18 Parting Thoughts From The PGA Championship: Xander's Narrative-Shifting Win, Bryson's Image Turnaround and So Much More

Michael Reaves. Getty Images.

What an unforgettable week at Valhalla, in the truest sense of the word. There is so much to discuss. Here are 18 Parting Thoughts from Valhalla. 

1. For a sport that moves so slowly, legacies change awfully quickly. We can officially retire the Xander can’t close narrative. 

It wasn’t just that he won his first major championship; it’s the way he did it. That bogey 6 on the par-5 10th was gut-check time. Viktor Hovland was making moves up ahead, and Xander looked poised to unravel. He responded with a dart into the par-3 11th. Birdie. A 3-wood down the middle on 12, then a super aggressive high cut into a back-right pin. Birdie. 

A gutsy up-and-down on 17 set up a dream scenario: birdie a par 5 to win your first major championship. After he tugged his tee shot on the edge of the bunker I figured he’d hit a short iron to 130 yards and try to get up and down from there. Instead, he played supper aggressively yet again and pushed his second up short of the green. A perfect spot. It was as pretty straightforward pitch on a Tuesday afternoon but not so much with thousands of people watching you try to do something you’ve never done in the game. He played a nice one but not a perfect one, leaving an ass-clencher for the win. It snuck in. 

“I’ve become very patient not knocking off any wins in the last couple years,” Schauffele said. “The people closest to me know how stubborn I can be. Winning, I said it earlier, is a result. This is awesome. It's super sweet. But when I break it down, I'm really proud of how I handled certain moments on the course today, different from the past.”

It’s all different now. All it took was a 65 at Valhalla Golf Club. 

2. The turnaround in Bryson’s public image has been truly remarkable. He had the most support of any of the contenders on Sunday afternoon. Four years ago he was at the center of attention at every tournament he played and he seemed about ready to burst. Now, thanks to the relative anonymity of LIV and his ability to put out his own content on YouTube, where he feels he can be himself, it’s a completely different vibe in his world.

“The future, it just seems so much more positive than where I was. I felt stuck back in that time frame…I've worked really hard to have people help hopefully understand who I am a little bit better. YouTube has been a great platform to help that out. The Break 50 series are a lot of fun. I love doing it. It's a lot of fun. It's a challenge that's never been done nor accomplished without any strokes. So it just keeps my brain fresh and in an entertainment mode, and realizing what the game is all about, not just for myself and winning money or winning trophies but entertaining, as well.”

He’s certainly entertaining. The emotions after making that putt on 18, the way he interacted with the crowd afterward. He’s leaning into his entertainer era and it clearly hasn’t come with any negative impacts on his golf game. All is well in the world of Bryson. 

3. Regarding Mr. Scottie Scheffler and the events of Friday morning. I don’t have much to add beyond it was just a really, really horrible confluence of events. A horrific accident that killed a volunteer. A resulting backup that caused the traffic jam that Scheffler was innocuously trying to get around. A Louisville police officer told me there’d been a crew of officers selected to work this event who are familiar with professional golf, its players and protocols. The officers who arrested Scheffler were, according to this other officer, not part of that group and only on-site because of the accident. None of this would’ve happened had that man not been killed. 

It’s no one’s fault, per se. Sometimes terrible things just happen. I do, however, believe that Scottie’s 66 on Saturday after stretching in a jail cell is one of the 10 will only grow in stature as the years pass on. He was running on pure adrenaline, and he hit a wall on Saturday morning once what happened had settled in—but man, what a masterclass in compartmentalizing on Saturday.

4. This is some real golf sicko stuff, but I so enjoyed watching the guys take advantage of the perfect lies on the zoysia fairways. The ball sits right on top of the grass, which is a little spongy in texture. That allows them to compress the ball just a little bit more with the strike and launch 200+-yard shots way up in the air. It’s always my answer when people ask what’s the difference between a scratch player and a tour pro: the ability to launch 4-irons and 3-woods way up in the air and have them actually hold greens. They can fly a 3 wood over a bunker and still stop it on the putting surface. If I hit a 3-wood into a green, it’s only staying there if it lands 10 yards short and creeps on. So they already have that ability on all grass types, but especially so this week. Here’s how Ludvig Aberg described it.

