While my tee shots have improved a ton over the past few years — both in distance and control — anytime I have a basic chip shot with plenty of green to work with, I somehow find a way to either chunk it, skull it, or make solid contact with zero distance control.

Add all of those things up and it’s no wonder why my scores have pretty much stayed neutral — because I’m not shaving strokes off my scorecard anywhere within 50 yards.

But here’s the real frustrating part: I usually feel like I’m doing everything right — especially when it comes to keeping my weight forward on chip shots. But during one of my golf lessons with top-ranked golf teacher Ryan Young, he showed me that my body was actually telling a different story.

In the video below, Young uses one easy checkpoint that involves the position of my nose to expose the flaw — and uses that to help clean up my setup and make chip shots feel easier.

Don’t Forget This 1 Rule When Hitting Chip Shots

As mentioned above, one of the biggest problems with chunked chip shots is that your setup can feel right — even when it isn’t. That’s exactly what Young spots during my short-game lesson with him at Chambers Bay

As I settle over the ball, Young asks me a simple question, “you think you’re leaning left, right?”

After telling him yes — because I feel my body leaning that way — he actually calls me out on my flaw before giving me a tip to fix it.

“Look where your nose is,” he says. “You’re right over the ball, so you’re not leaning left.”

This is super important for amateur and beginner golfers who feel their bodies favoring the lead side on chip shots — which is what you’re supposed to do — only to really find out that it’s just the hips and not the whole body.

That distinction matters if you want to hit consistently good chip shots.

As Young explains, just having the hips forward can actually move and tilt the upper body away from the target.

“Your hips are leaning, but the more you lean, you’re actually moving your spine backwards,” he tells me.

In other words, the lower body goes forward, while the center of the upper body drifts behind the ball — which can lead to bottoming out on wedge shots for chunked mishits, or topping it by scooping to help the ball get into the air.

So Young’s checkpoint makes the fix simple: Look at your nose.

“That’s why you’ve got to get your nose left of the ball,” he says.

Moving the nose towards the target helps place the body (and pressure) forward, giving the club a better chance to reach the turf after contacting the ball. And, as the video shows, just one simple adjustment immediately produces a much better chip shot.

“Way better,” Young says after my first couple of shots. “Inside three feet; I would take that!”

Ready to take the leap and join a community of golfers craving more beginner golf tips and structured golf instruction? SIGN UP for Golf Starter Club! And make sure to follow Nick Dimengo on Instagram and subscribe Rainmakers Golf on YouTube, too!

That is roughly how many travel miles the Tour has cut from its 2026 calendar. When LPGA officials showed the schedule to players during the FM Championship in August, chief tour business and operations officer Ricki Lasky described a reaction administrators do not normally get from a room full of professional golfers.

“I’ve never seen players clap the way they clapped for this schedule,” Lasky said.

That response says plenty about what the LPGA unveiled Wednesday. The Tour announced 33 events and more than $147 million in prize money, another record, but there is more substance here than a bigger dollar figure.

The calendar itself has been cleaned up. Events are grouped more sensibly. Several venues immediately improve the look of the schedule. Players will have more chances to recover between stretches that require serious travel.

For a Tour that sells itself, correctly, as global, those details are not small.

The LPGA Is Still Global, but the Map Makes More Sense

The LPGA will play in 11 countries plus Hong Kong and 13 U.S. states in 2027. Nobody should confuse that with an easy travel schedule. Elite women’s professional golf still asks players, caddies, families and support teams to spend much of the year crossing time zones.

The improvement is in how those trips connect.

After the season opener at Lake Nona Golf & Country Club in Orlando, the Tour heads to Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong on consecutive weeks. Rather than scattering another long-distance stop somewhere else on the calendar, the LPGA then continues across the Pacific for back-to-back events in Hawaii. From there come Arizona and two California stops before the first major in Houston.

That is what smarter scheduling looks like. There will always be long flights on an international Tour. The unnecessary ones are the problem.

The 2026 schedule required approximately 61,000 miles of travel between events. Cutting about 12,000 miles from that number while maintaining a 33-event schedule is meaningful.

It gives players something they rarely get back during a season: time and energy.

LPGA Commissioner Craig Kessler has put routing, courses and purses near the center of the Tour’s priorities. The 2027 calendar is where those ideas begin showing up together rather than as separate talking points.

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Hawaii Suddenly Becomes One of the Best Parts of the Schedule

The March stretch through Hawaii is going to get attention, and it should.

The new Nanea Cup carries a $4 million purse at Nanea Golf Club in Kailua-Kona. One week later, the LOTTE Championship moves from Hoakalei Country Club on Oahu to the Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort on Maui with a $3 million purse.

There is a little irony in that second stop.

The PGA Tour ended its longtime run at Kapalua, leaving one of professional golf’s most recognizable television properties without its familiar January date. The LPGA saw an opening and took it.

I wrote earlier this week about why that move matters, and seeing Kapalua now placed inside the full schedule only strengthens the argument.

Prestige in professional golf is partly built by the quality of the competition. It is also built by where that competition takes place.

Nanea followed immediately by Kapalua gives the LPGA two weeks that should look different, feel different and be easy for fans to identify. There is value in that.

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The Money Keeps Moving in the Right Direction

The 2027 prize fund will exceed $147 million, compared with more than $132 million when the 2026 schedule was announced. Non-major purses alone will surpass $94 million, nearly $12 million more than at the release of the 2026 calendar.

The Classic, returning the LPGA to Corning Country Club for the first time since 2009, arrives with a $5 million purse. That makes it the richest non-major outside the CME Group Tour Championship.

The JM Eagle LA Championship follows at $4.75 million, with the FM Championship at $4.7 million.

Those numbers matter beyond the winner’s check.

Ten events are expected to provide a minimum payout to every player in the field, while nearly 20 will offer some combination of hotel, airfare or transportation benefits.

Those are not glamorous additions to a schedule release, but professional golfers notice them. So do caddies and the people helping players finance a full season.

An extra week of lodging or another transcontinental flight may be a minor expense for a star near the top of the money list. The economics look very different farther down the field.

A healthier Tour has to work for those players, too.

The Major Venues Look Like Major Venues

The 2027 major calendar has weight.

The Chevron Championship returns to Memorial Park in Houston with a $9 million purse. The U.S. Women’s Open goes to Inverness Club in Toledo with $12.5 million at stake. Congressional Country Club hosts the $13 million KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.

Then comes the European portion of major season.

The Amundi Evian Championship carries a $9.1 million purse before the AIG Women’s Open heads to Royal St George’s Golf Club with $10 million available. Royal St George’s has hosted 15 Open Championships but will stage a women’s major for the first time.

That lineup matters.

Fans already understand what Congressional, Inverness and Royal St George’s mean when they see them on a golf calendar. The LPGA does not have to manufacture significance around those venues. The courses arrive with it.

There is also a new $4 million event currently called The Championship scheduled in the United Kingdom between Evian and the AIG Women’s Open. Its venue remains to be announced.

Corning Returns, Hong Kong Arrives and the Crown Comes Back

The schedule has enough change away from the majors to keep it from feeling like a lightly edited version of 2026.

Hong Kong joins the calendar with the $3.4 million Futu Ladies World Championship presented by Moomoo at The Clearwater Bay Golf & Country Club.

Corning returns with The Classic, bringing the LPGA back to a market where it had a long history before leaving after 2009. A $5 million purse makes that comeback considerably more than a nostalgia play.

The Hanwha PLUS International Crown also returns, this time at Lake Merced Golf Club in Daly City, California, in September.

Then comes the familiar four-event Asian run during October and early November before the Tour returns to Florida for The ANNIKA and the $11 million CME Group Tour Championship.

That portion of the calendar still deserves scrutiny.

Better routing for players does not automatically create better viewing windows for American fans. The fall Asian stretch again lands deep inside the NFL and college football seasons, where gaining television attention becomes considerably harder.

That is one part of the schedule puzzle the LPGA still has to keep working on.

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This Is What Progress on a Schedule Actually Looks Like

A tournament calendar can be easy to underestimate. Dates get released, courses get listed, purses get added up and everybody moves on.

Players cannot.

They live inside that calendar for almost an entire year.

The LPGA’s 2027 schedule asks them to travel the world again. It still has television challenges. Several details remain unfinished, including venues for The Championship and the BMW Ladies Championship.

But the structure is better. The purses are bigger. The venues are stronger. The dead travel has been reduced.

And before fans ever saw the final version, the players reportedly applauded it.

For a Tour trying to build something sustainable around the best female golfers in the world, that may be the best review this schedule could have received.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: The PGA Tour Left Kapalua. The LPGA Is Bringing It Back

Related: It’s October. What’s Left on the Golf Calendar? Plenty.

Related: WTGL Gives LPGA Stars Room to Be Seen and Heard

Rahm’s attorney, John Beck, told a bankruptcy court hearing Wednesday that the Spaniard independently reviewed the proposed terms of what has become known as LIV 2.0 and determined that “those terms are unacceptable to him.” Beck said Rahm will not participate in the restructured league going forward.

The Athletic first reported the development.

Rahm and LIV are now in advanced discussions toward a consensual separation agreement. Beck said the sides hope to complete that agreement by Oct. 15 and have the court address it Nov. 5.

There is still legal work to finish. The golf decision, however, appears settled.

The player LIV built Legion XIII around, the player who won its season-long individual championship in each of his three seasons and the captain who just led his team to a second consecutive championship has decided the next version of LIV Golf is not for him.

LIV 2.0 Just Lost Its Best Proof of Concept

Rahm was the LIV player who required the least salesmanship because he kept winning.

He joined ahead of the 2024 season and immediately became one of the league’s central figures. Three seasons produced three individual championships. Legion XIII won the team title in 2025 and again in 2026, when Rahm finished runner-up in the season finale at Indianapolis.

LIV’s own records now describe him as the winningest golfer in league history.

That is considerably different from losing a recognizable player whose best golf had already happened somewhere else. Rahm was 31, producing, winning and giving LIV exactly the kind of competitive credibility it hoped its enormous investment in elite players would create.

The timing makes his decision even tougher for LIV.

BC Partners Credit has committed up to $300 million in new financing as LIV works through Chapter 11 and attempts to emerge with a more sustainable business model. The proposed version includes greater player ownership and a smaller 2027 schedule. The deadline for enough players to commit to new contracts was recently pushed to Oct. 25.

On the same day Rahm’s decision became public, Reuters reported that BC Partners viewed retaining LIV’s important players as an “achievable hurdle.”

That hurdle just became considerably higher.

Money can finance tournaments. Equity can give players a reason to care about franchise value. A smaller operation can reduce the extraordinary expense of LIV’s first five seasons.

None of those things replaces the golfer who won the season championship every year he was there.

Leaving LIV Does Not Put Rahm Back on the PGA Tour

This is where the conversation can get careless.

Rahm leaving LIV Golf and Rahm returning to the PGA Tour are two separate transactions.

The PGA Tour created its one-time Returning Member Program in January after Brooks Koepka left LIV. Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Cameron Smith were among the limited group eligible to use it, but the application window closed Feb. 2 and applied only to the 2026 season.

Rahm did not take it.

More recently, PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said the Tour was “not currently contemplating” another returning-member program like the one Koepka used.

Nothing announced Wednesday changes that.

Rahm first has to finish severing his LIV obligations. After that, the Tour would still have to determine what membership rules, discipline and competitive pathway apply to him. There is no announced Jon Rahm fast lane back into PGA Tour fields for 2027.

That distinction has become increasingly important as LIV’s bankruptcy has unfolded. Contract freedom gives a player the ability to pursue something else. It does not hand him a PGA Tour card.

The DP World Tour is a different matter.

Rahm remains connected to the European circuit after reaching a conditional-release agreement earlier this year, and he is expected to complete his 2026 obligations with appearances in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. His eligibility for Europe’s 2027 Ryder Cup team at Adare Manor also remains intact.

So Rahm has somewhere meaningful to play while the rest of his future sorts itself out.

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Rahm’s Decision Reaches Beyond One Roster Spot

There is another layer to his departure that should not be overlooked.

Rahm is listed as LIV’s largest player creditor in the bankruptcy case, with an unsecured claim of approximately $7.5 million. He was simultaneously one of the league’s greatest competitive successes and one of the players financially entangled in the restructuring.

Now he has looked at the proposal for what comes next and said no.

That carries weight well beyond Legion XIII.

LIV Golf can survive the departure of individual players. It has already proven that. The more difficult question is whether LIV 2.0 can retain enough elite golfers to make the smaller, player-owned model compelling to broadcasters, sponsors, investors and fans.

Rahm was about as strong an answer to that question as the league had.

His departure also places even more attention on what DeChambeau and the other remaining stars decide. Each situation is different, and Rahm’s decision does not tell us what another player will do. It does change the environment in which those decisions are being made.

For Rahm, his 2026 LIV season ended with a third straight individual championship and another team title for Legion XIII.

That will now stand as the conclusion of his LIV career.

He leaves the league the same way he spent three years in it: at the top of the standings.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Bryson DeChambeau Reportedly Still Weighing His LIV Golf Future

Related: LIV Bankruptcy Could Free Stars, but a PGA Tour Return Must Be Earned

Related: Phil Mickelson Sought Treatment. The Golf Questions Can Wait

Cole Hammer arrives at The Federal Club at No. 20 on the Korn Ferry Tour Points List. Yuta Sugiura is No. 21, only 5.810 points behind him after shooting 58 last Saturday in Oklahoma. Austin Hitt is No. 22, another 6.945 points behind Sugiura. Ben Kohles sits at No. 19 and, remarkably, is the only eligible player from the top 60 who is not entered this week.

There is your tournament before anyone hits a shot.

The Korn Ferry Tour Championship presented by Virginia’s Richmond Region will crown a winner Sunday. Someone will collect $270,000 from the $1.5 million purse at The Federal Club in Glen Allen, Virginia. But there is a second competition running alongside the tournament, and for a large portion of the field, it is considerably more consequential.

Twenty players leave the season with PGA Tour membership for 2027.

Eight already know they will be among them.

Everybody else has work left.

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Eight Players Can Breathe a Little Easier

The group already assured of 2027 PGA Tour membership is Sandy Scott, Ross Steelman, Ian Holt, Alvaro Ortiz, Doc Redman, Cole Sherwood, Alistair Docherty and Tommy Morrison.

Look at those names a little closer and the Korn Ferry Tour’s purpose comes into focus.

Redman was the first player declared TourBound this season after winning twice. Steelman followed him after collecting his second victory at the Albertsons Boise Open. Holt won two of the season’s first three events. Ortiz is a two-time winner. Sherwood broke through after years of climbing through the professional ranks.

Scott might be the hottest golfer among them now. He reached TourBound status with his victory at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship and then went to Oklahoma last week and won again, beating William Sides on the fourth hole of a sudden-death playoff.

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Then there is Morrison.

The 22-year-old finished No. 6 in PGA Tour University this spring, went directly from Texas into the Korn Ferry Tour and promptly finished inside the top 10 in his first three starts. In start No. 4, he closed the Evans Scholars Invitational with a bogey-free 63 and won by three at 29 under.

He enters Richmond eighth on the Points List after only 10 Korn Ferry Tour starts.

The number that gets the immediate attention with Morrison is 6-foot-9. The more interesting number might be 10.

His transition from college golf to a PGA Tour card happened that quickly.

Sandy Scott and Ross Steelman Still Have Plenty to Play For

Scott and Steelman do not have to worry about falling outside the top 20, but their season is far from settled.

Scott leads the Points List with 2,176.634 points. Steelman is second at 2,153.371. Nobody else can finish No. 1.

That matters.

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The season-long points champion receives exemptions into the 2027 Players Championship and U.S. Open. Those are meaningful doors to have opened before the new season even begins.

Scott comes to Virginia after consecutive victories and a final-round 64 at the Compliance Solutions Championship. Steelman, meanwhile, has put together a season with six top-five finishes, the most on Tour.

It is a fascinating matchup because neither player’s year can be reduced to a brief hot stretch. Steelman has repeatedly been around the lead. Scott’s late-season golf has turned opportunity into trophies.

From a player’s perspective, there is a difference between getting yourself into contention and learning how to finish the job once you are there. Scott has done that twice in two weeks.

The PGA Tour card is secured. The best season on the Korn Ferry Tour is not.

Blades Brown Has a Piece of History Waiting

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Blades Brown has already spent much of his young golf life playing ahead of schedule.

He can do it again this week.

Brown begins the Tour Championship at No. 14. If the 19-year-old remains inside the top 20 through Sunday, he will become the youngest player on record to earn PGA Tour membership through the Korn Ferry Tour.

Jason Day currently holds that distinction. Day earned his card at 19 years, 11 months and 23 days. Brown would do it at 19 years, 4 months and 20 days.

The historical note is interesting. The golf behind it is better.

Brown arrives with 12 top-25 finishes in 17 Korn Ferry Tour starts this season. He has also earned Special Temporary Membership on the PGA Tour after producing two top-10 finishes there.

His route has never been conventional. Brown skipped college golf and turned professional at 17. He has already played enough PGA Tour golf to understand the level required, and he made an observation earlier this season that fits this week particularly well.

“Good golf takes care of everything,” Brown said.

The Korn Ferry Tour has also taught him something less glamorous and probably more useful: professional golf requires players to get comfortable going very low. Brown specifically credited the Tour for teaching him that lesson.

At 19, he is already finding out that a 68 can sometimes feel like standing still.

The Bubble Is Where This Tournament Changes

Davis Shore begins the week at No. 16. Ian Gilligan is No. 17. Carson Young is No. 18, followed by Kohles and Hammer.

Then comes Sugiura.

A month ago, Sugiura entered the AdventHealth Championship at No. 85 with no top-10 finishes in 18 starts. He won. Last week, he shot a 12-under 58 in the third round of the Compliance Solutions Championship, tied for the second-lowest round in Korn Ferry Tour history, and finished T11.

He still arrives in Virginia on the wrong side of the line.

That tells you something about this level of professional golf that can get lost when people casually describe the Korn Ferry Tour as a “developmental” circuit. Development happens here, certainly, but nobody is being given time to develop comfortably. These players are trying to beat fields filled with golfers capable of shooting 58.

Hammer’s position is nearly as interesting.

The former world’s No. 1-ranked men’s amateur is playing his third full Korn Ferry Tour season. He finished 65th on the Points List in 2024 and 72nd last year. Now he has four top-five finishes in 2026 and holds the final PGA Tour card entering the last event.

Hitt knows how quickly the number can move in the other direction. The Longwood, Florida, native was No. 19 before the Compliance Solutions Championship. He missed the cut and dropped to No. 22.

Carson Young showed the opposite side of the equation. His T3 in Oklahoma moved him from No. 27 to No. 18.

Those are not hypothetical swings. They happened last week.

This is where players can get themselves in trouble mentally. A golfer near No. 20 can begin competing against a projected points list instead of the golf course in front of him. The temptation to calculate everything is understandable, particularly when the television broadcast and leaderboard are doing the calculation for you.

The best answer remains the least complicated one. Pick the shot. Commit to it. Go hit it.

You cannot defend against somebody else’s 64 or 58.

There Are Stories Well Beyond No. 20

The card race naturally gets most of the attention, but this finale has several layers.

Gilligan is trying to finish off his first full professional season with a PGA Tour card after producing nine top-10 finishes. Shore has improved from 73rd on the Points List in 2024 to 39th last season and now starts the finale at No. 16.

Morrison’s remarkable summer has made PGA Tour University part of this conversation, too. College golf’s pathway into professional golf is no longer an abstract concept when a player can finish sixth in the ranking, join the Korn Ferry Tour in June and secure PGA Tour membership before October is over.

And then there is Kohles.

He enters at No. 19 with 917.892 points, but he will not tee it up. Sugiura trails him by fewer than 20 points and Hitt by fewer than 27.

Kohles can do nothing this week except watch where the number goes.

The Federal Club Has Its Own Test

The season finishes on a par-71, 7,073-yard layout at The Federal Club. Chandler Blanchet returns as defending champion.

The history of this championship is worth paying attention to because the names coming through it do not disappear when the Korn Ferry Tour season ends. Thirteen past winners of the event have later won on the PGA Tour, a group that includes David Duval, Stewart Cink, Nick Watney, Brendan Steele, Chesson Hadley and Emiliano Grillo.

Thursday and Friday coverage airs from 3-6 p.m. ET on Golf Channel. Weekend coverage moves to 1-4 p.m.

Expect the projected Points List to become as important to the broadcast as the actual leaderboard by Sunday afternoon.

It should.

The Pathway Changes After This Class

There is another reason this graduating class is worth watching closely.

The top 20 from the 2026 Korn Ferry Tour Points List will earn PGA Tour membership for 2027 under the current pathway. That pathway changes for 2028 as the PGA Tour moves to its Championship Series and Challenger Series structure.

Under the transition criteria announced by the PGA Tour, the top 10 players on the final 2027 Korn Ferry Tour Points List will earn PGA Tour Championship Series membership for 2028. The next 30, beginning with No. 11 and not otherwise exempt, will earn Challenger Series membership.

So the players receiving cards in Virginia this week are entering a PGA Tour that will look different again one year later.

Getting there remains the first job.

Staying there will require another one.

That can wait until next season.

For now, Sugiura has to make up six points after shooting 58. Hammer has spent three full seasons getting himself to No. 20. Hitt was inside the number one week ago and is outside it today. Kohles will watch his No. 19 position move around without hitting a shot.

Last week, rookie Chad Sewell birdied the final hole and climbed from outside the top 60 into full Korn Ferry Tour status for 2027. Sugiura shot 58 and still begins the finale at No. 21.

There is no need to manufacture drama around this tournament. The points list already did.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: It’s October. What’s Left on the Golf Calendar? Plenty.

Related: Blades Brown’s PGA Tour Path Just Got Much More Real

Related: The Korn Ferry Tour Stopped Guessing About Slow Play

But here’s some good news: If you’re not great with the putter in your hands, the fastest way to actually lower your scores is to work on your putting stroke.

Think about it: There’s no tee shot with wind, or deep bunkers, or crazy-long rough that’s swallowed up your ball — just a ball, a putter, and a hole.

Yet amateur and beginner golfers still lose countless strokes on the greens, often blaming poor reads or a faulty putting stroke when the real issue may be something much simpler: An inconsistent setup.

In the video below from Golf Starter Club, top-ranked golf teacher Rick Silva helps golf influencer Averee Dovsek build a proper putting setup by correcting her balance and discussing the correct ball position. So if you tend to lean onto your toes or never feel comfortable over the ball, Silva’s advice might reveal why your putter refuses to cooperate — and he provides an easy-fix for producing a smoother, more repeatable stroke.

Your Putting Stroke Might Not Be the Problem

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Plenty of golfers love blaming a missed putt on the stroke, but Silva shows why the problem can begin before the putter ever even moves.

As Dovsek settles over the ball, Silva notices a common setup flaw: Her upper body has drifted too far forward, placing excessive pressure onto her toes.

“That’s a very normal thing,” says Silva, which should reassure other beginners who might have the same unbalanced posture.

So what’s the issue with having your weight too far forward when putting? If your balance is either on your toes (or too much on your heels) and not evenly distributed, your arms can become crowded — meaning the putter has less room to naturally move. That makes it harder to return the face squarely and control where the ball starts, even when the stroke feels pretty good.

How to Fix a Bad Putting Setup

To help fix the issue, Silva first has Dovsek get into her normal putting setup. After noticing the common flaw, he then adjusts her posture with a simple cue: Move the back pockets behind you while keeping the upper body tall. That easy shift places her weight more securely through her feet instead of dumping it into her toes.

Once Dovsek takes her grip from a new and balanced position, Silva has her roll a putt. The difference is immediate, as the putter stays more on-plane since her body isn’t crowding its motion.

Their conversation then moves to ball placement while putting — which is a another detail a lot of golfers frequently overlook.

Rather than treating ball position like an isolated measurement, Silva connects it to how the body and arms hang at address. With the correct putting posture, the hands can fall naturally from the shoulders, with Silva explaining, “that way, the putter can arc.”

For beginners, the lesson takeaway is a simple one: Build the posture first, allow the arms to hang, then position the ball where the putter can naturally meet it. From there, the stroke has a better chance to repeat each time.

So the next time your putts repeatedly start off-line, hold back the temptation to instantly rebuild your technique or putting grip. Instead, just check your balance instead. If you feel pressure in your toes, move your hips and “back pockets” behind you, stay tall through the upper body, and let the putter swing without fighting your setup.

What’s Golf Starter Club?

Golf Starter Club’s a new, all-in-one golf instruction and community platform designed to help players improve — whether you’re a beginner golfer, average player, or even trying to play Division 1 golf somewhere.

Instead of sending golfers down an endless rabbit hole of conflicting swing tips — which too many amateur players do — Golf Starter Club provides trusted and organized learning paths built for beginners, juniors, bogey-golfers, and those looking to break 100.

Rather than stress about golf practice each week, members can learn on their own schedule alongside world-class golf teachers with practical drills, live sessions, swing discussions, and a growing library shaped by member feedback.

But what truly separates Golf Starter Club is its roster: Top-rated instructors — including GOLF Magazine Top 100 teachers, an LPGA Teacher of the Year, and elite coaches — alongside some of golf’s most recognizable creators and enthusiasts. By combining credible coaching with relatable personalities, GSC makes getting better simpler, more personal, and more fun.

Here’s how to choose your path on Golf Starter Club!

Ready to take the leap and join a community of golfers craving more beginner golf tips and structured golf instruction? SIGN UP for Golf Starter Club! And make sure to follow Nick Dimengo on Instagram and subscribe Rainmakers Golf on YouTube, too!

The golfer rolls it out, hits putts across it for a few weeks and eventually runs out of ideas. The surface may still be perfectly good. The practice has gone stale.

That is the part of at-home putting PrimePutt is trying to solve next. The company already has a mat I believe is the best in the business. Now the larger ambition is to build what happens around it and after it: instruction, competition, feedback and a community that gives golfers a reason to keep practicing.

I need to put my connection to PrimePutt up front. I serve as the company’s Director of Instruction and Lead Writer, and I am the PGA coach inside the PrimePutt Clubhouse. This is not an arm’s-length product review. I have used the mat extensively, believe in it enough to put my name beside it and have no hesitation saying I think it is the best putting mat available. The more interesting question now is whether PrimePutt can become more valuable after a golfer buys the mat than it was on the day the box arrived.

The Mat Has to Be Good Enough to Get Out of the Way

The reason this expansion has a chance is that the core product does not need a complicated sales pitch. PrimePutt’s current TrueGreen mats use dense nylon turf, a heavy rubber backing and regulation-width cups set into the surface without a ramp in front of them. The company lists the roll at about 10 on the Stimpmeter, and the standard versions are three feet wide.

