career Highlights	Major Accomplishments
Adrian Meronk	First Pole to win on the DP World Tour, play in a Major, and join LIV Golf	4 DP World Tour wins, 2023 DP World Tour Player of the Year, LIV Golf winner
Mateusz Gradecki	Second Polish winner on the European Challenge Tour	Won the 2022 Limpopo Championship (Sunshine/Challenge Tour)

 Meronk has always been a nice player, though most famous for a Ryder Cup snub....

I don't feature all that many favorable stories about Tiger, but Geoff has this one:

Meronk first came on the scene five years ago after winning the Irish Open at Mount Juliet Estate. He turned up two weeks later at The 150th Open in St Andrews and spotted his hero, Woods, on

the putting green. Meronk asked for a photo thinking it would be his only Woods encounter. Two days later, Meronk played a practice round with Woods on championship eve. (This Jack Bantock story has a nice account of Meronk’s week.)

I heard a slightly different version of the practice round tale from Woods’ friend and TGR EVP Rob McNamara. Woods got off a 10th tee shuttle bus in full focus mode, walked onto the 10th tee and did not see Meronk blending in at the back of with marshals and spectators. As Woods went through his routine, he spotted Meronk, who quipped, “Would you like to join me?”

Woods chuckled, said yes, and the two went on to enjoy nine holes. The following February, Woods gave Meronk a sponsor’s invitation to the 2023 Genesis Invitational.

Kids, it pays to have a dry sense of humor.

He must have caught him on a good day....

I can't move on without excerpting Geoff's caustic take on the coverage:

American viewers hoping to enjoy the wonderful scenes from St Andrews and the changes ahead of next year’s Open were unlikely to have gleaned a thing watching Saturday’s broadcast after an onslaught of commercial slop occasionally interrupted by action.. Things improved a bit Sunday on the DP World Tour’s feed aired by Golf Channel.

The extra ads are inserted by the Channel and covered the gamut from Temptation Treats (cat meals), the Bullseye Blower (a one-minute spot for a leaf blower!), TrustandWill.com, TexasGold.com, Rugiet (erectile dysfunction chewables), Presidents Cup apparel (“We’ll see you at Medinah!”), way too many Hidden Links spots, a special duo of Affordable Dentures and Clear Choice dental implants in the same break (options!), the Stoko short stabilizer to strengthen your hip rotation, and a bursts of Versant ads on repeat for things like Jim Cramer’s Investing Club, Full Swing, and Golf Now.

The heap of slop was all the more amazing since the tournament is sponsored by Dunhill, a subsidiary of Richemont and possibly the world’s finest collection of luxury brands under one roof (Montblanc, Chloé, Jaeger-LeCoultre,, IWC Schaffhausen, Peter Millar and G/FORE, to name just a few).

Did you say Prez Cup apparel? Are we closing out Medinah swag or is Kingston Heath on presale?

Prez Cup Scat - Tom Kim Edition - Has to be my favorite story of the week, especially since folks thought he was under excruciating pressure the prior week.  This, though, is what pressure looks like and a second favorable nod to the Striped One):

Tom Kim’s last PGA Tour win, which came at the co-sanctioned Genesis Scottish Open in July,

ended with a congratulatory text from Tiger Woods. On Saturday, as Kim prepared for a career-altering round at the 2026 Asian Games, Woods sent him a different message.

“Just be you. Nothing more, nothing less,” the message from Woods said, via Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.

Kim arrived in Japan for this week’s Asian Games under immense pressure. South Korean men between the ages of 18 and 35 are required to serve up to 21 months in the defense forces. PGA Tour pros Sangmoon Bae and Seung-yul Noh served during their prime and it impacted their golf. But the South Korean government awards exemptions to athletes who win a gold medal at the Asian Games or any of the three medals at the Olympics. Si Woo Kim and Sunjae Im won a gold medal in the team competition at the 2023 Asian Games, earning an exemption from military service.