“I love the zoysia…It's quite nice because the zoysia grass in the fairways, you can actually launch it pretty high with the irons because it's sitting up so high. You can get a little bit more smash on it.”

The audio that that extra smash produced, plus the backdrop of lush and dense Louisville hardwood trees—it was a joy to watch the best players in the world strut their stuff this week.

5. On the flip side, I didn’t love the setup this week. Loved the fairways. Didn’t love anything else. There are certain elements that are out of anyone’s control, like the Louisville humidity and rain, which kept the greens really soft all week. But there are things they can control—namely, there were such few penalties off the tee. The rough wasn’t so bad, yes, but even worse was setting up the course so that nothing went in the water.

Here’s what I mean. The second hole is a big dogleg left, with Floyd’s Fork (a water hazard) running down the left side. The hole is so, so much harder if that water is in play. It makes the tee shot more nervy and encourages player to play safely right, which leaves a longer approach shot into the green. 

Only the water wasn’t in play. Like, at all. Xander Schauffele hit a borderline snap-hook on the 2nd hole on Sunday. That’s the exact shot that should go in the water. But because the rough was so long there that ball held up, and he had a way shorter shot in because he’d cut off some of the corner. He knocked it up by the green and got up-and-down for par. Surely that’s a way, way better hole if the water’s actually in play? That seems like kind of a no-brainer?

Given the off-course events this week and the fact that the PGA of America no longer owns this property, it’s almost certain a major championship will not return to Valhalla. It’s a beautiful golf course in a beautiful area, and the members I met were lovely people. But, statistically and eye-test wise this was by far the easiest major championship setup in history. 

6. But, and it’s a huge but, the golf course and the setup produced a super bunched leaderboard filled with stars. It’s a feature of the course, not a bug. There’s just not a lot of junk. Guys play from the same spot a lot. And when that happens, as Justin Thomas said in his pre-round presser, it’s just really hard for anyone to separate themselves. 

The architecturally inclined will tell you that’s the feature of a bad tournament course, that the goal of championship golf is to identify and separate the best players. I’d argue that in this day in age the principle motivation is attracting eyeballs. This is an entertainment product. I fully realize I am inside a golf bubble that cares about things like shot values and scoring averages and all that. Golf broadcasts aren’t trying to cater to people like myself because we’re going to watch anyway. I suspect the ratings this week will be high because, as stated previously, a lot of big names in the mix. It has nothing to do with the golf course. The average fan isn’t turning on the coverage and thinking man, I wish guys had more options off the tee, or I wish that hillside were mowed so as to be more penal. They want drama. And this, this produced drama.

Of course, it’s not so black and white. You wouldn’t want to play a wide-open muni where every guy’s gonna be a million under and no one struggles. But that wasn’t the case this week. Jon Rahm, Wyndham Clark, Ludvig Aberg and Matt Fitzpatrick all missed the cut. As far as entertainment goes, Valhalla produced. 

7. There’s a giant chasm between the online ecosystem and real, tangible life. Often times I feel like I live inside Golf Twitter, and Golf Twitter relentlessly ripped those big-letter HALLA hats that were in the fan shop this week. You know the one’s I’m talking about. According to the internet they were offensively hideous and anyone who buys one is lame, stupid, a cuck. 

What was the hat that flew off the shelves quickest this week? That the most people rocked with pride? The HALLA hats. It’s a reminder that there’s a big, big world outside the confines of the 6-inch screen attached to our hips. It’s vital to touch grass. This was Max Home’s message, too, when he was asked about fan interest and the state of professional golf. 

“I do feel like the internet probably makes it seem worse than it really is,” Homa said Tuesday. “It's a very small community and they're incredibly loud.”

8. All those words about Valhalla should not be confused for anything negative regarding the Louisville fans, who were as good as I can remember. For the most part: Loud and excited but respectful, well-served and jovial but not shitfaced. The level of support they provided Scottie Scheffler on Friday has only been equaled twice since I’ve been doing this: for Tiger at the 2019 Masters and for Rory at the 2022 Open Championship. 