From a coaching standpoint, I also like what is not printed all over it. There are no permanent alignment tracks telling every golfer that the same visual belongs in every practice session. There is room to use a mirror, gates, tees, a chalk line or nothing at all.

Some days I want a player thinking about start line. Other days I want speed to own the session. Sometimes the best thing a golfer can do is put the training aids away and roll putts while reacting to a target. A practice surface should let the work change.

Independent testing has been favorable, too. Independent Golf Reviews named PrimePutt its best indoor putting green overall for 2026, while MyGolfSpy previously named PrimePutt its best indoor putting green in 2023. I am obviously not neutral about the product, which is precisely why outside evaluations matter.

The Clubhouse Is the Bigger Experiment

A great putting surface still cannot tell a golfer what to practice on Tuesday night. That is where the PrimePutt Clubhouse becomes more interesting to me than another product launch.

The private Skool community is currently built around PrimePutt mat owners, with plans to open it to a broader group of golfers. Members have access to a 30-Day Putting Accelerator, a growing drill library, live monthly coaching and Q&A, and the ability to post their stroke for focused feedback and a drill.

That last piece changes the relationship. A golfer can show what is happening, get direction and leave with something specific to work on instead of staring at a mat and wondering which drill to try next.

Golfers usually do better when practice has a purpose, feedback has context and somebody can tell them when to stop fixing the wrong thing. The hard part is doing that consistently enough that the community remains useful after the novelty wears off.

October Gives PrimePutt a Wider Front Door

PrimePutt’s giveaway running through October is one way the company is inviting more golfers into that orbit. The promotion gets attention, but the larger business question is what happens after somebody arrives.

There is another current example. PrimePutt is powering the Golf Tips Puttery Challenge, a free online putting competition running Oct. 4-31. The top prize includes a PrimePutt mat and a private virtual one-on-one coaching session with me. Second and third place also include PrimePutt mats along with golf prize packs.

The sequence is worth paying attention to. A golfer competes in a digital putting game. A physical practice product is part of the prize. Coaching is attached to the experience, and the relationship can continue through content and community.

That is a far more interesting interaction than a discount code. It also shows where PrimePutt is trying to go. The mat remains central, but the company is experimenting with reasons for golfers to interact with the brand before a purchase, after a purchase and between practice sessions.

Being More Than a Mat Company Raises the Bar

Calling something a community does not make it one.

A message board is not enough. A library of random drills is not coaching. A giveaway can collect attention without creating lasting value. Instructional content can become noise if golfers leave with five new thoughts and no idea which one applies to them.

If PrimePutt wants to be more than one of the best putting mat companies in golf, it has to clear that higher standard. My part is to help make putting easier to understand, give golfers practice they can actually use, answer questions, look at strokes when needed and keep the instruction connected to what happens on a golf course.

I have no interest in convincing golfers that their putting stroke needs to be rebuilt every week. Most do not need more information. They need better information at the right time.

That is why the Clubhouse can matter. A mat gives the golfer a place to work. Coaching gives the work direction. A real community adds accountability, conversation and some fun to a part of golf that can become painfully repetitive.

The Hard Part Starts After the Sale

PrimePutt has already shown it can build a premium physical practice product. The next challenge cannot be solved by better turf or a better cup design. It has to help golfers build a habit.

The mat can provide a reliable surface. It cannot decide what a player should practice tonight, explain why three straight putts started left or tell a golfer when a technical thought has outlived its usefulness. It cannot provide the little bit of accountability that gets someone to roll putts for 15 useful minutes instead of walking past the mat again.

That is where the next version of PrimePutt is being built. The October giveaway gets people through the door. Puttery creates another way to play. The Clubhouse gives practice some structure. My job, along with the rest of the team, is to make sure the instruction earns a place in that equation.

If we get it right, the most telling PrimePutt number will not be how many mats sit in offices, basements and living rooms.

It will be how many golfers still unroll one six months later knowing exactly what they came there to work on.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: PrimePutt: The Putting Mat Company That’s Changing How Golfers Practice at Home

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Smotherman arrived at the Bank of Utah Championship sitting 79th in the FedExCup Fall standings. Four rounds of 63-62-65-68 at Black Desert Resort produced a 26-under victory and moved him 28 places to No. 51. Suddenly, he sits first among the 10 players currently positioned to earn access to the first two Signature Events of 2027.

That is October in professional golf.

The biggest dates that casual fans circle each year have passed. The majors are finished. The FedExCup Playoffs have been decided. The Presidents Cup is behind us. None of that means the calendar has emptied.

For a considerable number of professionals, the next several weeks will determine where they can play next year, how often they can play, whether they get into the most lucrative events and, in some cases, whether a season spent grinding across airports and practice ranges ends with the card they have been chasing.

Then comes December, when the competitive stakes mix with some of golf’s more interesting made-for-TV events and one obvious question in Orlando: Might Tiger Woods and Charlie Woods return to the PNC Championship?

There is a lot of golf left before anyone turns the page to 2027.

The PGA Tour Fall Can Change an Entire 2027 Schedule

Smotherman is a perfect starting point because the PGA Tour’s fall schedule is easier to understand when you stop looking at it as a collection of smaller tournaments.

For many players, it is an employment race.

Six FedExCup Fall events remain after Utah, beginning this week with the Baycurrent Classic in Japan. The Tour then moves to Bermuda, Mexico twice, Austin and finally Sea Island for The RSM Classic on Nov. 19-22.

The number to watch is 100. Players who finish inside the top 100 in the FedExCup Fall standings secure full-field PGA Tour eligibility for 2027. There is another fight higher up the board. Nos. 51-60 become the Aon Next 10 and gain entry into the first two Signature Events of next season.

Look at what happened to Smotherman. He did not gradually inch his way from 79th toward safety. He won a golf tournament and landed at 51.

That is why dismissing the fall as leftover PGA Tour golf misses what players themselves are playing for. The trophies count. So does what those trophies unlock.

By the time Sunday evening arrives at Sea Island in November, plenty of players will know exactly what their professional lives look like in January.

The LPGA Tour Still Has a Serious Closing Run

There is even less justification for checking out on the LPGA Tour.

The schedule heads to Shanghai next week, followed by South Korea, Malaysia and Japan before returning to Florida for The ANNIKA and the CME Group Tour Championship. The season finale in Naples carries an $11 million purse, including $4 million to the winner.

Nelly Korda currently leads the Race to the CME Globe, with Jeeno Thitikul second and Miyu Yamashita third. Thitikul is also heading toward Naples as the two-time defending CME Group Tour Championship winner.

The top 60 points earners and ties qualify for the finale. That creates two very different races over these closing tournaments. The stars at the top are chasing a season championship and one of the largest prizes in women’s golf. Farther down the standings, players are trying to get through the door at all.

That second race can be the more compelling one to follow. A player sitting 58th does not need to win in November for a Sunday round to change her season. She needs enough points to stay on the right side of 60.

The LPGA season officially concludes at CME, but it will have one more high-profile appearance in December when PGA Tour and LPGA players return to Naples for the Grant Thornton Invitational.

The DP World Tour Has Two Finish Lines Before New Year’s Day

The DP World Tour might have the strangest remaining calendar of them all.

The current season reaches crunch time with the Open de España, DP World India Championship and Genesis Championship. Then the field shrinks. The top 70 qualifying players advance to the first playoff event in Abu Dhabi. Only the top 50 available after that move on to the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai.

Patrick Reed currently leads the Race to Dubai ahead of Rory McIlroy, Eugenio Chacarra, Casey Jarvis and Aaron Rai. There is more involved here than deciding who gets the Harry Vardon Trophy. The top 100 secure playing privileges for 2027, while the top 10 in the final Race to Dubai standings who are not otherwise exempt can earn PGA Tour membership.

Then the calendar does something wonderfully golf-like.

The 2026 DP World Tour season ends Nov. 15 in Dubai. Eleven days later, the 2027 DP World Tour season begins in Sydney with the BMW Australian PGA Championship.

The Capital.com Australian Open and Nedbank Golf Challenge follow in early December, with the AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open after that. Rory McIlroy is already scheduled to return to the Australian Open.

So, yes, there is so much golf remaining in 2026 that one major Tour will actually start its 2027 season before this calendar year is over.

Korn Ferry Has One Tournament Left, and Almost Nothing About It Is Small

The shortest remaining schedule belongs to the Korn Ferry Tour.

One tournament.

It may carry the most concentrated pressure of anything left in professional golf.

The Korn Ferry Tour Championship begins Thursday at The Federal Club in Glen Allen, Virginia. When it ends Sunday, the top 20 players on the season-long points list will receive PGA Tour cards for 2027. The player finishing No. 1 receives exemptions into the 2027 Players Championship and U.S. Open.

Now look at the line.

Cole Hammer enters the finale No. 20 with 904.152 points. Yuta Sugiura is No. 21 with 898.342.

The difference between the final PGA Tour card position and the first man outside it is 5.81 points.

There are larger purses being played for this fall. There will be bigger television audiences. There will be more famous names.

It is hard to find much more consequential golf.

A putt that catches an edge Sunday afternoon in Virginia could alter somebody’s entire 2027 season.

The Champions Tour Is About to Start Cutting the Field

PGA Tour Champions still has two regular-season stops before its postseason begins.

The Constellation FURYK & FRIENDS is this week in Palm Coast, Florida, followed by the SAS Championship in North Carolina. Then the playoff math starts becoming unforgiving.

The top 72 players advance to the Stifel Charity Classic. That field is reduced to 54 for the Simmons Bank Championship. Only 36 reach the Charles Schwab Cup Championship in Phoenix. All three playoff events award double points.

Stewart Cink currently leads the Charles Schwab Cup money standings ahead of Zach Johnson, Steven Alker, Padraig Harrington and Retief Goosen. Much farther down, the more urgent numbers belong to the players living around No. 72.

PGA Tour Champions then shifts into its late-season showcase events, including the Skechers World Champions Cup in Clearwater and the PNC Championship in Orlando.

That brings us to December.

December Has Become Its Own Little Golf Season

December once felt like the month when professional golf disappeared unless somebody happened to televise a silly-season event from somewhere warm.

Not anymore.

The Hero World Challenge is scheduled for Dec. 3-6 at Albany in the Bahamas. PGA Tour Q-School follows Dec. 10-13 in Ponte Vedra Beach, where the top five finishers will receive PGA Tour membership for 2027. The Grant Thornton Invitational is Dec. 11-13 in Naples.

Then comes the PNC Championship, with tournament week scheduled for Dec. 14-20 at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando.

And, inevitably, the Tiger question will follow.

Tiger and Charlie Woods did not compete in the PNC in 2025, and there has been no announced commitment putting them in the 2026 field as of Oct. 6. Woods announced in March that he was stepping away from professional golf to focus on his health. Anything beyond saying a PNC appearance remains possible would be speculation.

But if Team Woods does return in Orlando, one of golf’s friendliest December events will instantly become one of its most watched.

The calendar does not need Tiger to make the next two months interesting, though.

Tour cards will be won and lost. Players will move across status lines that determine almost everything about their next season. The LPGA will award its season championship and a $4 million winner’s check. The Race to Dubai will be settled. The senior playoffs will send players home in stages. Q-School will hand five players the last PGA Tour cards available for 2027.

And over on the Korn Ferry Tour this week, 5.81 points separate No. 20 from No. 21.

Ask Cole Hammer if October feels like the offseason.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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That comeback is worth keeping in mind when the PGA Tour returns to Yokohama Country Club for the Oct. 8-11 tournament. All 72 players are scheduled for four rounds. A poor Thursday can be repaired, although the score Schauffele ultimately posted shows how much ground a contender may have to cover.

The defending champion returns without a victory this season, and the field gives him plenty of company worth watching. Wyndham Clark has won three times in 2026. Hideki Matsuyama brings a run of strong finishes home to Japan. Collin Morikawa, Min Woo Lee and recent winner Jacob Bridgeman offer different ways to attack a course that asks an unusually persistent question: How well can you play a par 4, then do it again?

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Yokohama Keeps Coming Back to the Par 4s

The tournament routing has 13 par 4s, three par 3s and just two par 5s. It combines 16 holes from the West Course with two from the East Course, and both par 5s arrive within the first six holes. Players looking for a late scoring opportunity will have to create it elsewhere.

The variety within those par 4s deserves attention. The 337-yard 13th is followed by the 508-yard 14th. One invites a decision about how aggressively to position the tee shot; the next asks the player to handle considerably more golf. An appealing opportunity can be followed immediately by a hole where a loose swing becomes expensive.

Last year’s numbers give a clearer picture of the test than a yardage total would. The field averaged 10.34 fairways hit out of 15, putting Yokohama among the season’s easier courses for finding the short grass. Yet its average of 11.71 greens in regulation placed it in the harder half of the schedule for that measure.

Getting the ball in play was only part of the job. The approach still had to finish somewhere useful, and this is where the course becomes interesting from a coaching perspective. A player can drive it well all day and still spend too much of the round trying to recover. With so many par 4s, there are repeated opportunities for that gap between a good drive and a good approach to show up on the card.

Wind also changed the scoring dramatically in the course’s tournament debut. The opening-round average was slightly above par; the final-round average dropped to 67.72. Schauffele’s winning total should not become an automatic expectation for every day this week. Yokohama has already shown how differently the same holes can play.

Schauffele Has Company, and Matsuyama Has the Home Crowd

Schauffele is seeking the event’s first successful title defense. His connection to Japan runs well beyond this tournament: His mother grew up there, his maternal grandparents live in Tokyo, and he won Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021. Last year’s victory added a PGA Tour title in Japan to that history.

His 2026 season has included a third-place finish at The Players Championship and a runner-up finish at the Rocket Classic. Winning again would give those near misses a different ending to the year, but his strongest credential here is the golf he played on this layout. He has already demonstrated the scoring required to separate himself when conditions allow it.

Matsuyama’s recent record makes him much more than the familiar face for the Japanese galleries. He has made the cut in all 23 of his Tour starts this season, and his closing stretch of the FedExCup season included consecutive finishes of tied for third, tied for fifth and twice tied for seventh. He tied for 20th at Yokohama last year.

There is no cut to survive this week, so that season-long consistency has a different relevance. Matsuyama has kept giving himself weekends in which to improve his position. At home, with four rounds available, the next step is to turn that dependable work into enough birdies to challenge for his first Tour victory since the 2025 Sentry.

Clark’s Wins and Bridgeman’s Putting Deserve Attention

Clark arrives with three victories this season, including the U.S. Open and BMW Championship, and is the field’s highest-ranked player at No. 5 in the world. His first visit to Yokohama produced a tie for 48th. Only his final-round 68 broke 70.

His 68 was roughly level with last year’s final-round field average of 67.72. Even his best day on that first visit gained little ground once the scoring opened up. Clark’s three wins make him an obvious contender, and his Yokohama rounds give a specific measure of how much better he needs to play here.

Morikawa tied for 14th here last year and won at Pebble Beach in February. On a layout where finding fairways did not necessarily lead to finding greens, his approach play is an obvious part of the viewing interest. Watch whether he turns good position off the tee into birdie chances often enough to stay with the scoring.

Lee tied for 10th in Yokohama’s debut and finished tied for fourth at the Tour Championship. Bridgeman also tied for fourth there, then won the Biltmore Championship Asheville. The Tour’s strokes gained: putting leader enters his Baycurrent debut with a skill that could become especially valuable if the scoring resembles last year’s final round.

Adam Scott’s recent individual tournament results include five consecutive finishes inside the top 20, with a tie for second at the BMW PGA Championship. Doug Ghim has opened the fall with a tie for 17th and a runner-up finish. They add to a field containing 16 of the world’s top 50 players.

Spieth and Ghim Have a Different Scoreboard to Watch

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Jordan Spieth enters at No. 55 in the FedExCup Fall standings. He has 10 top-25 finishes in 22 starts this season but is still seeking his first top-10 result since the 2025 Memorial Tournament. Four guaranteed rounds give him room to build a week, though plenty of players in this field will be working from the same advantage.

Ghim has climbed from No. 93 to No. 58 with those first two fall results. Nos. 51-60 in the final fall standings earn entry into the 2027 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational. Spieth and Ghim currently occupy that group, with six fall events, including this one, still to be played.

For players closer to the other eligibility line, the priority is finishing inside the top 100 to secure exempt status for 2027. Yokohama offers 500 points to the winner and four scheduled rounds in which to improve a position. Nobody needs to spend Friday afternoon wondering whether a Saturday tee time exists.

The two par 5s will be behind the leaders well before they reach the closing stretch Sunday. From the seventh hole on, Yokohama asks them to find their birdies across 10 par 4s and two par 3s. Anyone waiting for a late par 5 to make up a shot will run out of holes.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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Announced Oct. 6, the update is available free to FlightScope customers, although access to certain features depends on the device and existing package. It includes a redesigned interface, new full-swing and chipping targets, expanded video tools and the ability to remove wind’s effect from shot data.

I have a professional relationship with FlightScope, and I appreciate the ingenuity and expertise the company brings to golf. After decades of coaching, my interest in a launch like this comes down to what I can help a player understand and do. The announced features give me several specific reasons to want to put this update to work.

The adjustable practice target is where I would start.

FS Golf Software Update

What Changes in the New FS Golf Experience

FlightScope announced a free software update Oct. 6, with new practice tools, expanded video analysis and more display customization.

1. 01

   A Redesigned Interface

   An updated home screen and new light mode are designed to improve visibility indoors and in bright outdoor conditions.

2. 02

   Adjustable Practice Targets

   Set target distance, size and offset for full-swing and chipping sessions. Randomize targets to change the assignment between shots.

3. 03

   More Trajectory Options

   Customize the sky, trees and hitting surface in the virtual range view.

4. 04

   Smart Data Margins

   Use AI-powered parameter ranges that adapt to skill level, with settings configurable by club. Access depends on the device and package.

5. 05

   A Centralized Video Gallery

   Find automated highlights for maximum carry, ball speed, club speed and best smash factor.

6. 06

   Synchronized Swing Comparison

   Compare any two swings with synchronized side-by-side playback and built-in markup tools.

7. 07

   Wind Normalization

   Remove wind effects from shot data during a live session or when reviewing a past session.

8. 08

   Saved Session Defaults

   Save the starting club, ball choice and dashboard preferences for a quicker session setup.

Before you start: Both the FS Golf software and your device firmware must be updated. The free update does not remove existing device or package requirements for individual features.

Source: FlightScope’s Oct. 6, 2026, launch materials. Image: FlightScope branding illustration, edited with AI.

Give the Next Shot a Different Job

FlightScope’s new in-session targets allow users to adjust distance, target size and offset during full-swing and chipping practice. Target randomization adds another option, changing the assignment to simulate the variety of shots a player encounters on the course.

A fixed target has a place in practice. It gives a golfer room to work through a particular shot and gives a coach repeated attempts to evaluate. But there is a point when I want to see the player choose a club, settle on a shot and commit without the benefit of having just hit that same ball to that same destination.

With a randomized target, the next swing requires a fresh decision. That makes the feature interesting to me as a coach, particularly when a player’s range work needs a stronger connection to how that player actually plays golf.

Chipping deserves that attention, too. Repeating one comfortable chip can help establish a feel, but I also want a golfer to respond when the distance changes. An adjustable target gives us a way to set that task and decide how demanding it should be.

Target size is a useful part of the design. I would want a newer golfer working toward an achievable area, while a more accomplished player could be given a tighter requirement. The exercise should ask enough of the golfer to hold their attention without making every reasonable shot feel like a failure.

That is one way technology can help people enjoy practice more. Give them an assignment they understand, a fair way to evaluate it and a reason to care about the next ball.

The Fastest Swing Is Only One Clip

The new centralized video gallery automatically highlights shots associated with maximum carry, maximum ball speed, maximum club speed and best smash factor. FlightScope also has added synchronized side-by-side playback and built-in markup tools for comparing any two swings.

Personal-best numbers are fun, and there is nothing wrong with enjoying them. Their coaching value depends on what we do with them afterward. I would want to examine the swing behind a standout result, then compare it with a shot that better represents the golfer’s usual performance.

Synchronized playback offers a practical way into that conversation. Two swings can be viewed together and marked up, giving a coach and player a shared reference while they discuss the motion. It also leaves the coach free to select the comparison that serves the lesson, rather than treating the automatically highlighted shot as the most important swing of the day.

Sometimes the shot worth studying is the one a golfer can repeat comfortably. Sometimes it is a miss that needs explaining. The ability to compare any two swings is the part of this addition I am most interested in exploring.

FlightScope also describes AI-powered Smart Data Margins that adapt to a player’s skill level, with parameter ranges configurable by club. For coaching, the appeal is having a range to work within that fits the assignment. Choosing the relevant parameter and setting an appropriate expectation still require judgment about the golfer in front of you.

Small Setup Choices Take Time From a Lesson

Some of the update’s quieter changes concern the start of a session. Users can save a default starting club, ball choice and dashboard preferences. The redesigned interface includes an updated home screen, customizable trajectory views and a new light mode intended to improve visibility in bright outdoor sun or indoor lighting.

I appreciate attention to that kind of detail. During a lesson, I want the screen to be easy to read and the session ready when the golfer is ready. Saved preferences are a sensible feature when the same setup choices otherwise have to be made again.

Customization also extends to the sky, trees and hitting surface in the trajectory view. How much that contributes will depend on the user. My priority would be arranging the display so the player can follow the shot and find the information we are discussing.

The update’s shot normalization feature removes wind effects during live sessions or reviews of past sessions, FlightScope says. That gives coaches another way to examine the numbers, provided we are clear with a player about which view we are using. A normalized result and a result that includes wind answer different questions.

“Continuous innovation is essential for delivering trusted performance data,” FlightScope founder and CEO Henri Johnson said in the company’s announcement. “We are proud to continue providing golfers and coaches with the tools and insights they need to improve their game, while remaining a trusted resource at no additional cost.”

Owners will need to update both the software and their device’s firmware to use the improvements, the company’s customer announcement states. Mobile users can get the latest FS Golf version through their app store, while Windows users have a separate PC update route.

FlightScope is holding a webinar Oct. 8 at 1 p.m. Eastern to walk through the software’s new features and customization options. For my own coaching, I already have a task in mind: use the changing targets to watch a golfer make a decision, then choose the two swings that best explain what happened. That is an afternoon’s work I would look forward to.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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Quiet Please belongs under the Don’t Be That Guy Media umbrella, where I am also involved. It is not a One More Roll Golf Media production.

What I have seen through Quiet Please, though, has reinforced something I had already been thinking about. A worthwhile golf conversation does not necessarily end when the show ends. One comment can become a clip. A disagreement can uncover a better story. Somebody can say something on air that sends me back to the phone, the numbers or another source.

I want One More Roll Golf Media to have room for those conversations, too.

The first original program moving toward production is Different Lies, a show I will host with Jacksonville University golfer Bretton Mackiewicz. The Arena Game is being developed around TGL and WTGL competition. Another idea, History in Play, remains farther down the road and deliberately so.

I am not interested in collecting show titles. If these programs cannot sound different, ask different questions and give golfers something they were not already getting from the previous one, there is little reason to make them.

Different Lies Starts With Where We Each Stand

Bretton Mackiewicz and I have known each other for years, dating back to her days as a junior golfer in Central Florida. Today she is a sophomore Division I golfer at Jacksonville University, studying business administration with a communications minor while competing for the Dolphins.

She also works with One More Roll Golf Media as our Social Media & Content Activation Coordinator and has experience working as a club fitter at PGA Tour Superstore.

I come to the same conversations after three decades inside golf as a coach, PGA Professional, operator, educator and writer.

That gap is the show.

The name Different Lies began as an obvious golf play, but the more we discussed the idea, the more appropriate it became. A golfer’s lie changes the shot available to them. Where you stand also affects what you see.

Bretton is experiencing college golf, social media, equipment, women’s golf, NIL, team dynamics and the modern golf culture from inside the generation living through those changes now. I have watched many of the same parts of the game develop from another vantage point, including years spent teaching players, running golf facilities and working inside the business.

There should be moments when one of us sees something the other does not.

I do not want Bretton sitting beside me because a younger voice looks good on a show graphic. I want her challenging something I say when her experience tells her I am missing part of the story. My job is not to play the veteran who always knows better. Hers is not to represent every young golfer.

We each have to make the case.

When I asked Bretton what interested her about working on the media side of golf, part of her answer landed directly on what I hope the show becomes.

“I love being able to share another view and an inside perspective of the game to help show more sides to the game.”

Different Lies will take one of golf’s larger current conversations and spend time with the pieces underneath it. We may disagree about what matters most. We may occasionally discover halfway through that one of us started from the wrong place.

Either outcome is more interesting than agreeing before the cameras come on.

The Arena Game Follows Golf Into a Different Room

My interest in The Arena Game came from spending more time around the developing world of arena golf.

Bretton and I are building the concept around TGL and WTGL, but I do not want it to become a weekly scoreboard show. Anybody who watched the match already knows who won.

The better material is in how these formats change the decisions golfers make.

The Hammer creates a strategic element that does not exist during a normal PGA Tour round. Team composition changes responsibility. Players accustomed to managing a golf course largely by themselves suddenly have teammates involved in the competitive environment. Technology is no longer simply measuring or explaining the golf. It is part of the playing field.

Even the physical proximity changes things. Traditional tournament golf gives players plenty of space between meaningful interactions. Arena golf can put teammates, opponents, microphones, spectators and immediate reaction much closer to the shot.

There is plenty there to examine without pretending every innovation automatically represents golf’s future.

My WTGL media access has allowed me to see some of this environment more closely. Bretton again approaches it from a useful position, as a current college golfer much closer in age to many of the people these formats are hoping will watch, engage and perhaps experience professional golf differently.

I want us asking why a Hammer decision made sense, what a player saw, whether a format created better golf or merely different entertainment, and which elements might have staying power after the novelty wears off.

The Arena Game is being developed as editorial coverage. It is not an official TGL or WTGL production, and no league affiliation, endorsement or sponsorship should be inferred unless one is announced separately.

One More Roll Is Moving Beyond the Byline

One More Roll Golf Media grew first through my writing because that was where the opportunities kept coming.

Athlon Sports, PGA.com, MyGolfSpy, PGA Magazine, GolfWRX, PrimePutt and other assignments filled the calendar. The company became a way to bring together reporting, storytelling, consulting and other media work that had previously lived in separate places.

Video changes the possibilities without replacing any of that.

