THE STARTER SHACK
Tiger Woods turned pro 25 years ago when Tom Lehman was the overall money leader with an eye-watering $1,780,159 compared to Jon Rahmn's 2020 $7,449,433.
✈️ The last time Tiger flew commercial
🧐 Cantlay makes up 14 shots on the field
🙍♀️ An all-female broadcast team
⛳️ Ping has a golf ball fitting tool
LPGA TOUR
It's The F@&king Solheim Cup!
We interrupt the seemingly endless supply of PGA Tour Playoff (playoff) golf to bring to your attention the very big event in women’s golf coming up this long weekend.
The festivities of the 17th iteration of the Solheim Cup get fired up this week; three days of competition starting on Saturday, culminating in the crowning of the winners on Labor Day.
The Solheim Cup, while relatively young, has a rather hotly contested history:
- Biennial matches involving teams from USA and Europe (12 players per side)
- Started in 1990, matches mimic the format used in the Ryder Cup
- named after Ping founder Karsten Solheim, the driving force behind the event’s creation
- USA leads the overall matches 10-6
- Europe won the most recent event in 2019 in Scotland
This year’s event is being held at the Inverness Club (Toledo, OH)
- Hosted numerous big-time golf championships in its 120-year history
- US Open (4 times), PGA Championship (twice) among other high profile events
The team captains for this years’ Solheim Cup are Pat Hurst (USA) and Catriona Matthew (Europe). The captains for each team have different ways to populate the rosters:
- USA: top-7 from LPGA Tour Solheim rankings, next two on World Golf Ranking
- Europe: top-2 from European Solheim Rankings, next four on World Golf Rankings
- Both teams fill out rosters with captain’s picks (USA: 3, Europe: 6)
Since 2002, the format is very familiar to those live for this “Us Against Them” type of golf:
- eight foursomes and eight four-balls played on days 1 & 2, 12 singles on the final day
- 28 points total, 14½ points to win Cup (14 points required for Europe to retain Cup)
- Format adopted permanently after the 2000 Solheim Cup used an abbreviated format
While the USA looks pretty stacked on paper, there is nothing like F-bomb-filled, patriotism-fueled golf to bring out the best in a perceived underdog.
Even better news for those of us that can’t get enough of women’s team golf; there will be back-to-back Solheim Cups contested in 2023 and 2024, a move made to get the Solheim and Ryder Cups back to offsetting years (due to the Ryder Cup getting bumped from the pandemic in 2020 to this year).
GIMME
- He's one of us: Ryan Palmer signaled to all us simple golfers that he's one of us...except the millions in career earnings and the being able to break 86, by using his putter out of the bunker.
- Gary Player sells Masters Trophy: Gary Player's, Wayne, has had a couple of run-ins with Augusta National; selling bogus tickets, guerilla marketing on the first tee during the introduction of Lee Elder. Which has us wondering if Wayne (his son) sold off the trophy behind Gary's back. We believe things come in three...just like our triple bogeys.
- Ping has a golf ball fitting tool: and the good people at Golf.com learned 5 things. Only 5? We're pretty sure if we used the tool it would tell us to take up darts. Ballnamic guides you through a detailed fitting process and provides the results for $39.
- Cantlay breaks putting record: with a +14.58 strokes gained putting. Cantlay make 537 feet of putts over 4 days. We've made 537 feet of gimmes this year and are feeling pretty good about the whole thing...come at us, Cantlay!
- 30 Man Field, No Cut: well we can tell you that your favorite golfer, Patrick Reed, make the field from his hospital bed. 30th man on the number! Here is the full list for the Tour Championship.
- An all-female field: NBC Sports is making history with an all-female broadcast team for the ShopRite LPGA Classic in October. What we would like to see is an all-female team on a PGA Tour event where Dottie & Judy can finally talk about all the great things they accomplished in their careers like Sir Nick and Johnny do/did. This particular bullet is not tongue in cheek.
- We spent $60 on two bottles of Titos: and these guys actually made money on the weekend. Who in their right mind works on a Sunday...SUCKERS! Here is how much each player took home from the BMW Champ. Let's put it this way, last place can now buy 650 bottles of Titos. So jealous.
PIC OF THE DAY
We know where we were 25 years ago...in front of a TV.
Golf Digest put together a "10 Things You Might Not Have Known" list about Eldricks professional debut, including having a corporate jet standing by after he won his last US Amateur. We usually have a cab standing by after our Thursday Men's League...same same.
WITB
Tiger Woods backup putter sells for $393,000!!! We hope the putter came with a disclaimer that it won't perform the same if in the hands of anyone other than Woods himself.
INSIDE THE ROPES
There are a couple of things that separate us from Patton Kazzire:
- he breaks 86 on a regular basis
- he can get a new putter for free
- he waits until the 18th hole to break his putter
- he doesn't carry two extra backup putters, not do we know, because he proceeds to rip his hat to shreds
GOLF GEAR
John Daly t-shirts:
Holy hell, why didn't we think of this? T-shirts inspired by the life of John Daly. These will go really well with a glass of Cab Sav on the country club patio. We don't deserve art of this caliber butt we're happy to promote it.
Take our money! Take our G@D D$MNED MONEY!
*not a sponsored post
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Today's email was brought to you by: Nolan Filipenko & Colby Johannson
