It’s only 87 days until the start of the Masters (of course we’re counting; aren’t you?), and former Augusta National champions dominated the off-season news cycle.
Phil Mickelson, a winner of three green jackets, uncharacteristically played the role of peacemaker in the ongoing war of words between his LIV Golf brethren and their PGA Tour counterparts. In response to a conciliatory tone struck by frequent LIV critic Rory McIlroy, Mickelson posted on social media that “it’s time for me and others to let go of our hostilities and work towards a positive future.”
Jon Rahm, Augusta’s defending champion, has been suspended by the PGA Tour after he reversed course and signed with LIV Golf. That move created a domino effect on the FedEx Cup points list for eligibility to this season’s big-money “signature events.”
Tiger Woods, a five-time Masters winner, recently put his game on public display for the first time in eight months, which is news in itself. But his proclamation during an apparently pain-free exhibition with his son, Charlie, at the PNC Championship that he intends to compete monthly on the PGA Tour this year further stokes the anticipation for the second week of April and the Masters.
Ángel Cabrera, a two-time major champion who recently was paroled from prison in his native Argentina after convictions on domestic violence incidents, has been reinstated by the PGA Tour as he begins a comeback, Golfweek’s Adam Schupak reported. It’s uncertain whether Cabrera, 54, the 2009 Masters champion, would make his first appearance at Augusta National since 2019.
And Patrick Reed, the 2018 Masters champion whose $750 million defamation lawsuit against numerous media outlets and commentators had been dismissed twice, was ordered by a federal judge in Florida to pay the defendants’ legal fees and associated costs. Reed and his attorney, Larry Klayman, didn’t take the news well, Sports Illustrated’s Bob Harig reported.
Meanwhile, the Masters field is shaping up to be among the smallest in years. Eleven players earned spots via top-50 positions in the final Official World Golf Ranking of 2023: Ryan Fox (No. 28), Min Woo Lee (33), Denny McCarthy (34), Justin Rose (36), Will Zalatoris (38), Harris English (40), Eric Cole (41), J.T. Poston (43), Adrian Meronk (48), Adam Hadwin (49) and Nicolai Hojgaard (50).
Mackenzie Hughes and Carl Yuan received early Christmas presents courtesy of Jon Rahm when the No. 3-ranked player in the world joined LIV Golf. With the Spaniard’s defection and subsequent suspension by the PGA Tour – he remains eligible to compete on the DP World Tour – all other players moved up a spot in the year’s final FedEx Cup standings. Hughes improved from No. 51 to No. 50 and became eligible for all “signature events” in 2024. Yuan moved up to No. 125 and earned a full exemption for the season. READ MORE
The PGA Tour’s legal expenses soared in 2022 amid the court fight with LIV Golf, and commissioner Jay Monahan got a huge pay raise, according to the tour’s tax filings that were obtained by Sportico. READ MORE
The PGA Tour has trimmed its list of potential investors to a consortium led by Fenway Sports Group and turned to Strategic Sports Group, an outside investment firm, to continue negotiating with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The U.S. tour and the DP World Tour want to finalize the “framework agreement” announced June 6 that would create PGA Tour Enterprises, a for-profit company that would operate outside of the tax-exempt PGA Tour. READ MORE and MORE
A law firm representing 21 PGA Tour players sent a letter to tour leadership in which they demand more transparency in negotiations with LIV Golf. Subsequently, the tour updated the players on the state of the negotiations. READ MORE and MORE
Wells Fargo will not renew its deal as title sponsor of the PGA Tour’s annual stop in Charlotte, North Carolina, after this year’s event, the Charlotte Business Journal reported. The news comes after a reported mandate by the tour that sponsors pay an even larger percentage of the rapidly growing purses as the tour attempts to keep up with rival LIV Golf’s massive infusion of Saudi money in the professional game. The purse at the Wells Fargo event, for example, soared from $9 million in 2022 to $20 million in 2023 as one of the tour’s “signature events.” READ MORE
Cognizant will title-sponsor the PGA Tour’s long-running stop in southeast Florida through 2030, the tour announced. Formerly known as the Honda Classic, the tournament has been played at PGA National Resort’s Champion Course in Palm Beach Gardens since 2007. Japanese automaker Honda had sponsored the event since 1982 but dropped its backing last year for a tournament that debuted on tour in 1972 as the late entertainer Jackie Gleason’s Inverrary Classic. This year’s tournament dates will be February 28-March 3. READ MORE
Scottie Scheffler was voted by his peers as the 2023 player of the year after Jon Rahm, who defected last month to LIV Golf, was suspended by the tour and declared ineligible for an award which he had been favored to win. Also in the balloting, Eric Cole was named rookie of the year. READ MORE
PGA Tour fans might need a program to keep up with NBC’s analysts early in the season. After NBC failed to reach a contract agreement with longtime analyst Paul Azinger late last year, the network launched a “rolling audition” for its next leading voice, Front Office Sports reported. Kevin Kisner had the honor at last week’s Sentry on Kapalua, Hawaii, and will get an encore next month at the WM Phoenix Open. Brandel Chamblee, the lead analyst on NBC’s Golf Channel, also will get a shot, according to the report, as will David Duval, Brad Faxon and Justin Leonard. READ MORE
Harrison Endycott won the recent PGA Tour Q-School in a return to direct access to the big tour, but Hayden Springer claimed the quest for heartstrings in perhaps golf’s biggest emotional struggle just one month after the death of his 3-year-old daughter. They were among the five players who earned full exemptions on the PGA Tour this year. READ MORE
PGA Tour University, which provides access for college players to the tour and its developmental circuits, will expand by five players, to the top 25 in its year-long ranking of NCAA Division I, plus the player of the year in Division II. READ MORE
The debut season of “Full Swing,” a Netflix documentary about life on the PGA Tour, was watched for 53.1 million hours from its debut in February through June, the streaming service announced. The show ranked 267th on Netflix during that period. READ MORE
Brendan Moran, Sportsfile via Getty Images
LIV Golf will return to Doral Resort this season, according to former President Donald Trump, who owns the Miami-area resort. LIV played its season-ending tournament at Doral last year, one of three stops at Trump-owned courses for the Saudi-funded tour.
