Drama in the Desert

Who threw that tee?

“Golf is a fascinating game. It has taken me nearly 40 years to discover that I can’t play it.” - Ted Ray

News Slice

Bum ba-dum bum bum bum bum

The Farmers Insurance Open PGA tournament was this past weekend.

  • 💰 Purse: $8.7M

  • 🏆 Winner: Max Homa 🇺🇸 | $1.6M 💰

  • 📍 Location: Torrey Pines - South Course in San Diego, California

What a weekend in sports.  First off, congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs for making it to the Super Bowl 🏈. The top-seeded teams going into the playoffs will square off in a couple of weeks for the Lombardi trophy and all of us golfers will be setting down our clubs to watch it. Now back to the  📰 news slice that was promised.

We had two great tournaments going on this past weekend, with the first one ending on Saturday. That tournament was the 🧑‍🌾 Farmers Insurance Open played at the outstanding Torrey Pines course in San Diego, CA.  Max Homa took home a nice payday of $1.6M 💵and did it in noticeable fashion, which appears to be the trend as of late. He came back from five shots off the lead to win it by two strokes over Keegan Bradley. This is his 2nd win since he won the Fortinet Championship in September 2022, which happen to be the first event to kick off the FedExCup 2022-2023 regular season.  With the win at Torrey Pines, this put him in 2nd place in the FedExCup Standings behind Jon Rahm.  It’s still early in the season with plenty of tournaments to be played (including Majors), but a great start nonetheless for the young California native. Other than being a pretty damn good golfer, he is also known for his social media prowess of taking jabs at amateurs’ golf swings posted on the web. It’s all in good fun, as most of them have asked to be roasted to get a good laugh. Check out his Twitter page, including one of my favorite roasts 🍖: 

Speaking of Rahm, he had a good chance himself going into Sunday to win his third straight start. However, he started out the day pretty shaky and ended with a 2-over 74 to come in tied at 7th. I guess you can’t win them all.

Ok, now for the elephant in the room known as “Tee-gate”. If you haven’t heard already, Rory Mcilroy and Patrick Reed made things interesting prior to the 🌴 Dubai Desert Classic tournament starting when apparently Patrick Reed went up to Rory Mcilroy to greet him. However, Rory wasn’t having any of it and choose to ignore whatever it was the LIV Golf league player had to say. Not taking it too kindly, Reed walked away and lightly tossed a tee, that happened to feature a logo of his 4 Aces team, into the direction of Rory. As we know, Rory has been one of the more vocal critics of the 🇸🇦 Saudi-run league. 

Fast forward to the start of the last round on Monday (due to a weather delay over the weekend), Rory is leading the field by 3 strokes at -15 under. Reed is not far behind sitting in 4th at -11 under. And like Hollywood would have written it, Reed came out on fire and picked up 7 shots in his first 13 holes, eventually leaving him tied for the lead with Rory yet to play the Par 5 - 18th hole.  Rory had a close call and almost dunked his tee shot into the water hazard, but it landed just short and stayed on the red hazard line. He would follow up the near-disaster shot with a layup and a very nice approach shot to set himself up for a 15-footer for birdie 🐦.  He decided to not give us the playoff matchup we all wanted and instead drained it to win by 1 stroke over Reed. You couldn’t ask for a better ending after the “verbal” interaction they had on the practice range. Well, if I were Rory, I would have used that same tee on the last hole and made sure he got it back in a timely matter 😉. 

Hopefully we get to see these two play again in one of the upcoming majors, as LIV players will be allowed to play in those events. Stay tuned 👀

Swing for the Fences

Happy Gilmore Yelling at a Golf Ball

Beautiful drive, land on the green with the second shot, chance for a 🐦 … but you end up with bogey 😔. Putting is hard and we’re constantly making up excuses for the 3 putt. “The green is fast or slow”, “broke unexpectedly”, “my putter is junk”,  “I’m constipated” 💩 … whatever your excuse, here’s some putting tips to help that ball find its home.

  1. Rick Shields - Easy Putting Tips

  2. The Art of Simple Golf - Golf Putting Simplified

Course of the Day

Popstroke - Florida

Not your normal “Course of the Day” here at Mulligan Report, but we wanted to show you the other great things that the world of golf has to offer, especially for those not yet in love with the game.  The key word there being “yet”. 

Popstroke is a great concept that frankly we need more of. It's a technologically-infused golf environment concept featuring professionally designed putting courses and exceptional food and beverage. Translation… it’s a badass putt-putt golf place ⛳.  It is headquartered in Jupiter, Florida with their other locations being in Fort Myers, Sarasota, Port Saint Lucie and Orlando. It was founded in 2018 and as of October 2019, they have partnered with the GOAT 🐐/🐅 himself – Tiger Woods (Tiger Woods Venture) and his foundation, TGR.

It has everything from a variety of craft beer to ice cream. Their app📱tracks your scores while playing and can be displayed on the jumbotron leaderboard. Each guest also keeps a Popstroke TaylorMade commemorative ball with their round of golf. It is a great place that you can bring the kids to enjoy a family night out, or even book a private party for corporate events and birthday parties. It’s great to see these types of places turn up and the only downside is there are no locations for us colder weather folks.  As these types of venues continue to pop-up, it should only continue to bring more people into the game of golf.

19th Hole

A decade ago golf apparel was dominated by large sportswear brands or traditional pro-shops serving up bland garbage 🗑️.

Sure the Nikes of the world still have a major presence but now there’s more choices from independent modern brands that are bringing a new-aged look to golf.

In today’s world is streetwear, athleisure and business casual are all considered stylish. Here are some golf brands making you slay 💅 on the course even when you’re in the woods 🌳 half the time: