Monday Rap: Rory's Sloppiness Hands Fleetwood Victory, Grayson Murray's Comeback Story and The Curious Case of Ken Weyand

Alex Burstow. Getty Images.

I actually saw a few folks in my mentions this weekend complain that I was posting about golf on a NFL playoff Sunday. Look, I'm under no illusions as to golf's relative nicheness, particularly when compared to professional football. There are constant reminders of this, but this stat really hammered the point home this weekend: NBC said the Peacock-only NFL game between the Dolphins and Chiefs drew 23 million viewers on Saturday evening. That's nearly double the viewership for the final round of this year's Masters final round. 

Again, I get it. This is Football Season. But talking about golf is what I do. That's part of the deal. I'm going to tweet about golf on Superbowl Sunday and during Game 7 of the NBA finals and probably during my first child's birth. 

Which brings us to an unexpectedly compelling weekend of mid-January golf. Two tournaments, decided by statistical anomalies on the putting greens, across the world from one another. Let's dive in. 

Rory's mistakes open the door for Fleetwood, who walks right through

We'll start in Dubai, 14 hours ahead of the Sony Open finish in Hawaii. Rory McIlroy had been near the lead the entire week. He began the week with a bogey-free 62, followed it up with a one-under 70 that included a quadruple-bogey 7 on a par 3, bounced back with a Saturday 67 and looked ready to close the deal after he birdied 11, 12 and 13 on Sunday at Dubai Creek Resort to draw even with Fleetwood. Especially so after he stuck his tee shot on the 180-yard par-3 14th to just about two feet. 

That's when disaster struck. We use that idiom often, but it's never been so appropriate. McIlroy somehow managed to three-putt from there for bogey—from two feet!—to fall a shot behind. 

To his credit, he found a way to shake-off that jolt to the system—three-putting on the back nine while in contention will always get the blood flowing, but triply so from inside the leather—to birdie two of the next three holes and stand on the tee with a one-shot victory. The announcer, clearly feeling himself and wanting to build the intensity around the moment, went deep into his bag while setting up Rory's tee shot at the finisher. "This will be flat out…MUNCH TIME!"

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A few seconds later, the on-course reporter chimed in with some on-the-ground insight: "That is an absolute horror down the final hole from Rory McIlroy."

His second water ball of the day and fifth of the week opened the door for Fleetwood, who had just birdied 17 to keep pace with Rory and only trail by a single shot. McIlroy dropped and made bogey. Fleetwood hit his approach shot to around 18 feet and poured a left-to-right putt dead in the heart for the one-shot victory. Starting the year with a victory, on home soil—Fleetwood's been living in Dubai for about a year now—is about as sweet as it gets for Tommy Lad. 

"I'm very happy," Fleetwood told reporters after his seventh DP World Tour victory. "It was amazing winning. Like almost everybody else in the world of golf, I don't win anywhere near as much as I would like to but just that winning feeling is great. This is obviously where I live and have a lot of support. It's great to kick off the year with a great result and push on from here.

"I feel like I've been saying for a long time that I've been doing a lot of really great things. I have amazing people that I'm working with, win, lose or draw today. Next week will be the same. We just crack on and we keep pushing forward and hopefully keep moving in the right direction."

The knock on Fleetwood, of course, is that he hasn't managed to win in the United States. It's a fair criticism; winning on the PGA Tour remains the gold standard of golf (besides winning a major, of course) and for as good as he's been, for as long as he's been good, it defies belief that he hasn't done it yet. But Fleetwood has closed out a number of tournaments around the world, and any time you beat Rory McIlroy down the stretch—even if Rory helped along the way—that's a massive accomplishment. 

