Scottie Scheffler was again in motion in Texas this week.
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Welcome again to the Monday Finish, the place we’re nonetheless making an attempt to determine if “Davis Riley” has two first names or two final names. To the information!
GOLF STUFF I LIKE
Going again to what works.
As I attempted to make sense of Davis Riley‘s Sunday steamroll over the rest of a talented PGA Tour field, one detail stood out: He’d lately reunited together with his former swing coach Jeff Smith.
“We haven’t re-invented the wheel or done anything different,” Riley stated after a Friday 64. “I feel like I’m in a good head space and comfortable there and I feel like simplicity has been the key for me.”
Riley made issues look easy on the weekend, notably on Sunday; whereas most of his competitors struggled with gusty situations and a agency golf course, the proficient Alabama grad plotted his approach by way of a difficult golf course, making a birdie for each bogey and cruising to a five-shot victory.
What’s attention-grabbing about Riley returning to an outdated coach and discovering success? The incontrovertible fact that we’ve lately heard different high execs say the identical factor.
Take Collin Morikawa. Before the Masters he talked about being “in transition”; he’d break up together with his lifelong swing coach Rick Sessinghaus within the fall however scuffled within the months that adopted. Ahead of the Masters he obtained on the cellphone with Sessinghaus a pair instances once more. Then he completed T3.
More good outcomes adopted as they formalized their relationship once more. Ninth on the RBC Heritage. Tied for sixteenth on the Wells Fargo. Then back-to-back fourth-place outcomes on the PGA Championship and the Charles Schwab Challenge. Something is working.
“Much better,” Morikawa stated post-round on Sunday, requested about his psychological house now in contrast with the beginning of the 12 months. “I owe a lot of that to Rick. Obviously joining back up with him, it’s been awesome. It’s not like we’ve done anything new, it’s just being able to talk.”
Then take Viktor Hovland. He completed 2023 because the FedEx Cup champ and the most popular golfer on the planet however modified coaches, modified philosophies and misplaced his approach — till he reunited with Joe Mayo, the person who’d helped rebuild his quick recreation, the week earlier than the PGA Championship. Then he completed third.
Viktor Hovland made a mysterious teaching change. Now he’s going again
Dylan Dethier
“I thought this was potentially going to be a little bit of a project and maybe take six, eight weeks before I would see kind of immediate improvement,” Hovland stated. Instead he contended for the win all of Sunday. “Yeah, that was kind of best-case scenario right there.”
There was additionally Rory McIlroy’s journey to Las Vegas to see Butch Harmon, who at all times appears to set him straight with the identical recommendation.
“The work I did with him wasn’t a tremendous amount of changing what he did, it was his attitude and the way he played certain shots,” Harmon stated on the Son of a Butch podcast. From “150 yards and in he made a full swing like he was hitting a driver and I wanted him to make more 3 quarter swings and chop the follow through off a little.”
McIlroy gained the Zurich Classic with Shane Lowry and ran away from the sphere on the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow earlier than a T12 on the PGA Championship. His swing appears to be working, too.
It’s simple to cherry-pick the teaching modifications of winners and contenders, after all. If teaching modifications don’t work out we frequently wouldn’t even hear a lot about them. So it’s robust to parse out correlation or causation in any significant approach. But there’s one thing satisfying about high golfers shedding their approach, returning to one thing important and discovering success. It was in there all alongside.
Tapping into your previous to raised put together in your current? That’s golf stuff I like.
WINNERS
Who gained the week?
Davis Riley gained the Charles Schwab Challenge by 5; it was his first particular person PGA Tour victory, he strikes from No. 250 to No. 78 on this planet and he locks up PGA Tour standing for years to come back.
Richard Bland gained the Senior PGA Championship in his first-ever senior tour begin; it was a very intriguing victory given Bland’s standing on LIV. He gained’t be eligible for the PGA Tour Champions however will proceed teeing it up for the Cleeks the remainder of the season.