9. Speaking of grass…I’ve never seen such lush lawns as I have here in Louisville. It makes sense—they’re all Kentucky bluegrass, and we’re in Kentucky. I’m also particularly wowed by such greenery because I live in California, where most new homes don’t even attempt to keep a lawn given all the water shortages and restrictions. They’re all turf. It almost feels unfair how easy it is to keep a beautiful patch of grass in your backyard here. 

10. I find Sahith Theegala’s outlook on himself and professional golf fascinating. I remember asking him last year about his world ranking—he was No. 29 at the time, and I asked him what it felt like being a top 30 player on the planet. 

“I’m not. I’m overrated. You’re telling me there’s only 28 guys better than me? No way.” On Thursday, after he shot 65 at the PGA Championship, I asked him if he’s starting to feel like the No. 12 player in the world. Same answer. 

“Still not really. It's weird, I don't feel like there's only 11 players in the world better than me, and obviously with the whole Tour/LIV thing, that's not the case. There's guys out on LIV that are better golfers than me from an objective standpoint, and subjective. But I definitely feel myself getting better on and off the course.”

Hmmm. Is this a character trait? Is he a bit self-deprecating, like Joel Dahmen? In his senior year at Pepperdine, Theegala swept all the major college player of the year awards. Did he feel like the best player then?

“Yeah, I did feel like I was the best player that year. I don't know if I'm ever going to feel that way again. We all strive to get to that point. But yeah, sometimes you look at the guys on the top of the world, and you're like, Am I ever going to be like Rory or Xander? And the answer is no. Or even Brooks; the answer is no. I'm just hoping I can find my own path again because that's what led to my success my senior year of college.”

There is no one “right” attitude in this sport. What works for Brooks doesn’t work for Scottie, and what works for Scottie doesn’t work for Bryson. It’s extremely rare, however, to find a guy as humble and realistic as Sahith. There was a time when he felt like those guys, back when he carried his own bag at Pepperdine and swept the national player of the year awards.  But this is a step up in competition, and he knows it, and he’s not sure he’ll ever have that feeling again, but he’s going to give everything he has to get there. Easy guy to root for.

11. I’d love to know what was running through Jon Rahm’s head as he slammed his trunk shut on Friday afternoon. The whispers around golf, and these were somewhat confirmed by Rahm himself at the Masters, is that he believed his decision to join LIV would hasten a deal between the PGA Tour and Saudi Public Investment Fund. That, obviously, has not materialized. And so he’s been playing on LIV Golf, and playing solidly, but unless you win on LIV it’s mostly an anonymous result. He’s had two chances this year to play against Rory and Scottie and Viktor and the like and he went T45 at the Masters and an MC Hammer here at the PGA Championship. That broke his streak of 18 straight made cuts in majors, which was the longest going. 

He surely prepared himself for this reality, where he goes to LIV and there’s no deal. But he probably didn’t’ think it would happen. He’ll now have to wait another month to get another chance to stack himself up against the best player on the planet. That can’t feel great. 

12. Two of the game’s brightest young stars recently reunited with men who helped usher them toward greatness. Collin Morikawa first took a lesson from Rick Sessinghaus at an executive course at the age of 8. Sessinghaus isn’t the normal swing instructor who speaks in terms like thoracic or pronate. He’s part coach, part golf therapist. Much of his work centers around trying to get his players into flow state, loosely defined as a delicate but powerful mental space of total focus and minimal thought. Sessinghaus coached Collin all the way up to last year’s Ryder Cup. They’d won two majors together, but Collin hadn’t won in two years and felt like he needed a change. What followed was a brief foray with Mark Blackburn, Golf Digest’s No. 1 coach in America and instructor to Max Homa, Justin Rose and many other tour pros. Collin won his first start after working with Mark in Japan, but a flat start to this year had him slightly in his feels. 

