Shlabotnik? He’s the hapless baseball player who hit .004 one season and was the favorite player of the sensationally hapless “Peanuts” pitcher, Charlie Brown. I wrote before the U.S. Open that Shinnecock would not crown a Joe Shlabotnik-type one-hit-wonder, fluke champion because of its history of producing legendary winners. Wyndham Clark, already a U.S. Open champion, was definitely worthy — if not necessarily popular.

I’m doubling down on the Shlabotnik Theory for this week’s 154th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. Its honor roll of past champions is every bit as impressive as Shinnecock’s: Peter Thomson, twice; Arnold Palmer; Lee Trevino; Johnny Miller; Tom Watson; Ian Baker-Finch; Mark O’Meara; Padraig Harrington; and Jordan Spieth.

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A quick check of the current World’s Hardest Word Rankings shows No. 1 is still “goodbye.” (Don’t Google that. I made it up.)

Goodbyes are hard (except maybe in divorce court).

This week’s Kaulig Companies Championship, a designated major on the PGA Tour Champions, is noteworthy because it is the farewell to Tour golf for the legendary Firestone Country Club and its South Course. Pro golf has been played at Firestone every year since 1954.

This tournament gets a new sponsor and a new name next year, the Hoag Senior Players Championship, and moves to Newport Beach Country Club in California. The decades of Firestone history will not move with it.

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Not after Bobby Jones in the 1926 U.S. Open. Not after Jack Nicklaus used this place as his launchpad, literally and figuratively. Not after Bruce Fleischer won a U.S. Amateur here and Dale Douglass won the first U.S. Senior Open hosted by the club. Not to mention the other U.S. Senior Opens and many U.S. Open qualifiers that rewarded a few and dashed the hopes of many.

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King famously had a very important dream. Block also had a dream. It was about his winning the U.S. Senior Open. Block, that is. Not the late civil rights activist.

“I woke up one day, I just had a vivid dream that I won the U.S. Senior Open and I told my wife about it,” Block said. “This was when I turned 49. I would be turning 50 the next year, so I would no longer be the shortest guy in every group, which I’ve been for the last ten years, which is very frustrating.”

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Wyndham Clark? No, he won the 2023 U.S. Open; he’s no rookie. Neither are Sam Burns nor Tom Kim, who finished second and third.

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Get used to the sound of that. Hate on Clark if you must, but the man affectionately called “Winner” by his late mother joined elite company early Sunday evening at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, whose golden-brown fescue shimmers like mesmerizing sirens when the wind blows. Which is basically all the time.

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But since I’ve got only deep-dish pizza handy, not deep thoughts, you’ll have to settle for the following very nearly keen observations.

Is it ‘ShinneClark’ Hills Yet?

Yes, it’s too early to start referring to the course as ShinneClark Hills. Way too early. Wyndham Clark has a six-shot lead and he’s not Tiger Woods. Oh, and the closest thing we have to a Tiger Woods (who still isn’t Tiger Woods) is one of the guys tied for second — Scottie Scheffler. So this game is decidedly not over.

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Exhibit A: The 150-Minute Wait

Oklahoma State University alumnus Sam Stevens started on the 10th hole Thursday morning and sent his drive down the hill. So far, so good. He was getting ready to hit his second shot when a horn sounded. Play was halted because of fog.

That seemed like a break for Stevens at the time. “You couldn’t even see the pin,” he said. “It was pretty foggy or misty or whatever it was.”

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My question is lost in the mists of time, but it had something to do with the Packers’ long stretch of futility in the mid-1980s. Gregg answered in his usual strong voice, “History records the past. It does not predict the future.”

It was another way to say, “This year’s team isn’t responsible for the past teams’ performances.” Point taken. It was also one way to avoid the topic, which was about why the Packers weren’t very good.

Gregg was right, but ignoring trends can be short-sighted. Golf isn’t football. Golf players have careers that cover decades, while most NFL players last only three to five years. And in golf, the horses-for-courses axiom is fairly well proven.

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Theories: 1. Time accelerating? 2. The Earth is hurtling toward an unseen black hole that is tearing the space-timecontinuum asunder. 3. I have just not been paying attention. (Only incorrect answers accepted.)

Look, I was going to wait until 2099 to wrap up this century’s major championship highlights. The odds say I’ll evaporate in some kind of thermonuclear event before then or die due to something Bill Gates did. So we can’t wait.

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I don't have data to back that up, but I believe it to be fact.

If you happen to remember the first paragraph here, maybe it's time to take the all-time list of golf major championships won and make it more relevant and recency-biased before we bump into the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. Since, if it didn't happen in the last five minutes, it didn't happen, and it doesn't matter to a lot of attention-challenged fans. What was that about the opening paragraph again? Never mind.

Nobody seems likely to get anywhere near Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 major professional titles won — 20, counting his two U.S. Amateur wins that used to be counted as majors. Tiger Woods spoiled us by making a serious run at that history. He got within three of Nicklaus, and he tied Sam Snead's official mark of 82 career victories — another record that seems far, far out of reach for today's generation of pros.

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They saw Aaron Rai sink a crazy long putt — they used to be called “ocean liners” — across Aronimink’s 17th green Sunday for a remarkable, unbelievable and the adjective-of-your-choice birdie that effectively clinched the PGA Championship. Was it 70 feet? Was it 80 feet? Does it matter? Officially, it was 68 feet. Unofficially, it was longer than the lunch line at Chipotle.

Rai is a 31-year-old of Indian descent born in Wombourne, England, whose resume prior to Sunday featured one PGA Tour win (2024 Wyndham Championship) and three DP World Tour titles. That amazing putt, well, it was a happy accident.

