"It's a pretty special feeling to finally be holding this trophy." - Scottie on winning the FedEx Cup... or my not so pointed commentary on hoisting the fantasy championship last season only to get ONE VOTE FROM YOU ALL in the reader contest last week.
Presidents Cup rosters are out
SI WOO IN MONTREAL!
The Presidents Cup rosters were officially locked in this week on both the International and US side—and the lead story here is Bad Birdie's own Si Woo Kim is officially back on the roster!!
Mike Weir, the International captain, had this to say about Si Woo's place on the squad: "Si-woo brings a wealth of experience to our team room, as well as a great record in the Presidents Cup. He has been a stalwart on PGA Tour leaderboards since 2016 and has demonstrated an ability to perform his best when the pressure is at its highest, which will be a great asset for us in Montreal."
Mike Weir, the International captain, had this to say about Si Woo's place on the squad: "Si-woo brings a wealth of experience to our team room, as well as a great record in the Presidents Cup. He has been a stalwart on PGA Tour leaderboards since 2016 and has demonstrated an ability to perform his best when the pressure is at its highest, which will be a great asset for us in Montreal."
Hell. Yeah.
And for those wondering about the differences between the Presidents and Ryder Cup teams—Presidents Cup is a team of non-Ryder eligible international players aka everyone besides Europe.
The impact of that distinction? America is on a nine-Cup winning streak...
Speaking of Team America. We could care less about sending the same people on our Presidents and Ryder Cup so lots of familiar faces—and a few missing ones too.
Golf social media is all abuzz that JT missed the Presidents Cup team which I find fascinating because the sentiment around the Ryder Cup—especially after watching Full Swing—was that he didn't deserve his spot there. So why only a year or two later are we suddenly aghast at him sitting on the side in favor of Keegan, Sahith, Finau, and Russell Henley.
Okay... I'll admit Henley wouldn't have made my list. But I also don't think I would've grabbed JT instead. I was loving the Akshay buzz to infuse some more youth into the mix.
(Wasn't sure where to slot this other observation in, but the Russell Henley/Mackenzie Hughes spot on the graphic wins the award for most awkward "do a serious face" portraits. They're both giving me one part school ID photo and one part Renaissance oil painting.)
PGA v LIV is finally happening—kind of...
DON'T CALL IT THE MATCH
Click bait aficionados from across the country rejoiced this week as TNT announced a new "Match" in mid-December—the pairings? Bryson and Brooks v. Rory and Scottie. LIV v. PGA!
It's happening!! But, sort of, and also not really.
Ok, the details are that despite it being on TNT and the match featuring 2 pairs of 2 golfers... they have kindly requested that we not call this "The Match" like the other largely QB-centric matches have been.
The plan is for there to be celebrity focused versions of The Match while TNT spins off more serious versions featuring only pro golfers.
And to my point above about this potentially being the LIV v. PGA showdown that I've been craving, I'll let Rory's quote about the announcement do the talking:
"We’re all here to put on a great show and contribute to a goodwill event that brings the best together again."
"We’re all here to put on a great show and contribute to a goodwill event that brings the best together again."
BOOOOOOOORRRRRIIIIINNNGGGGG - we're not looking for goodwill here. The only time I've wanted goodwill is when I used to scramble to find a costume during my 20s the week before Halloween. Grabbing a pair of size 8 ladies pink pants and a shiny button down for a semi-70s era kind of dude thing. The bar was low for me.
I know that true rivalries take time to develop but I'm having a hard time seeing this match live up to the already lofty expectations. The 2v2 format and broadcast has too much dead air to fill and if it slips into a lopsided affair then the competitive side of things also disappears.
LIV v. PGA is only going to work if it's team-based and takes place over multiple days. Don't burden the players with having to also make quippy commentary throughout—just mic 'em up for the spur of the moment competitive outbursts and let the competition do the talking.
$10k for a hole in one
THE MATH ISN'T MATH-ING
This is the kind of incentive I need to hit the driving range each week.
The post above is about Lake Taupo in New Zealand where a local tourist stop offers a hole in one challenge. Considering the financial stakes for a hole in one, the prices weren't nearly as bad as I thought. 50 bucks for 50 balls—steep for local range, but could you hit a hole in one if you bought 1000 balls? 10:1 payout isn't bad.
Currently 1,111 people have done it—and I'm ashamed to admit I needed a calculator for this math—which means they've paid out $11,100,000. And their site claims that someone hits a hole in one on average once every two weeks.
So either this 1,111 people is including the hole in ones for the other two flags which are larger and earn prizes to other local tourist activities, or this place is a money laundering scheme for a kind-natured New Zealand crime family which has cornered the local market for sheep's wool or bungee jumping or whatever else kiwis do for a living.
They also have the Ball Blaster—a five-golf-ball capacity rifle that people can attempt the hole in one challenge with. Otherwise known as the real money maker...
We've got archival videos now!!
THE KING OF AI GOLF RETURNS
Long time readers will know that I geek out hard for Will Watt, an Australian photographer and founder of Contours Golf. Will is a magician with AI creator tools and has created multiple series of imagined golf courses from periods throughout history as well as ones set in fictitious lands like Star Wars or Batman.
And his latest series is titled The Gaucho Golfers of Salta—depicting an imaginary course set in the 1920s as British engineers brought the game to the highlands of Argentina. The image above, while obviously an insane finishing position for a golfer... is somehow weirdly believable as I imagine a flashy gaucho completing his swing with a little extra theater to it.
Will also included a few found footage style videos that are scary good considering the nightmare fever dreams that AI was producing only two or three years back.
I highly recommend clicking through to see the full set but grabbed a few of my favorites below.
Our Four Peaks collab is coming to Vegas!
VIVA LAS VEGAS
Huge news from BB HQ and our partners at Four Peaks Brewing this week—the most crushable course beer you've ever tasted is crossing state lines!
The Bad Birdie Juicy Golden Ale is coming to Vegas this week.
(And a few other choice locations around the West Coast are lined up for the weeks to come. <crossing fingers> Come onnnnnnn California!!!)
For now, I'm always game for an excuse to visit Vegas. Been getting pretty addicted to these slot machine TikToks where you just watch someone drop $100 into different slot machines. All the fun, none of the risk.
But if you're looking for your new favorite beer, come find us—it'll be the safest bet you make all week.
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