“I was still scared as [expletive],” Si Woo Kim told The Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson in March of his Asian Games win.

That’s what Kim faced Saturday as he entered the final round holding a one-shot lead over Japan’s Kazuki Higa and Taiwan’s Wang Wei-hsuan.

Spurred by a text from his idol and friend, Kim played his best golf on Saturday. He birdied Nos. 2, 4, 6, 8 and 11 before making an eagle on the par-5 13th to gain some breathing room. A final-round 6-under 64 saw Kim finish at 18-under and claim the gold medal at Kasugai’s East course in Japan and earn an exemption for his military service.

It's a bizarre system, as it seems that military service should either be required of all or none.  That said, we know how it's affected other Korean players and you can just imagine how difficult the week was for him.

The Tour Confidential gang had thoughts:

Tom Kim won the 2026 Asian Games on Saturday and earned the individual gold medal for

South Korea, but his win also means the 24-year-old will avoid an 18-21 month stretch in the South Korean military required of all males in the country. We’ve seen a lot of impactful wins this season — Gary Woodland and Anthony Kim come to mind — but where does this one rank among some of the biggest of 2026?

James Colgan: It’s not at the AK and Gary Woodland level, but I think it’s in that neighborhood. Winning is, like, the hardest thing to do in golf. To win when the weight of a career-altering inevitability hangs over you if you don’t win? That’s extremely, extremely impressive.

Josh Schrock: Given the potential career-altering stakes, I’d say this win is potentially the biggest of the year. AK and Woodland’s wins were great stories in their own right, but had AK lost LIV Adelaide, his future wouldn’t have been greatly impacted outside of his bank account. The pressure Tom Kim had to have felt knowing how military service impacted Sangmoon Bae and others was undoubtedly immense and he got it done. What a weight to lift off your shoulders.

Alan Bastable: Dramatic stuff for sure, though if he hadn’t gotten it done, Kim, who is 24, still would have had two more chances, at the next Summer Olympics (L.A. in 2028) and next Asian Games (Doha in 2030). That was not the case for Kim’s Asian Games teammate, S.H. Kim, who is 28. His time is up. Tough stuff. Interesting the stock the Korean government puts in those two events in particular; you might think that a major-championship win would rank as highly in terms of national pride.

Although perhaps I would back off my comments above knowing he had until 2030 to work the system further.... 

Tom Kim had three PGA Tour wins from 2022-23, but didn’t win again until this year’s Genesis Scottish Open. Last week he was one of the best players at the Presidents Cup, and now his latest win will certainly prolong his professional career. What has changed and what’s the ceiling for Tom Kim?

Colgan: I think we might be seeing Tom Kim’s ceiling right now. He’s a player on the rise who can hang with some of the best in the world. He’ll need to elevate another notch — either in his ball-striking or his distance — to ascend into the territory of a top-10 player in the world; and he’ll need to learn to play faster to earn the adoration of the broader sport. But he’s just 24. He still has room to grow to get there.

Schrock: Tom Kim was so young when he burst onto the scene, it’s easy to forget that he’s still just 24 and is probably arriving at his peak years. He admitted to having to eat some “humble pie” over the last two years but thinks his game and his mindset is better for it. The putter has improved and it’s fair to envision a big year for him in 2027.

Bastable: Yeah, it’s the putter. Kim’s iron play always has been elite, but when he gets to the green, he struggles to put the ball in the hole. In his last few starts, he’s largely been gaining strokes on the green, which historically has not been the case for him. Look at this season alone: despite a strong finishing kick, he still finished 83rd in SG: Putting. For him to elevate to the next level, he’s going to need to get better with the flatstick. If only he could bottle his Presidents Cup play and bring that excellent and energy to every Tour stop.

He plays a lot of golf in Dallas with a guy with a similar profile, that has managed to solve his putting issues....  I don't lose a lot f sleep over Tom Kim's prospects.