I still believe deeply in the written story. There are things I can do with reporting, structure and time that I cannot do while somebody is waiting for me to answer into a microphone.

A camera offers something else.

You can see hesitation before an answer. You can hear disagreement develop instead of reading the cleaned-up version later. Two people can start in completely different places and work through why. Personality carries information of its own.

The useful part is deciding which format fits the material.

A Different Lies conversation might end on the show because the exchange itself was the story. Another might expose a question that deserves a reported Athlon piece the next morning. A segment from The Arena Game could lead somewhere neither of us expected before recording.

That kind of movement between formats interests me much more than simply adding video because media companies are supposed to have video.

One More Roll Golf Media has always been built around finding another way into a golf story. Now some of those stories will begin before I open a blank document.

History in Play Is Still on the Drawing Board

The third One More Roll Golf Media idea is History in Play, and I am intentionally keeping some distance between that concept and the two programs ahead of it.

There is no production schedule to announce.

The idea has grown largely from my work with the Golf Heritage Society and from the number of times a current golf story has sent me backward.

Professional golf has been through equipment disputes before. Tour structures did not appear from nowhere. Golf courses have continually reacted to changes in players, agronomy and equipment. Formats disappear, get rediscovered and return wearing different clothes. Even arguments that sound uniquely modern can have surprisingly old roots.

Golf history is often presented as its own category, almost separate from the game being played now. I am more interested in using it as context.

History in Play could eventually begin with something happening this week and then follow the thread backward. A course. A format. A piece of equipment. A player. A business decision. The past becomes useful because it helps explain the present, not because we decided it was time for a history lesson.

The Golf Heritage Society could provide remarkable people and resources if the concept develops in that direction, but I do not want to force the show onto a calendar simply because the title already exists.

Different Lies is much closer to the first tee. The Arena Game has a natural place alongside the TGL and WTGL schedules. History in Play can stay in the notebook until the format is good enough to justify producing it.

I have been in golf long enough to know how easy the announcement stage is. You come up with a name, make a graphic and describe what something could become.

Producing something people choose to watch again the following week is a much tougher standard.

That is the one One More Roll Golf Media has to meet.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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Jackson Koivun was announced Monday as the second member of Motor City Golf Club for the 2027 season, joining five-time major champion Brooks Koepka. Koivun is 21, his professional career is barely underway, and he already owns a PGA Tour victory and an unbeaten Presidents Cup debut.

Koepka, meanwhile, has lived through several versions of professional golf. He has won five majors, reached No. 1 in the world and spent years as one of the game’s most recognizable competitors. Now he is working his way back into the PGA Tour ecosystem while adding TGL to the next phase of his career.

Put them together and Motor City has something more interesting than two impressive résumés. It has two players arriving from almost opposite ends of the professional-golf experience, which gives the expansion franchise a personality before the rest of its roster has even been announced.

Koivun Keeps Making the Next Step Look Normal

I have written quite a bit about Koivun this year, and what keeps pulling me back is not simply the winning. It is how quickly a new level seems to stop looking new to him.

Koivun won the 3M Open in July in his third professional start. Two months later, he made his Presidents Cup debut at Medinah Country Club and went 2-0-1 as the United States defeated the International Team, 17-13. His Sunday singles victory over Si Woo Kim came while the Americans were erasing a three-point deficit entering the final session.

There are plenty of young players with extraordinary skill. What separates them over time is usually what happens when golf starts asking something different of them, whether that means winning for a college team, playing for their country, handling Sunday pressure on the PGA Tour or standing over a shot knowing teammates are counting on the result.

Koivun has received those assignments unusually quickly, and so far he has looked comfortable accepting them. That is why TGL feels less like another item being added to his résumé and more like another environment that fits what he has already shown.

He helped Auburn win NCAA Division I team championships in 2024 and 2026, and his team experience also includes the Junior Presidents Cup, Arnold Palmer Cup, Walker Cup and Presidents Cup. Motor City is not taking a young player accustomed only to individual stroke play and dropping him into an unfamiliar format. Koivun has spent much of his elite competitive life playing for something larger than his own score.

“Some of my best experiences have come while playing team golf, from winning national championships at Auburn to representing the U.S. at the Presidents Cup,” Koivun said. “Having teammates alongside you and feeling that energy from the fans makes those moments even better.”

That part of the signing matters because TGL asks for something different than a normal Tour week. Players are talking through decisions, interacting with teammates and reacting in an arena where microphones, cameras and a live crowd make it difficult to disappear quietly into a round.

Koivun appears ready for that part, too.

Koepka Gives Detroit a Completely Different Perspective

Koepka arrives from almost the opposite end of the timeline.

Five major championships have already established what he can do when golf reaches its highest competitive level. His career has also carried him through injuries, enormous expectations, the disruption created by LIV Golf and now a return to the PGA Tour ecosystem.

Motor City made Koepka its first player. At the time, that gave the expansion team an established star with instant recognition. Adding Koivun changes the feel of that first decision because Detroit now has two golfers whose careers invite completely different conversations.

Koepka knows exactly what major championship Sundays feel like because he has repeatedly won them. Koivun is still collecting the first versions of those career-defining experiences, but he has already shown an unusual ability to handle them without looking overwhelmed by the occasion.

That contrast should play well inside TGL. Koepka has never seemed particularly interested in manufacturing a public persona, and some of his appeal comes from that restraint. Koivun, on the other hand, is still being introduced to a much broader golf audience as his professional career accelerates.

A roster filled with four players from the same career stage might look impressive on paper. Koepka and Koivun give Motor City something less predictable.

TGL Can Show Another Side of Koivun

I have become more interested in TGL the more I have watched what happens around the golf rather than judging it strictly by whether it resembles a traditional PGA Tour event.

It should not resemble one.

TGL does not need to replace 72-hole tournament golf, and trying to measure it against that standard misses much of what the format can actually do. Its better opportunity is to create another doorway into professional golf, one where viewers hear more conversation, see more interaction and understand personalities faster than they often can during a conventional tournament telecast.

Koivun fits that concept particularly well because his rise has happened so quickly. Serious golf fans know what he did at Auburn, saw him win on the PGA Tour and watched him go unbeaten at Medinah, but much of the wider sports audience is still learning who he is.

Traditional tournament golf reveals players slowly. Viewers watch shots, decisions, body language and leaderboard movement over several hours, but there are long stretches when the golf itself carries nearly the entire broadcast.

TGL compresses that process. Put Koivun beside teammates, make strategy part of the conversation, expose his reactions and place him in front of an arena crowd, and people get to know something about him beyond the numbers beside his name.

Koivun clearly understands that part of the appeal.

“I am a huge fan of TGL and love how it brings new fans and an arena experience to golf,” he said. “I’ve been to SoFi Center, and it’s unlike anything I’ve experienced in the game.”

That comment interests me more than hearing another elite player simply say he is excited to join a new league. Koivun appears to understand what TGL is trying to do and why being good at golf is only part of making the product work.

Motor City Already Has Something Worth Watching

Motor City Golf Club was announced in May 2025 as TGL’s seventh franchise and first expansion club. It begins competition in 2027, and two roster positions remain open.

Those final selections will determine plenty about how Detroit looks competitively, but the franchise no longer needs to wait for a complete roster to establish an identity. Koepka and Koivun have already given it one.

Koepka represents accomplishment that has already been measured at the highest levels of the game. Koivun represents possibility, although calling him merely a prospect feels increasingly outdated after a PGA Tour victory and an unbeaten Presidents Cup debut.

More importantly for TGL, neither needs the league to create relevance. Koepka already has it, while Koivun has been earning his at a remarkable rate since leaving college golf.

The arena gives each of them another way to show viewers who they are.

Motor City could have started building its inaugural roster by collecting recognizable names. Instead, its first two choices leave us wondering how two very different golfers will play together, communicate together and handle the same unusual competitive environment.

For a team that has yet to hit its first TGL shot, that is a pretty good place to start.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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It just will not be a PGA Tour event.

The LPGA announced Monday that the LOTTE Championship will move to the Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort on Maui for tournament week March 15-21, 2027. The event will carry a $3 million purse and become part of a new two-week Hawaii swing alongside the Nanea Cup.

That is the news. What the LPGA is getting, however, is considerably more interesting than another line on its schedule.

Less than six months after the PGA Tour confirmed it was ending its tournament presence on Maui, the LPGA has taken one of the most recognizable golf courses on American television and put it back into professional competition. The Plantation Course, long associated with January golf, huge elevation changes, trade winds and panoramic Pacific views, will now become a stage for the best women in the world.

There is some irony in that.

There is also an opportunity.

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The PGA Tour’s Departure Was More Complicated Than It Looks

The history here deserves to be handled fairly.

The PGA Tour did not simply wake up one morning and decide it was tired of Kapalua. The 2026 Sentry was initially pulled from the Plantation Course because drought conditions, water restrictions and related agronomic issues had compromised the property. Tournament infrastructure and the logistics of staging a Tour event on Maui further complicated the decision.

The course reopened for public play in November 2025 after restoration work, although Kapalua officials said at the time that conditions had not yet returned to PGA Tour standards.

The larger separation came later.

In April 2026, the PGA Tour confirmed it planned to end its tournament presence on Maui. The Sentry eventually found a new home at Torrey Pines in San Diego, where the longtime sponsor will attach its name to the former Farmers Insurance Open beginning in 2027.

That distinction matters.

The drought helped take the PGA Tour away from Kapalua. The Tour’s subsequent scheduling decisions kept it away.

Now the LPGA is moving in.

Kapalua Gives the LPGA Something Television Cannot Manufacture

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There are great golf courses, and then there are courses viewers recognize before anyone identifies them.

Kapalua is one of those places.

The Coore-Crenshaw design stretches across the slopes of the West Maui Mountains, with dramatic elevation changes, wide corridors and ocean views from nearly every hole. The downhill 18th has become one of the most recognizable finishing holes in televised golf.

For years, seeing those images in January meant the PGA Tour had started another season.

That connection has value.

Women’s professional golf spends a lot of energy introducing audiences to players who deserve broader recognition. It should not also have to introduce every golf course from scratch. Established venues can carry some of that load.

Kapalua comes with visual memory already attached to it.

A viewer who may not know every player in the LOTTE Championship field can recognize where the tournament is being played. A casual sports fan flipping channels has a better chance of stopping because something on the screen looks familiar. The course itself becomes part of the marketing.

That is why this move strikes me as one of the smarter additions the LPGA has made to its schedule.

There is no need to reinvent Kapalua. Put great players on it and let the place do some of the work.

The Hawaii Swing Suddenly Has More Shape

The scheduling is smart, too.

The LOTTE Championship has been played at Hoakalei Country Club on Oahu since 2022. It now moves from October into March and joins the newly created Nanea Cup as part of a two-week LPGA stretch in Hawaii. Golf Digest reported that the sequence will follow the Tour’s early-season Asian swing, giving the LPGA a more logical geographic progression.

Tournament scheduling can look like administrative trivia from the outside. It is not.

Travel matters. Television windows matter. Venue recognition matters. Creating stretches of the season that feel connected rather than randomly assembled matters.

The LPGA now has a chance to make Hawaii feel like a defined piece of its calendar instead of simply a place the Tour visits once.

It also arrives at an appropriate time for the LOTTE Championship. The 2027 edition will be the tournament’s 15th, and instead of celebrating that milestone by standing still, the event is moving to a property with its own substantial professional golf history.

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Maui Gets Professional Golf Back, Too

The community piece cannot be reduced to a sports-business talking point.

Maui is still dealing with the long aftermath of the devastating 2023 Lahaina wildfires. The LPGA announcement specifically connected the tournament’s return to continued recovery and revitalization on the island.

A golf tournament does not repair what people lost.

It can bring recurring visitors, media attention and economic activity. It can put Maui back in front of viewers for reasons tied to competition and beauty without pretending the difficult recent history never happened.

The Plantation Course also has a functioning golf identity again. Kapalua currently lists the course as open and in strong condition after the severe problems that contributed to the loss of the 2026 PGA Tour event.

Professional golf returning there feels consequential because, for a while, it was reasonable to wonder when anybody would be back.

Now we know.

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This Should Not Be Treated Like the LPGA Picking Up Leftovers

That would be the laziest interpretation of Monday’s announcement.

Kapalua is not suddenly less valuable because the PGA Tour left. If anything, its absence from the men’s schedule created an unusual opening for the LPGA to claim a venue with decades of television equity already built into it.

The PGA Tour made the decision it believed fit its future.

The LPGA should make the most of what became available.

There is room in professional golf for recognizable places to develop new identities. Pebble Beach has hosted major championships for men and women. St. Andrews means more than one championship. Great courses do not belong permanently to one tour simply because viewers became accustomed to seeing a particular logo beside the leaderboard.

Kapalua hosted an LPGA event before, but that 2008 Kapalua LPGA Classic was played on the Bay Course and won by Morgan Pressel. In 2027, the women will compete on the Plantation Course for the first time as an LPGA Tour venue.

That distinction may ultimately become the best part of this story.

Golf fans already know the downhill drives, the slopes and the Pacific sitting beyond the fairways.

Next March, they get to see a different group of players figure them out.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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She carried a three-shot lead over Ina Yoon into the final round of the LOTTE Championship presented by Hoakalei. Yoon immediately made it uncomfortable, opening 4 under through five holes. Thitikul kept answering and regained enough separation that the tournament appeared to be back in her control late. Then she made double bogey on the par-4 16th. The cushion was gone.

Her next two numbers were 3 and 4.

Birdie at 17. Birdie at 18. A closing 68, a 21-under total of 267 and a three-shot victory over Yoon, who also shot 68. The scorecard makes the finish look tidy again. It was anything but.

And that is what made this win more revealing than a comfortable walk down the final fairway would have been.

The Double Bogey Only Got One Hole

Tournament golf does not demand that the winner avoid every mistake. It demands that the mistake be contained.

That distinction can get lost when elite players are reduced to leaderboards, averages and Sunday highlights. A double bogey with two holes remaining is not some minor blemish tucked inside four days of good golf. It changes the assignment immediately. The player who had been protecting a lead suddenly has to start earning it again.

Thitikul admitted the 16th felt awful. What followed was more important. She said she reminded herself that she still had a chance and tried to remain inside her own bubble rather than start reacting to somebody else’s golf.

“Golf really taught me about that. Accept the good thing but you have to accept the bad things too.”

There is a coaching principle buried in there without turning an LPGA Tour victory into a lesson tee. Players often make the original mistake worse by allowing it to live for another shot, another hole or another half-hour.

Thitikul gave the double bogey one box on the scorecard.

Then she birdied both holes that remained.

Yoon deserves plenty of credit for making that response necessary. She came out firing and forced Thitikul to keep producing instead of simply managing a Sunday lead. Thitikul knew it, saying afterward that Yoon’s start meant she had to keep making birdies.

Sixty-Five Greens Explain a Lot

The ending supplied the drama. The previous 69 holes supplied the reason Thitikul had room to survive it.

She hit 65 of 72 greens in regulation for the week, a staggering 90.3% and the best mark in the field. She also hit 46 of 56 fairways and did not record a three-putt. Her rounds of 67, 65, 67 and 68 never gave the tournament much opportunity to get away from her.

That green-in-regulation number is the one worth sitting with.

Yoon needed only 108 putts for the week compared with Thitikul’s 114, but raw putting totals can be deceptive when one player is hitting substantially more greens. Thitikul hit eight more greens in regulation than Yoon, 65 to 57. She kept putting herself in position to score without asking her short game to manufacture pars all afternoon.

That is championship golf that travels.

There will be weeks when the putter runs hot and a player steals a tournament. There will be Sundays when somebody scrambles from everywhere and survives. Thitikul’s LOTTE win came from something much more sustainable: repeated control of the golf ball, enough opportunities created over 72 holes that one bad number did not have to become the defining number.

Thinking Less Helped Her Play Better

The most interesting part of Thitikul’s post-round comments might have come well before she discussed the double bogey.

She credited a better work-life balance, including time away from golf, and said she believed she had been thinking less on the course. Her focus had narrowed toward the present and the next shot. Over the closing holes Sunday, she said she worked on her breathing and tried to stay away from the what-ifs.

That is harder than it sounds.

One of golf’s great traps is the urge to add information when something goes wrong. Another swing thought. Another correction. Another explanation for the last shot before the next one has even been played.

Thitikul described something different. She acknowledged that she was nervous and excited, that good and bad thoughts were both present. The objective was not to make those feelings disappear. She kept herself functional while they were there.

That is not mental-game wallpaper. The final two holes are evidence of an actual performance skill.

Four Wins Change the 2026 Conversation

Sunday also made the season math harder to ignore.

The LOTTE Championship was Thitikul’s fourth victory of 2026 and the 11th LPGA Tour title of her career. She has won two of her last three starts and joined Nelly Korda as the only players with four victories this season. She is also now one victory behind Ariya Jutanugarn, the winningest Thai player in LPGA Tour history.

At 23, Thitikul’s age still makes its way into almost every discussion about her. It should. What should disappear is any lingering instinct to frame her primarily as an emerging player.

The résumé has moved past that.

She became the first player from Thailand to win the LOTTE Championship. The $450,000 winner’s check pushed her official career earnings to $20,210,011, making her the sixth player in LPGA Tour history to cross $20 million. LPGA notes also moved her past Karrie Webb into fourth on the career money list, behind only Nelly Korda, Lydia Ko and Annika Sorenstam.

The money drew some of Thitikul’s trademark humor. Her immediate response to crossing $20 million was a joke about having to pay more taxes.

The finish drew something more revealing.

She said the two weeks away from golf had helped. She talked about breathing, staying present and accepting that bad shots are part of the deal. She even joked that the winner’s hula was harder than what happened at 16.

But beneath all of that was the part worth remembering.

Thitikul said winning those moments against the negative thoughts in her own head felt better than winning the trophy.

Two closing birdies made a pretty convincing case.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Jeeno Thitikul Took a Month Off and Came Back Without a Bogey

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He had already made enough birdies to rewrite the Bank of Utah Championship’s scoring records. Now, at the par-4 13th, the player chasing his first PGA Tour victory had to get out of a bunker, absorb a double bogey and keep playing with the tournament suddenly much less comfortable.

Smotherman won anyway. His closing 68 produced a tournament-record 26-under 258, two shots ahead of Doug Ghim, and delivered his first Tour title in his 100th start. David Ford and Trace Crowe tied for third at 23 under.

The 32-year-old led the field with 32 birdies. But the part of this win worth spending time with is how he handled the holes that refused to give him another one.

“It didn’t have to be pretty,” Smotherman said in his post-round interview. “I got some nice bounces. Made some poor swings, but this game doesn’t have to be perfect.”

The Bunker at 13 Changed the Finish

Three birdies in his first five holes helped Smotherman build a lead that reached four strokes. That kind of start gives a leader choices. The double bogey at 13 took some of them away, and Crowe’s eagle at the drivable 14th brought another challenger within one.

Smotherman answered with birdies at 14 and 16. Even then, the finish kept asking for more. He bogeyed the par-3 17th before making birdie at the closing par 5, where Ghim also birdied to finish at 24 under.

The putter had left opportunities behind. In the official interview, the questioner brought up the short eagle and birdie chances that had escaped him. Smotherman’s answer went back to the drives he hit coming down the stretch and the commitment behind them.

That is the golf in this finish I appreciate. A missed putt can make a player feel he has to find the missing stroke somewhere else immediately. At Black Desert, with lava waiting beyond the grass, that can become an expensive impulse.

Smotherman described trying to keep a soft pitching wedge right at 16. He saw it bounce off the bunker edge. A pulled shot, he explained, could have finished long and left, leaving him in a difficult spot. The next swing at 17 did go left.

“I hit it to the fat side,” he said. “I had a bit of a lead, I guess, and trusted myself on the 18th.”

In July 2025, Smotherman Told Me What Had to Change

When I interviewed Smotherman for Athlon in July 2025, he was preparing for a return to the PGA Tour after losing his status. Two Korn Ferry Tour wins in three weeks had helped secure that return. He understood more about what staying on Tour would require than he had when he first earned his card.

“On the PGA Tour, you have to be able to avoid those big numbers,” he told me.

Sunday makes that answer more interesting. The big number came anyway. A double bogey with the lead did not prevent him from winning, because he followed it with enough good golf to keep the damage from deciding the tournament.

He also spoke then about Jessica’s support and the perspective their children gave him after a round. He valued having them on the road with him, and coming home to children who did not care what he shot. That was part of the return to Tour he was anticipating, too.

The path back brought him into 2026, when he finished tied for second at the Cognizant Classic after holding the 36- and 54-hole leads. At Black Desert, he held those leads again. This time he left with the $1.08 million winner’s check and a result he had not managed in his previous 99 Tour starts.

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Black Desert Gave Him Birdies and Somewhere to Lose Them

Black Desert hosted my wife, Melisa, and me for a media visit in early September. We toured the full course, and I played the front nine with rental clubs and very little recent golf behind me. I played poorly and wanted another round.

The room to play was part of the appeal. From beside the lava, the available grass looked more generous than some television views suggest. The rock still influenced where I wanted to aim, even when it was well outside the shot I needed to hit.

That experience is why I have little interest in treating 26 under as a complete verdict on this golf course. I want to know what the player had to do when his lead shrank. Sunday supplied a much better answer than the winning total alone.

A difficult par 4 at 13 was followed by an immediate scoring chance at 14. After a bogey at 17, Smotherman still had the closing par 5 available. Black Desert allowed him to recover, but somebody behind him could use those same holes to get closer.

Crowe did exactly that with his eagle at 14. He eventually finished with a career-best tie for third, while Ford’s 64 earned a share of that position. Luke Clanton shot the day’s low round, a 62, to climb from a tie for 26th to a tie for seventh.

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Ghim’s Wait Continues, With a Better Position for the Fall

Ghim shot 65-62-64-69 and still left without his first Tour victory. This was his second runner-up finish in 192 starts. His 260 was a stroke lower than McCarty’s winning total in 2024, yet it left him two behind Smotherman. He moved from No. 89 to No. 58 in the FedExCup Fall standings.

Smotherman climbed from No. 79 to No. 51, and Ben James’ tie for fifth moved him from No. 66 to No. 59. The players who finish the fall ranked 51st through 60th earn places in next year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational. Those positions remain a race, rather than invitations already secured.

Black Desert has now produced a first-time winner in each of its three PGA Tour editions. Smotherman joined Matt McCarty and Michael Brennan, but his final interview left the result at a much smaller scale than that tournament history.

He had wanted one more lag putt on 18. After the bunker trouble, missed chances and another bogey, he was still talking about driving the ball down the fairway and staying committed.

He made 32 birdies this week. At the end, he was asking for a putt he could leave close.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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By Sunday evening, he was struggling to get through a different conversation. Meronk had won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, and the emotion interrupted his explanation of what it meant.

“I never usually cry, but this one, this one feels really special,” he said in comments published by the DP World Tour.

The Polish golfer closed with a four-under 68 at the Old Course to finish at 20 under, two shots ahead of Casey Jarvis and Niklas Norgaard. It was his fifth DP World Tour victory and his first on the circuit in 1,078 days, secured at the championship where he made his professional debut a decade earlier.

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There was a practical consequence, too. Meronk had been trying to secure his DP World Tour status for next year, and the victory accomplished that. When he described himself as relieved, there was a job-related reason behind the word.

He Prepared for the Nerves, Too

The DP World Tour’s post-win coverage included a revealing detail about Meronk’s preparation. He has worked with psychologist Bevis Moynan for several years, and their rehearsal before Sunday included “seeing the shots, feeling the wind, feeling the pressure, feeling the nerves.”

That last part deserves some attention. A golfer can spend an entire warmup trying to manufacture the feeling of a comfortable practice round, then become alarmed when the first meaningful shot feels nothing like one. Meronk’s preparation allowed for the discomfort. The nerves were among the conditions he expected to encounter.

He also said he writes daily in a notebook, expressing gratitude for tournament wins on the DP World Tour in 2026 and a top-20 finish for the season before achieving those goals. He described imagining himself with the trophy and working backward through the round during his mental preparation.

The notebook is an interesting detail. It would be a poor explanation for the result by itself. Jarvis was still there to beat, the ball still had to be played, and St. Andrews still had opportunities to undo the work.

The more useful observation is how specifically Meronk had considered the day ahead. He had made room for pressure in his preparation without treating it as proof that something was wrong. Sunday gave him plenty of chances to find out whether he could play through it.

The Lead Changed Before the Trouble Was Finished

Meronk erased his two-shot overnight deficit with birdies at the first two holes. The contest tightened again, then turned around the ninth through 12th: Jarvis three-putted the ninth and bogeyed the 11th, while Meronk made birdies at the ninth and 12th.

Those holes changed what each player needed from the remaining chances. Meronk could make Jarvis chase. For Jarvis, a routine par no longer did the same work it had earlier in the afternoon.

Meronk birdied the 14th to move three clear, but the closing stretch offered no comfortable procession. Jarvis pulled a shot back at the 15th. At the 17th, Meronk’s approach went beyond the green, leaving him on a narrow strip of grass between the path and the road, and he made bogey.

That miss is worth keeping in the account of his win. A final-round performance can be good enough to earn a trophy and still contain a shot the player would dearly like back. Meronk’s preparation had included pressure; here was a fresh dose of it with the finish close enough to see.

Jarvis also bogeyed the 17th, and Meronk finished with par. The official scoring table records a 68, a round that got him through the chase and the late mistake.

Tom Chaplin Had a Score to Contribute

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Meronk also won the team competition with Keane’s Tom Chaplin. They finished at 41 under, and Chaplin contributed two net eagles in the final round. It was his first time making the team cut in his last six appearances, the tour’s team report noted.

That is a substantial role for the amateur partner on a Sunday when the professional was trying to close out an individual title. Chaplin had his own competition to finish, and his golf helped deliver the second trophy.

“Whenever I struggle, he got my back and the other way as well,” Meronk said in the tour’s team report.

On the final walk at St. Andrews, Meronk said he thought about Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus crossing the bridge. He tried to enjoy it. Ten years after beginning his professional career at this event, he had a winning finish to complete and, with Chaplin, someone to share it with.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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Related: Yuta Sugiura Needed a PGA Tour Card Push. He Shot 58.

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The 12-under round came Saturday at the Compliance Solutions Championship at The Patriot Golf Club in Owasso, Oklahoma. Golf Channel reported that Sugiura climbed from a tie for 47th to a tie for eighth at 17 under, putting himself four shots behind 54-hole leader Trent Phillips.

Sugiura began the week No. 21 on the Korn Ferry Tour points list. The top 20 after the season-ending Korn Ferry Tour Championship earn PGA Tour cards for 2027. Sitting one place outside that cutoff gave every position he could recover in Oklahoma a consequence beyond this tournament.

