18 Parting Thoughts From The Players Championship: It's Scottie's World, That Was An Awesome Show And A PGA Tour-Saudi Deal Inches Closer

Jared C. Tilton. Getty Images.

What a show! There is so, so much to discuss. Here are 18 Parting Thoughts from the 2024 Players Championship.

1. Scottie Scheffler, man. This is the best run of play we’ve seen since…take your pick. Spieth in ‘15. Thomas in ‘17. DJ in ‘20. Rahm in ‘23. It might be better than all those stretches because it's lasted longer.

 For the first part of this year watching Scheffler was a bit of a frustrating experience. His putting struggles somewhat overshadowed his tee-to-green greatness, and there was an air of negativity undergirding it all. If only he could hole those putts. What would it look like if he started putting well?

These last two weeks have shown us. Scheffler kept himself in this tournament with his finish on Saturday. His neck, which was an issue all week, was having a visible impact on his game. His ball speed was down and he couldn’t hit draws. At just -1 through 15 holes he was losing ground on the leaders and appeared to be hanging by a thread. Then he ripped off three straight birdies to somehow get in the house with four-under 68, which kept him within shouting distance of the leaders. He felt much better on Sunday and it showed, hardly missing a shot en route to a final-round 64 that was just enough to edge Clark, Harman and Schauffele, each of whom had birdie putts on the 72nd hole. He's the first player to successfully defend a Players Championship title and the first player to win back-to-back weeks on tour since Tiger Woods in 2007. He is an overwhelming favorite in any tournament he plays right now. 

2. Wyndham Clark is the best player I’ve seen from the rough since Tiger Woods. Because he’s so strong, and because he uses his lower body so much in his swing, he’s able to excavate even the most buried balls and advance them way further than he should. Of course, speed is advantageous in all areas of golf, and especially so with the driver. But sheer strength plays a major role out of the rough. Look at this shot he hit on Thursday.

And this, from the first hole on Saturday. 

He also has tremendous touch from the rough both on short-game shots and the 30-50 yarders that keep momentum going. 

The purists are probably cringing right now. I get it; Clark’s game isn’t the most artful you’ve ever seen. He’s one dimensional off the tee. Cuts everything. Takes his time. Mashes it nine miles and then deals with it from there. He can be borderline brutish at times. Bomb-and-gouge comes to mind. But results are results, and over the last nine months he’s proven to be the most consistent guy in big events other than Scheffler. As Netflix’s Full Swing highlighted, he’s done tremendous work on himself as a golfer and a person to manifest this career turnaround. You have to respect the effort, even if it's not your favorite game to watch. 

He really, really hung in there on Sunday without his best stuff. He kept missing fairways and his speed on the greens, usually a strength, was all over the place. A few good breaks kept him alive but, at three back standing on 16 tee, you sensed he'd let it get away. Then he striped two shots and narrowly missed an eagle putt. Two back. Then he hit the best shot of the day on 17 to four feet. One back. He couldn't  have been closer on 18, his birdie putt lipping all around the hole but refusing to drop. He didn't quite get it done, but it's hard to argue that anyone else is the second best player in the world at this moment in time.

3. I can’t speak highly enough about the on-site experience at the Players Championship. TPC venues are an easy target for their modern architecture, ever-present water hazards and perfectly manicured maintenance style. But from a viewing perspective they tend to be as good as it gets, and Sawgrass might be the best of the best. It feels like a massive event when you’re on site, and it starts with the signature music and interviews playing as fans walk from the parking lots to the ticket gates. Natural amphitheaters envelop most holes; typically the area left and right of the fairways are higher than the fairways themselves and the same is true around the greens. Fans, even kids, can see easily even if they’re not in the first row. There are bathrooms and concessions stands everywhere. The course itself was in the purest, greenest, most vibrant condition I’ve ever seen it, surely due to perfect weather most of the week. The little crescent created by 16 green and the walk to 17 tee is one of my favorite places I’ve been to in golf. The crowd is halfway between the Masters and WM Phoenix Open—knowledgable about the game and in deference to the players, but not so decorous as to not show their emotions.

