Dave230

You don’t watch any sport entirely because of someone’s personality but if you’re a casual fan and 50-50 on turning something on in the evening, whoever is involved makes a difference. Even as a golf fan if it’s some standard PGA Tour event and let’s say Cantlay beating Morikawa with 5 holes to go (no disrespect) versus Fleetwood is beating Spieth with 5 holes to go, I’m more likely to stick on the latter.

I think personality-wise Scheffler has grown on people and is pretty interesting, just look at the past month with his press conferences in Portrush and his Happy Gilmore 2 cameos. He seems a pretty chill guy and incredibly grounded, I think that's cool to watch. Playing wise the feeling is more soothing to watch him than wrecking your nerve, I think there is room for both. It's like a critically acclaimed 'slow' movie with beautiful cinematography, it's high brow, it's satisfying to watch but some people will find it boring because not enough happens. I can't help but think of the difference in the Masters this year between Rory and what would have happened with Scheffler. Once Rory avoided the water on 12 with a few shots lead, if that was Scheffler, you could have turned off the TV and not missed anything. Would have been middle of the green on 13 and 15, the rest pars and the green jacket with ease. Rory's instead was soap opera or a thriller, ridiculous plot twists that didn't make any sense and a cliffhanger finish. It was far, far more exciting to watch, but you couldn't recommend it to anyone to actually play like that intentionally.

The best thing I've seen said about Niemann is that he won 4 LIV Tour events and then got rid of his coach and caddie mid-season after he missed the cut at the Open. Imagine a player winning 4 PGA Tour events in a season and getting rid of their coach and caddie mid-season. I just can't see it, it would be considered one of the best seasons in their career and they'd be a lot happier than he's looked recently.

Obviously the stuff about beating him and all that was a bit much, but if you were watching Zac Blair hit drivers you wouldn't necessarily think he's a PGA Tour player, in his defence. He is bottom 10 on tour in driving distance. There are probably plenty of scratch players out there who hit the ball longer and more impressively than him. The difference is the irons, wedges and the shots around the green where he'd smoke those scratch players. In a different era, Blair might have been a good hustler with this routine, going around clubs and beating their best players.

It was a lot better than I expected, I expected it to be terrible and it was quite enjoyable. I feel weirdly enough despite the nonsensical plot it was actually quite knowing and aimed at golf fans, way more than a lot of other slightly more serious golf films/TV shows. The Scheffler and Zalatoris stuff for example, I don't think a lot of non-golf fans would understand, but golfers would laugh at it.

Scheffler is currently hitting unbeatable levels the past two years, even better than certain peak Tiger Woods seasons in terms of strokes gained. The only active players who have enough juice to compete - or had seasons even in the same ball park of him are Spieth in 2015, McIlroy 4 times, Jason Day in 2016, and Xander Schauffele last year. Spieth and Day are nowhere near their 2015 and 2016 levels and enough time has passed to think that they're gone, so it's really down to McIlroy and Schauffele. Nobody else has shown the levels otherwise. Would require Scheffler to drop 10-15% and them to play some of the best golf of their lives. I'm not sure Schauffele has it in him to play better than 2024, that seemed his peak level to me. McIlroy does have the ability but I'm not sure if he has the hunger after the career Grand Slam.

The world rankings are a guide, the best anyone has come up with, of the best players in the world going into any given week. Only basing it off the majors is very flawed. If a random player won 6 PGA Tour tournaments in a row now between the Masters, the idea that they wouldn't be one of the best players in the world because they hadn't played well in the previous years majors would be ridiculous. Scheffler was never in the top 3 of a major before he won the 2022 Masters, but he still was world number 1 and everyone knew he was, and he proved it.

I hate that sort of attitude, comes across really badly. Spotters do god’s work at an Open, if there were none/no fans, bombers like Bryson would lose 5 balls a week.

I didn’t sense Gotterup was going to collapse and the 18th hole was playing a lot easier than it did last year for example, don’t think it would have made much difference since he lost by 2.