Prez Cup Scat, Varied & Sundry - Don't we think this calls for another Task Force™?

Would it be wrong of me to remind us all of that guy that led us to our first Task Force™?  Because he was in the news last week:

Phil MickelsonChecked Into Treatment Center

Really, there are places that will treat you for being a dick?

Phil Mickelson voluntarily checked himself into an addiction treatment center amid ongoing personal issues ... TMZ Sports has learned.

A rep for Phil tells TMZ Sports ... "Phil was seeking treatment for family trauma and addiction."

And who do we think caused the family trauma?  Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't the right guy?  

Back to the TC panel:

While we are officially a week removed from the U.S. narrowly beating the Internationals in the Presidents Cup — and discussed some talking points in this space last week — there’s still much to learn from Medinah. One we didn’t cover: What did 2027 Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk learn that will help him in Ireland?

Colgan: That if he actually wants things to be competitive at Adare Manor, he needs to get really, really, REALLY serious about creating a blueprint to improve the team’s performance in foursomes play.

Schrock: I would hope he learned that while the U.S. team remains really good at singles, they still have a lot of work to do at team golf, especially in foursomes. A Sunday singles charge against the Internationals shouldn’t paper over the big issue that has plagued the Americans for several competitions in a row.

Bastable: That JK (Jackson Koivun) might soon be the U.S.’s new JT (Justin Thomas).

But James, can you helps us with what that blueprint might entail?  It's like the weather, everyone talks about but no one does anything about it....

But, kids, I fear that the wrong question has been asked.  I'm less concerned about what Jim "Alas, poor" Furyk learned in Chicago, and far more worried about whether he learned anything in Paris.  Because that wasn't a Task Force™ success....

Let's remember that, twelve years into our Task Force™ era, that the pattern is to use Prez Cup wins to create a veneer of false confidence, so we seem very much on plan.

And what might European captain Luke Donald have thought watching the Americans? And will any of it be helpful to him come next year?

Colgan: That his advantage in foursomes play — the thing that has allowed the Europeans to win two straight Cups under his watch — is still prolific.

Schrock: That he still has the upper hand on a talented American team that doesn’t know what to do in foursomes, where the Europeans bludgeon them.

Bastable: Lol, quite sure Donald isn’t too worried about what the Americans are up to; he has far weightier matters — like shampoo brands and thread counts — to sort out. Donald and Furyk will address the media on Tuesday. Maybe we’ll get some insights into LD’s Adare Manor planning then.

The foursomes thing is interesting, as there's a misconception that the Euros grow up playing the arcane format, which is only true at a handful of elite clubs.  But does anyone think that Asians grow up playing alternate shot?  So how does one fic this?  The Subpar guys had some interesting data:

Stoltz suggested that perhaps the pairings themselves aren’t the problem, but the Americans’ on-course strategy may be.

“In foursomes, there’s a mind-blowing stat where it’s like, since the 2023 Rome [Ryder Cup], on those four team events, we have gotten our asses handed to us,” he said. “We have made fewer bogeys during that time than our opponents in the matches that we’ve played. And we have made half as many birdies.

“So I don’t know if it’s, like, a strategy thing, we get in there, like, hey dude, it’s all shot, like just if we just play it safe, hit fairways, hit greens, two-putt, make par, let them beat themselves. If that is the strategy, it ain’t working, and typically that’s kind of the thought process I would say for alternate shot, is it not?

That is interesting.... Not exactly sure what you do with it...

This one has me laughing:

The unauthorized blueprint to save U.S. golf’s match play kryptonite

 You knew the solution was going to be in the last place we looked, no?

But if you know American team golf, you know that one excuse has proved stronger and more stubborn than all the rest — an excuse repeated by U.S. team captain Brandt Snedeker on the Golf

Channel after Friday’s all-too-predictable trouncing in foursomes play in Chicago.

“They just made more putts.”