McIlroy will now play the second leg of the Dubai double and defend his title at the Dubai Desert Classic. It was last year at this event that we were gifted "TeeGate" when Patrick Reed flicked a 4 Aces tee at McIlroy after McIlroy didn't want to acknowledge him on the range just weeks after Reed's lawyers served McIlroy a subpoena on Christmas Eve. As fate would have it, it was McIlroy and Reed down the stretch on Sunday battling for the title. If history's any indication, McIlroy will have a chance again this next Sunday. He absolutely eats in Dubai and he's been excellent right at the start of the year throughout his career. He just needs to be a bit more detail-oriented. He knows this. 

“First week back out, I think you’re going to expect some of those sloppy mistakes, and unfortunately for me, those mistakes came at the wrong time today,” McIlroy said. He didn't play in the Hero World Challenge or the Sentry Tournament of Champions, which made the Dubai Invitational his first start in nearly two months. He's had a no-golf-in-December policy for the last few years. 

“I tried to hit a tee shot on the last (on Sunday); I probably wanted to hit a different shot because that was what was most comfortable, but I tried to go with the shot that I feel like I should hit, and then I wanted to try to turn one over because it was the only way that I was going to be able to carry the bunker on the right, too,” McIlroy added. “Just a bad swing at the end there. And then just a little sloppy, a lack of concentration with the tee shot on 6 in the water, and then the same thing with the putt on 14 as well. Just a couple little mental errors in there that hopefully I’ll clean up for next week.”

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Grayson Murray gave up on life. Then he found purpose

Some irony here…let's rewind to June 2023. The PGA Tour has just announced its stunning Framework Agreement deal with the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Less than a year after going on live television and essentially tying LIV golfers to 9/11, there was Jay Monahan on CNBC talking about how happy he was to be partnering with a "world-class investor" like the Saudis. Monahan, predictably, was absolutely torched in the court of public opinion—and also to his face, at a players-only meeting just days after the agreement was announced. 

Grayson Murray, of all people, was leading the charge. Per multiple reports, Murray launched a tirade" against Monahan, calling for his resignation after he "lied to our faces." McIlroy, who was at the meeting and had been intimately involved int he whole PGA Tour-LIV Golf battle as a de facto face/spokesman of the PGA Tour, chimed in:

"Just play better, Greyson." 

His insinuation: Murray's bitter that he's not getting into the signature events, that "the stars"—another term for "better golfers"—are benefitting from all this and that if he would just shoot lower scores, he wouldn't complain so much. Harsh, but perhaps not untrue? Murray, according to those in the room, then told Rory to "fuck off." 

Fast forward to Sunday afternoon, not long after McIlroy's rough closing stretch, and Murray finds himself in a three-way playoff at the Sony Open at Wailae against Keegan Bradley and Ben An. Murray's forced to lay up after pulling his tee shot into the left rough and hits a pretty indifferent wedge shot well left of the flag to 40 feet. Bradley's in there closer, around 25, and An's in the best position after playing a delicate little chip to four feet. 

Murray putts first…and cans it. Freakin' hoops it, for birdie, on the first playoff hole. 

Bradley's effort slides by on the left side. An shoves his effort, missing the hole entirely. And just like that, Murray is a winner once again on the PGA Tour…just hours after his heckler from the meeting coughed up a title of his own. 

That wasn't really talked about after the round, and rightfully so. Murray's victory is the culmination of a getting-well story that reached its pinnacle on Sunday. He's got quite the history. Golf wise, he was the top-ranked junior prospect coming out of high school. He began his college career at Wake Forest, then transferred to East Carolina, then transferred again to Arizona State. He won as a rookie on the PGA Tour in 2017 but revealed on Sunday that he was hungover for three of the four rounds of that tournament. 

Murray's issues with alcohol and depression began early in his career and lingered throughout his 20s. He'd frequently find himself in ugly Twitter battles. He sent a really, really creepy message to a high-schooler. He drove a motorbike into oncoming traffic during the 2022 Bermuda Championship. He reached rock bottom at last year's Mexico Open and told the story on Sunday. After shooting an opening-round 68, he fell off the wagon. 

