Iss. #303 | Match Play Madness Is Finally Happening!

"It's actually not easy... everyone has bad days. Everyone hits bad shots." - Nelly Korda on the advice she'd give a young girl picking up a club for the first time. And I might as well add this one on loop for my pre-round meditation sets.

It's Official!

MATCH PLAY MADNESS IS FINALLY HAPPENING!

The PGA Tour officially announced this week that next year's Tour Championship would become a World Cup style match play event spanning two weeks. The image above is how the field would've broken down based on FedEx Cup rankings.

It will function exactly like the World Cup in that the first weekend would feature a round robin group stage where the top two finishers from each would emerge into the second weekend's bracket.

The Tour will rotate what venues host the two weekends of play, meaning that a bunch of non-Tour venues could be in the running on both the West and East coast.

The gambling implications of this alone have me riding sky high. Two weekends of four straight days of nonstop action. Hole by hole or live betting the hot hand, I have to imagine this will be a spectacle 10x the current format.

A working theory I have for why the Playoffs always feel so lackluster is because we've spent an entire season of seeing the same format and cadence—and for four of those tournaments, there was a major on the line. So by the time you reach the end, it's kind of like, yep, we've seen it. This isn't that. And I love it.

So happy it's finally happening. Now... where will they play???

The Chili's Clubhouse

I WANT MY BABY BACK BABY BACK...

There are strange collaborations... and then there's Chili's offering a year's supply of Triple Dippers and setting up a pop-up restaurant in Los Angeles at a course that remains the bane of my existence.

The details of it all are simple, Chili's read the tea leaves on golf being "so hot right now" and decided to do a merch drop.

Where it gets stranger is they chose a course called DeBell in Los Angeles that was actually the birthplace of my old golf league, Tiny Putters—because it's where I met my buddy and co-founder at a random tee time. The track is super quirky with blind turns, forced 170 yard tee shot dog legs, and the iconic "Da Bell" where you ring a giant bell on a blind par 3 to let the tee box know you've cleared out. Despite the sentimental value, I have an almost Pete Dye level disdain for this place. But that's a "me problem".

Had to shout out people taking shots in the industry, and mostly wanted to say how bada@# this tricked out Chili's booth golf cart looks. They even hooked up the enormous red overhead light—and now I'm craving a basket of mozz sticks and bloomin' onions.

Do You Remembah?

EARTH, WIND, AND FIRE AT THE PIN

A viral clip on golf social this week came courtesy of the only band I will ever attempt in karaoke... Earth, Wind, and Fire. An attempt, I'll add, that only comes once every ten years. It's like a full eclipse or Haley's Comet or whatever.

This user on TikTok caught the sound engineer from the show shamelessly playing PGA Tour on a comically large screen... mid-concert. The video pans over to see the band in full swing, while their dude is hitting stingers around Kapalua.

The Home Stretch

MAD SCRAMBLE TIME!

Teased this one last week but this weekend are two of the most epic legs of the West Coast Mad Scramble Tour—San Diego and Scottsdale!

"The best golf experience I’ve ever been apart of!" - Theodore from Boston describing the Random Golf Club's Mad Scramble Tour. Who's Theodore? Not sure. But if you trust random reviews on Amazon, this should play.

In other news, the team will be on site at TPC Scottsdale and we'd love to see ya!

SIGN UP HERE if you want to get in on the remaining action as there are still a few stops left!