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I’d say that other than the Masters, which is in a tier of its own as an almost spiritual experience for a golf fan, and the Ryder Cup, which is also in a separate category (nationalism is a helluva drug), the Players Championship is the best golf event to attend in person. That includes the other three major championships. 

4. The broadcast was excellent. It showed noticeably more golf shots than what we see most weeks on the PGA Tour. It had an uptempo pace that stopped just short of frenetic. It featured tons of players, not just those in featured groups. Perhaps most crucially, it had minimal commercials. 

I understand this is possible because there’s more sponsorship dollars behind the Players than other tour events, which lessens the need to pile on TV commercials. The Tour and its broadcast partners also make a concerted effort to promote this tournament online and invest in the broadcast experience by having more cameras out there. If the PGA Tour is serious about serving its fans—and it sure seems they are, as Jay Monahan said the word “fans” 25 times in his hourlong press conference—and creating a better product, this is what it looks like. You can’t just chop the fields down by half (more on that in a second) and pay the guys more money and expect the fan to be won over. This is the formula: great golf course, crisp broadcast, fewer commercials, more opportunities for fans to watch their favorite players (or the ones they bet on). It really isn’t all that complicated.

5. Regarding commercials. There are many different ways for a broadcast to generate revenue in the year of our lord 2024. Companies can sponsor limited-commercial coverage, like Optum did for the Players had this week IBM or Rolex does for the Masters. Surely that’s more bang for your buck from a brand-image perspective than jamming a corny 30-seconder down our throats every commercial break. You could have on-screen advertisements covering part of the screen but not so much that we can’t see the action. A company could sponsor different segments, like a replay or a certain hole. You could have Brian Harman chanting MEGA! CORP! MEGA! CORP! for all I care, as long as you don't cut away from the action. There is ample room to get creative. Anything is better than abruptly breaking up the rhythm every five minutes to show us the same commercial we’ve already seen 10 times. 

When there is such a clear consensus from fans everywhere that the commercial load negatively impacts the product, tour leadership simply has to do something. This PGA Tour Enterprises deal is an opportunity to rethink fundamental aspects of the golf viewership experience. Let’s take advantage. 

6. The second season of Full Swing painted a pretty bleak picture of Joel Dahmen. He’s endearing throughout, but the episode painted a stark contrast between the way he approaches his career and the way Wyndham Clark approaches his. It wasn’t a friendly comparison for Joel. While Wyndham was meditating and writing down his manifestations, Joel was at the bar. While Wyndham was talking with his sports psychologist, Joel was resisting pleas from his wife and his caddie to talk to someone. 

Joel’s made strides since. He’s rededicated himself to his game and has been practicing as hard as ever. He’s heeded his team’s advice. As he discussed during our recent Side Gig YouTube video, he cares far more than people might think. The last thing he wants is to be famous and playing shitty golf. That’s not a fun feeling. How great, then, to see him bounce back from an opening-round 74 to shoot 67, 67 and 68 for his best finish of the season. And it came against the strongest field he played against as he’s not into the signature events this year. Big time stuff from Joel and Geno.

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7. I kept finding myself thinking about Lucas Glover’s question for Jay Monahan. 

“Why are the signature events (max) 80 players and only 50 make the cut but our biggest signature event next week is 144 players with a full cut. THE signature event,” Glover told Gulfweed’s Adam Schupak. “It’s very mind-blowing that our biggest signature event has the most players and the biggest cut.”

I couldn’t agree more. A full field is part of what makes tournaments feel big and important. It’s fun to see shots from a bunch of different guys on Thursday and Friday. Even the guys shooting a million provide some context and entertainment value, particularly if they’re in DGAF mode. The contrast between the superstars and the guys just trying to make the weekend is a crucial element. Friday afternoon always, always, always provides compelling viewing as guys scrap and claw to earn a Saturday tee time. 