Philadelphia fans aren’t shy about expressing their emotions. That’s a polite way of saying they’re loud. They rose to their feet around the 17th green, behind the gallery ropes and in the luxury suites, and they rose to the moment, too. They gave Rai’s historic and unlikely putt the cascade of jubilant cacophony that it deserved. (Speaking of historic: This probably marks the first time “cacophony” has been used in a golf story. You’re welcome.)

If Rai’s finish didn’t cause goose bumps or tingle your spine, you’re not a real golf fan or you’re laying on a slab in a Philadelphia morgue. Rai was tied for the lead with Germany’s Matti Schmid when he arrived at the par-5 16th tee, leading a cast of thousands, which was what the jam-packed PGA Championship still felt like at that moment.

Rai bombed the drive of his life down the 16th fairway, then scorched a 5-iron approach shot that slowly and desperately crawled onto the front of the green like a parched man inching through the desert toward the last oasis. He was left with a 25-foot eagle putt — Rai, not the parched dude — and poured it in with the lethal assuredness of Tiger Woods.

Moments later, Schmid made bogey at the 15th and just like that, fans and players checked the scoreboard and realized this PGA might be over. Rai was suddenly three shots over Schmid, struggling Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas, who finished a few hours earlier.

The pursuers’ only hope was that tough finishing holes would trip up the leader. When Rai holed the putt on the 17th, a putt that will be etched into the stone of Aronimink’s long and storied history, the PGA Championship had a winner. In fact, CBS cameras showed the official engraver beginning to etch his name — Rai’s, still not the parched dude’s — onto the old Wanamaker Trophy. That was fine camera work, people.

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This PGA Championship feels like that. It’s a novel with a cast of thousands but no plot. After 54 holes, we don’t seem much closer to identifying a champion. We’ve seen how Aronimink Golf Club can be trickier and more baffling than Harry Houdini in a Hall of Mirrors. So how much confidence can we have in winless Alex Smalley, who nosed two shots in front of the field Saturday with an impressive birdie on the final hole?

Zero.

Call this the Zero Confidence PGA Championship. Nothing is as it seems. Rory McIlroy is in 105th place after Round One? He is tied for first by the middle of Round Three and still lurks near the lead. Club pro and ex-folk hero Michael Block shoots even par in the first round and is going to get 15 more minutes of fame then, wham, Aronimink steps on his neck and he misses the cut by at least three blocks.

Just about everybody still has a chance to win this. Other than notable trunk-slammer Bryson DeChambeau; and legendary PGA champion Walter Hagen, who is long dead (unless Houdini is messing with us again).

Let’s not belabor the point. (Too late.) We’ve never seen a field packed as tightly as this outside of a Kentucky Derby, Boston Marathon or a media buffet that includes bacon.

“My PGA Tour career isn’t necessarily very long at this point, but I’ve never seen anything like this, it’s very tight,” said Ludvig Aberg.

Thanks, Ludvig. We already said that.

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Name a PGA of America club professional who is not the pro at your home course. Or is not named Michael Block.

Time’s up. You lose.

Michael Block is America’s most famous club professional. He is also America’s only famous club professional. You probably thought his 15 minutes of fame finally ran out four years after his glorious Sunday at Oak Hill in the 2023 PGA Championship.

You may be wrong and if there’s one thing Block likes, it is proving people and especially naysayers wrong. Block, whose nickname Blockie sounds like something from a “Peanuts” cartoon, is on his way to earning 15 more minutes of fame. Maybe.

All he did Thursday at the PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club was shoot an even-par 70. That was four shots better than Rory McIlroy, his final-round partner at Oak Hill who got to watch Block make an ace and a sensational up-and-down on the final hole, and six shots better than Bryson DeChambeau, the self-appointed king of the Internet.

What’s a 49-year-old club pro from Mission Viejo, California, doing beating some of the world’s top players, again? The odds were 10,000-to-1 on Block winning this PGA Championship before the start and it’s a sucker bet. He will not win this. But give the man some credit (but not your credit card because he has been known to order merchandise for his club members while he’s at a PGA Championship), he is an extraordinary player. Not quite good enough for the PGA Tour but pretty darned good.

Media types are always suggesting the PGA Championship doesn’t have an identity. It was the ass-end of the major season when it was played in August, usually in sweltering humidity and thunder showers. Now it’s second in the major lineup, inescapably in the shade of the Masters. It doesn’t have an identity, even though it has 97 of the world’s top 100 players? Even though its lineup of recent winners is a Who’s Who of Golf’s Big Dogs including Scottie Scheffler, Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas, Phil Mickelson and Xander Schauffele?

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The reason is that Spieth, a three-time major champion, is the golf equivalent of riding Disneyland’s Space Mountain rollercoaster or playing the crypto currency market. You never know what’s coming next.

Spieth is reminiscent of Phil Mickelson or Arnold Palmer, two legends who made birdies and eagles and thrilling charges. And, oh yeah, bogeys and disasters and head-shaking shots.

You know the best Spieth moments — “Spiething,” as they call it on the PGA Tour.

The 2017 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale was the pinnacle. Spieth blew his drive so far right of the 13th fairway that his ball ended up on the practice ground. Long delays ensued while Spieth and officials determined where he could take a drop. Eventually, Spieth played a blind shot, launching an iron over a fescue-covered ridge to just in front of the green, where he miraculously salvaged a birdie. A few holes later, he went birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie to beat a stunned Matt Kuchar.

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Be honest, you know you want to. And that’s exactly what makes “All Carry” so much fun. It’s a golf novel written by Gene Wojciechowski, a superb storyteller for ESPN after his first career as an excellent sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and ESPN the Magazine.

