According to a Tuesday filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Richard Globensky has been charged with transporting millions of dollars worth of Masters merchandise and memorabilia over a 13-year period from 2009-2022 from Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia across state lines to Tampa, Florida, “knowing the same had been stolen, converted and taken by fraud.”
If convicted, Globensky would forfeit any property and cash from proceeds traced to the stolen items. Augusta National has yet to comment on the case.
Last weekend saw Scottie Scheffler win his second Masters in three years by four shots over Ludvig Aberg in the 88th playing of the annual event.
A picture is worth a thousand words (and 280 characters).
One of the biggest storylines entering this PGA Tour season was Scottie Scheffler’s putting woes.
The world No. 1 had struggled with the flatstick and after last year’s Tour Championship at East Lake talked with his agent, Blake Smith, about seeing a putting coach on the plane ride home. Scheffler has seen PGA Master Professional and putting coach Phil Kenyon work with different types of players over the years and he appreciated his approach.
“As I watched Phil, I could tell that he was open-minded, and that’s the type of people I like to work with,” Scheffler said Sunday after he won his second Masters in three years. “And we kind of hit the ground running in the fall. I can’t speak highly enough of the decision that (swing coach Randy Smith) also made to be open-minded, not take an ego to it, sit there, watch us work, watch Phil do his thing.”
“Phil is also a guy that doesn’t have a big ego. He just wants what’s best for his players,” Scheffler added. “I’m really, really fortunate to have those two guys as part of my team.”
He might not have a big ego but we now know Kenyon keeps receipts. Back in March, a social media troll said “Phil Kenyon is destroying Scottie” in response to a photo of the two working together at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Scheffler went on to win that tournament and then the Players Championship before a T-2 at the Texas Children’s Houston Open and his recent Masters triumph. A month later, Kenyon got the last laugh.
Rickie Fowler and wife Allison announced on Tuesday that they will be filling out their foursome in August.
The Fowlers revealed on social media that the couple is expecting their second child, to join big sister Maya, who was born in November 2021.
Fowler tells Golfweek the due date is Aug. 4 and if all goes well he expects to play in the British Open in mid-July and then wait for the birth of their second child. Fowler said he’s going to be a “girl dad” again.
Allison was showing a baby bump at the Masters last week. She served as caddie in the Par 3 Contest on Wednesday along with Maya, who stole hearts playing with Sammy Spieth, Jordan Spieth’s first born.
Fowler, who has an AJGA bag tag for Maya on his golf bag, talked on the Netflix documentary “Full Swing” about the importance of family and what it meant to have his wife and daughter at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in July when he ended his four-year winless drought.
“I’ve always wanted to win having Maya around,” he said in the second episode of season 2 of the Netflix show. “Just being able to have the videos and pictures in that moment, that will be a special one, and hopefully there will be plenty more and ones that she’ll remember.”
Congrats to the Fowlers on their happy family news.
Scottie Scheffler rocked the green jacket at a Dallas dive bar after getting home on Sunday night.
Scottie Scheffler said he was going to try to enjoy his latest victory, a four-shot triumph at the 88th edition of the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, on Sunday.
“I will go home, soak in this victory tonight,” he said during his winner’s press conference after shooting 4-under 68 at Augusta National Golf Club.
Scheffler, who won the green jacket for a second time, did just that. When he got back to Dallas, he paid a visit to the Inwood Tavern to celebrate. Scheffler rocked the green jacket over the outfit he wore in the final round —though he did swap out his hat.
Scottie got home and went straight to the iconic dive bar Inwood Tavern to celebrate last night.
“In my head, all I can think about right now is getting home,” Scheffler said. “I’m not thinking about the tournament. I’m not thinking about the green jacket. I’m trying to answer your questions and I’m trying to get home.
“I wish I could soak this in a little bit more. Maybe I will tonight when I get home.”