Of course, Snedeker is right. The Internationals made more putts in foursomes play at the Presidents Cup in ’26. Just like the Europeans made more putts in foursomes play at Bethpage in ’25 and Rome in ’23, and just like the Internationals made more putts in foursomes play at Montreal in ’24. If there is a reliable throughline involving the American performance in each of these team events, something you could set your watch to, it is that they make fewer putts than their opponents in alternate shot.

And here’s the pesky part of this excuse: the data backs it up. Over the last four team events, the Americans have made half as many birdies as their opponents in opening foursomes sessions (96 to 50); and nearly twice as many bogeys or worse (24 to 13). In those same foursomes matches, the Americans typically start missing putts early — they trailed in 15 of 18 matches after just six holes — and they keep missing ’em until the playing is done. (In those 18 opening foursomes matches, the Americans are 1-17.)

But what if I told you Snedeker’s diagnosis was part of the problem precisely because he was right? After all, you can’t fix something like making fewer putts. You can’t will your team to make more putts, just as you can’t convince your opponents to make fewer of them. You can train like hell at your putting, and you can get better over a large enough sample size, but you can’t know that a larger percentage of your putts fall during the one week of the year when it matters most, in the one competitive format where you tend to struggle most. You just have to get lucky. And American team golf? Well, they’re unlucky.

In the end, this kind of thinking may be the single greatest boogeyman in golf over the last half-decade. And why? Because the idea that something as important as the Ryder Cup rests on something as trivial as putting provides a wonderful justification to do absolutely nothing about it. It allows the people with the power to change something the freedom to choose not to. It encourages inaction at the highest level, and in the case of U.S. foursomes play over the last half-decade, inaction has looked a lot like, well, losing.

But there’s a problem with blaming America’s failures on making fewer putts: It ignores the fact that America has some agency in the putts it makes. And blaming those same failures on rotten luck ignores another fact — one that every single player, captain, caddie, support staffer and locker room attendant knows to be true: In golf, luck is something you make.

Sorry for the long excerpt, but guess where the silver bullet is to be found:

As it turns out, America’s recent case of bad luck in team play is not specific to golf. American sprinters have faced a similar issue in team events, particularly in the men’s 4×100 relay, where the U.S. has failed to medal in five straight Olympics despite regularly possessing the fastest group of individual sprinters in the world.

When the Americans fumbled the baton handoff and a medal in the men’s 4×100 at the Paris Olympics in 2024, U.S. Olympic legend Carl Lewis unloaded a scathing critique of the entire American sprinting apparatus that sounded … a lot like the critiques recently aimed at U.S. golf leadership.

“It is time to blow up the system. This continues to be completely unacceptable,” Lewis wrote on Twitter. “It is clear that EVERYONE at @usatf is more concerned with relationships than winning. No athlete should step on the track and run another relay until this program is changed from top to bottom.”

What’s different is what happened to USA Track and Field after. Rather than paying lip service to Lewis, USA Track and Field actually did blow everything up. In 2025, USATF announced a new program called “One Team”—an initiative aimed at completely revamping the organization’s approach to the relay, with several targeted fixes to improve team performance in the biggest moments.

Got it.  So, just like USATF taught the guys how to make handoffs, the PGA should teach its players how to .....errr, putt?  Isn't that something they're already pretty good at?

It's a superficially similar problem, a superior group of athletes unable to perform.  I'd argue that relays involve a specific skill that can be honed, whereas foursomes play simply requires the use of already perfected skills, albeit in different circumstances.

I'm unclear as the path forward for the NOLA Tour event, i.e., will it still be a team event?  If so, I would argue that every player under consideration for that year's team should be expected to play in that event.  It's a stroke play event, so not comparable completely, but at least it might familiarize players with the odd nature of alternate shot.  

Or, yannoe, just get Scottie and Sam Burns to work on their baton handoff...

Have a great week.  I'll be back.....checking calendar...well, sometime.