“I kind of started talking to Rick, just to reach out as a friend, to be honest, not even for the golf swing, just more to talk. Sometimes you need that. Sometimes you need someone to just talk it through and get back to playing golf. We've always been the kind of player-coach where it's just more about going out and having fun -- not having fun, but just being creative and hitting shots. That's what we've kind of gone back to. Just keeping things simple right now and just being able to see our shots, visualize them, things that I've done in the past. Not really trying to reinvent the wheel right now.”

His fellow Class of ‘19er, Viktor Hovland, also made a switch late last year. But it wasn’t after a barren stretch of play like Collin’s. Quite the contrary—it came after the best stretch of golf of his life. Joe Mayo helped overhaul Hovland’s chipping, historically his Achilles heel, and that improvement keyed a torrid run last summer. He won the FedEx Cup and might’ve been the best player on the planet during the Ryder Cup in Italy. Why, then, would he make a change?

No Laying Up’s Kevin Van Valkenburg wrote a great story explaining this in detail, but Hovland’s a really curious guy who goes down rabbit holes. That, and Mayo’s a unique personality that can be too much for some. Still—why fix something that isn’t broken? Hovland’s game took a major dive this year. After posting seven consecutive finishes of T13 or better to close 2023 his best finish in seven PGA Tour events was a T19 at Riviera. So he reached out to Mayo and saw immediate results this week. 

“He knows my swing really well,” Hovalnd said Thursday. “He's really, really smart, and just has a way of looking at my swing and kind of knowing what it is right away. Felt like I got some really good answers, was able to apply some of the feels right away, and I saw improvement right away.”

These are both case studies in the ever-active mind of any golfer, but especially the professional. They’re never satisfied. They might feel something that doesn’t show up in their scores but they feel it, and this is an individual sport, and so that’s all that matters. Tiger Woods left Butch Harmon after playing literally the best golf anyone’s ever played. It’ll never make sense to us normal folk. 

13. Speaking of Tiger Woods—I was actually encouraged by what I saw this week. At least, before his post-round presser on Friday. I know, I know. But stick with me here. Firstly, I was about as down as I’ve ever been about his future prospects at Augusta. He completely ran out of gas on the weekend. Forget the golf game; just the way he moved around was hard to watch.

He looked much better physically than at Valhalla did at Augusta National.

“I’m definitely getting stronger,” he said Thursday. It showed. His gait was smoother. He had more pop with the driver and finished inside the top 15 in strokes gained off the tee on Friday against the deepest field of the year. The issue, then, is that he just isn’t playing tournament rounds to get any sort of rhythm. He’s making very, very silly mistakes. Players coming off injury almost always take time to play their way back to where they were. For Woods, every time he tees it up is his first time back after a long layoff. He was asked if he feels his game will improve, and immediately my optimism turned to confusion.

“It will. In time. I just got to -- I need to play more. Unfortunately, I just haven't played a whole lot of tournaments, and not a whole lot of tournaments on my schedule either. Hopefully everything will somehow come together in my practice sessions at home and be ready for Pinehurst.”

So…he says his game will get better if he plays more, but he won’t be playing more? Hopefully he can continue to improve physically to the point where he can play more than five times a year. This was the first week where I genuinely believed that was possible, that the way he moved at Augusta isn’t the way he’ll always move, that maybe the ankle fusion made a serious difference. Time will tell. But according to the man himself, the scores won’t really improve without tournament reps. 

14. I always like to highlight one light-hearted moment at major championships that all golfers can relate too. This week’s came on the 5th hole on Thursday. The group of Ludvig Aberg, Xander Schauffele and Justin Thomas were on their 14th hole of the day after starting on 10. JT didn’t get off the greatest start but had just hearted a 15 footer to get into red figures. Schauffele, on the other hand, was flying. Already -6 for the round, he’d flushed his tee shot down the center and played a perfect approach to the fat side of the green, just 10 feet or so to get to -7 thru 14 holes. Xander brushed it in the center and JT gave that little headshake. You know which one I’m talking about. Like, man, this guy just won’t fucking miss. We often think of these players as single-minded cyborgs in their own little bubble, but they’re just people. Golfer, like us, and we’ve all been semi frustrated by how easy the guy you’re playing with makes it look…but then, as golfers do, you shake off that semi jealousy and give the guy his due. JT did a little Shaka sign, Xander nodded back, and they moved to the next tee. Here’s JT after the round:

“I mean, it doesn't help when you're not making many putts in the sense of you feel like you're not playing that well, but when you're playing with one of the easiest 9-unders you've ever seen, it makes you feel like you're shooting a million.”

