ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The last time the whole of the golfing world got together was at the Masters. That week there were plenty of questions about if those who defected to the LIV Tour would be competitive at a major.
Those questions were answered in spades by the time Sunday night rolled around, with Brooks Koepka finishing tied for second with Phil Mickelson. Patrick Reed tied for fourth.
Another major is about to tee off and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Koepka in the conversation over the weekend. Twenty-four majors have been conducted since 2017 and he has finished first or second in a third of them. He won the week prior to the Masters on LIV and finished tied for second there.
Dustin Johnson won last week’s LIV event and the way the golf course is set up for this week seems to be playing right into his hands.
Then there’s Reed, Mickelson, and Cameron Smith, who will look to successfully defend his title at The Open Championship this summer.
With one major in the book this year it seems that no matter the tour you’re on, good golf still means good results.
“To me I don't need to keep proving myself. I already have for many years. Same with all the other guys. It's just where we play at,” Johnson said. “It doesn't change the style of golfer we are.”
The narrative of LIV versus PGA Tour has been diminished slightly — for this week at least — as the usually vocal mouthpieces on either side haven’t said much of anything. Rory McIlroy one-word-answered a reporter who asked if he would sidestep this narrative moving forward (the word was “yeah”). Questions remain, certainly, about world ranking points and who will be on the Ryder Cup and if a future with the two major entities could ever exist. More fuel to the fire through the summer months.
But the Masters was the first time that golfers from both sides teed it up at the same event in more than six months. Now it’s barely been six weeks.
Jon Rahm sought out Phil Mickelson for a practice round at Augusta National, and Talor Gooch — twice a winner on LIV this year — at the PGA Championship. Life continues to chug along on planet golf.
In all, there are 18 golfers who defected to LIV teeing it up at the PGA Championship out of 156 entrants.
A win for a LIV golfer at the second major of the year in men’s golf wouldn’t necessarily stop the golfing world from spinning. Mickelson is Mickelson, but Reed possesses one of the finest greenside games in golf — something needed for success this week — while Johnson and Gooch are in form. Ditto Koepka.
Koepka admitted he “choked” away the Masters, but he’s not dwelling on it. As long as he can learn from it, Koepka said, he’ll be better off.
“Game is in good shape, feel healthy. It's been nice to just play some good golf, so looking forward to a good week,” he said.
It’s another major week, and Koepka has long proved he thrives on these stages and at this kind of golf course — regardless of which tour he plays on.
BIG CHANGES AT OAK HILL
Just eight of the 156 golfers in the field this week also played Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course for both the 2003 and 2013 PGA Championships.
No one will have an advantage over anyone else, however, as Oak Hill underwent a significant restoration three years ago under the eye of architect Andrew Green. The work took the golf course back to how it looked and played when it was first designed in the mid-1920s by the iconic Donald Ross.
Canadian golf course architecture expert and founder of Beyond the Contour Andrew Harvie says over time Ross’ East Course became too one-dimensional.
“When Andrew Green came in, he restored Ross’ character and brought variety back, especially around the greens where golfers can find sand, short grass, deep rough, hummocks, and more,” says Harvie. “It’s still a treed, parkland golf course, but with more variety and interest — just as Ross intended.”
The rough this week is not long, per se, but it is very thick. Ball-striking will be key, as a Ross signature is including shaved run-offs around the green (“You hit onto one of those and you’re totally hooped,” Derek Ingram, coach to Canadians Taylor Pendrith and Corey Conners, told Sportsnet).
Look for golfers who are long off the tee, solid scramblers, and good long-distance putters to have success. It’ll be a mental grind, and this is an impressive major-championship test.
There’s four par-4s longer than 500 yards and only two par-5s, although each measure longer than 600 yards. The par-3 third hole will play of 230 yards with a green that one journalist described as the “size of one’s dinner table.”
“It's a combination of everything,” two-time PGA Championship winner Rory McIlroy said about what will be key this week at Oak Hill, “but I think discipline is going to be a huge factor this week.”
QUESTIONS AROUND SPIETH’S HEALTH
Jordan Spieth is looking to become just the sixth male golfer in history to win the Grand Slam. And yet, that story is flying under the radar this week.
Spieth, who withdrew from his hometown PGA Tour event the AT&T Byron Nelson last week, was sidelined with a wrist injury. He arrived Tuesday with a hefty roll of white tape around the injury. He also had black Kinesio tape running from his wrist to his elbow during his practice round.
He did not speak to media prior to the first round, but signs are pointing to him trying to give it a go this week.
Spieth’s results at the PGA Championship have been hit-and-miss. He has two top-10s in 10 starts but hasn’t finished better than tied for 30th any of the last three seasons.
WHICH RORY WILL WE SEE?
Carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders finally got to Rory McIlroy.
After missing the cut at the Masters (he also missed the cut at The Players Championship), McIlroy skipped the RBC Heritage and in the process forfeited $3 million as players are only allowed to miss one designated event per season. He finished tied for 47th at the Wells Fargo Championship, on a golf course he’s won three times previous.
McIlroy’s wife, Erica, is from Rochester. And there should be some hometown-by-association inspiration this week — he likes falls and Christmases here, plus the outdoorsy opportunities for activities at the Finger Lakes — and yet, he didn’t quite sound reassured that success was imminent.
Some nice strides have been made since his last PGA Tour event (he even spent a few hours at Tiger Woods’ home after Woods noticed something with his swing and texted McIlroy) but navigating life’s mental hurdles are a different beast.
“It wasn’t really the performance of Augusta (the missed cut) that’s hard to get over,” said McIlroy, “it’s just more … the mental aspect and the deflation of it and sort of trying to get your mind in the right place to start going forward again, I guess.”
BATTLE FOR NO. 1
The top two golfers in the world should be considered favourites once again at the 105th PGA Championship.
Jon Rahm, a four-time winner already this season, and Scottie Scheffler, who has won twice, are seemingly doing everything right in 2023.
Rahm is No.1 in strokes gained: total, and all of his ball-striking, driving, and putting has been elite of the elite so far this season. He nearly won for a fifth time the last time he teed it up on the PGA Tour, finishing runner-up to Tony Finau at the Mexico Open.
Scheffler, meanwhile, won the WM Phoenix Open earlier this year (a designated event) and The Players Championship. Scheffler’s statistics may be even more impressive than Rahm’s from tee-to-green, but his putting his holding him back from winning even more often (he’s 102nd in strokes gained: putting).
Still, the heavyweight duo is looking at each other this week at another major championship with a good chance it’ll be one or the other lifting the trophy come Sunday night.
“I wouldn’t say Jon doesn’t motivate me. I think any time you see guys playing really good golf, you want to be doing the same thing,” said Scheffler. “So, whether it's Jason Day beating me last week down the stretch or Jon just beating the crap out of me at a couple different tournaments this year, it's always motivating when you don't do what you want to do, and that's usually trying to win the tournament.”
In all, 99 of the top 100 golfers in the world are teeing it up at Oak Hill Country Club with Will Zalatoris — on the shelf with a season-ending back injury — the only one not here.