LIV did not announce a return to Doral, a former PGA Tour site, upon releasing its 2024 schedule. Trump made the announcement on social media without disclosing the dates, but LIV has not confirmed Doral as a tournament site.
LIV has slotted April 5-7, the weekend before the Masters, for a U.S. tournament to be announced. Seven LIV players – Sergio García, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Jon Rahm, Patrick Reed, Charl Schwartzel and Bubba Watson – hold lifetime exemptions to the Masters as past champions. READ MORE
Americans Talor Gooch, Peter Uihlein, Harold Varner III and Matthew Wolff were involved in trades ahead of the tour’s third season, which begins next month in Mexico. READ MORE
Finland’s Kalle Samooja, Zimbabwe’s Kieran Vincent and Japan’s Jinichiro Kozuma played their way onto LIV Golf for 2024 via the inaugural LIV Golf Promotions tournament. Vincent, who was one of the league’s reserves in 2023, joins older brother Scott on the tour. READ MORE
Rising Swedish star Ludvig Åberg rejected a second overture from LIV Golf, joining European Ryder Cup teammate Viktor Hovland of Norway in snubbing the Saudi-funded tour during the off-season, just days after Spain’s Jon Rahm joined the rival league. “I will never try to chase money,” Åberg said in an interview on Sweden’s SVT Sport TV show that was translated into English. READ MORE
LIV’s Harold Varner III was scheduled for a January 19 court appearance in Charlotte, North Carolina, after he was arrested December 28 on suspicion of driving while impaired, according to WBTV, which cited court and jail records. Varner, 33, resides in Charlotte and grew up in nearby Gastonia. READ MORE
Germany’s Bernhard Langer, the ironman of golf, will make his final appearance on the DP World Tour this summer in his hometown of Munich at the BMW International Open, the tour announced.
Langer, 66, is a 42-time winner on his home tour. Since turning 50, he has won a record 46 times on the Champions Tour. As a two-time Masters champion, Langer still has a spot each spring at Augusta National in an event that is on the European tour’s schedule but not run by the tour.
Langer has made a record 23 appearances in the BMW International, though none since 2012, and he has yet to win it, finishing runner-up a record five times. The tournament will be played July 4-7 at Golfclub München Eichenried. READ MORE
The Commercial Bank Qatar Masters was added to the tour’s schedule as the fifth and final stop in the Middle East. The tournament will be played February 8-11 at Doha Golf Club. READ MORE
Twenty exemptions to the DP World Tour will be on the line in 2024 as the developmental Challenge Tour plays 29 tournaments in 18 countries, the tour announced in releasing the schedule. The season begins next month with the first of four events in South Africa that will be co-sanctioned with the Sunshine Tour. READ MORE
TAP-INS
The Official World Golf Ranking system announced two updates to its formula, including a new points-distribution curve for the increasing number of small fields at elite-level tournaments such as the PGA Tour’s “signature events.” READ MORE
France’s Victor Dubuisson, a former European Ryder Cup player, withdrew from the LIV Golf Promotions tournament and told the French national sports daily L’Équipe that he is retiring as a touring pro. Dubuisson, 33, a two-time European Tour winner, withdrew from three of his eight starts in 2023 and conceded in the L’Équipe interview that “I’ve given up on my life as a professional golfer for some time,” adding “the solitude had become extremely heavy.” Dubuisson burst onto the international scene with a victory in late 2013 at the Turkish Airlines Open before he finished runner-up to Jason Day in the 2014 WGC Match Play. Dubuisson added top-10s in two of the 2014 major championships and compiled a 2-0-1 record on Europe’s victorious 2014 Ryder Cup team. READ MORE
A former club professional who was accused of stealing nearly $1 million from the two municipal courses in Springfield, Massachusetts, that he oversaw in 2007-16 was acquitted by a federal jury on 18 of 20 fraud-related charges, Mass.Live reported. Kevin M. Kennedy, 44, of East Longmeadow was found guilty on one count of tax conspiracy and one count of making a false statement to a bank. One day before jury selection, Kennedy pled guilty to four counts of tax evasion. He is scheduled to be sentenced in March. READ MORE