Been there, dude. Been there. 

15. Let’s talk about grips. More specifically, how professional golfers grip the club. You’d think this wouldn’t be something they even consider. That’s the domain of novices, of beginners. Right?

Wrong. Before every single round Scottie Scheffler hits balls with a training-aid 6-iron that ensures he’s gripping the club the right way. When Ludvig Aberg starts hitting it squarely, it’s one of the first things he checks. 

“Most of my work that I do is fundamentals. Normally if something is off, it's because of something in my setup, my grip or my ball position or something like that.”

Sometimes it really is that simple. Even with the best players in the world. 

16. Alejandro Tosti is quite the character. The young Argentine built quite the reputation on the Korn Ferry Tour. Let’s call him…fiery. He’s been penalized for rules infractions, he’s rumored to not pay caddies very well, he’s been suspended. He’s a wild child.

Tosti made the cut this week but dropped way down to the bottom of the leaderboard with a Saturday 79. He’s a big-time sitter, which is rare on tour—when he’s already holed out but his playing partners are still on the green, he plops a seat. Rest the legs. It’s just not something you really see. 

And then, on Sunday, he did what we want from every player way down the leaderboard: he went full YOLO. Not a single player in the field had gone for the par-4 13th green because it’s just a horrific decision numbers wise. The green isn’t very wide or deep, it’s an island, and everyone else just went long iron off the tee and were into the green. But Tosti was on tilt and Tosti didn’t care, so he launched driver right at it…and he pulled it off! It finished just 7 feet from the hole and he buried the eagle. That led to the best shot dispersion chart you’ll ever see. 

Sick, sick, sick. Our game needs more characters, not less. I’m all in on Tosti. 

17. It’s PGA Championship week, so we gotta highlight a club pro who balled out. Them’s the rules. This week it was Braden Shattuck, the 29-year-old Director of Instruction at Rolling Green Golf Club in Springfield, PA. 

Shattuck, 29 , played a few years of mini-tour golf before a serious car accident in 2019 that forced him to rebuild his golf swing from the ground up. It also limits his practice time—according to his director of golf, Scott Chisholm, Shattuk’s on the lesson tee all day and hits balls for maybe 20 minutes a day. That’s all his back can take. 

He shot -1 for the week and made the cut on a week when Wyndham Clark, Jon Rahm and Ludvig Aberg all missed it. What a game. 

18. It’s funny which shots entrench themselves in your memory. This was one of them…  

Shane Lowry shot his major championship record-tying 62 despite a brutal break on the par-5 10th. He’d just turned in 29 and had a bounce in his step. I watched him stripe his tee shot down the center, picked up his tee immediately, just totally locked in. From there hit a perfect mid height cutting 3-wood that looked great in the air but came up just short in a bunker short of the green. It was a spot to get up and down from with a back-right pin. And then he got up to the ball and it was plugged, which is odd because it didn’t land that steeply and the sand’s been pretty good all week. Only it didn’t plug the normal way. 

“I was on a good run, and I hit a great second shot straight at the flag. Obviously just come up a few yards short. But it's kind of where I was trying to hit it in that bunker because I knew I could get it up-and-down, and it pitched in the bunker. Obviously rolled up the face and rolled back in its pitch mark.”

Just an awful break, and he had to hack out his third just over the green. He did well to make par. He putted his ass off on Saturday, so it’s not like he didn’t get a lot out of his round. But as golfers we always think back to the one or two shots you really should’ve saved. And that janky ass fried egg is one of the more maddening I should’ve shot this possible. 

We'll see you at Pinehurst. 

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