The PGA Tour made the right decision in creating these signature events and pumping huge money into them. That alone would’ve guaranteed the top players going to battle more often. They didn’t need to chop down the fields as much as they did. There were only 69 players at Bay Hill and only 70 at Riviera. That’s far too few. It doesn’t seem like fans’ problems with golf tournaments are that there are too many players. As a general rule, the more professional golfers we get to watch, the better. It doesn’t take anything away from a tournament to have some of the rank-and-file guys in the mix. It adds to it. I genuinely believe Riviera and Bay Hill were better tournaments at 120 players than they were at 70 players. 

8. I love Live From so much. So, so much. It is the absolute nerdiest of golf nerdom. Hours and hours ever day, for a week straight, of golf-obsessed people obsessing over golf. They wax poetic about a guy’s golf swing. They go into full detail dissecting a rules situation as if it were a nuclear negotiation. It’s like the best late-night conversation on a golf trip, if that conversation involved multiple major champions and was aided by world-class statistics and graphic packages. It’s just the best. 

We were treated to maybe the most Live From moment in Live From history on Thursday night. It pertained to the rules conversation between Rory McIlroy and his playing partners, Jordan Spieth and Viktor Hovland. It was pretty standard as far as drop conversations go, but because it featured three of the bigger personalities on tour it went semi-viral. The details of that “dispute” aren’t so important. Instead, let’s appreciate that there was a very good television producer who said to Johnson Wagner, a three-time winner on the PGA Tour, that the plan was for him to chuck fastballs at the hillside left of 7 fairway and just donate three balls to the lake. 

It’s straight out of an SNL skit. Like, how deep inside golf do you have to be to understand what’s even going on here? You have to be a certified golf nerd—the target demo for Live From. We’re here, and we’re proud. I eat it up every time it’s on. 

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9. One more thing on that rules imbroglio: the Tour deserves credit for posting it to their social channels. They never would’ve done that five years ago. They’d try to sweep it under the rug in fear of one of their guys being viewed less than favorably. But the modern fan demands authenticity. We want to see it, warts and all. The Tour has finally learned this. 

That video got 3 million views on X alone. Controversy gets clicks. 

10. I think I’m coming around on the rollback issue? I’m still not a fan of telling the Average Joe he’s going to hit it shorter when golf’s experiencing a boom. But I can absolutely see the argument for at least limiting how far the elite professionals hitting it. 

It’s not just the driver speeds that keep creeping up and up. It’s that what used to be good ball speed with a driver is now, for the longer guys, a stock 3-wood. On the second hole on Friday, a 525-yard par 5, neither of the players in the final group considered hitting driver. They didn’t need the distance. Schauffele played first and ripped a tight draw at 179 mph ball speed. Next came Clark, who hit a driving iron on a par 5 and cranked it 279 yards down the center. From there, another iron from 247 to 5 feet. 

This isn’t to take anything away from Clark, who’s obviously one of the longer players on tour. Not everyone, obviously, is able to hit those two shots. But I’d argue that those two shots shouldn’t be possible with irons. This week had perfect scoring conditions and players took mega-advantage. It was a birdie fest. The course, without Mother Nature’s help, just wasn’t long enough to offer its intended challenge. Courses shouldn’t have to count on factors outside their control in order to be difficult. It’s going to suck for the pros to have to adjust, but I’m starting to believe it’s the right move for the professional game.

11. Jay Monahan used to work at Fenway Sports Group. Per his Wikipedia page, it was in a sales role. I’m not sure enough’s been made of that fact. It helps explain how he’s kept his job despite all the backlash over his handling of the LIV ordeal. Much of that backlash has come from the press, but a lot of it has come from inside his own house. I can’t say this with certainty, but I suspect that if you polled all PGA Tour players with a simple question—should Jay Monahan continue on as CEO of PGA Tour Enterprises—more than 50 percent would respond in the negative. But he has the support of the board of PGA Tour Enterprises. Can you guess which sports conglomerate is well represented on that board? Fenway Sports Group, which led the American consortium of pro franchise owners that invested billions in the PGA TOUR under a brand-new entity called Strategic Sports Group. 

