Monday Scramble: Road to playoffs winds down; do LIV guys even want a path back?
Lee Hodges alters his career trajectory, Justin Thomas heads into the regular-season finale, Jay Monahan takes a stand, Celine Boutier romps at home and more in this week’s edition of Monday Scramble:
With the week of his life, Lee Hodges showed just how much the final few events of the regular season can alter a player’s career.
The 28-year-old from a small town on the Alabama-Tennessee border made a pair of eagles in the final round and won wire-to-wire at the 3M Open for his first career PGA Tour title.
Hodges began the week at No. 74 in the FedExCup standings, his status for next season secure but needing a late push to crack the postseason and expand his scheduling options for 2024. Hodges led the field in strokes gained: tee to green and poured in his share of putts – none more critical than a pair of eagle putts inside 10 feet on the sixth and 12th holes – to keep J.T. Poston and Tony Finau at bay.
With the victory, Hodges is in next year’s Masters field and rose all the way to 33rd in the points standings – on the brink of locking down a spot at the Tour Championship for the first time. He should also be able to maintain his position in the top 50 through the first playoff event, keeping him a part of the designated-event schedule for 2024 with the guaranteed paydays against the strongest fields.
“Anytime you win,” he said, “you really set yourself up for some special stuff.”
His timing couldn’t have been better.
Hodges summoned his best when it mattered most, but this week’s Wyndham Championship marks the end of the road for the Tour’s regular season.
Here’s a look at some of the notable names who are outside the all-important top 70 and could be looking at a busier-than-usual fall campaign if they don’t make the playoff roster (full list here):
Justin Thomas (No. 79): JT added the final two weeks of the regular season not just to try to qualify for the postseason but also to show U.S. Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson that he’s in form. That backfired at the 3M, where he missed the cut after a second round in which he made two double bogeys and dropped another shot late. Now it’s all up to his play at the Wyndham, where he hasn’t competed since 2016. If Thomas doesn’t make the first playoff event, Johnson will have a hard time justifying a pick on a guy who is in a career-worst slump and on the sidelines for the most important stretch of the Tour season.
Adam Scott (81): Still competing at a high level two-plus decades into his career, the Australian will give it one final postseason push at the Wyndham, where he lost in a playoff in 2021. At 43, Scott desperately wants to play the limited, big-money schedule afforded to the game’s top players, but to guarantee himself that cushy spot he needs to reach the BMW, somehow.
Joel Dahmen (82): One of our feature subjects a few months ago, Dahmen has prided himself on consistently keeping his card despite downplaying his abilities and owning a skill set that doesn’t always mesh with the modern game. Under normal circumstances, he’d be fine – it’s the third year in a row he’s been between Nos. 70-95 in the season-long standings – but now that the cutoff has been lowered, he needs to post a good finish at Wyndham to keep playing this season.
Gary Woodland (97): It’s been a good-but-not-great campaign for Woodland, who doesn’t have a top-10 anywhere since the Genesis in February. G-Dub is exempt through 2024-25 by virtue of his 2019 U.S. Open victory, but he’s been too consistent of a player to be mired in such a position.
Akshay Bhatia (99): His is an interesting case, of course, after the special temporary member didn’t receive non-member points at either of the opposite-field events, the Barbasol and the Barracuda, the latter of which he won. The 21-year-old admittedly was “shocked” that he wasn’t exempt for the postseason, despite the Tour victory and nearly $2 million in season earnings. Now he needs to see if he can double up against a regular field.
Billy Horschel (116): It’s been an emotional year for Horschel, who has mustered just two top-10s this season. After beginning the year ranked 18th in the world, he’s all the way down to 48th. Horschel showed some glimpses of improved play at the 3M, where he was in fourth place early in the final round, but a few late mistakes dropped him to T-13 and improved his position in the season-long standings by just three spots. Again, like Woodland, he isn’t in danger of losing his card – he’s exempt through the end of 2025 because of a ’21 WGC victory – but he could be on the outside looking in for the designated events next year.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan is trying to win back the locker room.