His 58 made him the fourth player in Korn Ferry Tour history to break 59, tying the second-lowest round ever recorded on the circuit. The record remains Cristobal del Solar’s 57 in 2024. Sugiura joined that company at a particularly useful time, with this event followed by the season finale.

Five Birdies After His Only Bogey

He started on No. 10 and birdied his first two holes, then added four more birdies to turn in 29. An eagle at the par-5 first brought him to 8 under for the round with eight holes left. Then came the bogey at No. 2.

That is the part of this scorecard worth lingering over. Sugiura had already assembled a round most players would happily sign for, then lost a stroke just as an exceptionally low number was becoming possible. His response was a birdie at No. 3, a par at No. 4 and four consecutive birdies from Nos. 5 through 8. A closing par at the ninth completed his second 29.

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A 58 Still Left Him Four Shots Back

Saturday offered help. Preferred lies were in use, and Golf Channel reported considerably less wind than in the opening rounds. Ross Steelman and William Sides each shot 60, while Phillips posted 61. Sugiura’s 58 came amid a rush of low scores, which helps explain how it could lift him 39 places and still leave him four strokes off the lead.

Those other low rounds have a direct bearing on the card chase. Sugiura began the week one place outside the top 20, and the players around him are trying to improve their own standing. His eventual finish in Oklahoma will determine how much of Saturday’s comeback carries into the season finale.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Austin Smotherman’s Record Pace Leaves No Room to Coast in Utah

Related: Casey Jarvis Shoots 65 at St Andrews and Opens Two-Shot Lead

Related: Brian Jacobs Had No Plan C. Then Golf Found Him at 30

At 23 under, he has given himself a chance to win his first PGA Tour title in his 100th start. Doug Ghim is one shot behind after a back-nine 29, with his own first victory within reach in start No. 192. Smotherman has done almost everything a leader could want through three rounds in Ivins, Utah. Ghim has made sure none of it feels sufficient.

The temptation Sunday will be to look at those totals and assume somebody needs to fire at every flag. Saturday offered a more useful explanation for how the two leaders got there. Ghim described playing conservatively into a tricky pin at the 16th, then making birdie. Smotherman kept trusting putts from 15 and 20 feet rather than demanding that every approach finish beside the hole.

Smotherman called it “good boring golf” in his post-round interview. For a player trying to win for the first time, keeping that description accurate for another 18 holes may be harder than anything he has done all week.

Ghim’s 29 Was Built on More Than Putting

Ghim made his first bogey of the tournament at the ninth Saturday. He went on to shoot 64, closing with birdies at 16, 17 and 18 to reach 22 under. His explanation of that finish was refreshingly specific about where the shots were good and where he benefited from a little help.

At 16, he respected a pin with trouble short and long on the right side and gave himself a reasonable putt. At 17, a wedge he did not particularly like caught a favorable bounce and left him an 8- or 9-footer. His second shot at 18 also fell short of his intention, but the position left plenty of green for his next shot. He got it to 3 or 4 feet and made another birdie.

That account should temper the idea that a 29 requires nine holes of flawless golf. Ghim could describe two imperfect shots in his closing stretch without either becoming a repair job on the scorecard. He still had room to play.

His tee shots have provided that room all week. The official post-round interview cited 41 fairways hit out of 42, and Ghim explained that keeping the ball in position had received more attention than usual in his preparation. At a course lined by lava rock, chasing a few extra yards has to be weighed against what happens when the ball leaves the playable ground.

The putter gets plenty of attention when someone comes home in 29. Ghim’s account points back to decisions made before those putts existed. Sunday, with one stroke separating him from Smotherman, that same willingness to choose a sensible target could matter every bit as much as another hot stretch on the greens.

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Smotherman Has a Wedge Shot Worth Remembering

Smotherman’s 63-62-65 start adds up to 190, four strokes below the tournament’s previous 54-hole record. The official third-round notes also put it nine shots below his own previous best opening 54-hole total on Tour. He has earned the lead through sustained scoring, with eight more birdies Saturday overcoming bogeys at the third and 10th.

His birdie at 17 contained a detail worth carrying into Sunday. Earlier, at the eighth, he had hit a wedge about 30 feet beyond the hole. The number for that shot matched the distance he later faced to the flag at 17. Smotherman and his caddie recognized it, and he used the same swing with his 54-degree wedge to set up a birdie.

An approach that finished long had supplied information he could use. In a round this low, the next useful adjustment may be sitting inside a shot that initially looks disappointing. Smotherman remembered the distance instead of discarding the swing.

At 18, he admitted getting a little nervous over a 6-iron after a strong drive. He still chipped well and made a 10-footer to finish. He planned to make a few more swings afterward to check that the ball was starting on line.

Smotherman was pleased with his play and specific about the shot he wanted to check. The nerves had already shown up at 18, and he had finished the hole with another birdie. He has a recovery to draw on Sunday if that feeling returns.

The more pressing danger Sunday may be impatience. Smotherman explained that the course offers enough scoring holes for him to keep hitting fairways, control his approaches and wait for opportunities. A slow start would test that belief, especially if Ghim began making birdies beside him. Changing targets simply to answer the other player could undo the approach that has produced 23 under.

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Ben James Has a Reason to Keep Firing

Ben James gets up and down at the 14th to move to 17-under 😮‍💨 pic.twitter.com/mczLqRo4XV

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) October 3, 2026

Five shots back, Ben James has recent evidence that a Sunday charge can close a substantial gap. PGA Tour reporting noted that he shot final-round 61s in his previous two starts, finishing third at the Wyndham Championship and second at the Biltmore Championship Asheville. He entered both Sundays seven behind.

James’ bogey-free 64 Saturday put him at 18 under alongside Trace Crowe and Kevin Streelman. Crowe has improved by a shot each day, going 66-65-64, and leads the field in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green. Johnny Keefer, another stroke back at 17 under, shot a bogey-free 62 Saturday. There are players capable of making the leaders keep working.

James put his position plainly in his official interview: “I had nothing to lose, and I have nothing to lose tomorrow.” The freedom makes sense. He needs birdies, and his recent Sundays give him a reason to believe he can make enough of them. Smotherman and Ghim have a much different calculation, because a mistake would give away ground they already own.

Streelman brings another possibility at 18 under: a third Tour victory at 47, in his 489th start. His 68 gave up ground to the chasers shooting 64, but birdies at two of his last three holes kept him alongside James and Crowe.

Smotherman said a win would give everyone in his camp a chance to celebrate the work together. Ghim, asked how he would prepare for the final pairing, offered a quieter answer. He has a daily routine, and he intends to follow it.

“Whether I’m in 75th or first, it’ll all be the same.”

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Smotherman’s 62 Edges a Bogey-Free Roy at Black Desert

Related: I Played Black Desert. What Makes This Week’s PGA Tour Test Different

Related: Black Desert Makes Its Case Before the First Tee

Plan A was baseball. He grew up in Rochester, New York, as a catcher with an eye on the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles’ Triple-A affiliate, the Rochester Red Wings, played close enough for Jacobs to sit in the stands and picture himself on the other side of the railing.

Plan B was football.

“My plan C was ‘nothing,’” Jacobs said. “Somehow, someway I was going to be involved in professional sports.”

Golf was nowhere in that childhood plan. It arrived much later, and from an angle that helps explain the PGA Professional Jacobs eventually became.

He was 30, still learning the game himself, when he was asked to coach a middle-school golf team. His players were inner-city kids who, as Jacobs remembers it, had virtually no access to golf. He responded the way a coach does when there is nowhere to hide behind expertise: He started studying.

There was no YouTube rabbit hole waiting for him, no online swing library and no instant video exchange with another instructor. Jacobs read, practiced and worked through the game alongside his players.

“Coaching the game really sparked my fascination,” he said. “I always felt coaching, if I couldn’t do it then I can’t teach my team and players.”

They learned together. They played. They competed. Most importantly to Jacobs, they had fun.

More than two decades later, Jacobs is a PGA Professional and director of instruction at Eagle Vale Golf Club in Fairport, New York. His career has taken him through ESPN Golf Schools, Golf Channel Academy, Morning Drive and BallenIsles Country Club before bringing him back to the Rochester area.

The titles came later. The coach came first.

Oak Hill Gave Jacobs a Different View of Golf

Caddying widened the picture.

Jacobs was working as a caddie master when the 1998 U.S. Amateur came to Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester. He spent four days on the bag for Jess Daley, then a Northwestern golfer who later played professionally.

Jacobs remembers watching more than golf shots.

Daley’s preparation caught him. So did the planning. Jacobs asked questions and watched how a high-level player organized his work. Andy Miller, son of Johnny Miller, was also in the group, giving Jacobs another close-up look at how accomplished players went about tournament golf.

“At that point I knew my golf career was beginning,” Jacobs said.

He kept collecting information.

While working at Locust Hill Country Club, Jacobs also caddied during LPGA competition. He sought out players and coaches, spent time around the tour truck and talked with fitters, nutritionists, caddies and parents.

“I was a sponge,” he said.

Those details matter in coaching. A golf swing is one piece of a golfer, and often not the piece that determines whether a player can turn a good practice session into a good score. Jacobs was seeing that long before technology made collecting swing data easier.

He was learning about preparation, emotion, practice structure and the people around a player. Those lessons followed him into his own coaching.

He Treated the PGA Playing Test Like a Season

By 1999, Jacobs had decided he wanted to become a PGA Professional.

His background in other sports came with him.

He gave himself a year to prepare for the PGA Playing Ability Test and approached it much like preparing for college football. His target score in September 2000 was 154. Jacobs says he shot 71-67 for 138.

Passing the playing test was the clean part.

What followed had to fit around a life already moving at full speed. Jacobs was teaching school full time, coaching three sports, working toward a master’s degree in education and raising a young family. He completed the PGA education process and was elected to membership in December 2005.

For years, his normal day started at the gym at 4:30 a.m. He was at school by 6:30, taught until 2 and then went to his golf academy until 6. Saturdays brought more coaching. Sunday belonged to church and family. Monday afternoons were reserved for the business.

Jacobs credits his wife, Ruth, with making the schedule possible.

“She cleared the path for my success,” he said.

That acknowledgment carries more weight after hearing him describe what the schedule actually required. Golf careers are often presented through the visible pieces: the facility, students, television appearances, awards and tournament work. Someone at home frequently absorbs the parts nobody sees.

Jacobs knows exactly who did that for him.

After 30 years in education, the growing demands of golf and travel finally moved him out of the classroom.

By then, one classroom had simply replaced another.

The Range Was Never the Destination

Jacobs led more than 20 ESPN Golf Schools a year in a program where Hank Haney served as dean of instruction. He later became a lead instructor with Golf Channel Academy and appeared on Morning Drive. He also served as director of instruction at BallenIsles in Palm Beach Gardens.

Each stop gave him something different.

ESPN Golf Schools sharpened his ability to assess a golfer quickly and decide what actually needed attention. Golf Channel exposed him to television, production, content, social media and the business surrounding instruction. BallenIsles taught him something about himself.

Jacobs is an entrepreneur. He values owning his time.

That realization fits with advice he has carried through his career: Know who you are, but also know who you are not.

His teaching philosophy is equally direct.

“The game is not ‘golf swing’ it is ‘playing golf,’” Jacobs said.

There is a sizable difference between those two pursuits.

A range allows repetition. A golf course asks for decisions. The lie changes. Trouble enters the picture. Wind matters. A golfer has to choose a club, pick a target, accept a miss and keep playing after the ball does something inconvenient.

That has been a central piece of Jacobs’ coaching from the beginning. Technique has a place, but he wants golfers in situations where the skill has to survive consequences.

As a coach, I understand that distinction.

You can learn a great deal about a player in 15 minutes on a golf course that may never surface during an hour of hitting balls from the same lie. Club selection, pace, commitment, emotional response, target choice and what happens immediately after a bad swing all become part of the lesson.

Jacobs wants to teach that golfer, not simply the motion.

Technology still became important to him. One of the biggest early financial decisions in his golf business was purchasing a TrackMan for roughly $25,000.

His description of contemplating that investment is considerably more colorful than anything found in a business textbook. Jacobs remembers the price tag making him feel like he might hyperventilate, lose his lunch and worse, all at once.

He bought it anyway.

Jacobs believed being among the first in his area with the technology would allow him to confirm what he was seeing and differentiate his coaching business. He says the $25,000 debt was paid off within six months.

He took a calculated risk. More importantly, he understood why he was taking it.

Eventually, the Scorecard Changed

Jacobs accumulated the recognition that comes with a long coaching career.

Western New York PGA records include Teacher of the Year honors in 2017 and 2021, the Player Development Award in 2020 and other section recognition for professional development and mentorship.

Yet when Jacobs talks about the people who shaped him, the conversation moves quickly away from awards.

He points to Sam Froggatte of Eyeline Golf, whom Jacobs met at a Hank Haney Teach the Teacher program. Their friendship has lasted more than 20 years.

Froggatte’s influence, Jacobs says, helped shape how he thinks about service. Jacobs does not charge professionals he mentors. His lesson tee is open to visitors. If someone wants to learn, ask questions or spend time watching, he makes room.

“I always have time,” he said. “It is an honor to share.”

His work with PGA HOPE and Special Olympics pushed that philosophy beyond conventional golf instruction.

Jacobs tells the story of meeting a Marine through his work with veterans eight years ago. The two connected through golf and stayed in close contact, often talking or meeting to play through difficult stretches in the veteran’s life.

The relationship continued well beyond the original program.

Jacobs says the Marine eventually accepted a position as a program coordinator with a local veterans agency and now uses golf to help other people.

Golf instructors spend a lot of time measuring progress.

Ball speed. Carry distance. Handicap index. Proximity. Scores. Tournament results. Student retention. Revenue.

Those measurements matter. A coach should know whether the work is accomplishing what it is supposed to accomplish.

Jacobs eventually found another measurement for his own career.

“I realized many years ago I was seeking relevance instead of significance,” he said. “Being relevant doesn’t make you significant.”

That might be the most revealing line in his story because Jacobs spent much of his life chasing something quite visible.

As a kid, he wanted professional sports. Later came PGA membership, major teaching platforms, television, successful academies, technology and recognition from his peers.

None of it appears to be what he most wants remembered.

He talks instead about being ethical. Loving and encouraging people. Mentoring. Serving. Working hard. Choosing character over popularity.

Those middle-school players in Rochester were Jacobs’ first golf team. He was learning with them because he believed a coach had no business asking players to do something he had not worked to understand himself.

The surroundings have changed considerably since then.

The job really hasn’t.

He had the lead.

Then he shot 65.

Jarvis moved to 18 under in the third round of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, opening a two-stroke advantage as Saturday’s play neared completion at St Andrews. Matthew Jordan was his closest pursuer at 16 under, with Thomas Detry another stroke behind.

The tournament had spent two days asking Jarvis to solve different versions of links golf. He opened with a 66 at Carnoustie, followed it with a 67 at Kingsbarns and carried a one-shot lead into the course that will decide the championship Sunday.

His answer there was his lowest round of the week.

That changes the nature of this story considerably.

Jarvis is no longer a young player hanging around the top of a deep leaderboard and wondering what a third victory might look like. He has played 54 holes in 18 under par across Carnoustie, Kingsbarns and St Andrews. He has posted progressively lower scores each day, 66, 67 and now 65, while everyone else has been trying to catch him.

Sunday is about whether he can finish it.

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Jarvis Did Something Different With the Lead

Holding a 36-hole lead sounds better than it often feels.

Golfers spend Friday evening answering questions about winning a tournament that still has half of its holes left. Saturday morning brings a scoreboard full of players with nothing to protect. A one-shot advantage can disappear with one poor swing before the leader has properly settled into the round.

Jarvis did not spend Saturday defending 11 under.

He added seven more.

That distinction says more about his position than simply noting that he remains atop the leaderboard. His Friday lead was one stroke. After Saturday’s 65, it had doubled.

The number matters, but so does the response that produced it.

Jarvis had talked Friday about feeling in control of his golf game. The Old Course provided a considerably better examination of that claim. It is the place where everyone remaining in the tournament knows they will return for the final round, and Jarvis played it with the scoreboard already attached to nearly every shot.

A 65 under those circumstances is not maintaining position.

It is making everyone else find a lower gear.

Three Courses Have Asked Three Different Questions

The Dunhill’s three-course rotation makes the first 54 holes different from a normal Tour event.

Carnoustie presents one set of problems. Kingsbarns asks different questions. St Andrews offers its own angles, bounces, wind and decisions.

Jarvis has answered all three.

He began with a 66 at Carnoustie, where simply getting through the difficult stretches without giving shots back can create separation. Friday at Kingsbarns brought a 67 and the final-hole birdie that gave him the outright lead.

Then came Saturday’s 65 at the Old Course.

There is something useful in that progression beyond the arithmetic. Jarvis has not needed one specific golf course or one particular scoring environment to stay in front. The location has changed every morning. His name has not moved from the top.

That part ends now.

Sunday gives him the Old Course again.

For the first time all week, Jarvis does not have to wake up and solve an entirely different golf course. He has fresh information from Saturday. He has seen the bounces. He has seen how the wind affected his ball. He knows which lines worked and which ones demanded more care.

Of course, links golf does not allow anyone to copy yesterday’s homework and assume the answers will be the same.

Different wind, different hole locations and tournament pressure can make the same course feel remarkably different 24 hours later.

Still, if a player gets to choose the golf course he wants to see again after shooting 65, there are worse options.

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The Third Win Would Look Different

Jarvis entered the week with two DP World Tour victories already secured in 2026, at the Magical Kenya Open and South African Open.

Those wins established the year.

A victory Sunday at St Andrews would elevate it.

Three victories in one season are difficult to dismiss as a hot stretch, particularly when the third comes months after the first two and requires winning on three different links courses before closing on the Old Course.

That is where Jarvis’ week has become more compelling.

He did not arrive at the Dunhill needing somebody to explain that he could win on the DP World Tour. He had already proved that twice. What he had not done was put together this kind of week against a field chasing him into one of golf’s most recognizable finishing grounds.

There is a difference between winning when the opportunity appears and carrying a tournament for several days.

Jarvis has now done the latter through Saturday.

Sunday Becomes a Different Test

The two-shot lead helps. It does not simplify anything.

Jordan remains close enough that one birdie and one Jarvis mistake can erase most of the separation. Detry was three behind as Saturday wound toward its conclusion. There is enough golf immediately behind Jarvis that he cannot treat 18 under as something to protect for four hours.

That is where Sunday’s challenge becomes interesting from a player’s perspective.

The instinct when holding a lead can be to start managing the scoreboard instead of managing the golf course. Fairways suddenly feel narrower. Putts that had been struck freely for three days begin receiving a little extra attention. Players start trying to preserve what they own rather than continuing to play the golf that created it.

The Old Course does not particularly reward that mindset.

There are places to attack and others where position matters more than aggression. Jarvis will have to make those decisions one at a time while knowing Jordan, Detry and everyone behind them has permission to chase.

Saturday suggests he understands that.

He arrived with a one-shot lead and did not play like a man trying desperately to keep it. He shot 65 and left the rest of the field farther behind.

One more trip around St Andrews remains.

Jarvis knows exactly what 65 looks like there now.

He does not need another one.

He needs 18 holes of the same decision-making that put him in front in the first place.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Jeeno Thitikul Took a Month Off and Came Back Without a Bogey

Related: Smotherman’s 62 Edges a Bogey-Free Roy at Black Desert

Related: Tom Kim’s Longest Day Ends With Gold and Military Exemption

Thitikul followed Thursday’s 67 with a 7-under 65 Friday at Hoakalei Country Club. She shares the LOTTE Championship lead with Germany’s Polly Mack, who birdied No. 18 late in the day to join her at 12 under. Ina Yoon and Carolina Melgrati are one stroke behind.

The late change at the top is worth getting right. Thitikul had finished with the lead after making birdie at the par-5 18th. Mack eventually matched her.

The more interesting number remains zero.

Neither Thitikul nor Mack has made a bogey through two rounds. For Thitikul, that comes immediately after a month away from tournament golf.

“I’m hitting the irons pretty well. I didn’t expect to be that good having taken the past month off,” Thitikul said after Friday’s round.

She had traveled to Austria during the break with her coach and sister. What came back to Hawaii was a golf game that required little competitive recalibration.

The Last Two Holes Said More Than the 65

Bogey-free golf can look sterile when reduced to a scorecard. Hoakalei gave Thitikul a better test of what the number actually meant late Friday.

At the par-4 17th, she needed an up-and-down to save par. At the 532-yard par-5 18th, she converted the next opportunity for birdie and moved to 12 under.

That two-hole sequence gets closer to what players and coaches watch than the absence of red or black numbers on a card.

Tournament golf after time away is not solely a check on swing mechanics. A player has to see the correct shot, trust the yardage, produce the strike and then deal with whatever the course gives back. The par save at 17 was part of the round. So was taking advantage of 18 immediately afterward.

Thitikul managed both.

A 65 without a bogey is obviously excellent scoring. The ability to prevent a difficult hole from becoming a mistake, then collect the next available birdie, is a more useful description of how that score was built.

A Month Away From an Already Productive Season

The break also arrived in the middle of a year that had given Thitikul plenty to protect.

She won the Honda LPGA Thailand in February at 24 under, won the Mizuho Americas Open in May at 13 under and added the Standard Portland Classic in August at 22 under. She entered the LOTTE Championship with three victories, nine top-10 finishes in 16 starts and 10 career LPGA wins.

Golf has a habit of convincing players that good form must be squeezed until nothing remains. Miss a week and somebody else is playing. Take a month away and competitive rhythm becomes an easy thing to worry about.

Thitikul’s first two rounds offer another possibility.

Rest does not automatically mean losing the golf game that produced the need for rest in the first place.

That conclusion should not be stretched too far after 36 holes. Two rounds are not a weekend, and the players around Thitikul are hardly giving her room. Mack is tied with her. Yoon and Melgrati are one back. The championship is packed closely enough that one ordinary nine-hole stretch can redraw it.

Thitikul also does not need to protect the bogey-free streak as though it is the tournament.

That statistic has described her week beautifully so far. It does not have to survive 72 holes for her to win.

At some point, Hoakalei may leave her with another par save like the one at 17, or something she cannot save at all. The next piece of the story will be how quickly she moves beyond it.

Thitikul already supplied the correct standard Friday.

“Golf will never be perfect,” she said.

Two days into her return, it has been remarkably clean.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Jeeno Thitikul Beats Doubt and a Thai Charge in Portland

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Related: Solheim Cup Ratings Are a Warning. Golf Should Examine the Whole Picture.

An individual gold medal at the Asian Games would exempt him from South Korea’s full mandatory military-service requirement. So would a gold medal in the team competition. When Saturday was finished at Kasugai Country Club, South Korea had taken team silver behind China.

Kim did not need the second route.

The 24-year-old closed with a 6-under 64 to finish at 18-under 262 and win the men’s individual title by three strokes. In four rounds, Kim went 67, 66, 65, 64. Every day his score came down by one. The significance attached to those numbers kept climbing.

This was never going to feel like another tournament week.

Kim left Chicago on Sunday night after the Presidents Cup and arrived in Japan late Monday. At Medinah, he had gone 4-1-0 and produced four points for the International Team, the most by any player on either side. The Americans won the Cup 17-13, and Kim immediately traded one form of international team golf for another.

There was barely enough time to change time zones, much less settle into one.

Yet he opened with 67, followed with 66 and took the individual lead Friday with a 65. Saturday began with Kim one stroke ahead. He played the front nine in 4-under 31, added another birdie at No. 11 and made eagle at the par-5 13th for the second straight day.

The golf was getting cleaner as the consequences became harder to ignore.

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A Final Round With Stakes Outside the Ropes

Most pressure in professional golf stays inside the game. A missed putt costs position. A poor Sunday can cost money, FedExCup points or a trophy.

Kim had something waiting outside the leaderboard.

Most able-bodied South Korean men are required to complete roughly 18 months of military service. An Asian Games gold medal or any Olympic medal qualifies an athlete for an exemption from the full requirement. For a 24-year-old with four PGA Tour victories, that made Saturday different from the usual attempt to close out a tournament.

Kim understandably tried to frame his week around representing South Korea rather than the personal benefit attached to gold. After winning, he said he was proud to bring a medal home and believed the pressure he experienced could help him in future seasons.

There is no need to exaggerate what he carried. Kim supplied the description himself.

“This day was the longest day I think I’ve ever had in my life.”

That came after four days of tournament golf, a trans-Pacific trip and a Presidents Cup that had demanded five matches from him.

A golfer does not have to pretend all pressure is equal. Saturday clearly wasn’t.

S.H. Kim Shows Why the Details Mattered

South Korea’s team result also clarified just how narrow the exemption rules were.

China won the men’s team gold at 28 under, with South Korea taking silver at 26 under and Japan bronze at 23 under. That meant teammate S.H. Kim did not receive an exemption through the team competition. Mun Do-yeob, the third member of the Korean side, had already completed his service.

Only team gold would have done it for S.H. Kim.

Tom Kim’s individual victory stood on its own.

That distinction is important because this was not simply three Korean players chasing the same trophy with an unusual perk attached. The tournament created two possible ways for Kim to remove a legitimate interruption from his playing career. One disappeared. He won the other by three.

What Saturday Changed

Kim’s PGA Tour career did not need rescuing.

He won his fourth Tour title at the Genesis Scottish Open in July and then produced the best individual point total at the Presidents Cup. His place in elite professional golf was already established.

What remained unresolved was whether military service could force a lengthy break from that career during his 20s.

That question is gone.

The moment itself was more golf than bureaucracy. Kim tapped in for par at the last, then teammates and South Korean officials rushed onto the green and poured water over him. A four-day progression of 67, 66, 65 and 64 had ended exactly where he needed it to end.

Kim called it the longest day of his life.

He left the final green with nothing left to calculate.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Tom Kim Takes Two Asian Games Leads Into the Final Round

Related: Tom Kim Goes From the Presidents Cup to a 67 With Asian Games Gold in Reach

Related: Tom Kim Wins Scottish Open After 1,001-Day Wait

At 17-under 125, he is one ahead of Kevin Roy, who has played 36 holes without a bogey. Doug Ghim and Kevin Streelman are another shot back at 15 under. Ghim shot 62 on Friday, too, and also has yet to make a bogey this week.

There is your problem if you are trying to win in Ivins, Utah. Two rounds of 63, with nothing given back, have earned Roy second place.