Mike Scully, a longtime club professional in Florida and Illinois, is facing three felony charges related to merchandise sales from Streamsong Resort in Bowling Green, Florida, where he worked for 1½ years until last July, according to a report by Tim Cronin in Illinois Golfer. Scully faces arraignment on Tuesday in Bartow, Florida, on charges of grand theft, scheming to defraud and selling merchandise worth nearly $100,000, according to the report. At the time of his arrest, Scully, 58, had been the general manager and director of golf at Kinsale Golf Club, which is under construction in North Naples, Florida, but was fired by the club. Scully, a PGA of America member since 1999, is the former head professional at Medinah Country Club in suburban Chicago and was the Illinois PGA Section’s professional of the year in 2008. READ MORE
A co-owner of the Tri-County Golf Ranch in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio, was released from a local hospital after being treated for a gunshot wound to a leg after reportedly being shot by a Springdale police officer who responded to a call about two dogs attacking a man inside the business. Lawrence King, 62, of Monroe, Ohio, was struck by the gunfire when an officer fired at the dogs, both of whom were owned by King’s business partner and killed in the incident. READ MORE
The USGA will be playing five of its national championships at two Maryland courses into the mid-2030s. Woodmont Country Club in Rockville will host the 2025 and 2026 U.S. Adaptive Opens and the 2028 U.S. Junior Amateur, and Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase will be the site of the 2027 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur and the 2035 U.S. Senior Amateur. READ MORE
Sand Valley, the central Wisconsin resort built by the family of Bandon Dunes creator Mike Keiser, will host four USGA tournaments in the next decade: 2026 U.S. Mid-Amateur, 2029 U.S. Junior Amateur, 2030 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur and 2034 U.S. Girls’ Junior. READ MORE
The Dunes Golf & Tennis Club on Sanibel Island, Florida, celebrated the reopening of its front nine, 15 months after Hurricane Ian ravaged the southwest Gulf Coast, killing 149 and causing $112 billion in damage. The semi-private Dunes is the final course in the region to reopen, the Fort Myers News-Press reported. READ MORE
Oakland Hills broke ground on a new $104 million clubhouse after fire in early 2022 gutted the 100-year-old facility in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Crain’s Detroit Business reported. Oakland Hills’ championship resume features six U.S. Opens, three PGAs and a Ryder Cup. READ MORE
The number of rounds played in the U.S. jumped 8.2 percent in November compared with the same month a year earlier, boosting the annual increase to 3.6 percent for the first 11 months of 2023, according to Golf Datatech’s National Rounds Played Report. READ MORE
Jon Rahm, Lilia Vu and Steve Stricker were voted 2023 players of the year in their respective divisions – men’s, women’s and seniors – by the Golf Writers Association of America. Rahm, who since has defected the PGA Tour for LIV Golf, and Vu had been named POYs by Global Golf Post in the magazine’s December 4 issue. READ MORE
Two weeks after becoming the first Russian to earn LPGA status with a T23 finish at Q-Series, Nataliya Guseva won the Ladies European Tour’s Q-School to merit cards on both tours. Guseva, 20, played college golf at Miami and won last season on the developmental Epson Tour. READ MORE
Julieta Granada, a one-time winner on the LPGA Tour, announced her retirement as a touring professional. Granada, 37, of Paraguay, intends to focus on motherhood and her job as a performance coach at the International Junior Golf Academy in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida. READ MORE
The Ladies European Tour released its 2024 schedule, which begins next month in Kenya and will feature 31 events in 20 countries. READ MORE
The Asian Tour will open its 2024 schedule next month with the return of the Malaysian Open. READ MORE
Coaches were named for the U.S. and International teams for this summer’s Palmer Cup. LSU’s Garrett Runion and Arizona State’s Matt Thurmond will lead the Americans, and Scotland’s Stew Burke and Ireland’s Aaron O’Callaghan will guide the Internationals. The men’s and women’s collegiate matches will be played July 5-7 at Congaree Golf Club in Ridgeland, South Carolina. READ MORE
After two decades of running the PGA Tour’s TPC Network of public and private courses, John Hugghins has retired as senior vice president of TPC Network Operations. Victor “Vic” Aliprando Jr. has been promoted to head TPC Network. READ MORE
Dustin Roberts has been promoted to CEO of the Golf Coaches Association of America, replacing Gregg Grost, who has been named CEO emeritus. READ MORE
Troon has acquired Eventive Sports. READ MORE
Compiled by Steve Harmon