That’s just about the only way to read his wide-ranging memo that leaked last week that seemed geared as much toward the membership as it was the greater golf community with a keen interest in the Tour’s future.
The newsiest item pertains to the Tour’s stance regarding the proposed ball rollback at the elite level.
That Monahan’s position was made clear before the end of the USGA/R&A comment period underscored the pressing need for Monahan to score a victory among his constituents after nearly two months of criticism about his job performance. Though the Tour won’t support the model local rule as written – not a surprise, given the players’ endorsement potential and the Tour’s unproven belief that entertainment is tied to distance – Monahan said that they’d collaborate with the governing bodies on a solution. The USGA and R&A have already said that inaction is not an option, and so we appear to be setting up for a high-stakes game of chicken: Come 2026, is it really desirable to have one ball in use for at least three of the four major championships, and another for the rest of the season? Of course not, and the governing bodies know this.
Monahan also didn’t have much in the way of an update on the agreement between the Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, with the deadline now five months away. They’ve set up a committee of a committee to find a successor for Randall Stephenson’s board seat, and they’ve established task forces to work through a “player benefit program” – essentially a way to make whole the Tour loyalists – and player discipline for the LIV defectors who might wish to rejoin the Tour at the end of this season.
That last point caught the eye of Phil Mickelson:
Mickelson contends that “not a single player” wants to leave LIV. To be sure, that has been the public narrative among the LIV players, but they’re also not reckless enough to suggest publicly that they’re unhappy with a league that has gifted them seven-, eight- and nine-figure signing bonuses to play in non-OWGR-sanctioned events. Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau have said that there certainly are Tour events they miss; dozens of others no doubt feel the same. Whether they’re willing to go through the reapplication process for membership – and serve any possible punishments – remains to be seen. Dustin Johnson, for instance, seems rather content to play out the string on his LIV deal.
And that’s what Mickelson appears to be missing.
If the rival league eventually folds, the LIV players might have little choice but to rejoin the Tour or disappear into the competitive abyss. It’s where the money and best players will be. LIV might say it’s full steam ahead – it had an upfront last week to appeal to big-pocketed advertisers – but the circuit’s future is still uncertain until a definitive agreement is reached (if it is at all). If nothing else, it’s reasonable to assume that LIV, if it does continue, will not exist in its current form. No high-profile player would want to risk switching sides until there’s more clarity.
From the Tour perspective, the discipline route is tricky terrain to navigate. The prevailing sentiment has been that the Tour could decide a LIV player’s “punishment” on a case-by-case basis, allowing for an easier reentry for those that left peacefully (hello, Louis Oosthuizen) and harsher terms for those that torched the Tour on the way out (yes, that’s you, Phil).
Would the Tour loyalists sign off on a deal that brings those guys back in the fold so quickly? Would the Tour’s many sponsors support any bans, knowing that they’re willfully hurting field strength for optics? Is it even legal?
Jason Gore, Andy Pazder and Neera Shetty have their work cut out for them.
Celine Boutier was 33 over par in her Evian Championship career, owing to the internal pressure she felt to perform at home in the tournament she coveted most.
That didn’t happen this year.
The 29-year-old Frenchman blew away the field at the year’s fourth major, winning by six shots over Brooke Henderson to capture her first major title in front of a delirious home crowd. She finished at 14 under par.
“It honestly has been my biggest dream ever since I started watching golf,” she said.
It’s a sweet story that continues the year of the first-time major winners, with Boutier (who earned her fourth career LPGA victory) joining Lilia Vu, Ruoning Yin and Allisen Corpuz in the winner’s circle this year. The final major of the year, the Women’s Open, will be held next week at Walton Heath.
Stories like Boutier’s are fun to root for, but competitive parity in the game’s biggest events is typically a death knell for niche sports. Boutier’s triumph means that the last 22 major championships have been won by 21 different players, turning an era that was supposed to be defined by Nelly Korda, Jin Young Ko and Minjee Lee into anyone’s guess at the legacy-defining events.
That at least partially explains the massive attention surrounding Rose Zhang – she’s been a world-beater at every level, she won in her LPGA debut, and she has finished in the top-10 in each of her first three major starts as a pro. Still just 20 years old, Zhang could finally be the standout stud that brings the LPGA to the forefront. Or so they hope. The LPGA needs a dominant superstar.