I interviewed Smotherman and Roy for Athlon last year, when each had plenty to say about the work required to make a career out here. Smotherman explained what losing his Tour status had taught him about his game. Roy discussed a point in his career when mounting debt helped push him into medical sales. Those conversations are worth revisiting with both in contention.

Smotherman is making his 100th PGA Tour start and chasing his first victory. He also held the 36-hole lead at this year’s Cognizant Classic, where he finished tied for second. His Friday finish at Black Desert gives him another chance, although Roy has made it awfully difficult to create any breathing room.

Smotherman Has Found His Range With the Putter

When I interviewed Smotherman in July 2025, he had secured his return to the PGA Tour with two Korn Ferry Tour victories in three weeks. He spoke about understanding what needed to improve after losing his status.

“On the PGA Tour, you have to be able to avoid those big numbers,” he told me.

His opening round this week supplied a good example. After finding the lava rock and having to hack out, Smotherman said he saved par with a 9-iron from 175 yards. That recovery kept a mistake from becoming expensive on a course where the leaders are making so many birdies.

Friday brought 10 of them. The Associated Press recap published by the PGA Tour reported that eight came from inside 10 feet, with his longest birdie putt measuring 20 feet at the par-3 17th. Those numbers tell you how often he gave himself a realistic chance.

Smotherman has also been working on converting those chances. He started working with Josh Gregory on his putting this year and, during his time off, traveled to L.A.B. Golf’s headquarters in Eugene, Oregon, for a fitting. Black Desert is his second tournament week with the resulting putter.

“It felt like these 8- to 15-footers are going in, which is something I’ve been working on a good bit,” he said Friday.

He prepared for the elevation, too, using Trackman and GCQuad during the previous week to get comfortable with the ball traveling farther. He said he has been hitting greens pin-high and giving himself more looks. Getting the distance right is particularly useful when the putting is this good; a club-selection error can turn a makeable birdie chance into a long putt even after solid contact.

On the 16th, Smotherman described choking down on a pitching wedge from 155 yards, leaving a 9-footer. He followed that birdie with another at 17, then reached the par-5 18th in two and two-putted to finish. He and his caddie had wanted at least one birdie over those closing holes. They got all three.

Roy’s Father Gave Him Advice That Fits This Week

Roy’s two 63s have come with a strikingly clean scorecard. Asked about his play Friday, he said he thought he had hit every fairway, then described feeling good about his swing, irons and putter. There has been no bogey to interrupt any of it.

He also explained how his view of Black Desert has changed. On his first visit, the division between fairway and lava made the course look intimidating. Familiarity has helped him recognize the room available.

Black Desert hosted my wife, Melisa, and me for a media visit, and I wrote after Thursday’s round about that same visual effect. The usable space becomes easier to appreciate from the tee than from television. Roy has found enough of it to keep giving himself opportunities without putting a bogey on the card.

In our July 2025 interview, Roy discussed stepping away from professional golf in 2017, working in medical sales and returning with a more purposeful approach to practice. He also talked about his father, Jim, and the advice to “value par” and improve from 150 yards and in.

That advice has an interesting application here. Roy is 16 under, so valuing par plainly has not meant playing timidly. He has been able to pursue birdies while keeping dropped shots out of the equation. Smotherman’s closing run is the only reason that has not been enough for the lead.

Roy entered the week No. 87 in the FedExCup Fall standings. The top 100 at the end of the fall retain full cards for 2027, which helps explain his response when asked about his goals.

“Yeah, I think first and foremost keep a job,” he said with a laugh.

He went on to say he wants to play one shot at a time and evaluate where he stands afterward. For now, the next 36 holes offer a chance to make the rest of his fall considerably more comfortable.

Jackson Koivun Earned Two More Rounds

I am still looking for a strong weekend from Jackson Koivun, even with him 11 shots off the lead. His closing birdie Friday got him to 6-under 136, right on the cut line, after a 67. He had to work for the chance to keep playing.

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Koivun’s drive at the par-5 18th found a bunker, where he said the lie was not particularly good. He chose a 3-wood anyway, reasoning that a heavy strike could leave him in roughly the same position as a layup. The shot came out well, and he chipped close enough to make the birdie putt he needed.

He was candid afterward about feeling mentally exhausted and struggling with his emotions over the first two days. He also said he was hitting the ball well enough to make birdies. That distinction gives me a reason to keep watching him: the ball-striking feels good to him, even while other parts of the week have been difficult.

His immediate priority was rest. Putting has been a struggle in recent weeks, he said, and he mentioned possibly doing drills in his room while focusing on recovery. I would like to see that approach give him a chance to turn good shots into a lower number Saturday.

Koivun made clear that he had no interest in letting the weekend go. “At the end of the day I was fighting hard to make that cut and just happy to say I did,” he said.

Smotherman, meanwhile, was looking forward to the possibility of playing with Roy, whom he called a good buddy. They had been on the same flight, sitting one row apart. His forecast for a pairing with Roy was simple: “It will be some good banter.”

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: I Played Black Desert. What Makes This Week’s PGA Tour Test Different

Related: From Setbacks to Success: Austin Smotherman’s Journey Back to the PGA Tour

Related: A Name You Should Know: Kevin Roy's Feel-Good Rise From Medical Sales to PGA Tour Contention

There is real value in that choice. A man whose work is built around entertaining people has made room for a golf pursuit that recreational players can understand. Getting through 18 holes in fewer than 100 strokes is plenty of story.

Golf should be delighted to have him. We can enjoy the comedy while taking seriously what happens when somebody known for something else decides this maddening game deserves a recurring place in his life and on his channel.

The golf ball, incidentally, has yet to sign on as a cooperative cast member.

Hart Is Selling the Part Golf Usually Edits Out

In a September interview with Front Office Sports Tonight, Hart described his golf journey as “starting off at something being bad, trying to get better.” Front Office Sports also reported that Hart and LeBron James were planning a YouTube golf match, with both giving themselves time to improve. Hart did not disclose a date.

That decision to allow some practice before the big showdown is endearing. Two famous men have a match to promote, and they would also like to hit the ball reasonably well when they get there. Somewhere, a golfer preparing for a buddies trip understands completely.

The admission of being bad interests me more than a celebrity’s equipment or access to beautiful courses. Golf asks a beginner to do something uncomfortable: make an uncertain attempt while other people can see the result. Being willing to let an audience follow that process gives Hart’s channel a purpose beyond the guest list.

Think about the golfer who watches a professional flight an iron toward a tucked flag. There is plenty to admire, but it can be difficult to locate your own game in that shot. A goal of breaking 100 offers a much more recognizable assignment: keep enough balls in play, get the short shots onto the green and stop letting one hole consume the round.

Those are legitimate golf problems, and they deserve airtime.

I would rather a new player arrive expecting some ugly shots than believing the game will feel easy after a few swings. A channel built around trying to improve has room to show how much work remains after the first promising strike. The entertainment can help a viewer stay interested long enough to care about that work.

Hart also brings a reason to click that has nothing to do with swing mechanics. Someone can come for the comedian, learn what breaking 100 means and begin following the attempt. Golf does not need to be the viewer’s first interest to become one of them.

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LeBron Brings His Own Reason to Watch

James chose a different starting point. YouTube’s Aug. 17 announcement of his golf channel described a debut built around a Scotland trip with former teammates from the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers championship team. The reunion included Kevin Love, J.R. Smith, Richard Jefferson, Tristan Thompson and Channing Frye.

For a basketball fan, those names supply the context before anyone pulls a club. The people are already familiar. Golf becomes the activity through which the viewer gets to spend more time with them, rather than a subject the viewer must first decide to study.

That is a useful distinction for a sport that can overwhelm a newcomer with terminology. A Cavaliers fan does not need to understand links architecture to have a reason to watch a championship reunion in Scotland. The golf knowledge can come later.

James’ basketball résumé cannot tell him how much a downhill putt will break. Golf gives an accomplished athlete a new set of judgments to learn, with plenty of chances to be wrong. That learning is worth following even when the audience already knows how the basketball story turned out.

Should the Hart-James match happen, I hope the production leaves enough golf in it to follow what they are actually trying to do. Keep the banter, certainly. But let the audience see the shot that needs fixing and the decision that follows it. There is comedy available without editing away the struggle that makes the players relatable.

Both men are Black, and the familiarity they bring may also matter to a young Black viewer who knows them well but has little connection to golf. No celebrity can represent every person’s experience. Still, seeing someone you already admire take an interest in the game can give you a personal reason to look at it.

The people watching will have different reasons to stay. Some will want better golf; others will want more Hart.

A golf video is allowed to satisfy both.

The Course Has to Deliver After the Video

There is a limit to what we should claim. Views and subscriptions tell us something about a channel’s audience; they do not tell us how many people booked a lesson, played nine holes or came back a month later. The reporting here does not establish that Hart or James caused participation to increase.

The National Golf Foundation’s 2025 participation snapshot identifies retaining and converting newcomers as an ongoing industry challenge. Celebrity content is relevant to that work, but a facility still has to make the first visit manageable. A viewer inspired to try golf needs to know what it costs, whether clubs are available and where to go upon arrival.

I would put a plainly explained beginner session ahead of another vague promise to grow the game. Tell people what they will do and what they need to bring. Give them a place to hit an imperfect shot without feeling that they have interrupted everybody else’s afternoon.

Stephen Curry offers a substantive example of celebrity interest extending into opportunity. In 2019, he pledged six years of support for establishing Howard University’s Division I golf program. His Underrated Golf program also runs regional competitions for young players and describes access and equal opportunity as its purpose. That is work a person can identify beyond a video’s view count.

Hart has an upcoming project worth watching on that front, too. Taco Bell and Topgolf announced a Nov. 2 Live Más Open hosted by Hart that is designed to put qualifying fans in foursomes with celebrities, athletes and creators. It is a commercial promotion, but including fans gives the concept something more concrete to examine than celebrity exposure alone.

And yes, its winners are supposed to receive purple jackets and a say in bringing back a Taco Bell menu item. Golf has found a way to make a putt consequential to lunch. I am willing to hear it out.

The responsibility for welcoming a curious beginner still belongs to the people who run and teach the game. Hart can give that person a reason to try.

When the person arrives at the range and tops the first ball, the welcome needs to survive the shot.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Kevin Hart’s Blunt Message After Playing Golf With LeBron James

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When the lower body slides away from the ball going back, then scrambles toward the target coming down, all of that unnecessary movement can make solid contact almost impossible.

Thankfully, top-ranked golf teacher Brech Spradley has a simple alignment stick drill that can help eliminate that swaying to help build a more rotational golf swing.

In the video below from Golf Starter Club, Spradley helps golf influencer McKenzie Graham eliminate her sway, strike the ball more purely, and discover why the “Elvis move” is better saved for the dance floor.

How to Stop Swaying in the Golf Swing

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After watching Graham hit a shot, Spradley quickly identifies what’s making her swing harder to control.

“Your legs move too laterally,” he bluntly tells her.

Instead of rotating around a relatively stable base, Graham’s lower body shifts away from the ball during the backswing before sliding towards the target through impact. This is a super common issue for many amateur and beginner golfers.

That side-to-side motion may feel athletic, but it actually creates a difficult timing problem.

Once the golfer sways off the ball, the body has to travel back towards it before the club can impact the ball. If that recovery is just slightly off, and the golfer can become stuck behind the ball, lose rotation, and struggle to deliver the club to the same place consistently.

But here’s the good news, the solution is pretty easy — and doesn’t require complicated swing thoughts.

Spradley simply places an alignment stick in the ground beside Graham’s trail leg, explaining that “it’s about a fist-width from your leg.” The stick’s positioned just slightly behind her, close enough to provide feedback, but far enough away that she shouldn’t hit it while making a better turn.

The purpose is to create a boundary during the backswing. If Graham’s trail hip and leg drift away from the target, she’ll move into the stick — giving her instant feedback that something’s wrong. But by avoiding it, it encourages her to rotate rather than slide.

But eliminating the sway in the backswing is only half of Spradley’s plan.

“Now, here’s the goal,” he says. “We’re actually going to turn through.”

So instead of replacing one lateral move with another, Graham needs to now rotate through impact and finish on her lead side (which is towards the target).

After her first attempt, Spradley explains that “really working on posting up” will help her strike shots “straighter and more solidly.”

Naturally, Graham notices the difference at impact, telling Spradley that, even after one shot, it “definitely felt a bit more pure.”

So rather than wondering whether the lower body is moving correctly, golfers gain a simple checkpoint: Don’t drift into the stick going back, then rotate and post into the lead side going through.

How to Properly Shift Weight and Stop Sliding in the Golf Swing

As mentioned above, sliding in the backswing is one of the most popular swing-killers in golf. And while Spradley gives an easy drill to help eliminate sliding in order to improve your swing sequencing for more consistent contact, the video above explains how it should feel.

In my golf lesson with top-ranked teacher Kelvin Kelley, we had one focus: Fix my backswing by making it more efficient.

As the video shows, Kelley gets me in front of a mirror so I can compare the bad versus the good golf swing, and uses an impact bag to help me feel the differences through contact.

To help me from sliding in the backswing, Kelley says to feel like my lead leg is buried into the ground, and to use a push and pull motion for improved rotation.

“Put your tailbone towards the target, and move your head towards your right foot,” he instructs. “As you turn, get your chest over your right thigh — which will give you much better shape and fix your club path.”

After incorporating the new move into my golf swing, Kelley has me hit some balls on the driving range mat, making sure I maintain the new positions to keep the club on the right swing path.

“[If you were playing baseball] you should feel like you can hit the ball to right field,” he tells me. “That’ll be big-time in-to-out, so you need to learn to hit it from here.”

By creating just the slightest spine angle in my backswing, I’m able to create a more effective golf swing after just a few minutes.

What’s Golf Starter Club?

Golf Starter Club’s a new, all-in-one golf instruction and community platform designed to help players improve — whether you’re a beginner golfer, average player, or even trying to play Division 1 golf somewhere.

Instead of sending golfers down an endless rabbit hole of conflicting swing tips — which too many amateur players do — Golf Starter Club provides trusted and organized learning paths built for beginners, juniors, bogey-golfers, and those looking to break 100.

Rather than stress about golf practice each week, members can learn on their own schedule alongside world-class golf teachers with practical drills, live sessions, swing discussions, and a growing library shaped by member feedback.

But what truly separates Golf Starter Club is its roster: Top-rated instructors — including GOLF Magazine Top 100 teachers, an LPGA Teacher of the Year, and elite coaches — alongside some of golf’s most recognizable creators and enthusiasts. By combining credible coaching with relatable personalities, GSC makes getting better simpler, more personal, and more fun.

Here’s how to choose your path on Golf Starter Club!

Ready to take the leap and join a community of golfers craving more beginner golf tips and structured golf instruction? SIGN UP for Golf Starter Club! And make sure to follow Nick Dimengo on Instagram and subscribe Rainmakers Golf on YouTube, too!

Tom Kim has taken exactly one fewer stroke every day since arriving at the Asian Games, and the progression has carried him to the top of both scoreboards that matter.

Kim shot a third-round 65 Friday at Kasugai Country Club’s East Course to reach 12 under and take a one-shot individual lead over Chinese Taipei’s Wang Wei-hsuan and Japan’s Kazuki Higa.

South Korea moved with him.

The Korean team reached 20 under and leads Japan by one, with China and Chinese Taipei another stroke behind. Because gold in either competition would give Kim an exemption from South Korea’s active-duty military requirement, Saturday now offers two ways to change the direction of his career.

A few days ago, the remarkable part was that he got here at all.

He left Medinah after the Presidents Cup, crossed the Pacific with almost no recovery time and opened with a 67. Thursday’s 66 moved him within two shots of the individual lead while South Korea sat two behind in the team competition.

Friday changed the assignment.

Kim is no longer chasing either gold medal.

Everyone else is chasing him.

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One Score Now Counts Twice

There is nothing complicated about the golf Kim needs to play Saturday.

The team competition uses the two lowest scores from South Korea’s three players each round. Kim, S.H. Kim and Doyeob Mun are playing their own balls, and there is no match-play strategy or alternate-shot partnership to manage.

Kim’s job is still to make the lowest number he can.

The pressure comes from knowing exactly how much that number can affect.

His Friday 65 included five birdies and an eagle against two bogeys. It moved him from two shots behind to one ahead individually, while also helping South Korea climb from third place into the team lead.

One round changed both races.

That dual purpose makes the final round different from almost anything Kim faces during a normal PGA Tour week. A bogey changes his individual position, but it can also alter the margin available to two teammates. A late birdie could matter twice.

The golf ball does not know any of that.

Kim does.

Handling that difference is where Saturday gets interesting.

The Travel Story Has Reached Its Last 18 Holes

Kim’s score progression this week deserves attention for another reason.

He has gotten better as the week has gone on.

The opening 67 came after the Presidents Cup and a difficult travel turn. He followed it with 66, then produced his best golf Friday once both medals were close enough to touch.

Players do not always respond to fatigue by getting progressively worse. Sometimes the body catches up, the course becomes more familiar and the tournament begins to replace everything required to reach it.

Kim appears to have made that transition.

There is still very little room around him.

Wang and Higa begin the final round one shot back. Japan is one behind South Korea in the team competition. China and Chinese Taipei are two away.

Kim cannot protect two one-shot leads by playing cautiously for 18 holes. There are too many players and too many team scores moving around him.

The better task is the one he has followed since Wednesday: keep producing his own number.

He began this week trying to catch up with sleep, a golf course and the people already ahead of him on the leaderboard.

Saturday morning, after rounds of 67, 66 and 65, the direction has reversed.

They have to catch Tom Kim.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Tom Kim Goes From the Presidents Cup to a 67 With Asian Games Gold in Reach

Related: Zach Bauchou’s 62 Shows How Black Desert Really Plays

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The rookie finished birdie-birdie for a bogey-free, career-low 9-under 62 at Black Desert Resort, good for his first career 18-hole lead on Tour. Nine players posted 63s behind him in a first round that quickly became less about surviving the black lava and more about keeping pace with everybody making birdies around it.

Watching it unfold brought me back to my own round there in early September.

Black Desert hosted my wife, Melisa, and me for a media visit, and I played the front nine with rental clubs and not nearly enough recent golf in my hands. My scorecard was ugly. The education was considerably better.

The golf course I had watched on television turned out to have much more usable space than the cameras suggested. The lava gives every target a hard visual edge, but standing on the tee reveals landing areas, angles and room that are difficult to appreciate from an aerial shot.

Thursday’s scores did nothing to change that opinion.

The PGA Tour is back in Utah for the Bank of Utah Championship at the one-of-a-kind Black Desert Resort 🌋

📺 Golf Channel | @BOUChampionship pic.twitter.com/ybU7lI2ALY

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) October 1, 2026

Bauchou Was Better Than the Birdie Numbers Around Him

A 62 gets your attention anywhere. At Black Desert on Thursday, the way Bauchou reached it interested me more.

He led the field in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green at 5.635, did not make a bogey and finished by converting two more opportunities. Bauchou holed a 12-foot birdie putt at the par-3 17th, then reached the 602-yard 18th in two and two-putted from 25 feet.

That is a pretty good blueprint when a golf course is giving up this many low numbers.

Everybody near the top was making birdies. Bauchou separated himself because there was no wasted hole on the card. When scoring drops this low, a player can lose ground without doing much obviously wrong. A couple of pars in the wrong places begin to feel expensive.

There is also some FedExCup Fall pressure attached to his week. Bauchou entered Black Desert at No. 86 in the standings after two top-10 finishes in 22 starts this season. The top 100 at the end of the fall retain full status for 2027, so a Thursday like this has consequences beyond being the first-round leader.

The Lava Looked More Dangerous Than the Scorecard

Southern Utah gave the field sunny skies, temperatures reaching 90 degrees and light, variable wind. Black Desert responded with red numbers everywhere.

Sudarshan Yellamaraju, David Lipsky, Stephan Jaeger, Steven Fisk, Jordan Smith, Kevin Roy, Kevin Streelman, Nick Dunlap and Austin Smotherman all posted 63. Yellamaraju and Lipsky established career-low Tour rounds, while Fisk and Smith matched theirs.

Smith found the most entertaining route to 8 under. He rolled in a 30-footer for birdie at No. 8, then holed his second shot from 238 yards at the par-5 ninth for the first albatross of his PGA Tour career.

I wrote before the tournament that Black Desert can trick the eye into making the golf course feel smaller than it actually is. That sensation was very real when I stood there. Green turf simply stops against jagged volcanic rock, and there are few visual compromises once the ball starts moving toward the edge.

The Tour player has a major advantage over the resort golfer in that conversation. He has a detailed yardage book, a professional caddie and a practice-round understanding of where the usable space begins and ends.

My caddie was invaluable when I played the course because several sightlines made more sense after somebody explained what existed beyond what I could see. Tour players arrived with that homework already done.

The result Thursday was a golf course that still looked severe on television while a leaderboard full of 62s, 63s and 64s told an entirely different story.

My Jackson Koivun Pick Needed a Late Rescue

I picked Jackson Koivun to win this week. For a while Thursday, that choice was aging badly.

Koivun came directly from an undefeated Presidents Cup debut at Medinah. I liked his confidence, his recent form and his fit for a course where commitment matters when the visuals are trying to pull your attention elsewhere.

Then came three consecutive bogeys on Thursday.

Koivun dropped to 2 over for his round before turning things around with four birdies over his final five holes. He signed for a 2-under 69.

A 69 usually does not require an apology. Thursday at Black Desert, it left him seven shots behind Bauchou and needing considerably more on Friday.

The finish at least kept the week from getting away from him. Four birdies over five holes do not erase the middle of the card, but they gave him something useful to carry into Round 2. On a golf course allowing this many birdies, hanging around at 2 under for very long will not work.

Brennan Knows This Game Better Than Most

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Defending champion Michael Brennan apparently remembered the assignment.

Brennan opened with a 7-under 64, matching his lowest competitive round at Black Desert. He won here a year ago and returned this week attempting to become the first player to successfully defend the Bank of Utah Championship.

Max Homa also got off to a useful start with a 65, his best round since closing with a 64 in a runner-up finish at the John Deere Classic. Zac Blair and Patrick Fishburn led the players with Utah ties at 66, while Tony Finau opened with a 70 in his tournament debut.

Those scores help explain what I liked about Black Desert when I finally stood on it.

The place can scare a golfer into seeing only what should be avoided. The better play is understanding where the golf course is actually giving you room. I saw that during my nine holes and came away believing the property rewards a committed shot while making a genuinely poor miss costly.

Bauchou spent Thursday on the correct side of that equation.

The striking part was how many players joined him there. Nine golfers sat one shot behind his 62 among the completed rounds.

At Black Desert, the punishment Thursday was not always finding lava.

Sometimes it was making a perfectly respectable par while everybody around you was making birdie.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: I Played Black Desert. What Makes This Week’s PGA Tour Test Different

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Related: Black Desert Makes Its Case Before the First Tee

A representative for the six-time major champion confirmed that Mickelson voluntarily entered a treatment facility seeking help for “family trauma and addiction.” Mickelson has since left the facility. Neither the timing nor length of his stay has been disclosed, and the representative did not identify the addiction for which Mickelson sought treatment. PEOPLE independently received confirmation from a Mickelson representative after TMZ first reported the news.

Mickelson has played one tournament in 2026, finishing tied for 48th at LIV Golf South Africa in March. He later stepped away from competition amid what had been described as a private family health matter and withdrew from the PGA Championship in May. There is still no announced return date.

My relationship with Mickelson as a golf fan has never been especially tidy.

I was at Kiawah Island in 2021 when he won the PGA Championship at 50, and I cheered for him. That week was ridiculous in the best golf sense of the word. A player well past the age when major championships are supposed to be won kept finding shots and taking on the golf course until he eventually walked up the 18th fairway surrounded by one of the wildest scenes I have witnessed at a major.

I also enjoyed Mickelson’s early move into YouTube golf. There was a looseness to it that reminded people why he had been entertaining for so long.

I have never been an unconditional Phil guy, though. I have run hot and cold on him for years, and the pileup of negative headlines around him in recent seasons has often pushed me toward cold.

That history is part of why this particular story calls for some restraint.

Treatment Does Not Belong in His Controversy File

I wrote earlier this year about Mickelson’s increasingly complicated legacy. His golf record does not disappear because the public view of the man has changed. Six major championships, including that astonishing 2021 PGA Championship, are part of golf history. So are the controversies and decisions that have reshaped his reputation.

This disclosure is different.

Seeking professional treatment for addiction or trauma is not another controversy to toss onto the pile. It is information about a person who reached a point where he sought help.

Mickelson has previously spoken publicly about gambling addiction. In 2023, he described having crossed the line from moderation into addiction and said he had sought professional help. His representative did not say the recently completed treatment was specifically for gambling addiction, and there is no basis for making that connection ourselves.

Golf media naturally gravitates toward the next competitive question. Is Mickelson retiring? Is he coming back? Where would he fit if LIV Golf changes? Does playing one tournament in 2026 tell us anything about whether his career is nearing its end?

Those are legitimate questions. This disclosure answers none of them.

What We Know Is Narrow

The confirmed information is limited. Mickelson sought treatment for family trauma and addiction, and he is no longer in the facility. When he entered, how long he stayed, where he received treatment and what his next competitive step will be have not been disclosed.

That leaves plenty of blank space.

Blank space around a private family matter is not reporting waiting to be completed through speculation.

Mickelson has spent most of his adult life in public. His golf has been dissected, his business decisions debated, his move to LIV Golf argued over and his mistakes discussed at length. Scrutiny comes with being one of the most famous golfers of his generation, particularly when the subject is something he has done publicly.

Private treatment and unspecified family circumstances require a different boundary.

There is a distinction between examining the public decisions of a famous athlete and trying to reverse-engineer whatever private circumstances sent him into treatment. Golf loses nothing by respecting it.

The Golf Questions Will Still Be There

Mickelson is 56 and has made one competitive start this year. His future in tournament golf is uncertain. Whenever he chooses to address it, there will be plenty to discuss.

If he returns, the golf can be evaluated on its own terms. If he does not, the legacy conversation will continue because six major championships, Kiawah, the LIV Golf years and everything surrounding them are already part of the record.

I do not need to rewrite my opinion of Phil Mickelson because he sought treatment. I also do not need to fold the disclosure into every other argument golf has had about him.

There will be time for the golf questions if Mickelson chooses to answer them.

For now, the significant piece of information is that he sought help.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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There is enormous potential on that property, and meaningful investment in its courses, practice areas and infrastructure could be very good for public golf in Washington. A stronger golf course, better conditioning and improved facilities are not things I oppose. Quite the opposite.

