How would you spend your year?
CAM, THE CLARET JUG KING
Golf Digest ran an interesting piece this week about Cam's time with the Claret Jug after winning The Open last year. And while the meat of it ended back in LIV-PGA land, there were a bunch of great nuggets in there about the Jug's history as well as what a delightful oddball Cam Smith seems to be. These are my favorite nuggets of the bunch.
NUGGET #1
The Open champion has the option to purchase up to three more replica jugs after his year is up?!?! They charge the champion for replicas?? How is this not rolled into the multi-million dollar paycheck? It's giving me "buy your group photo after the roller coaster" vibes.
NUGGET #2
Billy Horschel came back to reality it seems...
“I was on a plane home with Zach [Johnson] in 2015, and everyone drank from the jug except me. I wanted to wait,” Horschel says. But two years ago, he gave in. “I was at the hotel bar in 2021 with Collin Morikawa the night he won, and I thought, F__k it, I may never win one of these, so I took my chances... A year later, Cam won, so I drank from it again.”
Someone broke Billy. But got to respect the 2015 version who was so sure he was going to win.
NUGGET #3
Cam Smith used the jug like a Chemex coffee maker.
“I was by myself, drinking a pour over out of the claret jug and looking out over the Intracoastal,” Smith says. “I laughed and thought, This is a bit too dorky."
NUGGET #4
The best of the rest.
In 1995, John Daly ate chocolate ice cream from it.
In 2008, two-time Open winner Padraig Harrington’s son put ladybugs in the jug.
In 2009, Stewart Cink had orange juice and barbecue sauce in it at various times.
In 2015, Iowa-raised Johnson ate corn from it.
I kind of like the idea of using it for maple syrup. Or a giant bloody mary with bacon and shrimp and vegetables spilling out of the top—and a giant crazy straw, too.
He's basically just walking click bait
TIGER MADE IT!
Alright, GOLF.com—ya got me. Can't throw a Tiger headline on the homepage and expect me not to click.
The problem? It ain't Tiger Tiger. It's actually a 19 year old German up-and-comer named Tiger Christensen.
That said, it appears that Tiger has quite the oddities in his family. As his parents admit his name was 50/50 selected because his dad's nickname was Tiger and, of course, Eldrick Tiger Woods.
His father also was a prominent DJ in Germany, founding a group called U96 whose hit Das Boot was the first techno song to reach No. 1 on the charts in much of Europe. Apparently, he still performs while accompanied by the Berlin Orchestra. Which seems like a low-key awesome concert to go to.
His mother, Nicci, also had herself a bit of a music career in the 90's. Performing under the name Rollergirl, her act consisted of singing and literally skating on stage.
All this to say, my click was not a complete loss. But happy to take one for the team here and click so you don't have to!
JT and Jordan buy a soccer team
WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE? RYAN REYNOLDS?
(Ryan Reynolds AND Rob McElhenney... I know, I know. But the headline was getting too long so I had to make choices, people.)
Anyways, news broke last week that BFFs Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas bought into an ownership stake in the English soccer club Leeds United.
They will be joining the group that also owns the 49ers and, bizarrely, NBA players Larry Nance Jr. and T.J. McConnell. It's a weird time in sports right now...
How's the investment going so far? Welp, Leeds United was relegated from the Premier League, after which, Spieth shared that Rickie Fowler decided against investing saying something like... "F this, you aren't getting a dime from me for these losers."
Was Jordan concerned, you ask? Jordan: "Relegation wasn't ideal." No, no it was not.
This week on r/golf
I MISS LO-FI COMPUTER GAMES
PC CD-ROM is a phrase that makes me feel older by the week. But I came across this post on golf Reddit and it brought back all the memories.
The entire Sid Meier canon was truly iconic—I played the heck out of Civilization. And the SimGolf game was also a banger. I know you can create infinitely better looking courses on the latest golf games—but there was something to be said for the lo-fi, simple setup of this era of 90's computer games.
My personal favorite was SimPark where I could spend hours and hours playing the taxonomy mini-game, guessing different animal calls, and creating the best damn biomes that the northwest suburbs of Chicago had ever seen.
And I honestly don't know where I wanted to go with this section besides down memory lane with my fellow millennials. Screaming down the stairs to my mom, asking for 10 more minutes so I could see whether my brown bears were going to assimilate into the mountain park I created... the important stuff, ya know?
Be like Teddy
KEEP INTERVIEWING JUNIOR ATHLETES
This is Teddy.
Teddy is the man.
Teddy's got his fishing hat. Leading a Junior Am tourney in Nebraska. Double wide polo on. And not a single care in the world.
I get such joy from watching local tourneys where reporters have to ask questions on their iPhone of junior golfers who are the furthest thing from media trained and will tell you what's what.
"I just went out there, hit some bombs, rolled a couple putts and tallied it up at the end."
I might get that phrase painted on wooden letters and make it the golfer's version of Live, Laugh, Love. Coming soon to a Home Goods store near you.
Bless you, Teddy! Never change.
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