He also has the support of Rory McIlroy, who pleaded for a wider-ranging view when assessing Monahan’s tenure. 

“You look at what Jay has done since he took over,” McIlroy said Wednesday. “The media rights deal, navigating us through COVID, the strategic alliance with the DP World Tour. I would say creating PGA Tour Enterprises, we were just able to accept a billion and a half dollars in the business, people can nit-pick and say he didn't do this right or didn't do that right, but if you actually step back and look at the bigger picture, I think the PGA Tour is in a far stronger position than when Jay took over.”

But Viktor Hovland and Xander Schauffele aren’t sold yet. 

First, Hovland: “There were some things that were said that has been walked back on and then things have been very contradictory. As a leader of an organization, I will want a person like that to take some ownership and say, hey, we made a couple of mistakes, but this is how we're going to rectify it, instead of kind of sweeping it under the rug, which I felt like has been done to a certain degree. So I don't mind people making mistakes. We all make mistakes. But I think when you make a mistake you got to own up to it and say, hey, we're trying to do better here, and this is how we're going to do it.”

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Schauffele was the most vocal Monahan-skeptic: “Trust is something that's pretty tender, so words are words, and I would say in my book he's got a long way to go. He could be the guy, but in my book, he's got a long way to go to gain the trust of the membership. I'm sure he's got the support of the board, since they were with him making some of those decisions, but for me personally he's got quite a ways to go.”

Most alarming for Monahan’s job prospects were the comments from Patrick Cantlay, who is a player director on the PGA Tour and thus a board member for PGA Tour Enterprises. He was asked, point blank, if he has confidence in Monahan. 

“I think it's really important that we're all rowing in the same direction, I think with this PGA Tour Enterprises board, I think it's really exciting that we do have a chance to kind of start with something new and all move together in the right direction.”

Wait…that wasn’t an answer. So he was asked again: “I think it's very important that we're all rowing in the same direction, and right now he's definitely our leader, and so it's important that we're all doing our best, and like I said, rowing in the right direction to do what's best for the membership and the Tour.”

Sheesh. Is it possible that Monahan’s doing his old FSG buddies a solid by staying on through this tumultuous time, only for them to pick a new leader once a deal with the Saudis is done? It’s hard to imagine him retaining his position if a deal with the PIF goes through. But I'd have said on June 6 that there's no chance Monahan would still be in charge in March 2024. The guy has nine lives. 

12. Speaking of that deal. It seems close. That was Monahan’s message in his state-of-the-tour presser on Tuesday.

 "I recently met with the governor of the PIF, Yasir Al-Rumayyan and our negotiations are accelerating as we spend more time together," Monahan said. "While we have several key issues that we need to work through, we have a shared vision to quiet the noise and unlock golf’s worldwide potential.”

As for weather bringing on SSG might scare off the Saudis, as some suggested, Monahan said it actually goes the other way. 

"When you bring in a group of investors in that consortium that combined have over 200 years of managing professional sports franchises in the U.S. and internationally, and you bring in that level of expertise, I think that that is attractive to the PIF, and I think that we all—when you step back from it and you just look at where we are, and for some of the reasons I stated earlier, with the game booming, becoming cooler, becoming more mainstream, it's truly global. There are a finite number of athletes, and this is a point in time, a unique point in time where unification ultimately puts the sport in the best possible position to take advantage of this growth on a go-forward basis.”

The chatter around Sawgrass this week corroborated those comments. A deal seems to be close. Or, at least, they are making significant progress toward that end. Then came Golfweek’s report that the player directors were being encouraged to meet with al-Rumayyan soon, only for Patrick Cantlay to all but confirm a meeting will take place on Monday. This is all good news for golf fans, as reunification has supplanted competition as pro golf’s Northern Star. 