My concern throughout the redevelopment of East Potomac has been what happens to the public part of public golf, and whether improving one use of federal parkland ultimately comes at the expense of people who have been using the same property in other ways for years.

New reporting has made that question considerably larger.

The Washington Post reports that President Donald Trump wants Ohio Drive removed from the Hains Point peninsula, allowing a redesigned East Potomac course to extend toward the water. The Post cited two people familiar with Trump’s discussions and reported that the road was absent from plans Trump carried during a June visit to the property. The White House has not released a final plan establishing what will happen to Ohio Drive, and the Interior Department has not publicly resolved the road’s future.

That distinction matters.

What has been reported about Trump’s preference is not the same thing as an approved final design.

East Potomac Can Be Better Golf Without Losing Its Identity

This is now my third trip through the East Potomac issue for Athlon Sports.

The first centered on stewardship. East Potomac is public golf on federal land, and whoever improves it inherits a responsibility larger than building attractive golf holes.

The second examined the contracting process and the promises surrounding affordability, access and the future operation of the property.

Those questions remain.

But none of my concerns about East Potomac come from believing the golf course should remain frozen in time.

I would like to see better golf there. I can appreciate exactly why a golf architect would look at Hains Point, see the water surrounding the peninsula and imagine holes using that setting more dramatically. Any golf professional who has spent time around course design can understand the appeal of bringing the Potomac and Washington Channel more directly into the playing experience.

That is a golf argument worth having.

The problem begins if creating those holes requires removing a heavily used public route without first showing people what replaces it.

Ohio Drive Is Already Part of the Park

The roughly three-mile Hains Point loop serves runners, cyclists, walkers, anglers, birders, families and other park visitors. Major events, including the Marine Corps Marathon and Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 Mile, also use the area.

This is not some incidental strip of asphalt sitting unused beside the golf course.

The National Park Service has previously invested in making Ohio Drive work better for multiple forms of recreation. In 2022, NPS approved changes that converted one vehicle lane along 2.5 miles of the loop into a protected, bidirectional shared-use path for cyclists and pedestrians while keeping another lane open to motor vehicles. The agency said the project was intended to improve safety while preserving a broad range of uses at East Potomac Park.

That history is important.

The federal government was recently redesigning Ohio Drive around the idea that cars, runners, cyclists and other visitors could coexist there.

Now one reported version of the golf redesign could remove the road altogether.

That deserves an explanation.

The Public Has Seen More Than One Picture

There is another reason clarity matters.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum publicly shared a Fazio Design concept for East Potomac in May. That rendering showed a championship course exceeding 7,600 yards from the back tees, along with other golf improvements. The Ohio Drive loop appeared to remain around the peninsula, and Hains Point itself appeared largely untouched.

The Washington Post’s latest reporting describes something different.

Trump reportedly wants the road eliminated so the golf course can extend toward the water, and the plans he carried during his June visit appeared to omit Ohio Drive.

Maybe those ideas can be reconciled.

Maybe the final design includes a new continuous path somewhere else on the peninsula. Perhaps golf holes reach the shoreline while runners and cyclists receive an equally useful route. There may be engineering or design work underway that has not yet been made public.

That information matters before anyone declares what the finished property will or will not become.

The problem at the moment is that the public does not have it.

The Usage Numbers Need Context

The Washington Post’s reporting also included numbers illustrating how much activity takes place around Hains Point.

A Virginia Tech model estimated approximately 1,100 bicycle and pedestrian passages on an average day near the southern end of the peninsula, roughly 500 by bicycle and 600 on foot. Those are passages, not unique people. Someone completing multiple laps can be counted more than once.

Strava reported approximately 80,000 recorded outings around the loop last year and roughly 192,000 total passes. Those figures capture only users who recorded and uploaded an activity.

National Links Trust, which operates East Potomac Golf Links, told the Post that its three courses hosted 124,500 rounds in 2025, an average of approximately 341 per day.

I would not put 1,100 passages next to 341 golf rounds and pretend we have discovered which group deserves the property more.

The measurements are fundamentally different.

A golfer can occupy the course for several hours during one round. A cyclist can cross the same measuring point multiple times during one workout. Strava captures only part of the recreational population. None of those numbers measures the value of one activity against another.

They do establish something useful, though.

Golf is not the only significant public use taking place at Hains Point.

That should be part of the design conversation.

Better Golf Should Be Able to Survive Hard Questions

The administration has promoted the redevelopment as an opportunity to create championship-quality golf while keeping local access affordable. The May Fazio concept was presented with comparisons to major public facilities such as Bethpage and Torrey Pines.

I like the ambition behind making public golf better.

Golf has too often treated “municipal” or “public” as permission for facilities to be tired, underfunded or unimaginative. There is nothing wrong with believing East Potomac can offer something considerably better than what golfers have known there before.

But public golf carries an obligation that a private development does not.

The land has other users.

Extending holes toward the water might produce a more interesting golf course. I can understand the architectural attraction immediately. If accomplishing that requires eliminating Ohio Drive, however, the government should be able to explain where runners and cyclists go, how anglers and families retain access, how major public events are affected and why that tradeoff represents the best use of federal parkland.

Those are not anti-golf questions.

They are the questions that should come with improving golf on a piece of public property shared with thousands of other people.

My position on East Potomac has not changed since I first wrote about the redevelopment.

Make the golf better.

Invest in it.

Give Washington a public golf facility worthy of the location.

But “better” should eventually be measurable by more than how good the routing looks on a rendering.

At Hains Point, the final design also has to explain what happens outside the ropes.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: East Potomac Contracts Leave Public Golf Promises Untested

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Related: CityGolf USA Plans 18 Fazio-Designed Greens Under One Roof

The approximately 174,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to open in winter 2026 and will feature 18 green complexes designed by Fazio Design Technologies. CityGolf announced Thursday that Celebrity Greens will build those surfaces, including real sand traps and multiple cuts designed to let golfers chip, pitch and putt their way through the indoor experience.

That last part is what makes this project especially interesting.

Golf simulators have become extraordinarily good at telling golfers where a shot went. The short game asks for something different. Golfers feel the turf under their feet. They watch the first bounce of a chip. They notice whether a putt holds its line, how quickly the ball loses speed and whether the break they see actually matches what the ball does.

You can simulate a 7-iron flying 165 yards. Convincing somebody standing over a six-foot putt is another problem entirely.

“At CityGolf USA, we’re building an unparalleled indoor golf experience, and that starts with the turf,” said Tony Graffia Jr., CEO of CityGolf USA and managing partner of Nessie Capital. “Celebrity Greens brings three decades of industry-leading craftsmanship to their custom turf system, and they’re turning what we imagined with Fazio Design Technologies into reality, starting with our first location in Nashville.”

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The Short Game Has to Feel Right

Celebrity Greens has been tasked with translating the Fazio designs into 18 physical green complexes inside the Nashville building.

The company says the surfaces are being constructed to provide authentic contours, true ball roll, natural shot reception and realistic short-game conditions. The complexes will incorporate multiple cuts around the greens along with real sand bunkers.

Those are important promises because golfers are unusually sensitive to what happens from 50 yards and in.

A synthetic green can photograph beautifully and still leave a player unconvinced after one chip. The ball can check too quickly, release too far or react differently than the golfer expects from the lie. A putting surface can appear realistic until the first putt rolls across it.

The challenge for CityGolf and Celebrity Greens is not simply producing something that resembles a golf green. It is creating enough variety in lies, slopes, turf transitions and ball reactions that golfers continue making recognizable golf decisions.

Should the ball be flown onto the green or allowed to release? Is there enough room to use the slope? How aggressively can a bunker shot be played? Where is the safe miss?

Those decisions are a large part of what keeps the short game interesting outdoors. Bringing them inside is considerably more ambitious than giving golfers a flat surface at the end of a simulated hole.

Celebrity Greens brings three decades of experience to the project. The Scottsdale, Arizona-based company says its founders have designed and installed greens for more than 75 PGA Tour players, along with other athletes, celebrities and recreational golfers. Its work also includes short courses, par-3 holes and commercial short-game areas.

The Nashville installation will test that experience at a very different scale.

Eighteen Greens Under One Roof Creates Its Own Problems

Building one high-quality indoor putting surface is manageable. Building an entire 18-hole experience inside a commercial facility changes the assignment.

Celebrity Greens is working alongside simulator, structural and finishing crews inside the same enclosed space. The surfaces also have to be constructed with eventual golfer traffic in mind, something far different from a backyard putting green used by one family.

Durability becomes part of performance.

A green might roll beautifully when it opens. CityGolf needs it to continue doing so after repeated foot traffic, thousands of putts and golfers entering and leaving the same chipping and bunker areas throughout the day.

There are also architectural demands. The contours have to create interesting shots without becoming gimmicky. Different cuts need to affect the ball enough to matter. The bunkers need to function as hazards, not decorative features sitting next to a synthetic green.

“Translating Fazio Design’s architecture into 18 championship-caliber green complexes under one roof is an extraordinary undertaking,” said Weston Weber, co-founder of Celebrity Greens. “It requires an exceptional level of expertise, precision, and craftsmanship, and it’s exactly the kind of challenge our team was built for.”

That translation may become the most telling part of the Nashville project.

Fazio Design Technologies can draw the contours. Celebrity Greens can construct them. CityGolf can surround everything with the technology and infrastructure required to operate the facility.

Eventually, though, a golfer is going to drop a ball into the rough beside one of those greens and hit a chip.

That shot will say quite a bit about whether the concept works.

Nashville Becomes the First Test

CityGolf plans to operate the Nashville location on a semi-private model, offering public tee times along with a limited number of Founding Memberships. The company says additional locations are planned after the Nashville opening.

That puts considerable weight on the first property.

A concept this large has to work operationally, but golfers will judge something more basic. Does it feel enough like playing golf that they want to come back?

The distinction matters as indoor golf continues finding different ways to package the game. Technology can solve weather. It can remove the need for hundreds of acres. It can put golf into places where building a traditional course would be impossible.

It cannot eliminate what golfers expect from the game itself.

If CityGolf wants players to walk through 18 holes, encounter different green complexes, play bunker shots and hole putts, it is inviting a much more demanding comparison than a traditional simulator experience does.

That is also what makes the idea worth watching.

CityGolf is trying to preserve more of the physical experience of playing a hole, rather than letting technology decide everything once the full swing is finished. The golfer still has work to do.

That work happens in the part of the game where touch matters most.

When Nashville opens, the impressive number will be 174,000 square feet. The more revealing measurement may be considerably smaller: the few feet between where the ball lands on one of those Fazio-designed greens and where it finally comes to rest.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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The network and TMRW Sports announced a multiyear extension of their U.S. media rights agreement Thursday, keeping TGL presented by SoFi with the same domestic television partner it has had since the league debuted. The 2027 season will begin Sunday, Dec. 27, with seven teams of PGA Tour players competing at SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

For a league constructed around primetime television, that continuity carries more weight than the ordinary renewal announcement.

TGL does not simply play golf and then hand the pictures to a broadcaster. The television presentation is part of what the league is selling. The arena, technology, team format and access to players are designed to compress professional golf into a different viewing experience. ESPN has spent two seasons learning how to present it, while the audience has been learning how to watch it.

Changing networks at this stage would have introduced another variable into a concept that is still establishing its habits. Instead, TGL gets to continue building on familiar ground.

ESPN executive vice president Rosalyn Durant said the agreement allows the two sides to “continue the momentum of the league’s first two seasons together.” Rufus Hack, TMRW Sports’ president of golf, called ESPN “the ultimate partner in helping establish TGL.”

Those comments sound like the language expected in a rights announcement. The more interesting part is what the renewal allows TGL to avoid.

TGL Does Not Have To Reintroduce Itself

New sports properties ask something different of viewers than established leagues do. They first have to make the competition understandable, then make it worth finding again.

TGL has had the benefit of recognizable PGA Tour players, but familiarity with the names does not automatically create familiarity with the product. The arena setting, technology and team competition still represent a separate viewing choice from the professional golf fans have watched for decades.

Keeping ESPN removes one piece of friction.

The league does not need to spend its next season explaining where it went. ESPN does not need to start from zero learning how to package the competition. Sponsors, teams and players continue inside the same U.S. media relationship that has accompanied the league through its first two years.

For TGL, the next stage should be less about introducing the concept and more about sharpening it.

That distinction matters. Novelty can get people to watch something once. A sustainable sports property needs people who know when it is on, understand what they are watching and eventually begin seeking it out without needing to be sold on the premise every time.

The 2027 season also gives ESPN and TGL a slightly larger product. The league will feature seven teams following the addition of Motor City Golf Club. TMRW Sports specifically pointed to Motor City’s arrival as part of the league’s continued expansion.

One more team does not transform the business by itself. It does give TGL another market identity, another collection of players and more material from which rivalries and team loyalties can develop.

That is where the league still has considerable room to grow. Golf fans already understand individual players. Team allegiance in professional golf is a different proposition.

The 30% Audience Claim Is Worth Watching

One number in Thursday’s announcement deserves more attention than it may receive.

TGL says more than 30% of its viewers report that they are not regular viewers of other professional golf. The release does not provide the methodology behind that figure, so it is best treated as a league-reported audience measure rather than an independently established ratings statistic. Still, it speaks directly to the business case TGL has been making from the beginning.

Professional golf does not gain much if a new product simply moves an existing fan from one golf telecast to another.

The opportunity is finding people who would not normally spend that time watching golf.

TGL has several structural advantages in trying. Its competition takes place in an arena. Players are more accessible during matches. The presentation is built around a shorter primetime window rather than the many hours required to follow a traditional professional tournament.

None of that guarantees a broader audience. It does give ESPN something that looks and moves differently from the golf already available across television and streaming.

If TGL can continue pulling a meaningful percentage of viewers from outside the normal professional golf audience, that becomes more important than simply comparing its audience with another golf telecast. It would mean the league is adding people to the conversation rather than dividing an existing group into smaller pieces.

That is a harder achievement, and probably a more valuable one.

ESPN Now Gets To Help Build The Next Version

The full 2027 schedule has not yet been announced. TGL also said commentator and production details will come before the season begins. What is already settled is the U.S. media home and the Dec. 27 opening date.

That gives ESPN and TMRW Sports another offseason to work on the product without spending it negotiating a change in distribution.

After two seasons, TGL should have enough evidence to know where its television presentation works and where it drags. A new league should be allowed to evolve. The mistake would be treating the first version as if experimentation ended once the lights came on inside SoFi Center.

The best sports television eventually becomes almost invisible. Viewers know the rhythms. Broadcasters understand when to talk and when to get out of the way. The audience stops noticing the mechanics required to bring the event to them.

TGL is not there yet, nor should anyone expect a two-year-old league to be.

This extension gives it time to keep working toward that point with the same media partner.

When the 2027 season begins Dec. 27, viewers will not need directions to a new network. TGL can spend its energy on the harder problem: giving them a reason to come back the next week.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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Golf had found the viral “Hotel Lobby” AI trend.

The source is Quavo and Takeoff’s June 17, 2022, performance of “HOTEL LOBBY (Unc & Phew)” for A COLORS SHOW. The set is almost comically simple: a flat orange background, one suspended microphone and the two rappers trading verses. That clean frame turned out to be perfect material for AI recreation. By mid-September, social feeds were filling with versions built around actors, athletes, fictional characters and just about any two recognizable faces someone could upload.

Golf, naturally, did not leave this alone. Here are five versions worth a scroll.

Justin Thomas and Jackson Koivun

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I had already spent part of Presidents Cup week calling them Team Double J, so seeing Thomas and Koivun land in the orange room felt like the internet finishing the assignment for me.

Their real pairing had some substance behind it. Thomas and Koivun beat Corey Conners and Nico Echavarria 4 and 3 in Thursday four-ball at Medinah, then were reunited Saturday morning. The age gap and veteran-rookie mix made them interesting before anyone pointed an AI tool at them.

A few days later, the uniforms were gone and they were sharing Quavo and Takeoff’s microphone.

The meme did not have to invent a duo.

Tony and Gipper Finau

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The Finau brothers were a duo long before Tony was winning PGA Tour events. They grew up playing and practicing together in Utah, including the famous family-garage setup where their father had them hit balls into a mattress.

AI turning them into a rap duo is funny on sight, but the casting carries more history than most of these clips. Golf fans mostly know Tony now as the established Tour star. The Finau golf story started with two brothers chasing the game together.

Collin Morikawa and Sahith Theegala

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Los Angeles Golf Club could probably fill an entire version of this article by itself. Morikawa and Theegala make up half of the four-man LAGC roster that won the 2026 TGL title, and their pairing is good casting because their golf presence feels so different.

Morikawa’s best stuff can look clinically precise. Theegala rarely feels quite that buttoned down.

Put the two of them under one mic, remove every trace of a launch monitor and let the orange wall handle the rest. It works.

Justin Rose and Tommy Fleetwood

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The other half of LAGC gets a turn here, and this may be the funniest casting of the five before the video even starts. Rose and Fleetwood round out the same four-man Los Angeles roster with Morikawa and Theegala.

Rose and Fleetwood have spent years in Ryder Cup rooms, major championships and some of golf’s most traditional settings. The AI trend drops them into a stark orange studio built around a rap performance.

That collision is most of the joke.

Fleetwood’s hair provides a little production value of its own.

Robby Berger and Grant Horvat

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Creator golf was never going to miss this.

Horvat is one of the best-known names in YouTube golf. Berger is the frontman for Bob Does Sports, a media brand that has made an entire business out of proving golf content can be funny, loose and wildly watchable without a trophy at the end of it.

A template built around two recognizable faces, one microphone and about 15 seconds of instant context is practically native territory for them.

No leaderboard required.

Golf is overflowing with duos fans already know: teammates, brothers, Presidents Cup partners and creator combinations. The template does the rest.

The next meme will arrive soon enough. For the moment, golf is in the lobby.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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Kim shot a 3-under 67 Wednesday in the opening round of the Asian Games at Kasugai Country Club East Course. He made five birdies and two bogeys, finishing tied for seventh and two shots behind co-leaders Wang Wei-hsuan of Chinese Taipei and Japan’s Kazuki Higa.

South Korea also put itself immediately into the team competition.

Mun Do-yeob led the Korean players with a bogey-free 66, good for a tie for third. Kim Seong-hyeon shot 68 and is tied for ninth. With the two best scores from each three-player team counting, Mun and Tom Kim combined for 7 under.

Japan leads at 9 under. South Korea and China are two shots back.

Kim arrived in Japan directly from the Presidents Cup.

There was not much time to reset.

A Completely Different Kind of Week

Tournament golf usually gives players at least a few days to move from one assignment into another.

Kim went from representing the International Team at one of professional golf’s biggest team events to playing for South Korea in a competition carrying significant personal consequences.

Gold in either the individual or team competition would qualify Kim for an exemption from South Korea’s full mandatory military-service obligation.

It gives every shot this week a different weight than a normal PGA Tour start.

The opening 67 did not look particularly dramatic on the scorecard. Five birdies. Two bogeys. Eleven pars.

For a player changing countries, time zones and competitive environments almost immediately after the Presidents Cup, boring golf can be extremely useful.

Fatigue tends to show up in small places first. Pre-shot routines get quicker. Patience gets shorter. A decision that normally feels obvious suddenly takes a little more effort.

Kim kept enough of those mistakes off his card Wednesday to stay close to both races.

His par save on the 18th left him two behind individually. More importantly for South Korea, none of its three players gave the team a score it had to survive. All three finished the opening round inside the top 10.

South Korea Has Strength in Three Scores, Even Though Only Two Count

The team format gives Kim another route to gold.

Only the two lowest Korean scores count each day. Kim Seong-hyeon’s 68 was therefore discarded Wednesday even though it left him tied for ninth individually.

Coaches love options like that.

A three-man team cannot expect the same two players to carry every round. Golf does not cooperate that neatly. One player will eventually have the day when putts burn edges or one swing costs two shots.

South Korea opened with three usable scores.

Mun supplied the best of them with his bogey-free 66. He made one birdie on the front nine and three on the back, reaching 4 under without putting a bogey on the card. Kim Seong-hyeon mixed three birdies and an eagle with three bogeys for his 68.

Tom Kim sat between them.

It leaves South Korea able to chase Japan without needing Kim to force the issue Thursday.

Kim Does Not Need to Chase Gold Yet

A two-shot deficit after 18 holes is barely a deficit in a 72-hole golf tournament.

Kim knows that. So does anyone who has played enough competitive golf to understand how quickly a leaderboard changes when three rounds remain.

The temptation, given what gold could mean personally, would be to feel the destination too early.

Golf generally punishes that.

Kim has already done the difficult part of the opening round. He changed continents after an emotional Presidents Cup, stepped onto another golf course and gave South Korea a counting score without playing himself out of the individual tournament.

Thursday offers a different assignment.

Settle into the week. Let the travel catch up. Keep producing golf shots rather than chasing the medal attached to them.

South Korea will begin the second round only two shots behind Japan. Mun is one from the individual lead. Kim is two away.

There are 54 holes left at Kasugai.

For the golfer who arrived from Medinah with hardly enough time to unpack, Wednesday gave him exactly what he needed most.

Another tee time with both possibilities still there.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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Golf writer Alan Shipnuck said on the “Dan on Golf” podcast that DeChambeau has been “going back and forth” on whether he will continue with LIV in 2027 and beyond. Shipnuck said the information came from someone close to DeChambeau. DeChambeau himself has not publicly announced his plans.

That last sentence is where this story has to remain grounded. DeChambeau has not said he is leaving LIV, and there is no confirmed agreement taking him somewhere else.

He is reportedly still deciding.

Given everything surrounding LIV at the moment, taking time with the decision hardly feels unreasonable.

LIV filed for Chapter 11 protection on Sept. 8 and entered into a restructuring support agreement with BC Partners Credit. LIV has described the proposed replacement as a player-first model that would bring players and new financial investors into the ownership structure. Existing contracts and the economics that brought some of golf’s biggest names to LIV are being reworked as part of the process.

DeChambeau has considerably more at stake than where he will tee it up next season.

Bryson Has Become Much More Than a LIV Player

Professional golf spent a long time trying to decide what to make of Bryson DeChambeau.

He has always done things differently. He chased speed when plenty of people thought he had already gone far enough. He experimented with equipment, technique and course strategy in public. He attracted criticism, changed parts of his approach and kept competing.

Along the way, he also figured out something professional golf has struggled with for years: how to make golfers interested in a player even when there is no tournament leaderboard involved.

His digital presence has become a substantial part of his appeal. YouTube matches, challenges and collaborations have allowed fans to see considerably more personality than a conventional tournament broadcast can provide.

LIV benefited from that.

DeChambeau gave the league a player who could contend in major championships, captain a team and then reach an entirely different audience through his own content. His Crushers GC team won LIV’s 2023 team championship, and his profile remained large outside LIV events.

Those qualities are difficult to replace with another good golfer.

They also give DeChambeau reason to study whatever LIV is asking him to sign next.

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LIV’s New Structure Asks Players to Make a New Decision

The original decision to join LIV was made under circumstances that no longer exist in the same form.

LIV’s Chapter 11 case is intended to restructure the business, with BC Partners positioned to help finance a new version of the league. Court documents establish a 35-day window from the Sept. 8 filing for the required player creditors to join the restructuring agreement. The threshold requires players representing at least half the number of eligible claims and at least two-thirds of their value.

DeChambeau is among the league’s largest unsecured player creditors, with a reported claim of approximately $5.7 million. Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith are also among the largest.

Rahm has not publicly committed to LIV 2.0. Smith recently said players need more answers before making their decisions.

A player can believe in a league and still want to understand the next contract.

A golfer can appreciate what LIV has provided and still evaluate ownership, compensation, schedule, team structure and long-term stability before agreeing to another version of it.

DeChambeau may ultimately decide that LIV remains the right place for him. Nothing in the current reporting rules that out.

His importance to LIV makes the waiting more noticeable.

LIV Has Good Reason to Want Bryson Back

Players move between tours and leagues. Stars are different.

DeChambeau has become one of the faces most closely associated with LIV while keeping relevance well beyond it. His 2024 U.S. Open victory at Pinehurst reinforced his competitive standing, but his connection with golf fans does not depend entirely on trophies.

LIV 2.0 is trying to establish what it will be after a fundamental financial restructuring. Familiar stars would give it continuity while the business around them changes.

DeChambeau would provide plenty of it.

The league also has an approaching Oct. 13 milestone tied to player support for the restructuring agreement. Court materials make clear that some of LIV’s significant player creditors need to participate for the BC Partners plan to proceed on its current path.

Shipnuck’s report puts DeChambeau among the players still considering his options as that date approaches.

No farewell has been announced. No new destination has been revealed.

Bryson DeChambeau is reportedly deciding what he wants the next part of his career to look like.

Considering how much has changed around him, it is a decision worth getting right.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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It feels a lot like the Good Good people became fans of in the first place.

Play golf. Compete with each other. Have some fun. Turn the cameras on and invite everybody else along.

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The company is also working through another round of change away from the videos.

Business Insider reported Tuesday that head of content Logan Spence has left Good Good after approximately a year with the company. Head of events Hung Tran said he was part of the company’s layoffs. Good Good did not comment to Business Insider for its report.

Their exits follow earlier departures involving Good Good’s CEO, president and top marketing executive during the fallout from the Callaway advertisement that drew widespread criticism earlier this year.

Those departures raise legitimate business questions.

There is also a group of golf creators currently trying to answer some of them the way they know best.

They are making golf content.

Good Good’s Audience Came Before the Corporate Structure

Good Good grew because people wanted to watch the members play golf together.

The production became better. The audience expanded. Merchandise followed. Sponsorships grew. Retail relationships became part of the business.

Business Insider reported that Good Good raised $45 million last year, showing how far the company has moved beyond a collection of golfers with cameras and a YouTube account.

Growth brings people into a business whom the audience may never see.

Someone has to manage partnerships. Someone plans events. Someone oversees content calendars, production schedules, commerce and all the other pieces that let the personalities on camera focus on making something people want to watch.

Spence and Tran worked in two areas directly connected to Good Good’s public identity: content and events.

Their departures deserve attention, but they don’t tell the whole story of where Good Good goes next.

The people viewers recognize are still playing golf.

The 50 States in 50 Days tour gives them a sizable canvas to work with.

Fifty States Gives Good Good Something New to Talk About Every Day

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The concept is simple enough to understand before anyone clicks a video.

Fifty states. Fifty days.

Good Good’s website is already promoting the first episode of the series along with a Good Good Championship merchandise collection tied to the trip. An accompanying sweepstakes began Sept. 28 and runs into November.