CARNAGE!: Senior Open. Royal Porthcawl might be too short for the game’s best players, but it provided a thrilling backdrop for The Senior Open contested in some of the most miserable weather imaginable – so bad that it made the final round of The Open seem benign by comparison. Cold, wet, wicked winds – they all pounded the over-50 set for the second consecutive day. Alex Cejka and Padraig Harrington played off after finishing 72 holes at 5 over par. The best score on Sunday was 73, shot much earlier in the day. There were 26 rounds in the 80s. The scoring average was 78.5, the highest on tour in nearly a quarter-century. What glorious TV.
Glimpse into the Future: NV5 Invitational. Barstool made its first foray into televised golf with four-day streaming coverage of last week’s Korn Ferry Tour event, won by Trace Crowe, in what was clearly a test-run for the Tour to see if it can expand its digital offerings. The event featured many of the company’s biggest personalities in both a studio and on-course role, and reception on social media, at least, appeared to be largely positive. Golf’s network TV demographic remains in the mid-60s, so any option that appeals to the much-desired younger crowd should be welcomed and applauded. The players definitely embraced the idea. It mightn’t be for everybody, but it’s still a necessary step forward.
Toughen Up: Korn Ferry cut. Four of the last five halfway cuts on the developmental circuit have been 5 under or better, including an eye-popping 7-under mark at the NV5 that matched the lowest 36-hole cut in tour history. Sure, it’s hard to argue with some of the players who are soon to graduate to the big tour (Pierceson Coody, Adrien Dumont de Chassart, etc.), but shootouts are no one’s idea of a proper test of golf. Put the screws to these guys and see what happens – the best will prevail.
Gotta Respect It: J.T. Poston. Needing to make something special happen on the 72nd hole to have an outside shot at victory, Poston had 220 yards to the pin for his second shot into the par-5 18th hole at TPC Twin Cities. The degree of difficulty was high – in the rough, on the side slope, with water short – but Poston was also in a reasonably comfy position: three shots behind Hodges, and three clear of third place. So Poston went for it, his ball nosediving out of the sky, ricocheting off the rocks and plopping harmlessly into the pond. The tournament was effectively over, and Hodges closed it out moments later with a wedge to kick-in range. Poston laid up, wedged short of the green and then needed three more from there for a closing triple bogey, the shock finish dropping him from solo second into a three-way tie for second – a difference of about $260,000. Afterward, Poston had no regrets about the decision to go for it: “It was a shot that was going to be hard to pull off, but we weren’t playing for second place. I had to give it a shot.” Indeed, his mistake wasn’t going for the green; it was failing to hit the green with his fifth shot from 98 yards, when he still had a few shots to play with. Hopefully the difference in points doesn’t end up costing him this postseason, since he’s in a precarious position, now 48th in the standings. We love to see guys who don’t play for position or for points, but for the glory.
Slowpoke: Carlota Ciganda. The Spaniard refused to accept a slow-play penalty at the Evian, knowingly signing an incorrect scorecard and then leaving the scoring area to prompt a DQ from the year’s fourth major. Ciganda said on Instagram that, while on the clock, a rules official told her that she took 52 seconds to hit an important par putt on the final green – longer than the 40 seconds required to play a stroke. Ciganda saw things differently, clearly, and stormed off in frustration. All of the professional tours have been hesitant to crack down on the dawdlers, but Ciganda might be the exception – she was also dinged for a slow-play penalty in 2021. The message from the tour is clear: Speed up … or else.
Welcome to the Club: Bryan Kim. The 18-year-old incoming freshman at Duke took down Joshua Bai, 2 up, to capture the U.S. Junior Amateur. Next summer, after completing his freshman year with the Blue Devils, he’ll make the 80-mile drive to Pinehurst for the 2024 U.S. Open, for which he is now exempt. Prior to the win, Kim was ranked 443rd in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and, as the No. 52 seed, becomes the lowest-seeded player to capture junior golf’s biggest prize since 2002.