Scheffler’s festivities don’t appear to rival the next-level British Open celebration in Ireland that commenced shortly after Shane Lowry won the British Open at Royal Portrush in 2019, but props to Scheffler for soaking in the triumph at one of his hometown’s old-school bars.
Surprisingly, the creator said, developing this skill is easy.
Eight-foot putts are not typically stressful for PGA Tour pros, but the 8-foot par putt that Max Homa faced on Friday morning on the fifth at Augusta National had to be made if he was going to stay tied for the lead at the 2024 Masters. On the outside, he looked calm, but on the inside, he had to be feeling the pressure.
After both Tiger Woods and Jason Day finished the hole, the dance floor was Homa’s. With one foot on either side of his golf ball, he bent his right arm at about a 90-degree angle and held up his index finger and middle finger while staring at the hole. After backing up four paces, bending to take another look toward the hole, and then getting into his address position, Homa set his putter behind the ball. No practice strokes. He made a quick glance toward the cup, made his stroke and buried the putt.
“I mean, that is special,” said Colt Knost on the ESPN+ broadcast before Billy Ray Brown added, “That’s what champions do.”
Max Homa lines up a putt on the no. 9 green during the second round of the Masters Tournament. Mandatory Credit: Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Network
But what was Homa doing with his fingers, which appeared to be what Will Zalatoris, Viktor Hovland, Keegan Bradley, Tommy Fleetwood, Collin Morikawa, Adam Scott and a growing number of other PGA Tour pros are doing? Like those other pros, Homa uses AimPoint Express. This green-reading technique was developed by Mark Sweeney, the man who created the AimPoint putting line that broadcasters like Golf Channel, NBC and CBS used to show viewers a virtual path a ball needed to travel to finish in the hole.
“AimPoint Express is a dramatic simplification of what is a very complicated computer program to figure out how the ball goes from Point A to Point B and goes into the hole,” Sweeney said. “AimPoint Express takes about 100,000 lines of code and converts it into the player feeling how much side tilt there is in the putt.”
What television viewers did not see during the broadcast of Homa’s putt on the fifth hole was that he had not only straddled his golf ball before he putted, but that he also stood halfway between his golf ball and the hole for a few seconds and tried to feel the tilt of the putting surface. Through practice and some training, Homa and other golfers can feel the difference between a one-, two- and three-percent slope to one side or another using their feet.
Then, standing over their golf ball, they extend an arm and hold up the number of figures that correspond to the estimated number of degrees in the tilt they felt — one finger for a one-percent slope, two fingers for a two-percent slope and so on.
Viktor Hovland and Will Zalatoris both use AimPoint Express. (Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Sports)
Sweeney accidentally discovered the relationship between the slope of a green, the length of a golfer’s arm and the width of a person’s fingers.
“I had a much more complicated method of reading greens prior to AimPoint Express,” said Sweeney. “But then I was teaching some young kids, 7- and 8-year-olds, and I had them put their thumb on the high side of the hole, just to get them aiming somewhere above the hole. It turns out that your thumb is perfect for one’s and two’s, it will get you close, but then we started experimenting with one finger per percent. We tested those reads against the math and it was insane how accurate it was. Like, it was within an inch or two every single time (from 20 feet).”
Knowing that, and seeing Homa on the fifth hole holding up two fingers, viewers familiar with AimPoint Express would know that Max was estimating that halfway to the hole, there was a two-perfect tilt in the green. From Homa’s perspective, his target on that putt was two fingers’ width to the right of the hole (probably about 4 inches right), and assuming he hit the putt directly at that target, he was right because the ball went in the cup.
Every week, pros can be seen practicing AimPoint Express and developing their sense of feel for slopes on the practice greens at PGA Tour events. Many of them bring a digital level, and as they stand along an intended putt line, they call out a slope percentage like one, two or three while their caddy looks at the level.
Surprisingly, Sweeney said, developing this skill is easy.
