Remember when...
Asked and answered, as lawyers like to say.
Scheffler’s one-man show at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson over the weekend sent a Texas-sized message as the PGA Championship approaches. He had gone eight tournaments without winning (with five top-10 finishes) and there were questions about whether he had lost something since last year.
Think about that for a moment.
That’s the impossibly high standard Scheffler now plays against and the answer is no, he hasn’t slipped. No matter how good a player is, it’s hard to win, though Scheffler made it look pretty easy at the Byron Nelson.
Now that he’s done it, the Rory narrative has shifted to what he might do the rest of the season.
One line of thinking – and not a good one – is that McIlroy might take his foot off the gas and revel in what he’s finally accomplished. Enjoy the achievement. Bask in its glow. Wear the green jacket every day.
That’s not the McIlroy way.
The more reasonable scenario is that McIlroy will push just as hard and, having tossed the weight of the Masters chase aside like an old candy wrapper, he picks up several more majors in the next handful of years.
He’s heading to Quail Hollow for the PGA Championship next week, a spot where he’s won four times and lost in a playoff another time. That is the major he’s had targeted for months and where he will start as the player to beat.
If McIlroy gets the first two majors of the year – and the Players Championship – the fun will really begin.
That didn’t last long.
The tour is enjoying a purple patch when it comes to eyeballs tuning in to what’s happening.
It peaked, not surprisingly, when more than 19 million watched McIlroy’s will-he-or-won’t-he playoff victory in the Masters last month and the momentum carried over into the subsequent RBC Heritage, which peaked at more than six million viewers, giving the tour its largest (non-major) Sunday show since August 2023.
Prior to that, ratings through the Florida Swing were up almost every week leading into the Masters.
One more bit of good news for the tour: The reported 1.6 million viewers for the Zurich Classic's final round was more than 10 times greater than the 110,000 who tuned in to LIV Golf’s finale from Mexico City.
That’s what former CEO Greg Norman said after the OWGR shot down LIV’s request to receive ranking points in late 2023.
Norman is now off doing something else and there are multiple reports that new CEO Scott O’Neil and the OWGR are in discussions about how LIV Golf might qualify for ranking points.
In April, O’Neil told GGP, “I think the good news is we all want the same thing, right? We all want to see the best players in the world playing on the biggest stage. There isn’t a person on the planet that cares a lick about golf that wants anything more than that and we do too and so do the folks at the OWGR. Over time we have to figure out what the solve is.”
With Trevor Immelman now heading the OWGR and O’Neil striking a more moderate tone than his predecessor, it seems likely that an agreement will be reached. The first step is for LIV to submit an official application to receive points, something the league has yet to do under O'Neil, Immelman told the Associated Press last week.
Should LIV be granted world ranking points, they probably won’t be as rich as those earned on the PGA Tour but it will be a victory for LIV and another indication that it plans to be around for years to come.
They’re definitely on Captain Keegan’s list now and they may stay there.
Bradley’s top six won’t change much – Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Bryson DeChambeau, Russell Henley and Justin Thomas – but it’s pretty wide open after that.
McNealy has quietly played his way to 10th in the world ranking and seventh in the Ryder Cup standings with a game that has no real weakness. He’s a very good putter, which seems to count double in the Ryder Cup, and he has a very good chance to be at Bethpage in September.
Novak has become something of a star this spring. The way he plays and the way he carries himself – Novak comes across as a guy you’d like to play 18 holes with – has resonated with fans.
With U.S. team regulars like Patrick Cantlay, Tony Finau, Jordan Spieth and the struggling Max Homa not gaining much traction, the opportunity is there for players like McNealy and Novak to make this their time.
It still is though it seems less likely.
At the moment, Bradley sits 22nd in Ryder Cup points and has been emphatic that he will only play if he is one of the six automatic qualifiers. With almost half of the available Ryder Cup points still to be distributed, Bradley’s performance will determine which role he plays at Bethpage Black.
“He’s got to play great golf the rest of the year. I know he will. He’s working hard at it. We'll see how it all shakes out.”
Brandt Snedeker
“A big reason why we were able to pull [the 2024 Presidents Cup] out in Montreal was the way he played. I think the guys loved seeing his fieriness,” said Brandt Snedeker, who will captain the 2026 U.S. Presidents Cup team and serve as vice captain on Bradley’s Ryder Cup team this year.
“They got to see his competitiveness come through. They’re seeing that now as his way as a captain and the amount of care he has for these things comes through with the way he plays and the way he captains and the way he talks about it.
The tour season passed its halfway mark with the completion of the CJ Cup Byron Nelson. That’s 20 events down, 19 to go through the Tour Championship.
McIlroy is the runaway player of the year at this point, Scheffler and Schauffele are still chasing their first victories of the season and both J.J. Spaun and Justin Rose were one swing away from legacy-altering achievements.
The reality of only 100 players keeping their tour cards this year, down from the traditional 125, will bring an increased urgency through the summer, the pace-of-play firestorm has calmed down slightly (though the embers remain hot) and it’s getting late to change for the format for the Tour Championship this year.
Given the general discontent with how the Tour Championship is currently structured, it’s worth making a change this year because the event needs a refresh.
A match-play element, according to multiple reports, is off the table because it scares television and no one would care about the various consolation matches being played to keep players around. That means something more dramatic, perhaps cutting the field after every round to set up a Sunday shootout of some type.
Imagine getting to East Lake in August and saying, “Remember when this started with the leader already 10-under par?”
E-MAIL RON
Top: Rory McIlroy and caddie Harry Diamond celebrate McIlroy's slam.
JOEL MARKLUND, AUGUSTA NATIONAL