Major Key Alert

"You're only one good swing away from a better mood.” - ChatGPT

News Slice

• 💰 Purse: $17.5M

• 🏆 Brooks Koepka 🇺🇸 | $3.1M

• 📍 Oak Hill Country Club - Rochester, New York

Full Tournament Results

Koepka gets his Majors swagger back

Brooks Koepka returned to the winner’s circle on Sunday, winning his 5^th major 🏆 and 1^st since 2019. He joins a small (and elite) group of golfers to win three or more PGA Championships in the stroke-play era. The other two in that group were some guys named 🐅 Tiger and 🐻 Jack.

Koepka finished the tournament at 9-under and beat out two other stars in Scottie Scheffler and Viktor Hovland by two strokes. Maybe the key to this victory was that he didn’t have “Rahmbo” having his best stuff or a group in front 🐌 slowing him down. Either way, Koepka is no stranger to winning majors in his youngish career. Prior to this win, he had gone winless in majors in the last four years and wasn’t feeling the best about himself as made evident in Netflix’s golf documentary series “Full Swing”. One of the reasons he had left for LIV was that he wasn’t sure if he had the ability to win another major against the fierce competition on the PGA Tour (the other 100 million reasons he left are pretty obvious 💰).

Dealing with knee injuries over the past three years didn’t make matters easier for him. With a top-2 finish at the Masters and a win this past Sunday at Oak Hill, it appears those injury and performance issues are now water under the bridge. It’s fair to say that Brooks just gets it done at major tournaments, whether he is playing on the PGA Tour or swimming in money at LIV Golf.

Congrats again to Brooks Koepka on another phenomenal win. We are excited to watch him compete again in the two remaining majors of the year.

😭 I’m not crying, you’re crying…

Probably an even bigger story than Koepka winning was Michael Block, a PGA club professional who finished tied for 15th at the PGA Championship. An amazing story over the last couple days and an even better one to watch. Block won fans over with his nonchalant personality and surprisingly brilliant performance, at times acting like it was no big deal to be performing this well on one of ⛳ golf’s biggest stages.

Block, who is 46 years-old, teaches at Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in Mission Viejo, California. Prior to this weekend, his largest paycheck from a tournament was $75,000. His finish at Oak Hill brought him a cool $288,000 and also a sponsor exemption to play into next week’s Charles Schwab Challenge. Check out this emotional phone call he received after finding out he would be able to play:

If the paycheck increase and the invitation wasn’t enough, he topped it off with a slam dunk hole-in-one on the par 3, 15^th hole 🏌️‍♂️. He also did that playing next to Rory McIlory in the final round 😮, who went up to him right away to congratulate him. At first, he wasn’t sure that it even went in and was wondering why Rory was so happy about this standard par 3 shot. He now knows why.

Block’s finish was the best finish by a PGA club professional at the PGA Championship in 35 years. And of course, his final standing punched his ticket to next year’s 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla.

Seeing stories like this unfold is one of the million reasons why we play and watch golf. What an amazing accomplishment by the club professional and we only hope to see more things like this the rest of the year.

Before you scroll, check out this scene at his home golf course when he hit his hole-in-one:

Course of the Day

Lava Links - Soap Lake, Washington 🏜

And you thought the rough was bad at Oak Hill… try playing on literal gravel. By no means are we recommending you try and play golf here, but we thought you should know about this course at the very least. The Lava Links golf course is sort of like playing on the 🌑 Moon, only if the Moon also had sagebrush, sand, and 🌵 desert vegetation. The only thing you can call green on this course are the surrounding trees.

Located in Grant County, Washington, the website describes this course as having holes that “range from 40-100 yards”, and you having to putt on “grays (sand) instead of greens”. They suggest you tee up any shot you like other than when you are putting.

Why would anyone want to pay to play here? Well, there is no charge except for a “suggested donation of $1 to $2” for 9 holes. I would say that is a fair price to experience playing golf on a not-so-nice golf course.

It might be America’s “worst” course, or even the most “unplayable”. Whatever it is, it’s here in America and sounds like an experience that is worth the price of admission donation.

Check out this local news station’s experience on the course.

19th Hole

Night Golf - I have a hard enough time finding my ball in full sun. Maybe these glowing balls … 🟣 🕳 will help?

Night golf is what it sounds like - A unique and thrilling experience that allows golf enthusiasts to play their favorite game under the stars ⭐️. It’s particularly popular in the 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates where two courses Abu Dhabi Golf Club and the Emirates Golf Club offer golfers the ability to play under flood lights 🔦 after the sun departs for the day. It’s also popular in Turkey and Vietnam. Other courses throughout the 🌏 world are starting to offer this by giving glowing balls to play with.

Sounds like a trend that could really pick up. Instead of experiencing nature such as deer on the course you can watch opossums scurry across the fairway. Let’s go golfing.

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