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“I went out to the pool,” he said, “played pool volleyball, and I had too many and woke up the next day before my round and started to chug some alcohol before the round just to get rid of the jitters. And I got out there and shot like 80. (He shot 79.) I got home and had an anxiety attack that lasted four days; it was the worst feeling ever.

“I did not want to go through that ever again,” he continued, “and that was the last time I had a drink. I would have rather been dead, those four days. I just kind of locked myself in my room and didn’t tell my parents or anything. It was bad. It was really, really bad.”

Murray vowed to finally stick to sobriety after a few failed attempts, re-dedicated himself to his faith and has found purpose and success down this new path. Here's the emotional interview with Golf Channel's Todd Lewis after the playoff:

Between Chris Kirk winning the Sentry and Murray winning the Sony—and I know the Internet is not a place for positivity—but those are two guys who feared losing it all but decided to battle their demons and turn their lives around. We love to see it. 

The curious case of Ken Weyand

Back to Dubai for a second…so if you scroll down the leaderboard…keep scrolling…even further…you'll eventually get to WEYAND, Ken. No, that's not a typo. He really did shoot 53-over par for four rounds in a DP World Tour event. That's 72 shots behind Tommy Fleetwood and 39 shots worse than the second-worse guy. 

So, who is Ken Weyand? He's the GM/Director of Golf at Grove XXIII, Michael Jordan's ultra-exclusive and ultra-elite club in South Florida. Weyand got into the no-cut event on a sponsor's invite, which they are of course permitted to use on anyone they choose. They put up the money for the tournament, they get sponsor invites. That's how it's been for years. Nothing new there. The issue here is Weyand's lack of recent playing experience: a quick Google search shows that his last competitive start came in 2020. He shot 86 in the first round, prompting a DP World Tour caddie to air his thoughts on X.

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That got a reply from Richard Mansell, who played with Weyand during the first round. 

If you're going to shoot 86 in a tournament with Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood in it, you better at least throw out some invites to Grove. Good on you, Ken.

Elsewhere…

—Gary Woodland returned to competition after a harrowing health scare. He felt anxious and afraid for months on end and couldn't figure out why he, always an optimistic person, felt so off. An MRI showed a lesion on his brain that eventually required surgery for removal. Woodland feared he'd never play competitive golf again, sure, but more frightening is that he thought he was going to die. He didn't make the cut at the Sony but that didn't damper his deep gratitude for simply being out there again. 

—The PGA Tour returns to the Continental 48 this week with the American Express out in Palm Springs, about 2 hours east of Los Angeles. For a non-signature event that's also a pro-am, they've drawn a highly impressive field: Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay, Wyndham Clark, Tony Finau and Tom Kim are among those playing. 

—The season-opener on the Korn Ferry Tour is underway at the Bahamas Great Exuma Classic, which started on Sunday and finishes on Wednesday. 

—Keegan Bradley took the playoff loss hard. Bradley's an emotional guy. He feels things, heavy. He said he thought about making the Ryder Cup team "every minute of every day" and was crushed when he got the call that he wasn't on the team. He's been open about just how anxious he is by nature and how he has to manage that to play pro golf. And, at 37, he knows he won't have that many chances to win more PGA Tour events. 

"It's tough right now," he said after the round. "This is one of the hardest losses I've ever had in my career, if not the hardest, because of just how long I fought, hung in there. Playing in the last group with the lead is hard on the tour. I've done a really good job of doing that the last couple years. Proud of the way I played today, but I just needed a 4-iron on that 18th that one time there. But next time. I'll learn from what happened today. I know I can hang in there with not my best game, and I'm proud of that."

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He's become a fan favorite over the past few years, and it's refreshing to hear a guy so honest and vulnerable after a tough finish. 

—The LPGA season kicks off this week at Lake Nona in Orlando with the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions. It's also a pro-am, and Fore Play had a team last year—we all played one round—but we decided to throw our competitors a bone and sit it out this year. 

Until next week,

Dan