Some old-school golf-trip appeal is hidden inside a very modern creator-business idea.

Where are they playing tomorrow?

Who are they meeting?

What golf course is next?

What happens when weather, travel or a golf course refuses to cooperate with a schedule that has virtually no room in it?

Good Good does not need to manufacture much drama with an itinerary like this. Golf and travel usually provide enough on their own.

The series also lets fans spend time with the personalities who made Good Good successful, rather than the business story surrounding the company.

That may be especially useful now.

The Business Still Has Work to Do

Good content cannot fill every vacant executive position.

Good Good still has to determine how its organization will operate after several leadership changes. Commercial relationships damaged during the Callaway controversy will require their own attention, and viewers are not the only constituency a company of this size has to serve.

Investors, retailers, sponsors and employees experience a brand differently than subscribers watching a YouTube video.

Good Good has built enough of a business that both sides count.

Golf has also seen plenty of creator brands arrive with huge audiences and discover that making popular videos and building a durable company require different skills.

Good Good got much farther than most.

It created recognizable personalities, products people wanted to wear, live experiences and a place in golf culture that did not depend on traditional tournament golf. The company reached golfers who may never spend Sunday afternoon watching a PGA Tour broadcast but will happily watch friends play a challenge match on YouTube.

I have always thought golf is better when there are more doors into it.

Good Good opened one of those doors wider.

Its members showed younger golfers that golf content did not have to look or sound like the game their parents watched. They made competition entertaining without needing a million-dollar purse attached to it. They helped move golf media toward personality at a time when the traditional game could be pretty guarded about showing any.

One bad advertisement doesn’t erase all that work.

Neither do leadership departures.

They do leave Good Good with a business to steady while the creators keep creating.

Back to Golf

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There may be no better project for this particular group right now than 50 States in 50 Days.

Not because a video series fixes corporate problems.

Because making ambitious golf videos with friends is where Good Good has always looked most comfortable.

Its website is already selling merchandise connected to the trip. The sweepstakes follows the tour. The YouTube series gives the audience something new to follow almost every day.

More leadership decisions will eventually come. Good Good will have to make them.

The cameras do not need to wait.

There are still golf courses in front of them, people around the country who want to see the crew and a ridiculous travel schedule capable of producing plenty of its own stories.

State No. 3 is already on YouTube.

Good Good has 47 more to go.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Reinaldo Simoni’s PGA Tour Dream Is Being Built One Qualifier at a Time

Related: Jackson Koivun Is My Pick at the Bank of Utah Championship

Related: I Played Black Desert. What Makes This Week’s PGA Tour Test Different

Those facts sit awkwardly together if a PGA Tour start is viewed as the moment a professional golfer has arrived. For Simoni, 23, the inside-the-ropes part has happened twice, both times at the Puerto Rico Open. So has everything that comes after it: coaching to help cover entry fees, flights and travel, deciding which qualifiers he can afford to chase and trying to turn another good round into another place to play.

His first Tour start came with a scene no polished player biography could improve.

In 2025, Simoni was still a full-time student at UCF and working at Golf Galaxy to help fund his golf. He said he was cleaning a bathroom at work when he learned he had an opportunity to play in the Puerto Rico Open.

He ran out and hugged his coworkers.

Then he went home to Puerto Rico and played Grand Reserve, shooting 71-73 to finish his first two PGA Tour rounds at even par.

Put “PGA Tour start” on a résumé and the career looks considerably different. Simoni’s expenses did not disappear with it.

Puerto Rico Never Became Background

Golf began for Simoni at 5 years old in Puerto Rico, where he practiced at Dorado del Mar and competed around the island. Chi-Chi Rodríguez was among the people Simoni credits with influencing him early, and an old golf résumé contains a photo of the two from the 2012 Puerto Rico Open.

Simoni moved to Florida in 2013, but the competitive connection to Puerto Rico never disappeared.

By then, tournament golf already occupied plenty of his life. At 11, he made his first hole-in-one at Disney’s Lake Buena Vista Golf Course. His high school years at Lake Nona produced a long list of results, including district and regional championships and top-10 finishes at the Florida Class 3A state championship.

The record became particularly strong from 2017 through 2020. Simoni won a district championship with a 71 and a regional title with a 69 in 2017. A year later, he won the East Metro Conference, district and regional titles. In 2019, he won another regional championship and finished runner-up at the state championship. His 2020 season included a Disney Junior Open victory at 8 under.

Simoni’s old materials include enough scores and trophies to turn this into a junior-golf retrospective. The more important point is that he didn’t discover winning when professional golf came into view. He had been building that part of his game for years.

UCF became the next stop in 2021.

Simoni joined the Knights as a Division I golfer and eventually graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Yet some of the most meaningful competition during that stretch again came wearing Puerto Rico’s colors.

He represented Puerto Rico on National Team squads that won Caribbean Amateur championships in 2023 and 2024. He also won the U.S. Am Tour Clermont Open in 2024.

By then, the level of the test was changing.

The Qualifier Became the Measuring Stick

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Simoni began taking shots at PGA Tour qualifying opportunities in 2024. His materials include a Bermuda Championship Monday qualifier at ChampionsGate where he came close to advancing. He later shot a bogey-free 5-under in an RSM Classic pre-qualifier.

Those rounds matter differently for someone trying to find out where his game really belongs.

Junior trophies can tell a player what he was. College golf can tell him where he stacks up among his peers. A PGA Tour qualifier cares much less about history. Shoot the number or go home.

Simoni got his first Puerto Rico Open start in 2025. Then he found his way back in 2026, winning a final qualifier to earn another start.

That second trip changed his calculation. Simoni said the qualifying performance convinced him he was ready to make professional golf his full-time competitive pursuit. His sponsorship materials list March 2026 as the point when he turned professional.

Back-to-back PGA Tour appearances sound like a breakthrough, and they are, competitively, substantial. They did not hand Simoni a Tour card or a guaranteed schedule.

His own plans tell the story. PGA Tour pre-qualifiers and Monday qualifiers remain part of it. So do Korn Ferry Tour opportunities, PGA Tour Americas qualifying and Q-School. His immediate goal goes back to the tournament that gave him his two biggest stages: finding a path into the 2027 Puerto Rico Open.

That means building a professional career one entry at a time.

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Two PGA Tour Starts Do Not Pay the Next Entry Fee

This is where Simoni’s story gets considerably more interesting to me.

A wide gap in professional golf exists between an accomplished amateur career and a secure place on a major tour. We see the players who make it through. We rarely see much of the accounting required while they are trying.

For Simoni, coaching has become part of that accounting.

He started his own coaching business and says the income helps cover tournament entry fees, flights and travel. On some qualifier trips, he has slept in his car.

There is nothing romantic about that part. An uncomfortable night does not make the next morning’s 68 any easier to shoot. A player can have PGA Tour experience, a Division I background, international team success and a lifetime of competitive golf behind him and still have to calculate whether another tournament makes financial sense.

That is where Simoni is right now.

He is also only 23.

“I’ve been sleeping in my car and trying to find ways to get to places,” Simoni wrote while describing his current pursuit. “I’m hungry and 23 years old. Nothing will stop me.”

The golfer in those two Puerto Rico Open starts is easy to put on a sponsorship deck. The golfer trying to reach the next qualifier may tell us more about whether this can become a career.

Simoni’s target is straightforward. Keep improving. Keep finding events he can enter. Get himself back to Puerto Rico in 2027.

His description was even simpler.

He wants to “compete anywhere I can earn an opportunity.”

Right now, that opportunity might begin with a Tour tee time, a Monday qualifier or another long drive to wherever the next opening happens to be.

For Simoni, all three are part of the same job.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: I Played Black Desert. What Makes This Week’s PGA Tour Test Different

Related: Once a Bronco, Always a Bronco: Inside SUNY Delhi’s PGM Program

Related: Still Shooting Par, Still Struggling: What One Student’s Slump Taught Me About Young High Achievers

Instead of thinking about body movements, imagine simply throwing a baseball. Sounds too easy, right?

During my golf lesson with top-ranked instructor Kelvin Kelley, I learned why that familiar throwing motion can create a smoother and more natural backswing — and why Kelley wants the move to “feel armsy.”

The video below breaks down the idea, and shows how every level of golfer can produce cleaner and consistent contact by using the motion.

A Beginner’s Guide to the Proper Golf Backswing

The golf backswing has been analyzed to death, but Kelley’s advice makes the move sound refreshingly simple: Think less about turning your body and more about simply moving your arms.

Sounds a bit contradictory to what you’ve likely heard, right? Allow Kelley to explain himself.

“Your arms pull your shoulders, so that’s a shoulder turn,” Kelley explains.

Although the motion feels “all arms,” my chest has rotated considerably more than it did with the previous, body-driven move — which is what most golfers use to “turn” in the backswing. But that often leads to coming off-plane and hitting inconsistent shots, so Kelley helps simplify the golf swing.

When most amateurs think about “making a big turn,” they begin twisting, swaying, or forcing their torso away from the ball.

In Kelley’s view, that can create unnecessary movements without producing a functional shoulder turn. By moving the arms correctly, it allows the shoulders, rib cage, and glutes to respond naturally while golfers retain the posture and coil needed to return the club to the ball.

Kelley compares that sequence to throwing a baseball.

“If I were to throw a ball, my arm would go up and my body would go around,” he adds.

To throw harder, you wouldn’t abandon your shape and manufacture a larger body turn. You’d simply perform the athletic motion faster. The golf swing should operate in the same way, creating a simply relationship between both the arms and body.

A Better Backswing Starts with the Right Setup

As the video shows, a better backswing begins with having the proper setup and pressure on the inside of the trail foot, which creates a loaded position that’s prepared to move forward.

After improving my setup, Kelley’s cue is pretty blunt: “Just pick up your arms,” later adding, “it’s got to feel armsy” — emphasizing how important the feel is.

But here’s the caveat to “getting armsy”: I’m not actually making an arms-only swing. It’s simply the sensation that counteracts an overly active, inefficient body motion.

Kelley reinforces the change with a simple “fold and unfold” rehearsal. By keeping the rest of my body quiet — especially the lower part of my body — I’m able to swing my arms back and down at half speed before gradually adding pace.

While my golf lesson with Kelley might challenge conventional wisdom, the payoff is a backswing with fewer moving pieces, better structure, and a clearer path back to impact.

So for amateur or beginner golfers who battle a jerky takeaway that leads to unreliable contact, feeling “armsy” may be exactly what makes the swing feel more like one connected motion.

Ready to take the leap and join a community of golfers craving more beginner golf tips and structured golf instruction? SIGN UP for Golf Starter Club! And make sure to follow Nick Dimengo on Instagram and subscribe Rainmakers Golf on YouTube, too!

Joyner is surrounded by technology at the GOATED Clubhouse in Bonita Springs, Florida. He uses it. He also watches what the shot actually does. In his view, coaches can become so absorbed in the numbers on a screen that they overlook something obvious.

“The ball flight is sometimes forgotten,” Joyner said.

He is hardly anti-technology. His point is that the screen cannot become the lesson. Data has to lead somewhere, preferably toward a golfer who understands the change well enough to eventually take it onto the golf course.

That approach fits a career that has moved through several very different corners of the golf business. Joyner has worked at Crooked Stick Golf Club, Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill Golf Course, Pine Needles/Mid Pines, Desert Willow Golf Resort and Impact Zone Golf. Today, he is the director of instruction at GOATED Golf, where the coaching operation combines in-person instruction, remote support, practice access and the social feel of a clubhouse.

The PGA Path Became a Coaching Path

Golf arrived early for Joyner. He began playing at age 2 with his father as his coach. His family moved frequently, taking him through Huntsville, Nashville, Chicago and Atlanta. He made a high school golf team while still in eighth grade in Alabama, then helped establish a team after another move brought him to a private school in Atlanta.

Eventually, Joyner made the kind of decision plenty of good young players have to make. He believed his competitive game could take him into Division III college golf, but he saw a different route for staying deeply involved in the sport.

Mississippi State University offered it.

Its PGA Golf Management program was the closest such program to Atlanta, and it was already well established in PGA Golf Management education. Joyner enrolled and began building a career around golf rather than asking his playing résumé to carry it.

The facility names came later, but they were more than lines for a biography.

Joyner worked around different operating styles, customers and leaders. He names Todd Anderson, Tony Pancake, Warren Bottke, Bobby Clampett and Eric Eshelman among the mentors who influenced him. The clubs themselves taught another part of the job that is sometimes underestimated when the conversation centers on swing mechanics: how people expect to be treated.

Joyner sums that part up simply.

“Working at clubs taught me elite customer service and how to treat people,” he said.

That lesson now sits beside everything he learned about the golf swing.

Impact First, Then Work Backward

Crooked Stick helped Joyner figure out what he wanted more of.

He worked there from 2019 through 2021, with instruction sharing his time with the other responsibilities that come with a golf operation. Indiana winters shortened the teaching season further. Joyner wanted to teach full time, reach players beyond one membership and find out how far he could take that part of his career.

The move south brought him to Impact Zone Golf in Naples and into closer work with Bobby Clampett.

Joyner describes that move as the most important one in the development of his coaching career. Clampett helped shape his impact-based approach, while Mike Bender became another major influence on how Joyner works with individual students.

The order matters to him. Start with impact. Understand what the club is doing when it meets the ball. Work backward from there to determine what has to change.

That leaves room for the golfer who is already standing in front of him.

Joyner has little interest in stripping away every personal characteristic simply because another motion photographs better or produces cleaner positions on video. He wants to preserve what works, change what affects impact and explain it in language the golfer can actually use.

“Everyone is different,” Joyner said. “There’s no such thing in my books as cookie-cutter or philosophy or one method of teaching.”

That philosophy also explains his concern about becoming too dependent on technology. Launch monitors, video and other tools can expose things the naked eye cannot measure. A golfer still has to hit a shot, recognize a pattern and make decisions once there is grass under the shoes and a target in the distance.

For a coach, knowing more information is not the same thing as communicating it better.

GOATED Puts Coaching Inside a Membership

Joyner first met GOATED Golf founder Kevin VanDuser at the PGA Show when VanDuser was working with Lag Shot. They crossed paths again later while Joyner was teaching one of his elite junior players.

By then, Joyner was considering leaving his previous facility. VanDuser had been looking for a PGA Professional who fit what he wanted to build around GOATED. The conversations moved from there.

The faith connection was part of it, too. GOATED Golf is a faith-based brand, and Joyner described the eventual partnership in personal terms.

“We hit it off and knew this was a God thing,” he said.

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GOATED already sold golf apparel, equipment and accessories. The GOAT Club extends the brand into something closer to a golf membership, while GOAT Club+ takes another step by making coaching one of its central benefits.

The entry-level GOAT Club is currently $99 per month. Members receive a welcome gift, 15% off products sitewide, free two-day shipping, 24-hour early access to product releases and access to a members-only shop called The Vault. The package also includes a private Telegram community, invitations to GOAT Club trips and events, early pricing and VIP opportunities for selected events, periodic complimentary products and one complimentary swing analysis each year.

That level also includes a coaching component. Members get access to a CoachNow program managed through the GOATED Clubhouse, including weekly golf instruction and video content from Joyner.

GOAT Club+ is where the structure becomes especially interesting from a player-development standpoint.

At $599 per month, the upgraded membership includes the GOAT Club benefits plus one hour of individual coaching with Joyner each week. That works out to four lessons per month, delivered virtually or at the GOATED Clubhouse in Southwest Florida. Club+ members also have access to the Clubhouse for practice and training, while Joyner uses CoachNow to extend the coaching relationship between scheduled sessions.

GOATED also makes the membership available to the public rather than requiring a traditional private-club affiliation, and Joyner works with golfers across different ages and ability levels.

That changes the rhythm of instruction.

A conventional lesson model can leave a golfer on their own for weeks. The player takes a lesson, practices independently and returns when the calendar, budget or next problem makes another appointment necessary. Joyner’s Club+ members have another session coming the following week and a digital connection to the coaching program in between.

For a player trying to make an actual swing change, that continuity can be more important than adding another piece of technology.

Golfers routinely leave a lesson hitting the ball better and understanding what they need to do. Then comes Tuesday evening on the practice tee. The contact changes, the original feel disappears and the golfer begins searching for it. Sometimes that search creates another problem before the coach ever sees the player again.

A weekly structure gives Joyner the chance to see those detours sooner.

It also lets the work move beyond swing repair. GOATED describes the coaching program as addressing ball striking, distance, accuracy, short game, putting, practice habits and on-course decision-making. That wider scope fits Joyner’s belief that whatever happens indoors or on a launch monitor eventually has to work when someone is keeping score.

There is a business idea underneath it as well. GOATED is connecting three parts of golf that are often sold separately: products, access and instruction. Someone can enter the company through apparel or equipment, become part of its membership community and, at the Club+ level, have an ongoing relationship with a PGA Professional.

Joyner does not want that relationship to feel clinical.

He described his goal as creating “a safe haven” where golfers feel welcome. His version of the Clubhouse can have a college football game playing on television while somebody nearby is putting serious work into a golf swing.

“Combining a social hangout hub that also implements incredible coaching,” Joyner said.

That might explain GOATED better than the name does.

Recognition Arrived, but Joyner Is Still Looking Ahead

Golf Digest recently named Joyner among its 2027-28 Best Young Teachers in America.

Joyner did not describe the recognition as a finish line.

“Nothing comes quickly,” he said.

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He began teaching full time in his mid-20s and sees the Golf Digest recognition as validation of work that has accumulated student by student.

“It’s incredibly gratifying that others believe in me in helping the success of students,” Joyner said. “It’s humbling, rewarding, and I’m extremely grateful for this achievement.”

His longer-range goals stretch in two directions.

Joyner wants to coach elite juniors with college ambitions and players competing at the professional level. He also wants to work with the golfer who has spent years trying to break 90 or 80.

That mix says something about the direction of his career. High-level players can challenge a coach’s knowledge and sharpen the work. Recreational golfers bring a different test. They have jobs, families, limited practice time, ingrained habits and very real definitions of success that might have nothing to do with tournament golf.

A coach who wants both has to speak to both.

Three to five years from now, Joyner can picture an academy of his own closer to family in South Carolina, somewhere around Bluffton, Hilton Head or Charleston. He wants elite players there. He wants ambitious juniors. He also wants amateurs walking through the door because dropping a handicap or finally breaking a scoring barrier still matters deeply to them.

After a childhood spent moving and a professional career built across golf facilities, Joyner is already thinking about where the next version of his work might live. This time, he wants family closer, the academy his own and the range of golfers walking through the door to remain wide.

One destination on his list has nothing to do with real estate.

“My dream has been to coach at the Masters,” Joyner said.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Once a Bronco, Always a Bronco: Inside SUNY Delhi’s PGM Program

Related: I Played Black Desert. What Makes This Week’s PGA Tour Test Different

Related: Black Desert Makes Its Case Before the First Tee

Zeigler, the Director of Instruction and Dallas National Golf Club, is one of the instructors on a new improvement platform called Golf Starter Club, which helps players of all levels, learn the basics of the sport.

He’s also a diehard golfer, and someone who has been around the sport for decades. Add in the fact it’s his profession — both as a current instructor and previous caddie — and it’s safe to say he’s seen just about everything on the golf course.

With about 60 minutes to chat with him, I had to ask Zeigler a few burning questions, one of which was the mistake that too many average and beginner golfers often overlook — which is leading to higher scores.

Bryson DeChambeau’s Former Caddie: Stop Skipping Your Pre-Shot Routine

A lost ball’s frustrating enough. But according to Brian Zeigler, the bigger mistake often comes immediately beforehand — when a golfer abandons the pre-shot routine — which may have prevented the poor shot in the first place!

In fact, Zeigler says that, by skipping that process, you’re asking for a death wish.

For amateur golfers, the danger begins before the club ever moves. When you skip your pre-shot routine, you’re essentially stepping over the ball without a clear plan for where you want it to go — or how what kind of shot you plan to execute.

Instead of choosing a specific target and visualizing the shot, many players simply aim towards a general area and swing. That lack of intention introduces uncertainty, poor alignment, and indecision, increasing the likelihood of sending the ball somewhere less-than-ideal.

But Zeigler says that a consistent pre-shot routine can help eliminate those preventable mistakes, giving every shot a purpose.

“What takes longer, your pre-shot routine, or taking another shot,” asks Bryson DeChambeau’s former caddie. “If you don’t have a good routine or process, you’re not going to hit a good shot.”

Here’s the funny thing about building a pre-shot routine: It’s really easy to do.

Simply start by standing behind the ball and assessing what’s in front of you. Choose a precise target, picture the trajectory and shape you want, and visualize where the ball will finish. Once the image is clear, step into your setup, commit to the plan, and confidently take your golf swing.

The process doesn’t need to be long or complicated, so no need to overthink it. Just treat it as the final checklist before you commit to a shot, providing your mind with something positive and specific to focus on.

And that visualization piece is really important. Thinking “don’t hit it right” still puts the right-side trouble in your mind — because golf is hard like that. So being able to visualize the ball starting on your intended line and finishing safely at your target creates a much clearer objective.

Now, a pre-shot routine won’t guarantee a perfect result. But it removes unnecessary guesswork — and helps prevent one careless swing, lost ball, or blowup hole.

Build a Pro-Level Pre-Shot Routine

In the video above, another top golf teacher, Tony Ruggiero, works with PGA player Emilio Gonzalez on his pre-shot routine, highlighting some of the nuances that makes it effective.

As Ruggiero states towards the beginning of the video, one of the more popular questions he gets from average golfers is how they can be more consistent. But when he sees them practicing on the driving range or playing a few holes, Ruggiero sees a flawed system.

“When I watch them, the way they go and get into the ball is never the same,” he says. “Yet, when I got to an event with you [speaking to Gonzalez], the way you step in and get ready to hit the ball is almost always exactly the same every time.”

That’s why having a trusted pre-shot routine in golf is so critical, as it allows Gonzalez to go from his “think box” behind the ball to his “performance box” as he addresses the ball.

“I think you should always start your pre-shot routine behind the ball, and keep it directly between you and the target,” Ruggiero says.

This isn’t just to eliminate any pre-shot jitters before addressing the shot, but to also help with your aim, giving you a wider view to see what lies ahead.

Next, Ruggiero says more amateur players need to follow the lead of great pro golfers and set their golf grip from behind the ball before stepping over it for a shot.

“I don’t like to see players get [over the ball] and then try to fidget with their grip,” he adds. “It’s just not very consistent, and it takes away from focusing on the shot and the target.”

Finally, Ruggiero has Gonzalez setup for his golf shot, having him demonstrate how consistent his pre-shot routine is once he addresses the ball.

“If you notice, he found the back of the golf ball with his trail foot and it’s square to the target line, then he’s aiming the face, and then he sets his feet” Ruggiero shares. “Now take a good last look at your target before letting it go.”

What’s Golf Starter Club?

Golf Starter Club’s a new, all-in-one golf instruction and community platform designed to help players improve — whether you’re a beginner golfer, average player, or even trying to play Division 1 golf somewhere.

Instead of sending golfers down an endless rabbit hole of conflicting swing tips — which too many amateur players do — Golf Starter Club provides trusted and organized learning paths built for beginners, juniors, bogey-golfers, and those looking to break 100.

Rather than stress about golf practice each week, members can learn on their own schedule alongside world-class golf teachers with practical drills, live sessions, swing discussions, and a growing library shaped by member feedback.

But what truly separates Golf Starter Club is its roster: Top-rated instructors — including GOLF Magazine Top 100 teachers, an LPGA Teacher of the Year, and elite coaches — alongside some of golf’s most recognizable creators and enthusiasts. By combining credible coaching with relatable personalities, GSC makes getting better simpler, more personal, and more fun.

Here’s how to choose your path on Golf Starter Club!

Ready to take the leap and join a community of golfers craving more beginner golf tips and structured golf instruction? SIGN UP for Golf Starter Club! And make sure to follow Nick Dimengo on Instagram and subscribe Rainmakers Golf on YouTube, too!

The back nine at The College Golf Course at Delhi opened that June. Four years earlier, college officials announced plans to expand the course to 18 holes to support a future professional golf management program. Delhi’s golf and turf programs had already been around since the 1970s, but something larger was taking shape.

I was not a student in the Professional Golf Management program SUNY Delhi offers today. My path was through Golf Course Management, part of the turf and operations side of the game. Still, looking back three decades later, the timing is difficult to miss. I was leaving Delhi while the school was physically building the foundation for the next version of its golf education and the path I eventually took on myself as I moved to Florida in August of 1996.

Now one of my students is there.

Bennett Paden, a remote student of mine from Oxford, New York, is a freshman in his first semester studying Business and Professional Golf Management at SUNY Delhi. Oxford sits just south of Norwich, where I grew up. Thirty years separate my final year at Delhi from Bennett’s first, but golf has a way of making distances like that feel considerably shorter.

He arrives at a much different SUNY Delhi. The college began the fall 2026 semester with approximately 3,300 students, including 866 first-year students, while its Business and Professional Golf Management degree has developed into the only four-year PGM program in New York.

What interests me most, though, is not how much bigger Delhi has become. It is how recognizable its approach still feels.

The Golf Course is Part of the Education

The College Golf Course at Delhi is not scenery outside a classroom window.

It is an 18-hole public golf operation with a tee sheet, pro shop, leagues, junior golf, instruction, tournaments and championships. It opened as a nine-hole course on July 1, 1965, and the back nine added in 1996 moves through the rolling terrain surrounding Delhi. Today, the course serves directly as a training ground for students in both Professional Golf Management and Golf and Sports Turf Management.

That distinction is important.

Golf management can look much cleaner from the outside than it does from behind the counter. Anyone who has spent time running a golf operation knows how quickly one job becomes six. Instruction overlaps with tournament preparation. Merchandising meets inventory control. A staffing issue arrives while an outing is checking in. The golfer at the counter doesn’t care which chapter of a textbook applies.

SUNY Delhi can put students into an environment where the business is actually happening.

The PGM program has access to a 25-station outdoor driving range, a 34,000-square-foot practice area, an indoor swing-analysis lab, a TopTracer simulator and a club design and repair lab. Students can develop retail and golf-shop experience at the course, while teaching and player development are built into the curriculum as well.

That setup makes particular sense to me because my own Delhi education came from the other side of the property. I studied how a golf course works. Today’s PGM students are learning how the golf business operates on top of that ground.

Those disciplines eventually meet every morning before the first tee time.

A Business Degree that Gets Students into the Business

The official degree is a four-year Bachelor of Business Administration in Business and Professional Golf Management.