Nacho Elvira gained the Soudal Open in Belgium, holding off three golfers by a single shot — together with one other LIV participant in Belgian native Thomas Pieters — to say the second DP World Tour victory of his profession.
Harry Higgs gained in unbelievable trend for the second consecutive week on the Korn Ferry Tour, draining a 37-footer for eagle on the second playoff gap to primarily assure he’ll be again on the PGA Tour subsequent season. he adopted the win with a touching speech honoring Grayson Murray, whose tragic demise hung over the golf world this weekend.
NOT-WINNERS
Not all people can win the whole lot.
Scottie Scheffler made his worst single-hole rating in 9 months on Thursday — a triple-bogey 6 that despatched him to three over par — however he rebounded and performed his approach into the ultimate group on Sunday, the place he was outgunned by Riley however nonetheless completed T2.
“I battled back very nicely on Friday and Saturday. As far as today goes, I just wasn’t able to put as much pressure as I would have hoped to put on Davis early in the round and he just kind of cruised all day,” Scheffler stated Sunday. “He played great golf.”
Keegan Bradley completed T2 alongside Scheffler and was delighted together with his gritty ultimate spherical, calling it “my best round of the year, probably.” He’s as much as No. 16 on this planet, stated he’s trying ahead to what he known as principally back-to-back U.S. Opens with Memorial adopted by Pinehurst and feels usually inspired staring down the summer season season.
“I’m playing good golf right now. I had a tough stretch there in the Florida swing, and now I feel like I’m back playing the way I should play.”
Morikawa’s fourth-place outcome has him chomping on the bit.
It’s loads higher than the place it was originally of the 12 months, and we’re getting there, I simply — clearly you need it sooner fairly than later, and with two extra majors to go, you recognize, I actually need it.
And Kevin Kisner confirmed some promise by way of three rounds, making the minimize and sitting T32 earlier than a Sunday 79 despatched him to T65. Still, it was one in every of his extra promising showings of the previous 12 months as he seems to regain kind.
SHORT HITTERS
5 intriguing tales, briefly.
1. The Louisville PD launched movies of the moments round Scottie Scheffler’s arrest, yielding few new particulars however leaving me believing two issues are true: First, the video misses a key second within the incident the place Scheffler and the arresting officer first make contact. But second, except there’s one thing actually dramatic that occurred in these few off-camera moments, what’re we nonetheless doing dragging this case ahead? Surely there are higher makes use of of the judicial system than a trumped-up felony cost based mostly on a misunderstanding. Nobody wins by this shifting ahead.
2. Mark Flaherty turned the most recent member of the PGA Tour’s Policy Board to step down and did so at a wierd time: Sunday evening of the PGA Championship. In his resignation letter he thanked Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and the board chairman Ed Herlihy however, notably, no person else on the board.
3. The brains (and names) behind Bandon Dunes are increasing south: The Keiser household introduced 36-hole resort Wild Spring Dunes will characteristic one course by famed architect Tom Doak and one other by the legendary staff of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.
4. Jim Nantz is constructing one other yard golf gap, this time replicating the inexperienced of Augusta National’s par-5 thirteenth — and he’s turning a patio on his home right into a tee field.
5. Jon Rahm completed No. 2 on Forbes’ checklist of highest-paid athletes, incomes an estimated $218 million thanks to an enormous signing bonus from his signing with LIV Golf. Cristiano Ronaldo — additionally taking part in for a Saudi sports activities league — topped the checklist at $260 million. Rory McIlroy (nineteenth, $80.1 million complete), Tiger Woods (twenty third, $67.2 million), Scottie Scheffler (twenty ninth, $59.2 million) and Cameron Smith (forty third, $48 million) additionally cracked the highest 50.
ONE SWING THOUGHT
From the U.S. Open champ.