Here’s “All Carry” in one sentence (if that’s even possible): A set of old irons and persimmon woods that once allegedly belonged to Jack Nicklaus, including his famed White Fang putter, possess magical properties that turn a middle-aged golf broadcaster (and previously a golf hacker) into the second coming of Tiger Woods and leads him to an epic showing at the Masters.

A little magic has been behind some of our favorite sports movies. There’s Wonder Boy, the bat that made “The Natural” able to hit towering home runs that turned old-time stadium lights into fireworks displays. There’s “Field of Dreams,” which has ghosts playing baseball in an Iowa cornfield.

If we can believe in Rocky Balboa, the Mighty Ducks and Matt Damon’s pathetic “authentic swing” in “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” we can enjoy the premise of “All Carry.” It’s funny and clever and has amusing dialogue and plot twists. Plus, the magic golf clubs are simply a platform for the story about a father (Joe Riley) and son (Buddy) who have grown apart. It’s a story of redemption about a pro caddie (Hard Way Mitchell) who gets unfairly scapegoated by his selfish-arrogant-jerkface tour player (think Shooter McGavin of “Happy Gilmore” or Don Johnson’s David Simms in “Tin Cup”).

Let’s address the fantasy involved here. Which golfers among us haven’t dreamed of hitting 400-yard bombs like Happy Gilmore? We want this fantasy. We need this fantasy.

These offbeat characters and others come together in a most believable way. Buddy resents that his father didn’t spend enough time with him. That was due to Joe Riley’s job as a television broadcaster for a network that might as well be called Golf Channel. Every Father’s Day, Joe was at the U.S. Open instead of with Buddy and the rest of the family.

While in search of the perfect gift for his dad, Buddy comes across a set of old irons with leather-wrapped grips, finely crafted persimmon woods and a putter that a curious older gentlemen has on display at a garbage sale. The clubs were made by Jack Wullkotte, an actual legend who was to clubmaking back in the old days what Antonio Stradaveri was to violin-making centuries ago. The clubs aren’t for sale but after a heart-to-heart conversation, the old man sees Buddy and his father in need of these special instruments. Plus, it turns out the old man was ill and knew he was chipping to the final green, if you get the drift.

The clubs are special and defy explanation. It takes some time but the Rileys discover that Dad, and only Dad, can launch 400-yard-plus drives with the antique driver and 190-yard pitching-wedge shots despite his crappy hacker swing. The clubs are merely ordinary in the hands of all others.

Dad’s new-found power is discovered by Hard Way Mitchell, who runs a worn-down, but aspiring, driving range called To The Linksland. This is one of many golf-insider nuggets to be found, as that is the title of a book by golf writer Michael Bamberger. You can look for other Easter eggs such as cameos by esteemed talent such as ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi, golf coach Butch Harmon and others.

Mitchell finds golf balls hit in a tight pattern on his range near the 400-mark. All right, I’ve never actually seen a 400-yard range in my life except in “Happy Gilmore” but I’m open to it. He soon discovers that Joe Riley is the culprit, which he can’t believe because Riley doesn’t have a decent swing. But Hard Way soon becomes a believer and after Riley messes up on TV and gets released, the caddie starts grooming Riley to take on the tour as a way to vindicate himself.

Nobody really believes Riley can deliver and his old tour friends don’t want Hard Way to succeed. To say more would be to give away too much of this charming, feel-good tale that is emotionally believable despite being physically unbelievable. A side story, no less important, is the love story between Hard Way and the hot wife of the arrogant tour player who fired Hard Way and got him blackballed from working the tour.

You might think you know where this tale is going. You may have already guessed that from the book’s cover, which is done in bright daffodil yellow with a shade of green that sure would look good on a major champion’s jacket. Wojciechowski told “The Golf Show 2.0” podcast that the cover colors are definitely meant as an hint toward a certain tournament in April.

Still, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Did Tin Cup win the U.S. Open? He did not. Did Rannulph Junnah of “Bagger Vance” win the big match? He did. Will Joe Riley really land the big one after he becomes an overnight golf phenomenon much like ninth-alternate John Daly in the 1991 PGA Championship at Crooked Stick? Read it and find out.

“All Carry” is in the tradition of the great Dan Jenkins novels such as “Semi-Tough,” “Dead-Sold Perfect,” and “You’ve Gotta Play Hurt” and it starts with an opening line unlike any other:

“It was a dump.”

That is an attention-getting opening line to a book. For context, you need the second paragraph:

“The best thing you could say about the driving range was that it had a nice view of the commuter trains as they caromed back and forth from Chicago on the Union Pacific West Line. And that only three of the fifteen ancient and threadbare artificial grass mats had been stolen in the past month. But it was Max (Hard Way) Mitchell’s dump — or it would be in 109 more monthly payments.”

The amusing descriptions sets the stage for a Shakespearian-like saga. The ending is smart and worth the journey to get there.

If Stradaveri himself was given a copy of “All Carry,” I know what he’d say—“Non leggo l’inglese.” (“I don’t read English.”) Well, that’s his loss. (Cue sad violin music.)

“All Carry” has 415 pages, about one page for each yard of Joe Riley’s longest drives. It’s a magical tale. All you have to do is believe.

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▪️ When 1 swing, 1 shot proves to be enough
▪️ A sobering journeyman’s tale

“People think the hardest part of leaving professional sports is the goodbye. It’s not. It’s the silence that follows.”

— Steve Wheatcroft, “Cocktails and Range Balls: One’s Too Many, Ten’s Not Enough”

Steve Wheatcroft did not exactly make a lot of noise during his professional golf career. You had to be listening closely.