The curriculum moves well beyond learning how to teach a golf swing. SUNY Delhi lists player development, golf instruction, tournament organization, golf-shop operations, course planning and design, budgeting, economics, accounting, marketing, strategic management and guest services among the areas students encounter.

That range is closer to the actual job than a narrow golf curriculum would be.

A good golf professional may teach before breakfast, manage employees before lunch, work through merchandise numbers in the afternoon and oversee a tournament the next morning. Someone eventually has to understand why the operation made or lost money, why an event ran smoothly, why a staff member succeeded and why a customer wants to return.

Delhi also requires four full-time paid internships. Students complete three during summer periods, while the fourth is a six-month placement intended to expose them to multiple areas of golf management. The program’s 2025 internship list stretched from New York facilities such as Shinnecock Hills Golf Club to Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina and Cherry Hills Country Club in Colorado.

For a young person who thinks he or she wants a career in golf, those experiences can be as valuable for eliminating possibilities as confirming them.

A substantial difference exists between enjoying golf and enjoying the golf business, something I know very well after 30 years in the business. Internships help students confront that difference while they still have time to learn which part of the industry fits them.

SUNY Delhi says PGM students who remain in the golf industry have a 100% job-placement rate. Its alums have moved into jobs ranging from teaching and club-professional positions to facility management, equipment, sales and tournament operations.

The people teaching them have spent time in those environments themselves. James R. Lees Jr., PGA, is the program’s primary advisor, internship and player-development coordinator and teaches courses ranging from golf instruction to merchandising, budgeting and course design. David Arehart, PGA, has served at The College Golf Course at Delhi since 1998 and currently combines his roles as head golf professional, general manager and men’s golf coach.

That connection between the classroom and the golf shop is difficult to fake.

The Broncos Still Have a Competitive Side

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Golf at Delhi also offers opportunities to compete.

The PGM program specifically points students toward the school’s Division III men’s and women’s golf teams. For a student who still wants tournament golf to remain part of the college experience, the game does not have to disappear once career preparation begins.

The men’s program entered this academic year after earning a spot in the 2026 NCAA Division III Men’s Golf Championship. Delhi qualified by winning its third North Atlantic Conference championship in fall 2025, with Grady Glennon repeating as individual medalist.

That overlap is useful for an aspiring golf professional.

Playing college golf does not automatically make someone better at managing a facility, teaching a beginner or running an event. It can, however, give a future professional another view of preparation, tournament conditions, competitive pressure and what players need from the people administering the game.

Delhi students can encounter golf from several directions without leaving campus. They can study it, work in it, practice it and, for those who make a roster, compete in it.

Bennett Paden Gets His Own Version of Delhi

Bennett is not attending the SUNY Delhi I attended.

He should not be.

My program was different. The facilities have changed. Technology has changed. The business has changed. A young person considering a golf career in 2026 needs to understand tools, services and expectations that did not exist when I graduated.

What has survived is the practical nature of the place.

Bennett and I will continue working together remotely on his own golf development. That relationship does not change because he is now studying golf professionally. If anything, I am interested in watching the two tracks develop alongside each other. One concerns his game. The other is beginning to introduce him to the industry surrounding it.

I have no interest in telling him what his Delhi experience is supposed to become. First semesters are messy enough without someone 30 years removed from his own trying to write the ending for him.

His job right now is to absorb it.

Learn from the PGA professionals teaching the program. Spend time around the course. Pay attention to what happens in the golf shop when nobody is hitting balls. Notice how tournaments are organized. Watch how good professionals deal with golfers. Use the internships to figure out which parts of the industry create energy and which don’t.

Those are decisions Bennett eventually gets to make for himself.

For me, there is still something unusual about watching it from this side of the timeline. The back nine that opened when I graduated is no longer the new part of The College Golf Course at Delhi. It has been there for 30 years. The PGM program that was still somewhere in Delhi’s plans while I was a student has become an established path into the golf industry.

And one of the newest students walking into it happens to be someone I already coach.

The next time Bennett and I connect for a remote session, we will probably spend most of our time talking about his golf game. Delhi has a much larger assignment in front of it.

I know that place well enough to be interested in what it does with him.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Still Shooting Par, Still Struggling: What One Student’s Slump Taught Me About Young High Achievers

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Four days later, the surroundings change completely.

Koivun will make his Bank of Utah Championship debut at Black Desert Resort, a place I had the chance to spend time at earlier this month. Match play becomes stroke play. A team week becomes an individual one. The noise around every hole at Medinah gives way to one of the most visually unusual golf courses on the PGA Tour.

Koivun is my pick to win.

He went 2-0-1 at the Presidents Cup and was the only player in the event who did not lose a match. That performance followed a summer in which he won the 3M Open by three shots over Scottie Scheffler in just his third start as a professional. He also finished T5 at the Biltmore Championship before heading to Medinah and has three top-10 finishes in eight PGA Tour starts this season.

An obvious argument exists against taking him this week. A Presidents Cup can empty the tank, especially for a 21-year-old experiencing it for the first time. Players spend days on team schedules, playing emotionally charged matches and living in an environment that doesn’t resemble a normal Tour week.

I am looking at the other side of it.

I do not need Koivun to carry Presidents Cup adrenaline into Thursday. I like the confidence that can come from finding out you belong when the week gets considerably bigger than anything you have experienced before.

Black Desert Is Generous Until the Ball Leaves the Grass

Black Desert measures 7,421 yards as a par 71, but the number on the scorecard does not tell the whole story. The course sits at roughly 3,000 feet of elevation, and the golf ball gets some help in the Southern Utah air. Fairways are expansive. Greens average around 7,000 square feet. The course played to a 69.811 scoring average last year.

That sounds inviting.

Standing there gives you a different appreciation for the tradeoff.

I went deeper into Black Desert in my Athlon Sports course preview after visiting the property, but one thing stayed with me after seeing the golf course from ground level. There’s plenty of room to play golf, and the visual contrast makes the boundaries unmistakable.

Green grass sits against black lava. The fairways can feel enormous until the ball starts moving toward one of those edges.

That matters because the penalty can change quickly. This is not a place where every loose drive disappears into manageable rough. A miss into the wrong section of lava can leave a player dealing with something much more disruptive.

The best players should still make plenty of birdies. Black Desert has been one of the more receptive par-71 venues on the schedule through its first two years. Wide landing areas allow players to attack, and the size of the greens should produce plenty of regulation opportunities.

The separation becomes more interesting after that.

When most of the field can find fairways and greens, proximity starts carrying more weight. So does putting. Black Desert has been tougher than its overall scoring numbers might suggest from several shorter putting ranges. In each of its first two PGA Tour editions, it ranked among the more difficult courses in conversion percentage from 4 to 8 feet, and the putting numbers from inside 15 feet have held up despite players creating birdie chances everywhere else.

That is where I keep coming back to Koivun.

The power is easy to notice. What impressed me at Medinah was his ability to continue making committed golf decisions when every match started carrying more weight.

Black Desert gives players permission to be aggressive. It does not permit them to get careless.

There is a difference.

Koivun Still Has Something to Play For This Fall

Koivun enters the week at No. 62 in the FedExCup Fall standings. That number matters because players who finish the fall from Nos. 51 through 60 earn spots in the 2027 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational.

He is close enough that one strong week can materially improve his position.

That gives his Black Desert debut an edge beyond chasing another trophy. Koivun is not fighting for his Tour card the way some players deeper in the standings are, but something immediate is still available.

Tony Finau arrives in a very different spot. The Salt Lake City native and Lehi resident is making his first appearance in the tournament and begins the week at No. 100 in the FedExCup Fall standings. Billy Horschel sits at No. 101. For players around that line, every round carries a different kind of consequence.

Finau’s week also carries a local pull that should make him one of the most followed players on the property. The Utah native has won six times on the PGA Tour, but this will be his first appearance in the event.

That is one of several reasons the Bank of Utah Championship feels more interesting than its place on the fall schedule might initially suggest.

There are players trying to secure their status. Others are chasing access to early-season Signature Events. Koivun arrives with a different problem entirely. He has already shown he can win on the PGA Tour. Now he gets another chance to prove how quickly he can reset after one of the biggest weeks of his young career.

Brennan and McCarty Have Already Solved This Place

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There are safer choices than Koivun if course history drives your pick.

Michael Brennan returns as the defending champion after winning by four shots last year. He has since added a victory at the Wyndham Championship and arrives as the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 33 in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Matt McCarty has been even more consistent at Black Desert. He won the inaugural Bank of Utah Championship in 2024 and finished T3 in his title defense last season. His scoring average through those two appearances is 66.125.

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Ben James also deserves attention. He arrives with podium finishes in each of his last two starts and sits 66th in the FedExCup standings.

There are plenty of reasonable places to go if you want to move away from Koivun. Brennan has won here. McCarty has nearly turned the place into a personal scoring playground. James is playing well. Finau has the Utah connection and far more urgency in the standings.

I am still staying with Koivun.

Black Desert can overwhelm you visually before it ever becomes difficult strategically. The red cliffs, lava fields and strips of green are constantly competing for your eyes. Television shows some of it. Standing there shows considerably more.

Eventually, though, every player has to stop looking and hit the shot.

That was part of what stood out about Koivun at Medinah. The surroundings kept getting louder. The stakes kept climbing. He still had to choose a club, pick a target and commit to the swing in front of him.

The format changes this week, but the job does not.

Koivun leaves one of the most pressure-filled environments he has experienced and walks onto a golf course that should reward confident swings, strong approach play and a player comfortable making birdies.

I like the fit.

I like the timing.

And I like Jackson Koivun to win at Black Desert.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Jackson Koivun Won Me Over Again With a Fearless Sunday at Medinah

Related: I Played Black Desert. What Makes This Week’s PGA Tour Test Different

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I had rental clubs in my hands, very little recent golf behind me and a scorecard that never had much of a chance. Nine holes later, I wanted to go back to the first tee and start over.

That does not happen often after I play badly.

Black Desert hosted Melisa and me for a media visit in early September. We toured the course before I played it, and somewhere during that short stay it moved into the top five of my favorite tracks I have played. The scenery had plenty to do with that. The golf had more.

The cameras get the colors right. They flatten the scale.

On television, the fairways can look like strips of green dropped into endless black lava. Once you stand beside the rock, there is more room than the aerial shots suggest. Tom Weiskopf and Phil Smith did not build 18 narrow bowling alleys through volcanic stone. There are angles, landing areas and places to play away from trouble.

The lava is still close enough that you never forget it is there.

Black Desert Looks Meaner Than It Plays, Until You Miss Big

The 2026 tournament setup measures 7,421 yards at par 71. The average greens cover approximately 7,000 square feet, while average fairway width is 30 yards. The course has 44 bunkers and only three water hazards, with Kentucky bluegrass rough scheduled at 2 inches.

Those numbers help explain what I experienced.

Black Desert does not have to smother every golf ball in rough to defend itself. A shot that remains in grass usually leaves another decision. Send one far enough offline and the black rock begins making decisions for you.

The visual effect comes first. Green grass stopping against jagged black stone makes the target feel different, even when there’s plenty of room. Golfers who become fixated on everything they should avoid can make a golf course smaller than it really is.

That is where Black Desert gets interesting.

The course still wants players to hit golf shots. Its short par 4s invite aggression. The par 5s offer birdie opportunities. There are generous areas where a committed swing is rewarded. The punishment becomes severe when a player takes on more than the shot can support or misses the intended corridor badly.

For a PGA Tour field, that distinction should produce plenty of red numbers without reducing Black Desert to target practice.

Two Years of Scores Reveal a Very Specific Pattern

Matt McCarty won the inaugural PGA Tour event at Black Desert at 23 under in 2024. Michael Brennan followed at 22 under last year. The course averaged 69.061 in its first Tour appearance and 69.810 in 2025, so par has not been a particularly useful target here.

Look deeper, however, and the same four holes keep separating themselves.

Nos. 11 and 13 ranked as the two most difficult holes in both PGA Tour editions. No. 11 averaged 4.253 in 2024 and 4.246 last year. No. 13 followed at 4.136 and 4.217.

At the other end are Nos. 14 and 18. They have been the two easiest holes on the course in both tournaments, only swapping places in the order. The drivable par-4 14th averaged 3.419 in 2024 and 3.465 last year. The closing par 5 played to 4.348 and 4.478.

That produces a finish I like.

A player can give away something at 11 or 13, then arrive at 14 with an immediate decision about how aggressively to get it back. The 18th provides another opportunity before the card is signed.

There is no long closing stretch where everybody simply hangs on.

The Front Nine Shows How Much Local Knowledge Helps

My nine holes also gave me a much better appreciation for the value of somebody who knows Black Desert.

Our caddie gave us information and perspective that a number on a GPS screen could not. Some of that is unavoidable on a course where lava shapes sightlines and certain landing areas are easier to understand after somebody explains what is beyond what you can see.

The seventh is a good example. It is a long, semi-blind par 5 with lava islands near a relatively small green. Then comes the short downhill eighth, where the green is shared with No. 2 and protected by lava and a deep bunker. The ninth climbs back uphill with lava and bunkers shaping the route toward the green.

Those holes do not ask the same question.

That is important because visual drama can sometimes disguise repetitive architecture. I did not get that feeling at Black Desert. The rock keeps appearing, but the shot being asked of you changes.

Tour players have detailed yardage books, practice rounds and professional caddies. They will know where everything is. Knowing and trusting are different things when a target is framed by something as visually final as a lava field.

I Saw Tournament Preparation Before Tournament Week

The rough that swallowed my opening tee shot was already being prepared for this event.

The finished tournament specifications call for 2-inch Kentucky bluegrass rough surrounding bentgrass playing surfaces. The greens are 007XL bentgrass, while Dominator bentgrass is used on the collars, approaches, tees and fairways. Superintendent Ken Yates’ operation has 27 agronomy employees, with another 42 tournament volunteers listed for the week.

Even the visual presentation will be different. Last year’s fairways were mowed north and south regardless of hole direction. This year they will carry a diamond pattern, and robotic fairway mowers return for the third consecutive year.

Most viewers will never think about any of that.

They will see green against black against red, probably reach for their phones and take a picture of the television.

I understand.

A Bad Nine Was Enough to Put Black Desert in My Top Five

I only played nine holes, and that distinction matters. I am not pretending I experienced every tournament tee, every green angle or every possible wind direction. We toured the entire golf course, I played the front nine, and I left wanting considerably more.

That is enough for my personal list.

I do not put a course there because it photographs well or because somebody tells me where it ranks. The courses I remember make me want another look at shots I already played. They leave me curious about a line I did not take, a club I probably should have hit or a part of the property I did not get enough time to understand.

Black Desert did that while I was playing some lousy golf.

When the Bank of Utah Championship begins Thursday, the obvious pictures will be everywhere. I will be paying more attention to what happens between them: who accepts the proper line when lava pulls the eye somewhere else, who gets through Nos. 11 and 13 without damage, and who has enough nerve left to take advantage of 14 and 18.

Black Desert has already produced winning scores of 23 under and 22 under. Birdies are coming.

So are shots that miss by a little and look much worse because of where they finish.

I played poorly there and did not want the round to end. For me, that is about as strong a course review as I can give.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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Over nearly three decades, I have had the chance to help thousands of young people discover golf, explore it, learn it and, in some cases, become very good at it. Some stayed with the game competitively. Some eventually found other interests. Years later, a few have trusted me with their own children, essentially handing the game from one generation to another and asking me to help again.

There are trophies, low rounds and college opportunities scattered throughout those years, but those are not the memories I value most. I remember kids getting the ball airborne for the first time, making a team they weren’t sure they could make, finding confidence they didn’t have before, or simply discovering that a golf course could become a place they loved being.

That has been one of the great blessings of being a PGA Professional and coach.

My coaching has changed, though. I once spent much of my time introducing children to golf. Today, a larger percentage of my work centers on competitive teenagers, and that has exposed me much more regularly to a part of coaching that can hurt.

Golf can be brutal to a young person who cares deeply about being good at it.

The Coach Eventually Has to Let Go

I understand the attraction and the damage competitive golf can deliver because I lived some of it myself. I played high school and college golf, and some of the memories from those years remain vivid decades later. A great round, a pressure putt, a team moment, or simply realizing you could compete with somebody you once thought was better can stay with you for the rest of your life.

The other memories stay, too. Golf has an extraordinary ability to expose insecurity because there is almost nowhere to hide. You hit the shot. You write down the number. Nobody can substitute for you, and eventually the numbers are added together.

As a coach, I can prepare a player for that environment in almost every way I know how. We can work on the golf swing, putting, short game, course management, routines, breathing, decision-making, emotional control and practice habits. I can study statistics, watch video, develop plans, talk through tournament situations and try to anticipate what the player might encounter.

Then competition begins, and the most difficult part of coaching takes over.

I cannot hit the shot.

I cannot make a teenager use a pre-shot routine we have practiced repeatedly. I cannot force somebody to respond constructively after a double bogey. I cannot stand inside a player’s head on the 14th tee and quiet the fear that the round is beginning to get away.

Ultimately, the player has to take everything we have worked on and put it into play. That ownership is necessary for development, but accepting it doesn’t get easier just because I have been coaching for a long time.

When you care about a young person, you want the good outcome for them.

Sometimes you want it desperately.

Two Different Scorecards, the Same Concern

The past several days have driven that home for me in two very different ways.

One young player I coach was still producing perfectly respectable scores. There was nothing dramatic enough on the card to suggest a serious problem. Yet, our conversations told me he was becoming consumed by mechanics, positions and the feeling that something in his golf needed to be fixed.

He was playing better than he felt.

Eventually, our work shifted away from adding another technical thought. The golf needed to become a task again rather than an inspection. Give the player a target. Ask him to create the shot. Let him use the swing instead of analyzing every piece of it while the club was moving.

That situation reinforced something important: A young golfer can look fine statistically while struggling significantly with his relationship to the game.

Another young player I coach is dealing with almost the opposite problem. The results have become difficult enough that there is no hiding from them. Golf has begun to feel foreign, confidence has been battered, and the player I know is capable of much better golf is having trouble finding any evidence of that player when competition begins.

Those scores hurt to see as a coach because I know the work that has gone into trying to prevent them. More important, though, is what repeated disappointment can begin doing to the teenager experiencing it.

A bad round bruises.

Enough bad rounds can scare.

A young golfer can begin wondering whether the next tournament will bring more of the same. Frustration can become expectation. The first mistake of the day can suddenly feel like confirmation that another miserable round has started.

That is no longer only a swing issue.

Golf Does Not Always Stay at the Golf Course

This is the part adults around competitive teenagers need to take seriously.

A score is supposed to measure a round of golf. It should not become a measurement of the kid who shot it.

That distinction becomes harder for teenagers who care intensely about what they do. Golfers can tie enormous portions of their identity to their games, just as high-achieving students can become consumed by grades or musicians by an audition. Nobody around them necessarily has to apply unreasonable pressure for that to happen.

Young people are quite capable of supplying the pressure themselves.

I was a teenager about 35 years ago, and teenagers certainly dealt with expectations then. We wanted good grades. We wanted to play well. We wanted approval from coaches, parents and friends, and many of us worried about what we were going to do with our lives.

I do believe today’s young people experience another layer.

There is almost no escape from comparison. Their phones can show them somebody else’s tournament victory, college commitment, highlight reel, test score, vacation and seemingly perfect life before they have even finished processing their own disappointing afternoon.

School keeps moving. Other activities continue. Family expectations exist. Friends have their own successes and struggles. Coaches ask for accountability. The teenager adds his or her own expectations on top of all of it.

Then golf can pile on.

We need to be careful when a young person’s disappointment with the game begins traveling home.

Ask Something Other Than the Score

Golf coaches love information we can measure. Fairways hit, greens in regulation, putts, proximity, scrambling and scoring averages can help us understand whether a player’s perception matches what is actually happening.

Those numbers also have serious limitations.

They cannot tell me whether a teenager dreads the next round. They cannot tell me whether golf is affecting the ride home, dinner, homework or the way that player feels the next morning. They cannot show me whether a young person is beginning to see every poor result as evidence of something wrong with him or her.

That information comes through conversation, and “What did you shoot?” is often not enough on its own.

Sometimes I need to ask, “How does golf feel right now?”

I need to know whether the player still wants to practice. I need to understand what happens mentally after a bad hole. I need to know whether the goal still belongs to the player or whether golf has turned into an ongoing attempt to avoid disappointing everyone around them.

Parents need those answers, too.

There is also a boundary coaches should respect. I am a golf coach. I can help with competitive frustration, routines, preparation, perspective, practice structure and the mental skills involved in playing the game. When problems spread well beyond golf and affect a young person’s overall well-being, the solution cannot simply be another lesson.

Knowing when the issue has moved beyond our lane is part of caring for the people we coach.

Caring Without Owning the Result

There is another difficult responsibility for coaches and parents.

We have to resist taking ownership of the outcome.

I can know exactly what a player should do and still watch that player choose something else under pressure. A parent can provide every reasonable opportunity and still watch a son or daughter struggle. Everybody involved can communicate well, provide support and genuinely want what is best for the young golfer.

The game can still go sideways.

That does not automatically mean somebody failed.

Development is messy, particularly during the teenage years. Players are learning golf while they are also learning who they are, how they respond to failure, what motivates them and how much of their identity they want tied to an activity.

Sometimes my job is technical. Sometimes it is demanding. A player needs to practice something we have agreed upon, follow a routine, prepare properly or accept accountability for decisions that contributed to a poor result.

Other days require something different.

The coach has to see the kid.

Why I Still Love Doing It

I sometimes miss the simplicity of introducing little kids to golf.

A ball got into the air and everybody celebrated. A putt went into the hole and you might as well have won the Masters. Nobody asked for a ranking update.

Competitive golf becomes more complicated because the stakes feel more real to the player. Scores matter. Teams matter. Tournament results matter. College aspirations may matter. Learning to perform when you care about the outcome is one of the valuable things sports can teach.

I would never want to remove that challenge.

I do want to make sure we are not so busy developing golfers that we fail to notice what the game is doing to the young people playing it.

That is especially difficult for coaches because we care about the results, too. I want my players to succeed. I want them to experience the confidence that comes from seeing hard work become good golf. When one of them is lost, hurting or frightened by where the game seems to be heading, I feel it.

But I cannot carry the golf bag emotionally for them any more than I can swing the club for them.

My responsibility is to prepare them, challenge them, support them and pay attention. It is to help them understand that a round can be awful without them being awful, that improvement rarely moves in a straight line and that a golf score should never be allowed to define the person writing it down.

Then, eventually, I have to let them walk to the first tee.

I have watched thousands of kids make that walk in one form or another over nearly three decades. Some eventually came back with children of their own.

Maybe that is the part worth holding onto when the coaching gets hard.

Long after the scorecards are gone, the kid is still there.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

Related: Still Shooting Par, Still Struggling: What One Student’s Slump Taught Me About Young High Achievers

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By then, the five-shot lead he carried into the final round had been reduced to two. Eugenio Chacarra was making birdies. Fitzpatrick had spent much of the afternoon scrambling instead of separating himself from the field.

The easy response in that position is to start chasing the golf you expected to have.

Fitzpatrick kept taking pars.

He made 12 of them in a row to begin the final round at Le Golf National, held the tournament together with his short game and eventually closed with a 1-under 70 for a three-shot victory over Angel Hidalgo. It was his fourth worldwide win of 2026 and the 11th DP World Tour title of his career.

The number four gives Fitzpatrick’s season its headline. The first 12 holes on Sunday explain why the season has become so good.

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Twelve Pars Were Doing Real Work

A golfer protecting a five-shot lead does not have to play defensively. He does have to understand what the tournament is asking him to do.

Those are different things.

Fitzpatrick missed an opportunity from eight feet on the opening hole. At the third, his approach finished under a tree right of the green, yet he saved par. He produced another strong par save at the fifth. Through nine holes, he had nine pars while Chacarra attacked the deficit and got within two.

Nothing about that stretch would make a glamorous highlight package. It was excellent tournament management.

Players get themselves into trouble when they confuse an opponent making birdies with a personal emergency. Fitzpatrick began Sunday five ahead. Chacarra’s early run changed the margin, but it did not require Fitzpatrick to start firing at every flag or turning a difficult afternoon into a search for a swing thought.

A lead gives a golfer something valuable: the ability to absorb another player’s good golf.

That advantage disappears quickly when impatience begins creating bogeys.

Fitzpatrick later described the opening 12 holes as “a bit of a grind,” saying he had been out of position several times but scrambled his way through the stretch without dropping a shot.

There is a coaching lesson in there that travels well below the professional level. Golfers tend to judge a round by how frequently they are hitting the shots they want. Tournament golf eventually asks a different question: What score can you produce with the shots you have today?

Fitzpatrick’s answer through 12 was even par.

That was enough.

His first birdie finally arrived at the 13th, just after Chacarra’s challenge took a serious blow with a double bogey. Fitzpatrick saved par again at 14, then birdied the 15th to push the margin back to five and effectively remove the remaining drama. His only bogey of the final round came at the 18th, and it was just his second bogey of the entire week.

He finished 20 under, three shots clear of Hidalgo.

Win No. 4 Looks Different From the Other Three

Fitzpatrick’s 2026 résumé now includes PGA Tour victories at the Valspar Championship, RBC Heritage and Zurich Classic of New Orleans, followed by the FedEx Open de France. The victory at Le Golf National was his 11th on the DP World Tour, coming in his 202nd start, and his first Open de France title.

Four wins in one calendar year command attention on their own. Sunday in France added something more useful than another low final-round score.

It showed another way Fitzpatrick can win.

Professional golf can make winning look like a ball-striking exhibition because television naturally follows the shots that finish close to the hole. Players know better. So do coaches.

A player will eventually reach a Sunday when the range swing doesn’t make the trip to the first tee, distance control feels slightly off, or an opponent starts making putts from everywhere. There is no reset button and no time to rebuild anything.

The golfer who can turn that version of his game into 12 consecutive pars is difficult to catch.

Fitzpatrick then did what experienced winners tend to do when the round finally opens back up. He changed nothing merely because the birdies had been absent. When the opportunities appeared late, he took them.

The result was a 70 that looks ordinary beside the scores elite professionals produce every week.

It might have been the most revealing number on his card.

Hidalgo’s runner-up finish also carried a significant reward. The Spaniard secured the available place in the 155th Open Championship at St Andrews as the highest-finishing player who was not already exempt.

Fitzpatrick had something waiting beyond the trophy presentation, too.

He and his wife, Katherine, recently welcomed their first child, Jack. The victory in France was his first since becoming a father.

“First win as a dad is really cool,” Fitzpatrick said.

Then he talked about where he wanted to be next.

He wanted to go home.

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