“Within about 15 minutes, most people are picking up half-degrees of slope,” he said. “People are much, much better at feeling slope than they think. Nobody is ever off by more than one percent. Like, it’s almost unheard of that a player is off by more than one percent. No one calls a one a three or a one a four because they are so dramatically different.”
Ben An doing slope detection exercises with his caddie at Riviera Country Club. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Sweeney claims that anybody, with a bit of practice, can accurately estimate to a half-percent. He also encourages golfers to calculate the slope along their putt’s length twice around halfway between the ball and the hole and use the bigger of the two estimations for their read. Some players, like Homa, take one reading and then turn around and repeat the estimation facing toward the ball to confirm their first reading.
In a Golf Channel interview, Homa said, “Your eyes can lie to you a lot, but your feet, typically, will never lie.”
Tiger Woods does not use AimPoint Express, and neither does Jordan Spieth or Jason Day. Brad Faxon, Loren Roberts and Ben Crenshaw never used it either. Some golfers have a great feel for green reading, spotting slopes and contours on the putting surface and understanding how putts will roll. However, many golfers are not blessed with this ability. Sweeney hates hearing that the skill will come with time and experience.
“As a coach, you have to take someone who doesn’t have a skill and give them that skill,” said Sweeney, who works with several tour pros and teaches lessons at Waldorf Astoria Golf Club in Orlando, Florida. “How do you teach someone green reading if they don’t naturally see what a good green reader sees? I thought ‘Just go do it and you’ll get better,’ was a really crappy answer. It’s like a full-swing instructor saying to someone, ‘I know you’re slicing it off the tee, but just go hit a lot of balls and you’ll get better.'”
Tom Kim and his caddie practice reading greens with a digital level before the start of the Genesis Invitational. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Aimpoint Express removes the need to walk around a hole and see your intended putt from multiple angles, so for Sweeney, it does not slow play as some people think.
Sweeney postulates that the better a golfer gets at reading greens, the more time they can spend working on improving distance control and developing the quality of their putting stroke.
“It’s really helped me to read the greens, obviously, but it’s turned a lot of that into better speed,” Homa said on Golf Channel. “I’m shocked more people don’t do it, if I am being honest.”
First-time participants in majors rarely make much of an impact.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — First-time participants in majors rarely make much of an impact.
They are expected to show up, perhaps make the 36-hole cut and go quietly about their business. To get into contention would be a bonus.
To actually win is virtually unheard of, Ben Curtis and Keegan Bradley being the exceptions. Their victories in the 2003 British Open and 2011 PGA, respectively, were their first starts in major championships.
Frank Urban Zoeller, affectionately known as Fuzzy by his peers, paid little attention to the conventional wisdom at the Masters.
The native of New Albany, Indiana, got into contention in 1979, hung around to the end and won a historic playoff in his first visit to Augusta National Golf Club.
Zoeller joined Horton Smith and Gene Sarazen as the only men to win the Masters in their first attempts. Smith won the inaugural event in 1934, and Sarazen, already one of the game’s established stars, won a year later with his famous double eagle on the 15th hole.
Ed Sneed, who was only slightly better known than Zoeller coming into the 1979 Masters, appeared to be on his way to his first major title. His first three rounds of 68, 67 and 69 put him five shots clear of the field heading into Sunday.
And for 15 holes, Sneed appeared to be a good bet to slip on a green jacket. Despite charges by Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson, Sneed still had a three-stroke lead with three holes to play.
A three-putt for bogey cost Sneed a shot at the 16th, then he missed a short par putt on the 17th. Suddenly, his lead was down to one.
Sneed hit the fairway on the 18th, but his approach finished next to the greenside bunker. He chipped to about eight feet below the hole, then watched in disbelief as his putt hung on the lip, refusing to drop for par and the win.
Zoeller, meanwhile, had finished with 70 to join Watson and Sneed in the Masters’ first sudden-death playoff.
Like Sarazen 44 years before, Zoeller took a risk on the 15th hole to help force the playoff. He went for the green in two, even though the shot was longer than the distance he normally hit his 3-wood.
