Iss. #128 | It's The Big Game Week—WINK WINK

Woke up this morning to a note from Bad Birdie Bill Esquire.

Yes, the man formerly known as Bucket Hat Bill apparently has a law degree now because his note said: "Hey, I bet you're going to want to say S*&$# B@$!—but some light Googling leads me to believe that there's at least a 1% chance the NFL will sue us... And you ain't funny enough to be worth it."

To which I said, "I bet my nemesis at Golf Digest Alex Myers can say S*&$# B@$!"

To which Bill said, "Yeah, I don't care. Let him have this one."

To which I said, "Well telling people that the WM Phoenix Open is OUR The Big Game just doesn't hit the same. And the readers deserve a Breakfast Balls that HITS."

To which Bill said, "Dude, I've been up since 3am patrolling the grounds out here in Scottsdale, I'm delirious, I'm in golf party heaven, and I have some Bad Birdie fans to chase down."

To which I said, "Fair. Okay, I'll figure it out."

SOOOOOOO this one's for you Roger Goodell!

Damn, this headline sucks.

IT'S THE BIG GAME WEEK!!

Kicking things off with a surprisingly fun piece from the PGA Tour where they sent Justin Thomas to NFL Media Day. And it provided quite the collection of noteworthy nuggets.

("Noteworthy nuggets" being a pretty killer summation of my feelings towards the fast food chain Wendy's, by the way. Still can't get over their stake in the ground about square patties. A natural shape for a patty is a circle because that's what naturally forms when you smash them with your hands. You can't get me on board with "fresh never frozen" but turn around and give me an unnatural shape. Whoops, sorry everybody, these are the things that happen when I write BB hungry.)

NOTEWORTHY NUGGET 1
Mahomes wasted no time in roasting Rodgers for his uhhhh handicap snafu at Pebble Beach this past weekend. But I've got more on that friggin' cheesehead in a bit.

NOTEWORTHY NUGGET 2
Adam Schefter strikes me as the WORST kind of person to talk to at a bar. Screaming in your face, a touch sweaty, harping on the one point of commonality you two share, and I don't know why I'm getting hints of stale frat house beer while I consider this scenario—but I am.

NOTEWORTHY NUGGET 3
Extremely humbling to watch Justin Thomas genuinely introduce himself to Jalen Hurts only to get a bit of a brush by on the press line. Justin has been at the top of the game for quite some time AND is an ex-Bama guy. And Jalen is out here giving him the same treatment that Jack Nicholson likely gives the cute little kid reporter that Nickelodeon sends to the Oscars.

NOTEWORTHY NUGGET 4
Justin casually concludes the clip by dropping that him and Mahomes hung out at an F1 race in Miami and made a win-win bet that if he won THE BIG GAME and JT wins the WM Phoenix Open then they'd meet up in Vegas afterwards. Just a couple sports legends being sports legends. Nothing to see here, folks!

Speaking of *cough* sports legends

WHAT A FRIGGIN CHEESEHEAD, THIS GUY

You know who wasn't even close to sniffin' THE BIG GAME?? This dude.

(TRIGGER WARNING: I am a Chicago-born, Bulls-Cubs-Bears guy. So really this trigger warning is for myself and catching you up on why I am dropping so much shade.)

The main story here is that Aaron Rodgers (winner of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am last weekend) had a handicap as stinky as the cheese Wisconsinites dip their 13 championship trophies in.

According to GHIN, the nationally recognized handicap tracking system, yes, NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED, Aaron Rodgers is a 3.0. Cool.

However, in pro-am tournaments, apparently the organizers arbitrarily assign handicaps to the most popular amateurs so that they have better shots at making the weekend action.

Insane. I get it. But in this particular instance, insane.

Lesley Varney, VP at the Foundation which stages the Pro-Am, said: “The past few years [Rodgers] has played as a 9 and has only made the cut once.”

This year? Aaron got himself a tidy little 10.

To which I call sandbaggery of the highest order. Golf.com went on to report that he played to a 5 at the Lake Tahoe Pro-Am in the summer and placed 9th in a pretty stacked field.

All this to say, I hope you enjoy your time on the Vegas Raiders Aaron. We hope to never see you in the NFC North again and I swear if that f%^@# Packers team stumbles @$$ backwards into one more generational quarterback... I'm going to lose it.

This week on r/golf

A MOMENT OF GOLF ZEN... ON REDDIT??

Okay. Wow.

As someone with a fairly serviceable array of artistic skills... I'll have you know!... this drawing actually stopped me in my tracks.

I don't really have much else to say besides that I saw it, said danggg that's really good, I should show the Breakfast Ballers this. And that was it. Until I found a shockingly well placed joke in the comments.

And it was at this point I left the thread, because I knew if I clicked this user's name, or kept scrolling into the comments that Reddit would go all Reddit on me and ruin it with someone bringing that passive aggressive smoke or a dirty joke about the Q-Tips in the photo or I don't know.

I don't want to know.

Let me have this as a palate cleanser from the Rodgers garbage.

Also this week on r/golf

I'M TRAPPED IN AN IRON CAGE OF EMOTION

There's that self-deprecating humor I know so well from Reddit.

But in all seriousness, wow what an awful job. The cage doesn't even come down far enough to guard against stingers and rolling pop-ups. And to think they had to pick the balls up with a little scoop???

Really puts things into perspective.

Like, maybe, it isn't so bad that ChatGPT will completely replace my job in 2-3 years.