Monday Rap: Rory and Lowry Crush Dreams, LIV Australia Pops Off And Everyone And Their Grandmother Is Shooting 59

Chris Graythen. Getty Images.

The David vs. Goliath storyline is tried and true, an archetype with a track record of tugging on human heartstrings since biblical times. This one had a slight twist: Davids, plural, vs. Goliaths.

The Zurich Classic's final round leaderboard featured a ton of two-man teams that could've really, really used a PGA Tour victory—the job security that comes with it, the FedEx Cup points, the dollars, all that jazz. Nicolas Echavarria and Max Greyserman. Ryan Brehm and Mark Hubbard. Garrick Higgo and Ryan Fox. Martin Trainer and Chad Ramey, who combined for an absurd 63 in alternate shot to post at 25 under and hope no one caught them. Only someone did, and it was the two by-far most accomplished players with a chance on Sunday: Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry. 

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Both are PGA Tour winners, major champions, Ryder Cup veterans, multi-multi-millionaires. But they needed an up-and-down birdie at the last to get into a playoff with Trainer and Ramey, and Lowry didn't do his partner any favors. Rory piped a drive down the center of the par-5 finisher, leaving Lowry just 210-odd yards into the green. He pulled it, badly, leaving McIlroy with a delicate chip to a pin tucked on a back shelf. 

He pulled it off perfectly, giving American fans flashbacks (nightmares?) to the pitch he hit on the 17th at Marco Simone at last year's Ryder Cup. 

You sensed they'd be the winners after Lowry brushed the putt in, and Ramey and Trainer made a mess of the playoff to hand Lowry and McIlroy the W. 

“We said coming into the week let’s go and get 400 FedEx points each," Lowry said. "I feel a little bit bad taking them because Rory carried me a lot of the way, but the points are mine and they’re not going away.”

The win is McIlroy's 25th on the PGA Tour, and he's just the 23rd player to reach the milestone. For as much fun as this win looked, and for as well as he played, this obviously shouldn't count toward his individual total. That seems like common sense. It's also common sense to say that Tiger Woods has the most PGA Tour wins ever given Snead's 82 total includes five team victories compared to Tiger's zero, not to mention all the limited-field events he won. And we're not talking 70-man limited fields. We're talking, like, 15 players. My old colleague Alex Myers actually went through all of Snead's wins to uncover just how bogus that 82 number is and it's a great, if infuriating, read. 

And we couldn't not mention McIlroy's performance of Don't Stop Believin' after the victory. I was unfamiliar with his singing game. I apologize.

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LIV Australia delivers again

No surprises here, but bringing top-level golf to a sports-crazy nation starved of it will deliver results. Australia is sort of LIV's home turf. There's the Greg Norman connection, of course, and Cameron Smith. The country has a proud golfing history with those two plus the likes of Peter Thomson, Adam Scott and Jason Day. And the Australian Open was, not so long ago, one of the biggest and best golf tournaments in the world that the top players flew in for. Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Tom Watson, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer are all past winners. 

But the tournament takes place in December, and that doesn't align with the PGA Tour schedule that gives players the latter portion of the year off. And so less and less big-name players have played in recent years. Smart, then, for LIV Golf, which has tried to brand itself as the world's tour as opposed to the PGA Tour being so U.S. centric, to host an event Down Under. 

The crowds looked epic all week with 94,000 showing up across the three days. That's about half of what the WM Phoenix Open does on a weekend day but still, LIV Adelaide once again distinguished itself as the best event on the LIV schedule as far as fan engagement and buzz. It is abundantly clear that Australia deserves to host top-level golf. A future “world tour” that brings the best players together, which remains a pie-in-the-sky dream but hopefully becomes a reality one day, must include Australia.

Little golf nerd-ey here but I also love the way the bunkers are cut straight into the greens in Australia. Those sharp edges are a much cleaner and better aesthetic than having two yards of rough between a greenside bunker and the putting surface. It also makes for cool viewing as more balls actually funnel or spin back into bunkers rather than being bailed out by a patch of rough.

One more note from Australia: a lot of foot stuff going on all week. Lot of guys chugging beers out of shoes. I saw Bryson DeChambeau gave his socks to a fan after losing a putting contest. It's not my thing but I learned a long time ago not to yuck other people's yum. 

As for the tournament itself, Brendan Steele took a sizable lead early on Sunday and held on for his first win on LIV Golf. Ripper GC, the all-Australian team, got the win on home soil. The team competition continues to be a miss for me but that's a conversation for another time. 

The PGA Tour hands out $$$ to top players (of recent years)

It's not a loyalty payment. Not officially, at least. The stated purpose of the $930 million in equity grants being doled out to 193 PGA Tour players is to give players a skin in the game, to make them part owners in the new for-profit PGA Tour Enterprises that is being built upon their labor. But when the four biggest payouts all go to guys in their 30s or 40s based on their past contributions rather than their future prospects, it's hard to view it as anything but a loyalty payment. 

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A loyalty payment with strings attached, no less. The $100 million being set aside for Tiger Woods—and the $50m for Rory McIlroy, $30m for Justin Thomas and $30m for Jordan Spieth—isn't a lump-sum being deposited into his account. They are equity shares that won't begin vesting for four years, when each of the 193 players will receive 50% of their shares. It'll be a further two years for another 25%, and players won't receive the last quarter until 2032. By then, in theory, the shares should be worth more, assuming the value of PGA Tour Enterprises rises in the next eight years. It also incentivizes players to stay on the PGA Tour, for one must be a Tour player in good standing to receive their grants. There's more equity being set aside for future stars like a Ludvig Aberg, but it's hard to think they aren't getting the raw end of the stick. Say Aberg becomes the chief challenger to Scottie Scheffler and the two of them are No. 1 and No. 2 for years to come. Will he ever get the kind of cash that Tiger and Rory and JT got just because they were big-name players at the exact moment the Saudis started sniffing around?

