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4. One other thing that intrigued me about Scottie’s win at Memorial last week was how he talked about bringing Sunday intensity to a Thursday morning round.

What this has led to is some nice weekend leads and eight straight wins when he’s held the 54-hole advantage. Jack talked about the blueprint for winning golf tournaments (this was Tiger’s, too, by the way). But you can only execute it from out in front.

Scottie is currently at 2.64 SG/round from tee to green. The next best player in the world this year (Bryson) is at 2.58 SG/round total. This means that if Scottie is an average putter (0.00 SG), he is still the best player in the world.

Scottie literally doesn’t have to worry about putting, which was true of Jack as well.

🎯🎯🎯 

5. I absolutely agree with this take. The PGA is in a cool position where it doesn’t have to worry about PR as much as the USGA does, and it can absolutely ingratiate itself with us idiot golf nerds by taking a collection of events and courses that were not considered up to the USGA’s standards (for a variety of reasons) and make them their own.

You could do a lot worse than the following as a PGA Championship rota.

1. Kiawah
2. Southern Hills
3. Chambers Bay
4. Erin Hills
5. Medinah
6. Cherry Hills
7. Olympic
8. PGA Frisco

A lot worse.

6. Speaking of walling things off!

Rory spoke on Wednesday about his media freeze out at the PGA this year.

It doesn’t really change my position on him not talking — which I disagreed with then (articulated here) and still do.

I think the whole failed driver issue was not (and is not) a big deal for Rory and that he should have talked about it at the PGA. However, I also understand that all of this was complicated by Scottie’s driver failing the test that week as well. Rory was upset that Scottie’s driver also failed but only Rory’s name got leaked — which is fair! — although he seems to be directing that ire at “the media” for breaking this news.

I think this is misguided unless — as he maybe insinuates here? — the same media folks who broke the news on Rory also had Scottie’s name but chose not to break that news (if that’s the case, I totally understand where he’s coming from and all of this makes a lot more sense!).

Regardless, Rory still could have talked at the PGA about his own failed driver test and curbed some of the nonsense chatter going on. He could have indirectly referenced Scottie (or the nine or 10 other players whose drivers failed) without selling anyone out.

His explanation makes sense, though, and I sympathize with it. It was a tough and weird spot, and I think it actually says a lot about Rory that the baseline expectation of him is that he could and would thread that needle in public. It speaks to how open, forthright and honest he’s been over the years.

7. In the second half of the question he answered above, he addressed the responsibility of superstars speaking to the media in general. There were a number of times where he got right up to the line of saying something like, You need us a lot more than we need you! about the media, which made me laugh because he wanted to say it so badly (watch at 2:39, I was 😂).

Also, this is absolutely true!

My career is my career in large part because Rory McIlroy is Rory McIlroy. The same is not true going the other direction.

Here’s what I wrote on Wednesday.

8. All of this is a bit of new territory. In the 1930s and 1970s and even into the 1990s, guys needed to talk because media members were the gatekeepers to stardom.

That’s no longer necessarily true (Bryson’s YouTube page is Exhibit A here — although, incidentally, Bryson talks to the media as much as anyone).

Rory could just do pressers on Instagram on his own and take questions from fans or whatever. The only thing keeping this from happening is the social contract pro golfers make with the media because of the way their public perception is shaped by what we write and talk about (see above).

If Rory only did Instagram pressers with fans, the folks who talk and write about golf for a living would be frustrated with him. And because of this, fans would turn on him because fans trust people who talk and write for a living to shape their perception of this sport and these people they follow.

I actually think this is becoming more true (for reasons outlined above), but I don’t believe a lot of golf’s stars truly believe it (although, again, Rory has proven over and over that he does). Or if they believe it, they often don’t seem to care all that much about it.

9. I also think Rory kind of said the quietest part out loud.

The unintended consequence of having five (six?) different organizations ruling the golf world strikes again. In other sports, you get popped (financially) for not speaking. In golf, where there is no players union and where golfers are still independent contractors?

No chance.

It’s a weird space. And there are no assurances that future superstars will be as benevolent as Rory has been with his time in speaking to anyone and everyone.

This is a bit of a problem now, but there is a chance that it will be an even bigger problem in the future.

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