Fighting a slice on the course? Wyndham Clark has a tip for you: Tee up your wedges on the vary. Try to hit attracts, which is a bit simpler to do with the ball’s teed up. That’ll assist zero you out.
“I tend to be steep,” Clark stated on our newest episode of Warming Up. “So under pressure … I start swinging really left, big divots, swipey cuts. And so what I’m trying to do here is neutralize that and do the opposite so when I get into competition [my ball flight] is where I want it to be.”
Here’s the remainder:
ONE BIG QUESTION
Will now we have any PIF-PGA Tour readability by June sixth?
The one-year anniversary of the framework settlement quick approaches. So … now what?
We mentioned this in Tour Confidential, too, however what indications do now we have {that a} deal is shut? Rory McIlroy stated there’s been no progress made. Tiger Woods stated there’s an extended technique to go and that the scenario is fluid. Jimmy Dunne was so annoyed with the dearth of progress that he stepped down from the board. Mark Flaherty stepped down, too. Jordan Spieth known as tales of stalled talks a “false narrative,” which can be true, however Spieth additionally stated earlier this 12 months that he’s okay if a deal doesn’t get finished straight away. Immediacy doesn’t appear to be a precedence.
So is a deal shut? It doesn’t appear to be it. What appears extra possible is that no person is aware of what’s going to occur. In the occasion of some form of reconciliation between excursions, it’s nonetheless up within the air about what would occur to LIV. And with out some form of reconciliation, what’s the purpose of any of this? In the meantime, Spieth and his friends are centered on not making a nasty deal. That’s precedence No. 1: not ceding management to an unpredictable investor. Maybe there’s an in-between stopgap resolution right here the place they safe a PIF funding for the PGA Tour with out significant change within the skilled golf panorama. But if I’m a golf fan rooting for LIV stars to return to the PGA Tour by the top of this season or subsequent? I’m not holding my breath.
ONE THING TO WATCH
Patrick Reed tells his facet of the story.
Some pointless context: We launched this Patrick Reed interview across the Masters nevertheless it was such a busy time that we by no means printed the condensed Q&A model that ran within the journal. But now? That’s reside, too!
What’s within the interview? I wished to ask Reed about his background and about his breakthrough moments and about his popularity — each good and unhealthy, from Captain America to guidelines controversies to lawsuits and extra — and whether or not it’s deserved. Here’s that full sitdown:
NEWS FROM SEATTLE
Monday Finish HQ.
Seattle has been within the {golfing} information left and proper. Bryson DeChambeau, coming off a terrific runner-up end on the PGA, credited a lot of his current success to Washingtonian caddie Greg Bodine. RJ Manke simply Monday-qualified into final week’s Korn Ferry Tour occasion and completed inside the highest 20. Max Herendeen, repping the Pacific Northwest on the University of Illinois, begins Monday in prime place on the NCAA Championships — and he’s staff’s main with one spherical to play. Plus there’s a serious coming to city in lower than a month!
REFLECTIONS ON GRAYSON MURRAY
Gone too quickly.
It was touching to learn and listen to tributes after the tragic lack of Grayson Murray, who died Saturday on the age of 30. A press release from his household confirmed that Murray had taken his personal life. “Life wasn’t always easy for Grayson,” the assertion learn. “We know he rests peacefully now.”
I’ve been struggling to wrap my head round of Murray’s sudden loss and it was clear his friends had been, too; from Scheffler to Bradley to Webb Simpson and extra they described the eeriness of seeing him at some point and understanding he was gone the following, whereas his identify nonetheless sat on a placard within the locker room and on the underside of the leaderboard. There’s no making sense of it, not likely. But the very best factor I learn this weekend was a strong essay by Gary Williams, who displays on his personal journey with alcoholism, his bond with Murray and the harmful powers of habit — crafty, baffling, highly effective — that at all times lurk.
You can learn that right here.
Be properly, buddies. We’ll see you subsequent week.
Dylan welcomes your feedback at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
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