13. Remember when slow play qualified as a big story in pro golf? Ponte Vedra Beach had perfect weather all week and they still couldn’t get through either the first or second round without having to bleed into the following morning. Five years ago, that would’ve spawned op-ed after op-ed about how the tour needs to immediately address the slow-play issue. Now? Hardly anyone has enough energy to care. The past few years have been rather taxing. 

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14. Rickie Fowler doesn’t get angry. He really doesn’t show much emotion at all, positive or negative. At least not on the golf course. Which made his reaction on the 16th tee on Saturday so jarring. 

We all have our breaking points.

15. Gotta give some credit to our social guy Rob for this call: Rory McIlroy is, right now, the Josh Allen of professional golf. 

That’s not to compare their careers. Obviously McIlroy has four majors, Allen’s yet to play in a Super Bowl. It’s that both are impossibly talented and, when they’re on, make the game look so darn easy. They’re blessed with the raw tools and their top gear leaves almost all their competitors behind. 

The problem is that both struggle to stay out of their own way. Allen’s Achilles heel are his turnovers. McIlroys are his penalty shots and double bogeys, which are golf’s version of turnovers in that you can’t win with them. His Thursday 65 sums it up in a nutshell: 10 birdies at TPC Sawgrass…but two balls in the water and a double bogey. Another water ball, another double bogey on Friday. There were five balls in the water total for the week, which more than offset his 26 birdies. It goes down as a T19 finish, but that doesn't tell half the story.

His good remains good enough, but his bad has been backbreaking thus far this year. The good news: another Players Championship wouldn’t have done much for Rory’s legacy. It’s cruel, but the only thing that’ll change that is another major championship, and there are still four of those for the taking this year. He’ll have to find a way to limit those mistakes. 

16. Matt Fitzpatrick’s got some ‘splaining to do. The mistake he made would be bad for any professional golfer: forgetting you put 4 grams of weight in the grip of your driver. But for the most famously meticulous person in world golf? Who has charted every single shot he’s hit since he was 15 years old? Who leaves no stone unturned in search of a 1% advantage? How on earth do you make that mistake?

You could tell he was fuming at himself for making the mistake. It should be noted that he still won two pretty big tournaments—the RBC Heritage and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship—with the weight in the grip. Still, he could feel a massive weight off his shoulders after Titleist discovered his mistake during a routine re-gripping. 

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“We were just very confused swing-wise, did all sorts. Turns out, take the weight out of the top of the driver, and I think since Phoenix is when I've taken it out, I've driven it a lot better…as soon as I came out and hit the next day, it felt night and day. I could hit it as hard as I want and it wouldn't go left. Previously, I felt like I hit it hard and it would just go straight left.”

As for whether the mistake resulted in any jobs being lost?

“Absolutely not, no. It's just as much my fault as everyone else, so no chance.”

Having known Matt for as long as I have I simply cannot believe he made that error. He thinks more about his golf game than anyone thinks about anything. How that never popped into his mind when he was tinkering with his driver swing is legitimately amazing.

17. This might be prisoner-of-the-moment thinking—I'm still buzzing off that tournament—but for me, the lead analyst job is Kevin Kisner's if he wants it. NBC's gone with a rotating cast of characters since Paul Azinger's contract wasn't renewed. Paul McGinley got a shot. So did Luke Donald. But it's Kisner who's shined brightest in that spot. His understated, sarcastic humor combined with his willingness to call players out (he's friends with most of them) made him a natural fit alongside Dan Hicks. 

Kisner has said recently that he doesn't think he's done playing, but his game's not in a good spot and he's very good at the announcing thing. He's likely going to be offered the full-time role. He's got a helluva choice to make. 

18. That was the show golf had been waiting for. Augusta can't come soon enough. 

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