“Now, I’ll tell you exactly how far I can hit a 3-wood. I can hit it 235 yards without any wind,” Zoeller later told reporters. “I don’t know how it got there.”
The playoff began on the 10th hole, and all three men made par to advance to the 11th.
Zoeller hit the biggest drive, then watched as Sneed’s approach flew into the back bunker and Watson’s came up wide right. The Masters rookie then calmly hit his iron shot to inside 10 feet.
“Two balls right and don’t leave it short,” was caddie Jariah Beard’s advice for Zoeller, according to Ward Clayton’s book Men on the Bag, which chronicles the stories of Augusta National caddies.
After watching Sneed and Watson play, Zoeller coolly rolled his birdie putt into the cup and earned his place in history. He flung his putter into the air and jumped for joy with outstretched arms.
“I’m on cloud nine, and I guess I’ll be up there for three or four weeks,” Zoeller said afterward.
He had extra motivation for making the birdie to end the playoff on the 11th hole.
“I said if I don’t make it, we have to play No. 12, which I don’t want to do,” Zoeller told the media corps. “I’m 3-over-par there this week.”
Zoeller, who retired from Masters competition in 2009, thinks someone will come along and join him, Smith and Sarazen as Masters winners in their Augusta debut. In 2014, Jordan Spieth almost joined the club after sharing the lead going into the final round.
“You never say never,” Zoeller said. “It is amazing when you think about all the talent that has walked through from that practice range to that first tee and it hasn’t happened.
“Can I explain why? No. Will it happen again? Somebody will do it.”
Wise words from three of the all-time greats, who still care deeply about the state of professional golf.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson want to see the PGA Tour-LIV Golf dispute get settled.
Speaking during a joint press conference after the three legends hit the ceremonial tee shots to the 88th edition of the Masters, Watson shared a special moment during the Champions Dinner, which brought together 33 of the past winners – seven of them members of LIV – in their Green Jackets and Augusta National Golf Club Chairman Fred Ridley, on Tuesday evening.
“We were sitting down and we were having great stories about Seve Ballesteros and people were laughing and talking. I said to Mr. Ridley, I said, ‘Do you mind if I say something about being here together with everybody?’ He said, ‘Please do.’
“And I got up and I said – I’m looking around the room, and I’m seeing just a wonderful experience everybody is having. They are jovial. They are having a great time. They are laughing. I said, ‘Ain’t it good to be together again?’ ” Watson recalled.
He added that he hoped the players would take it upon themselves to reach a resolution, sooner rather than later.
“We have to do something,” Watson said. “We all know it’s a difficult situation for professional golf right now. The players really kind of have control I think in a sense. What do they want to do? We’ll see where it goes. We don’t have the information or the answers. I don’t think the PGA Tour or the LIV Tour really have an answer right now. But I think in this room, I know the three of us want to get together. We want to get together like we were at that Champions Dinner, happy, the best players playing against each other. The bottom line: that’s what we want in professional golf, and right now, we don’t have it.”
Nicklaus echoed that sentiment and placed his trust in PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan to lead the way.
“The best outcome is the best players play against each other all the time. That’s what I feel about it. And how it’s going, I don’t know, I don’t want to be privy to it,” Nicklaus said. “I talked to Jay not very long ago, and I said, ‘Jay, don’t tell me what’s going on because I don’t want to have to lie to the press and people that ask me questions.’ I said, ‘How are you doing?’ He said, ‘We’re doing fine.’ I said, “OK, that’s all I want to know.’ If Jay thinks we’re doing fine, we’ll get there, I think we’ll get there. And I certainly hope that happens, the sooner the better.”
Player touched on how that division in golf and attention on the greed in the game has turned off the public. But he also noted that the players who had stayed loyal to the PGA Tour needed to be compensated in some way (which they will be through the infusion of capital into the Tour’s new for-profit arm from private equity investment.)