There were two Korn Ferry Tour wins. (Louder, please.) He set a Korn Ferry Tour record for margin of victory when he won the 2011 Melwood Prince George’s County Open by a stunning 12 shots. (Amazing, but a little louder, please.) And he won four times each on the now defunct Golden Bear and Gateway Tours. (C’mon, you can turn up the volume higher than that.)

Wheatcroft, a native of Indiana, Pennsylvania, earned his PGA Tour card seven times and successfully retained it just once; reached a high of 234th in the Official World Golf Ranking; finished 63rd in the 2010 U.S. Open — his only major championship appearance; and once led the John Deere Classic with an opening-round 62. His best FedEx Cup points finish was 114th. He’s even got a Wikipedia page devoted to him.

After turning pro in 2001 following a career at Indiana University, the man simply known as “Wheatie” by his fellow players earned $1.1 million on the Korn Ferry Tour and $2.9 million on the PGA Tour over two decades.

That’s $4 million. By any measure, Wheatcroft was a success.

Is that loud enough for you?

It should be. Wheatcroft, 48, retired from pro golf in 2019 even though he still had full Korn Ferry Tour status. He cited burnout, travel and a desire to spend more time at home with his wife and two kids.

“The $1.5 million sounds incredible but then you have to take expenses and taxes out,” Wheatcroft told “The Golf Show 2.0” podcast last week. “You’ve got to pay the caddie. I don’t think I played out there a year when I didn’t spend $125,000 or $150,000 on expenses for flights, hotels, caddie fees and all the stuff. It adds up.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great job. I loved being out there every minute of it. I wouldn’t have traded it for the world, but it’s definitely not as glamorous as you think.”

Half a dozen outstanding golf books have already been published in 2026, including “Rory,” “All Carry,” “Aren’t You That Golf Guy?” and “Tiger v. Jack,” to name a few.

None of them are as short as Wheatcroft’s 137-page “Cocktails and Range Balls: One’s Too Many, Ten’s Not Enough” (“I’m not a big reader so I kept it short,” he jokes). Or as important, especially in the wake of golfers who struggled with mental health or other issues such as Gary Woodland, Grayson Murray and Tiger Woods.

Yes, Wheatcroft’s breezy stories recall his grinding successes and his flaming failures in golf. And there are plenty of tour anecdotes, such as one about The Pooping Bandit, who has a less classy nickname in reality. The Korn Ferry player would leave unsavorily pungent messages for unpopular players who broke unspoken Tour etiquette, such as playing slowly or stepping in another player’s putting line. The Bandit expressed his displeasure by adeptly delivering his feces inside the box of a dozen balls routinely left in a player’s locker.

The important part of the book is Wheatcroft’s post-golf descent into alcohol dependency and how he spiraled down. Wheatcroft bravely spills his guts, tells his innermost thoughts and relives his lowest lows in this gut-wrenching account.

Post-golf, he worked at a financial institution in a pretty good job. Eventually, he began to feel unhappy, even empty, and didn’t understand why.

“When I competed in golf, if you kicked me or knocked me down, I’d get right back up and keep fighting,” he says. “But at work, I went through a month where I woke up every day and as soon as my feet hit the floor, I felt this black cloud was waiting for me.”

He didn’t know he was suffering from depression, a symptom likely caused by the silence of his post-golf life. Then came the straw that buckled the camel like a torn ACL. He had a big financial deal that was about to go through, which meant a much-needed commission for his family. Then he got a text from the client informing him that the deal was on hold for at least a year.

“It shouldn’t have shocked me, but I just snapped that morning,” Wheatcroft says. “I kind of had a mini-panic attack. My heart started racing, my hands started sweating, my face got hot. My wife was already out of the house, my kids were at school.

“It was 7:15 in the morning, I walked over and poured a big glass of vodka, put a little orange juice on top, sat down, turned on “SportsCenter” and realized after 20 minutes how relaxed I was and how I didn’t care about anything,” he says. “I got up, poured another one and that was the start of a very bad road. It numbed me enough to where I didn’t care about anything. And I loved that. I describe it as a warm blanket that would comfort me so I didn’t have to feel stress, joy — anything.”

Wheatcroft staggered through the next two and a half years as a functional drunk. His wife had no idea he was drinking, neither did friends at his workplace. He put on weight and was in and out of hospitals, admittedly in bad shape. They didn’t recognize the lie he was living.

“I was going to be dead within a year,” Wheatcroft said. “My liver was failing. All my organs were starting to fail.”

He finally checked into a treatment center, where he spent 35 days and learned a sobering truth, no pun intended. “I knew very quickly that alcohol wasn’t the problem,” he says. “It was just what I was using to mask the problem. I had to dig in and figure out why I hated myself and why I had to lean on alcohol.”

The answer came slowly. Without golf, he didn’t know who he was. The silence that follows.

“I lost track of my faith, my family, my friendships, my hobbies,” he says. “I let everything go by the wayside because I was so focused on being Steve the golfer and that’s all I knew I was, since I was 4 years old, and now I wasn’t. Steve the financial advisor wasn’t a bad thing but it just wasn’t the same.”

One setback during his treatment stay was when he was watching the telecast of the PGA Tour event at Colonial Country Club. Wheatcroft would commandeer the facility’s TV to watch golf on weekends.

“I’m watching Colonial and all of a sudden, Grayson Murray’s face was on the screen,” Wheatcroft recalls. “They had the year when he was born and the year when he died — now — and I just lost it because he was my ‘beacon of hope.’ He was the one who had beaten depression and beaten alcohol — not that you beat it, but you manage it. He’d won the Sony Open a few months earlier, $3.5 million, he was engaged to be married and everything seemed so perfect.”