These numbers are large, and just a few years ago would've been unfathomable guaranteed-money payouts in golf. But LIV Golf has destroyed the scale for golfers' pay, and the $30m Jordan Spieth's getting in equity is roughly a 1/10th of what he could've fetched from LIV Golf. Jon Rahm got $300m for his signature, though it's worth noting that figure also includes down-the-line incentives and isn't a one-time payment. Tyrrell Hatton, who was world No. 16 when he signed with LIV, got $60m. 

So yes, these equity payments pale in comparison to what some of the top LIV guys got. Still, all top-level professional golfers are making way more money, and will continue to make way more money, as a result of LIV Golf. Even with declining TV ratings and a populace that's tired of a divided landscape, the players continue to earn more and more as purses and bonuses increase. Scottie Scheffler's already made $18.7 million on-course this year and it's not even May. There are still three major championships, five elevated events, the Comcast Business Top 10 and the FedEx Cup payout still to come. If Scheffler keeps playing this well, wins the Comcast Business Top 10 ($4 million), the FedEx Cup ($18 million) and finishes, say, second in the Player Impact Program ($8 million), there's a good chance the PGA Tour pays Scheffler somewhere around $65 million this year all-in. That's not including a cent of his endorsement earnings. 

He's eating good. All professional golfers are, and more than ever. If there's one constituency that's benefitted most from these last four years in golf, it's the players. 

Another sub-60 round on the Korn Ferry Tour

Sam Hodde. Getty Images.

I came out against the golf-ball rollback when it was announced. I might be coming around. Credit to me, as it takes a humble man to change his mind on the internet. But the onslaught of sub-60 rounds in world golf, combined with the eye test that no course is ever long enough, have me understanding what the governing bodies have been suggesting. 

Yes, the Korn Ferry Tour got its sixth round under 60 in the last 12 months when Frankie Capan III shot a 13-under 58 on Thursday at Texas Rangers Golf Club outside Dallas. He somehow didn't know what he'd shot until after the round—turns out it's not good for your game to start freaking out when you're playing well?—and it actually could've been lower, as he needed an eight-footer to save par on the par-5 finishing hole after a poor tee shot. 

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The course played at right around 7,000 yards and is rated 73.7/132 from the back tees, so it's not exactly a U.S. Open-ready layout. But it's also not a pitch and putt, and it's clear that this sudden increase in sub-60 rounds can't solely be explained by better athletes. The equipment is playing a big role—the less spinny ball allows guys to swing harder at driver without worrying about big misses. Stuff just doesn't go nearly as far offline as it used to. I'm okay with rolling the ball back. At this moment in time, at least. 

Elsewhere…

—Hannah Green played the 12th-16th holes at Wilshire CC in Los Angeles in birdie-birdie-par-eagle-birdie to shoot 66 and successfully repeat as champion of the JM Eagle Championship. 

—Miles Russell, the 15-year-old phenom who set a record by finishing T20 in last week's Korn Ferry event, shot 68-70 (-4) to miss the cut in the Korn Ferry event this week. He's the youngest player ever to win AJGA Player of the Year and the youngest to finish in the top 20 of a PGA Tour or Korn Ferry Tour event. The best junior in the country and a name we'll be hearing much, much more from.

—Also in the 15-year-old department…Charlie Woods shot 81 in his U.S. Open local qualifier and did not advance to Final Qualifying.

—Anthony Kim's comeback is going…well, not so great. At least the golf part. Through 4 starts on LIV Golf Kim has finished 53rd, 50th, 53rd and 54th—all out of 54 players. He's a combined +46 in 12 rounds. This comeback was always going to take time, but it's been rough sledding so far. I also wonder why they're waiting to tell the full story of what happened until a to-be-released documentary comes out, because if he continues to play poorly the story will have so much less punch than had it been released before he made his comeback. He's got 6 more LIV events this year to make some progress.

—Tommy Fleetwood continues to do cool shit with regards to caddies. A few weeks ago at the Masters he had Augusta National local caddie Gray Moore loop for him. Moore's been his caddie when he's visited the grounds outside the Masters in the past, and when his longtime caddie Ian Finnis told him he couldn't make it due to a lingering illness he immediately thought of Moore. Fleetwood finished tied for 3rd and Moore surely received one fat paycheck. 

This week, Tommy put on the bib himself. His stepson, Oscar Craig, is a promising 17-year-old amateur himself. He got his debut on the Challenge Tour last year back home in Dubai, where the Fleetwoods live, and Tommy picked up looping duties. Craig made the cut with rounds of 69-72, and Tommy couldn't have been happier.

—The PGA Tour moves to the CJ Cup Byron Nelson this week at TPC Craig Ranch, and unless you're a Texas resident, most of the big-name players are resting ahead of the Wells Fargo-PGA Championship double. Jordan Spieth, Will Zalatoris and Jason Day headline the field. 

—LIV Golf is off to Singapore for an event at the beautiful Sentosa Club. This one won't feature nearly as much feet stuff. 

Until next week,

Dan