“Anytime in any business whatsoever, not only in the golf business, there’s confrontation, it’s unhealthy. You’ve got to get together and come to a solution. If you cannot, it’s not good. The public don’t like it, and we as professionals don’t like it, either,” Player said. “But it’s a big problem because they paid all these guys to join the LIV Tour fortunes, I mean, beyond one’s comprehension and the players that were loyal, three of us and others. Now these guys come back and play, I really believe the players, that if they are loyal, should be compensated in some way or another. Otherwise, there’s going to be dissension.”
Wise words from three of the all-time greats, who still care deeply about the state of professional golf.
Sergio Garcia is one of 13 players representing LIV Golf this week at the 2024 Masters, and trust us, it’s going to be hard to miss him at Augusta National Golf Club on Thursday.
Garcia, the 2017 Masters champ, debuted his look — which matches with his wife, Angela — on social media before teeing off for the opening round of the year’s first major championship.
There’s a lot we could say about this fit. Is he now sponsored by Starry? Is he attempting some sort of camouflage? Or has he had this outfit laid out in his closet for the last few months?
Finau was presented with a patent certificate in Ping’s PGA Tour van on Wednesday.
When he is faced with a delicate chip from the collar or an awkward shot from a few inches off the green, Tony Finau has been known to turn his putter, a Ping PLD Anser 2D, counter-clockwise in his hands and strike the ball with the toe-end of his putter, popping the ball onto the putting surface.
In fact, he loves the feeling shots like that create so much that he worked with designers and engineers at Ping to build a prototype putter that replicates the sensations of that shot and was just named as one of three people on a utility patent awarded to Ping (U.S. #11,911,670 B2) for a compact putter head. Tony Serrano, Ping’s principal putter design engineer, and John A. Solheim, the company’s president, are also on the patent.
Finau was presented with a patent certificate in Ping’s PGA Tour van on Wednesday outside the gates of Augusta National Golf Club.
“When Tony turns his putter over and hits a putt with the toe, all the mass is directly behind the ball,” Serrano said. “So he came to us and said, ‘How can we make a putter that has some of these feelings and attributes and sounds that I get when I turn this putter over?’”
That led Serrano and his team to develop a few prototypes that would give Finau what he wanted while also conforming to the USGA’s Rules of Golf and equipment standards.
Tony Finau’s compact prototype putter is shaped like a cube and replicates the feeling of hitting a putt with the toe-end of a putter. (Ping)
The putter that Finau liked and worked with Ping to develop is cube-like in shape, with a small area in the back hollowed out to create some perimeter weighting. There is also a T-shaped alignment system on the top and a plumber’s neck hosel.
“He looks at the top rail of the putter when he turns it. It’s long and right down the center and helps him align the putter with the ball,” Serrano said. The small T accomplishes the same thing and helps Finau focus on a tiny area and make solid contact more easily.
The small hosel was designed and positioned close to the grooved hitting area so that when Finau putts, his stroke has to pull the center of gravity and the putter’s weight, like a traditional putter, instead of pushing the head’s weight as Finau would do with a flipped-over putter.
“Tony said that he plays with this putter all the time,” when he is home in Utah, Serrano said. Finau has yet to use the un-named putter in a PGA Tour event, but he plans to keep using it as a training aid going forward, and Ping plans to study the tiny putter more closely to see whether attributes of it could be designed into future PLD and retail putters.
The Honorary Starters ceremony is one of the best parts of Masters week.
The event is steeped in tradition, and when Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson take to the tee, thousands show up and surround the first tee box at Augusta National Golf Club to watch the legends kick off the Masters annually.
However, one of the coolest parts of the Honorary Starters ceremony was Nicklaus’ bag. The 18-time major champion and six-time winner at Augusta had a sick flag bag. The bag was made with different flags from around the country, including a Masters one and St. Andrews flag.
Flag bags are common in certain parts of the country, but seeing arguably the greatest golfer of all-time using one to begin the Masters was pretty cool. What a flex.