It was three weeks into Wheatcroft’s stay and suddenly, he felt a reckoning. Wheatcroft believed he was in a good place and was almost fine to leave and then, Grayson …

“He looked like he had it all put together and here I am, still sitting in the treatment center trying to figure it out,” he says. “It made me take a hard look at my own recovery. We all watched the Grayson Murray story and we couldn’t relate, we couldn’t understand. In one of the recovery meetings, somebody told me, ‘It’s like the devil might not be here in the room with you but he’s outside in the parking lot doing push-ups, waiting for you. I’ll never forget that line. Just know that he’s always waiting for you.”

At this point, “Cocktails and Range Balls: One’s Too Many, Ten’s Not Enough” may sound like a downer. But in fact, it’s a tale of hope.

Wheatcroft improved, returned to his family and regular life in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, where he now resides. His next chapter is already in progress. He created The Mulligan Foundation, a nonprofit institution to help athletes with mental issues or substance abuse issues.

The PGA Tour has programs to help Tour players but Wheatcroft didn’t feel comfortable going through its system and meeting with strangers about what he was going through. A couple of former Tour players had made it known that they struggled with similar problems and were available to talk with anyone who needs help. Wheatcroft did call another Tour player, he didn’t want to say which one, and that started him on the road to getting help. As a result, Wheatcroft wants to be that guy who can provide help for the next person who needs it.

Wheatcroft’s story has already been out there for a few years. When he decided he wanted to be a resource for help, he wrote a letter he was going to send to 200 or so PGA Tour players. The message was something like, “Hey, most of you guys know me and those who don’t, here’s my story and what I’ve been battling for the last two years.”

At the last minute, Wheatcroft decided to post the letter on Twitter instead. “What could go wrong there?” Wheatcroft jokes. “Only four million people reading your life’s darkest secrets.”

It promptly went viral. He took his dog for a walk after posting, came home an hour later and his wife, Sarah, said, “You’re going to want to pick up your phone.”

Why, Steve asked? Has it been ringing?

“It hasn’t stopped since you left,” Sarah answered.

The post racked up nearly 100,000 views while he was out with the dog. The last time he checked, it had more than four million views. “And there wasn’t one piece of negative feedback, which is shocking for social media,” he says.

The recent publication of his book (available at Amazon.com; $23.99) revived interest in his journey. He also has news about the nonprofit Mulligan Foundation, which will officially kick off in May.

The Mulligan Foundation has given Wheatcroft a new mission and a new role. The Foundation’s mission is to provide education and resources to support mental health and wellness in athletes through programs and services, including counseling, support groups and workshops.

How important is mental health? Every case is different, but Gary Woodland underwent brain surgery a few years ago, was struggling with the aftereffects of it and an unseen mental pressure. He went public with his troubles and trauma, and within a few weeks won the Texas Children’s Houston Open in stunning fashion. It can’t be a coincidence that after the pressure of keeping his burden secret was lessened, he found success.

Wheatcroft is hopeful that Tiger Woods can succeed in getting the right kind of help for his problem, allegedly a reliance on painkillers. According to data, more than 5 million Americans suffer from a prescription opioid-use disorder.

“When you’ve experienced it yourself, you know the look,” Wheatcroft says. “Every time I’ve seen Tiger on TV in TGL, he looks high. I can tell by the way he talks, the way his face looks, the way he sweats. I just hope he has the right people around him that get him the right help because I believe he is in a bad place.

“But everybody has kept putting car keys in his hand and saying, ‘Here you go, man, you’re fine.’ I just know he needs help. He’s probably in a great deal of pain every day from what his body has been through. He’s a huge individual. He’s got a lot of muscle but you can see that he’s got a lot of stuff in his body that he shouldn’t have in his body, too. I hope he can find some peace and find a better path.”

He’s Tiger Woods, he certainly has the financial wherewithal to get the best medical help available. After his latest car accident, he wisely turned down the Ryder Cup captaincy and stepped away from golf to get himself right. He got approval to go out of the country to get help, wherever that takes him.

But, like Wheatcroft and others, he has a devil to face. You know, the one who’s out in the parking. The one doing the push-ups.

And he will eventually have to face what Wheatcroft and other athletes have faced, for better or for worse: The sounds of silence.

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▪️ Saying something without saying much
▪️ Brian Rolapp’s major move

The PGA Tour’s new CEO accomplished one important thing Wednesday morning here at his press conference. He extinguished concerns about “significant changes” he ignited with comments after his hiring months ago. Those included fears of cutting the PGA Tour schedule in half, deep-sixing the Tour’s smaller stops and turning the Tour into a closed shop.

Give Rolapp an A-minus for his confidence, diligence and humility. He came across as a regular guy. He was very positive, upbeat and reassuring. The only thing that kept him from getting an A grade was in regard to how he said he would be focused on transparency, yet he delivered only a few details of what’s to come — mostly in 2028, not next year — and deflected many questions with the deftness of past commissioners Tim Finchem and Jay Monahan.

In his defense, he admitted he didn’t have answers for many topics because decisions haven’t been made. “By no means is this a baked cake,” Rolapp said. He expects to have more announcements after the Future Competition Committee meets June 22. Until then, he said, “I can’t emphasize this enough, nothing is finalized.”

Some of the frosting was ready to spread, though.

The big news? Rolapp said the Tour plans to double the number of signature events to 16, expand those fields to 120 (up from the 70 or so currently) and have 36-hole cuts. That was a big W. Include the four majors, The Players Championship, the FedEx Cup playoffs and the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup and Rolapp sees a PGA Tour schedule that consists between 21 and 26 top-tier events. The season will kick off in late January with a marquee event at an iconic West Coast site so it can finish in the Sunday prime time window on the East Coast.

He pointed out that the Tour plays in only four of the top 10 markets in the U.S. and wants to get into some of the biggest markets that it’s not currently in, including New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boston. It’s an obvious idea and a smart one.

In addition, Rolapp mentioned changes to the season-ending FedEx Cup Playoffs may include getting match play involved in one or more of those events because fans and sponsors want more “drama.” Match play is always more popular as a concept than a reality. While it provides drama, it creates an uncertain length of play for broadcast partners and it can lead to final matchups that may not be marquee-level. Anyone remember the World Golf Championship Match Play finals between Jeff Maggert and Andrew Magee or Pierre Fulke and Steve Stricker?

The goal, Rolapp said, “is to build the best version of the PGA Tour that better serves our fans, players and sponsors.”

Meanwhile, some questions went essentially unanswered, such as:

◾ What is the Tour’s stance on the USGA’s proposed ball rollback?
◾ What is the future of the Tour’s strategic alliance with the DP World Tour (European Tour)?
◾ What progress has been made on LIV Golf reunification?
◾ How did the Tour spend some of Strategic Sports Group’s $1.5 billion investment into the Tour and how does it plan to use the rest?

It is clear that PGA Tour tournaments will be broken into two categories — the Haves and the Have-Nots. The signature events are the Haves, the other remaining events are the Have-Nots. Some of the latter will still apparently be played in the fall.

“A key consideration is establishing more consistent fields,” Rolapp said. “Our best events will have larger fields, ideally 120 players with a cut. This helps fans know who they will see. It helps our partners know what they’re investing in.”

Rolapp offered six items on the agenda of the Future Competition Committtee (which includes Tiger Woods) that is helping shape the remodeled Tour.

One topic of particular interest was the calendar. He said late January to early September is ideal. The former sounds as if the two Hawaiian stops may be toast and the latter sounds as if Labor Day weekend is where the Tour stops. He clarified the early September time frame as including the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup.

The second item was establishing more consistent fields. In other words, the same 120 players teeing it up most of the time.

He also said the committee is evaluating some form of promotion and relegation between the Haves (signature events) and Have-Nots (the other Tour events). Rolapp didn’t detail whether the promotion and relegation would happen only at season’s end or whether it was an in-season possibility that a player who performs well in regular events could jump up to the signature events immediately. There already is a system for that in the current format so the guess is that, yes, there will be in-season movement.

“What we envision is a merit-based system that leans into what makes professional golf so compelling, players earning their way to the top, with every event having greater meaning,” Rolapp said.

He compared it to English soccer where teams move between different leagues, like the Premier and Championship levels, based on performance. “For our members, the message is pretty simple: Play well and you earn the opportunity to compete in our biggest events and for more money,” he said.

Other notable comments by Rolapp:

About The Players Championship commercial that ended with the message “March will be major” and if he considers The Players a major championship: “I will say the one thing I learned is our marketing department’s really effective. They made one commercial spot and we’re all having this conversation. Kudos to them. Listen, I’m not entirely sure how majors become majors. The history is really interesting to study. That’s not for us to decide. What is important is that this is a pretty special event and that should be celebrated.”
Translation: Maybe that line was a bridge too far — you decide.

On possible reunification with LIV Golf: “I’m open to whatever makes the PGA Tour better. That is my brief. That’s what I’m focused on.”
Translation: Nope. That ship got torpedoed a long time ago.

On how many Tour events will go away: “There’s a misconception that scarcity means a dramatic cut in the number of events of the PGA Tour as we know it. Scarcity is about making the events we have matter more, so I think there will be a place for most of our events in our new model. What you’ll see in the model is more of a rationalization of the competition to make those events more meaningful.”
Translation: I’d rather not say how many events must die.

On sponsor exemptions in signature events: “It is my opinion we need a better competitive model because we should be delivering fields to the sponsors. I also have an appreciation that professional golfers are independent contractors. So their level of job security is in some part in these exemptions they have earned. So it’s a balance. We want to deliver the purest competition that fans want.”
Translation: We’re leaning toward meritocracy, not handouts. Signature event sponsors shouldn’t need exemptions with the star-studded fields we’ll deliver. Adding former stars such as Webb Simpson and Jordan Spieth is unnecessary.

Match play format in the playoffs: “All sorts of models are being talked about. Medal-match play, other things. Nothing has been decided and it would be a waste of time to debate that here.”
Translation: Medal-match play (the low 18-hole score) might be the leader in the clubhouse. TV might not hate that.

On whether The Players will move back to May, which has been rumored: “We’re open to anything. In our discussions, moving this tournament has not been part of it. So while we are operating with a blank sheet of paper, to date we have not discussed moving this tournament’s date.”
Translation: Just because we haven’t talked about it yet doesn’t mean we aren’t going to do it. The PGA Championship is still in the way in May … for now.

On whether the Tour would try to buy or invest in the five biggest golf properties that it doesn’t own — the four major championships and the Ryder Cup: “We focus on making our tour and our events better. I think it would benefit the entire golfing ecosystem to work closer together commercially.”
Translation: No comment. None of those events are for sale, are they? Asking for a friend.

Overall reaction: Rolapp doused the flames of public and player concern with his presentation. Expect the other shoe to drop in June when big issues are finalized. Forecast: Sunny, chance of flareups likely.

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▪️ Brooks Koepka’s savvy business move
▪️ Being square in a rounded world

The PGA Tour has spent 51 years not actively promoting its flagship event, The Players Championship, as golf’s fifth major. That would have been crass and presumptive, to be polite. Traditionalists would have handed the PGA Tour its rear end, if an organizational body had an actual rear end.

But here comes the Tour’s new CEO, fresh off his job with the National Football League, a sport run by billionaires whose leaders spend every waking moment devising ways for the NFL to take over every day of the week around the globe. The NFL is a big, big fish in America’s biggest sports pond. The new guy looks around, notices that golf has four major championships and the Tour somehow doesn’t control any of them.

So the first TV spot promoting the Players in March ends with the not-even-a-little-cryptic line, “March will be major.”

Fire lit. Golf Channel’s outspoken analyst Brandel Chamblee uses facts and figures to declare the Players not only a major championship but the one with the strongest field. The world explodes. Even famed oil firefighter Red Adair couldn’t extinguish this blaze if he was still alive. (Ol’ Red passed in 2004 and is buried in Houston.)

Rolapp merely dropped a hint. The result is a raging debate rolling over golf like a tsunami about whether the Players should be golf’s fifth major. That one line in a commercial got us right where the PGA Tour wanted us — putting “The Players” in the same sentence with “fifth major.” That doesn’t mean it will happen but talking about a concept like this is The First Big Step toward acceptance. Rolapp is playing us like a viola. (Violas are better than violins, by the way. You know why? They burn longer. Sorry, a musician friend told me that joke once and it stuck in my brain.)

Let’s address the big questions.

Does any other major championship have a better, stronger, deeper field than the Players?
Nope. Chamblee has that part correct but it comes with an asterisk. The LIV-PGA Tour rift means some top players are currently MIA at the Players. That’s Missing In Action, not Miami, in case acronyms aren’t your thing. The PGA Championship still invites some club professionals. The Masters includes a few amateurs and geezers and limits its field to only 90 or so players. The two Open championships have qualifiers around the world to fill in the spots not already claimed by exempt players. That’s a nice meritocracy but it leads to some players getting in who will never be heard from again, unlike, say, the top 100 in the world rankings.

Is four major championships a sacred number?
Nope again. That number has evolved. The Western Open was once considered a major. So was the North & South Open and the U.S. Amateur. When Bobby Jones won the Grand Slam in 1930, although some writers called it the Impregnable Quadrilateral, it was the U.S. and British Opens and Amateurs. The Masters hadn’t even been born yet.

Somehow, five majors work for the LPGA and PGA Tour Champions but for a long time, the Senior PGA was the only major tournament in senior golf. Sponsorship money and TV marketing subsequently led to five designated majors for the seniors. In women’s golf, the LPGA declined to acknowledge the Women’s British Open as a major for an embarrassingly long period of time.

But those are apples and armadillos compared with the PGA Tour. It isn’t certain when the four current majors gained their major status. Some say it was Arnold Palmer deciding to start playing the British Open in 1960, thus putting it on the radar of American fans. But even that may not be right because the PGA Championship was scheduled the week after the British Open until 1965, thus preventing most golfers from getting back from the United Kingdom in time to play the PGA. That’s why Ben Hogan went three-for-three in 1953 at the majors. He missed the PGA because ocean liners were the mode of travel then.

Jack Nicklaus was thrilled to win the 1972 U.S. Open to tie Jones with 13 major titles and pass him the next year with a victory at the PGA Championship. The U.S. and British Amateurs were still considered majors then and a player’s total included them. During the 1986 Masters broadcast, someone on the CBS broadcast team mentioned that Nicklaus was going for his 20th major title — 18 professional, two amateur. So 40 years ago, we still had six majors, not four.

That all faded away, somehow, as professional golf behind the Big Three — Palmer, Nicklaus and Gary Player — took the spotlight and relegated amateur golf to Bob Uecker’s seat in “the front row.” Nicklaus has joked more than once that he still doesn’t know how he lost two majors and went from 20 to 18. At least, he was probably joking.

A year ago, I wrote about respected golf instructor Hank Haney’s tweet. Wrote Haney: “I’m ready to do a 360 (sic) on the Players Championship and make it the fifth major. Golf desperately needs more meaningful events. Four majors and the Ryder Cup just isn’t enough.”

After assorted wisecracks, I got to the point that while I have always been a traditionalist and was never going to cave on the Players as a fifth major — in part, perhaps, to not give crusty ex-commissioner Deane Beman the satisfaction — I have been won over by 50 years of memorable Players Championships. I am OK with the Players being the fifth major if that’s what somebody thinks we should have.

Who’s going to decide this dilemma?
Well, that’s the biggest question of all. While the LPGA and PGA Tour Champions were able to simply decree some of their own properties as majors — I’m looking at you, Peter Jackson Classic, Evian Championship and Kaulig Companies Championship —there is no one ruling body for professional golf on Earth. Professional golf is a dog-eat-dog world fighting for corporate bucks and the folks at the Masters, the U.S. Golf Association, the Royal & Ancient Society and the PGA of America certainly aren’t going to vote for a fifth major that might in some way diminish their own events.

It is also a moot point until the PGA Tour and LIV Golf reach some kind of agreement. Which will be, in my estimation, in the month of Never-ember.

The Players can’t be a major without Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, ex-Players champ Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed and maybe even past champ Sergio Garcia, to name a few.

What happens if the Players does become the fifth major?
We’ll have to back-door some major status, won’t we. Guess what? That would mean Fred Funk, Craig Perks, Jodie Mudd and Si Woo Kim are major champions. It would mean Rickie Fowler finally got his major — in 2015. And Matt Kuchar, Tim Clark and Stephen Ames. Don’t let those names put you off the idea. Plenty of one-hit wonders have captured other official majors: Ben Curtis, Lou Graham, Scott Simpson, Shaun Micheel, Paul Lawrie, Gay Brewer and so on.

Nicklaus won three Players. So he’d have 21 majors. Tiger Woods won two, he bumps up to 17.

One thing in favor of the Players is what Haney said. Golf needs more meaningful events. The Tour’s signature events will never be meaningful with small fields (70 or so, barely bigger than LIV) and no cuts. And they aren’t played on courses nearly as iconic as the Stadium Course. Even if you despise that track, you have to admit the finishing holes are as exciting as any in golf.

As for those whining that any fifth major should be played outside the U.S., well, Europe and Australia had the last hundred years to create their own major championship and didn’t do it. To be a major, you have to attract all or most of the best players.

Only one tournament can claim that these days. And it’s the one that rose out of a swamp 44 years ago in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Should it be considered a major championship? That’s for an all-knowing, all-seeing being from a higher celestial plane to decide.

So, Tiger Woods, what do you say?

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▪️ Brooks Koepka’s savvy business move
▪️ Being square in a rounded world

Brooks Koepka made a smart business decision.

In returning to the PGA Tour this week? No, jumping to LIV Golf in 2022.

Forget about the loyalty of the move or the fact that he said he wasn’t jumping ship not long before he did, in fact, jump ship. Based strictly on money, his move was inarguably a good one.

Koepka guaranteed his financial future — if it even still needed guaranteeing by then after his first four major championship titles — by signing for a reported $120 million from the Saudi Public Investment Fund that backs LIV Golf. Koepka won another $45 million in four seasons at LIV. When he asked out of his deal, he lost a payment of an estimated $10-$15 million for 2026 but effectively cleared something like $150 million in the first four years.

Not even Scottie Scheffler did that and he dominated the PGA Tour during that span, winning 19 times and earning just over $91 million in prize money. No way a guy who won “only” five times in events that originally had mini-fields of just 48 players (far less competitive than PGA Tour fields two-and-a-half times that size) would have matched that. Plus, Koepka had suffered a knee injury that was potentially career-threatening or at least career-hindering. Taking the money was the right choice, the smart choice.

The price of LIV was traveling to the four corners of the globe — Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Mexico and the U.S. It’s not comfy-easy like private-jetting to the next PGA Tour stop a few states away.

The other big names who took LIV’s big money made wise investments, too. You can criticize Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith and Patrick Reed for the ways in which they left, perhaps, but not for their bottom lines. They earned far more money from LIV than they would have by playing the PGA Tour.

Now, Koepka is back and gets to eat his cake, too. Well, except for that $5 million he owes to some PGA Tour-related charity, according to his reconciliation package. And that’s still a tax deduction, which is about as painless as $5 million can be. The PGA Tour scored a win with CEO Brian Rolapp’s smart decision to create a pathway back to the Tour for a few of LIV’s biggest remaining stars.

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Koepka’s second defection doesn’t drive a stake into the heart of LIV Golf’s future. It barely makes a dent. Even if Rahm, Reed, Smith and DeChambeau bailed, LIV has the money to persevere. Losing all of them at once — especially DeChambeau — would be a public relations headache but not a death knell.

LIV Golf is about a different type of product, different format (team golf, love it or hate it) and a different audience than the PGA Tour. Although it is beyond ironic that the PGA Tour keeps getting more like LIV and LIV keeps getting more like the PGA Tour.

LIV increased its field size again to 57, almost the same size as the Tour’s no-cut signature events, and upped its tournament size from 54 holes to the Tour’s standard 72. LIV also expanded its qualifying process slightly, although it’s a still a tiny door to get through in order to get rich quick. Only three spots were available in open qualifying, two spots available based on Asian Tour results.

The PGA Tour has eight signature events in 2026 with half-fields of 72 (by standard PGA Tour field measurements). Five are no-cut events, like LIV, and three cut to the low 50. No-cut events are basically appearance fees or guaranteed money, like LIV offers. LIV played 15 tournaments in 2025, the Tour played 39 but there is talk that Rolapp and the Tour Policy Board may cut the future schedule to between 22 and 25 events. That would leave a lot of weeks where no one will be talking about the PGA Tour. Is less ever more? It didn’t work for the LPGA a decade ago.

Maybe the TGL indoor simulator league is supposed to generate PGA Tour interest in lieu of the current early-season schedule on the West Coast and Hawaii. Maybe, but those two Hawaiian events, especially, plus Palm Springs and Torrey Pines usually draw good TV ratings from folks in northern states digging out from snowstorms and freezing weather. Those viewers are desperate to see golf played on green grass. Discarding some or all of those stops seems curious, at best.

Every time I write something about LIV, especially my proprietary LIV Golf rankings that I quit computing after two seasons, I get hate mail from Tour fans who have no use for LIV. I also get hate mail from pro-LIV followers if I write something critical. Let’s just say that American golf fans have mixed feelings about LIV Golf, at best.

LIV seems very successful and popular when it plays overseas. Australia is a country of great golf courses and great fans that is horribly underserved by professional golf. The game’s top stars just don’t visit very often and when LIV comes to town, it’s a big deal. One of the most exciting finishes I’ve seen anywhere was the 2024 LIV Golf Adelaide event in which the all-Aussie team, led by Cam Smith, beat Stinger GC in a playoff. The crowd was massive and loud, it was a thriller and made for great TV.

Unless or until the Saudi PIF loses interest in funding LIV Golf or tires of the steady drain on its infinite resources, LIV Golf will continue as a valuable global golf property. The DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) has an agreement with the PGA Tour to be business partners through 2035 but if something happened to break that alliance and the DP World Tour joined with LIV Golf, the PGA Tour would suddenly have a partner with bottomless pockets, a long history, the world’s oldest major in the Open Championship and a whole system of feeder tours. That entity would be a formidable business opponent for the heretofore unchallenged PGA Tour.

That’s all pie-in-the-sky stuff, of course. It could happen but probably won’t. But didn’t we say the same thing about Brooks Koepka coming back to the PGA Tour?

Well, Brooks is back. Just enjoy the ride.

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