Who do you want to watch in future versions of The Match?
Over the last five years, The Match has featured everyone from Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson to stars from other sports such as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Charles Barkley and Steph Curry.
With eight editions of the made-for-tv charity golf event now in the books – Curry and Golden State Warriors teammate Klay Thompson lost to the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl-winning tandem of Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce on Thursday night – we got to thinking … who should be next?
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Check out who else we think would be fun to see in future versions of The Match.
With just 100 days until the Ryder Cup, here’s an updated look at who may be on Team USA.
Mark your calendars, golf fans. The Ryder Cup is just 100 days away.
That’s right, in just about three months the United States will look to not just defend its Cup title against the Europeans, but also win for the first time on foreign soil in 30 years.
Twelve of the best players from the U.S. will take on Europe’s 12 best at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club in Rome, Italy, for the 2023 Ryder Cup, Sept. 29–Oct. 1, and the teams are starting to take shape.
American players began earning points at the beginning of 2022, and at the conclusion of the PGA Tour’s BMW Championship on Aug. 20, 2023, the top six players on the points list will qualify for the U.S. team. Captain Zach Johnson will then announce his six captain’s picks following the 2023 Tour Championship, Aug. 24-27.
While it’s difficult for LIV Golf players to earn automatic qualification (though one is currently ranked No. 3 in points), American players who left the PGA Tour for the Saudi-backed circuit are still eligible for the team via a grace period for their PGA of America membership that runs until June 2024. But will any be picked?
Here’s an updated look at what the U.S. team may look like 100 days out from Italy.
Jordan Spieth let out his frustration after a rough showing in the first two rounds.
It hasn’t been a great start to the weekend for Jordan Spieth at the 2023 U.S. Open.
While many of his competitors put up comically low scores during Round 1 on Thursday at the Los Angeles Country Club, Spieth shot just 2-over. He was slightly better with a 1-over score on Friday, but he still sits two strokes below the projected cut line of 1-over.
Spieth is a four-time major champion, but he’s looking for his first since 2017. With that wait likely to continue beyond this weekend, Spieth let his frustrations get the best of him.
After hitting a bad shot during the Par 5 eighth hole during Round 2 on Friday, Spieth was hoping his shot would land in the bunker to give him a better out.
Instead, it landed in the rough to the right of the bunker, setting up a tough shot. Spieth was not pleased, to say the least, and the broadcast caught his reaction in all its splendor.
Warning: Clip contains NSFW language.
Disgusting act by Jordan Spieth. This language does not belong on the golf course pic.twitter.com/dX6dKKWFcJ
— Storm Tracker Corner (@WolverineCorner) June 16, 2023
We’ve all been there. Unfortunately for Spieth, so was a hot mic.
Ironically, Spieth’s chip on the subsequent shot hit the pin, and he managed to birdie the hole. It was one of just four birdies that he recorded in Round 2.
Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas may soon be investors in the Championship side
Leeds United’s new ownership group may be adding some major stars of the PGA Tour.
Rickie Fowler has said that he, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas are interested in joining new Leeds owners 49ers Enterprises as investors in the team.
“There is the group that’s moving forward with being involved with Leeds. Myself, J.T. and Jordan potentially will be a part of it,” Fowler told Sky Sports ahead of this week’s U.S. Open in Los Angeles.
“It’s cool to have those opportunities. I know we are looking into it. It will be fun if we get to be a part of it.”
Last week, Leeds announced that owner Andrea Radrizzani had reached an agreement to sell his stake in the club to 49ers Enterprises, the investment arm of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers.
The move will keep an American influence at the club after a season in which three Americans — Weston McKennie, Brenden Aaronson and Tyler Adams — played for the club and American coach Jesse Marsch was in charge for part of the season.
Following the club’s relegation, McKennie has returned to Juventus after his loan expired while Aaronson and Adams have been rumored to be eyeing transfers away.
“Obviously they got relegated, but to be able to go to a Premier League game, Champions League. I feel like, obviously you call it football over there, we call it soccer here, it’s a massive sport,” Fowler added.
“I feel like it’s continuing to get bigger in the States but since I haven’t been to a game, I don’t have the true appreciation until I’ve actually been able to go and be there and feel that energy.”
Rahm and Koepka are already major champions this season, as the Spaniard slipped on the green jacket in April while Koepka captured his third Wanamaker trophy last month at Oak Hill.
Two majors are in the books, with Jon Rahm capturing the green jacket at the Masters in April, and Brooks Koepka claiming his third Wanamaker trophy and fifth major at the PGA Championship.
Next up, the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club in California.
Shockingly, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is the favorite at +750, followed by No. 2 Jon Rahm at +900 and PGA champ Brooks Koepka at +1200.
Scheffler tied for second at Oak Hill while Rahm struggled, tying for 50th.
One of the public’s favorite picks to win at LACC, Max Homa, is +2000 to take home the hardware. Homa has won six times on Tour, four of those coming in his home state of California.
Here are the top 10 betting favorites for the 2023 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club.
“Once you get a taste of (winning), you want to get back there as soon as possible.” — Davis Riley
DUBLIN, Ohio – When former U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover pulled up to the front gate at Jack Nicklaus’s Muirfield Village Golf Club this week, he asked the attendant how he was doing.
“He said, ‘If I was any happier, I’d be dancing.’ I’d never heard that one before,” Glover said. “And then he followed that up by saying, ‘And nobody wants that, trust me.’ ”
On a warm, sunny Thursday at the Memorial, Davis Riley danced around Jack’s Place to the tune of 5-under 67, to lead Englishman Matt Wallace by a stroke.
Riley, 26, made birdie on three of the final four holes to vault to the top of the leaderboard. But it was a par save at the second hole that jump-started his round after an errant tee shot left stopped behind a tree. Riley pitched out sideways and then wedged inside 3 feet and holed the putt.
“I felt like that was kind of a momentum-keeper shot and hole and, yeah, that kind of kept the round going,” he said.
He made a birdie at the third and finished with a flurry of birdies including a 13-footer at the ninth.
“I thought that I left the last one short and thankfully it fell in on the last roll and it was a good way to end the day,” he said.
A year ago, he shot an opening-round 67, too, and was part of a six-way tie for the lead before finishing T-13. Riley, who claimed his first PGA Tour win last month at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, entered the week having missed four straight cuts.
“I hit a really hard reset at the beginning of this week and said to my caddie James (Edmonston) – he helped me out a lot with that and he’s like, ‘Look, you just need to keep doing your thing, good golf is right around the corner.’ I know it’s weird saying that when you win, six, seven weeks ago, but it’s just one of those things to try to kind of get that consistency part, I feel like I need to be a little easier on myself and just keep playing my golf,” he said. “Once you get a taste of (winning), you want to get back there as soon as possible, and I feel like I’ve been getting in my own way a little bit.”
Asked if he would treat himself to one of Muirfield’s trademark milkshakes after his strong start, Riley said he’d hold off because it would keep him up all night and he’s got an early wake-up call for his 8:12 a.m. tee time. “If tomorrow goes well I’ll probably have to have one,” he said.
Players typically serve as advisors on these projects, but this was more of a polite debate than a straight strategy session.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Before revered golf course architect Gil Hanse was signed on the dotted line to lead a massive $20 million overhaul of Colonial Country Club, longtime member and Colonial advocate Ryan Palmer sat in a room with Hanse to hash out a few details.
Players typically serve as advisors on these projects, but according to Charles Schwab Challenge Tournament Chairman Jim Whitten, this was more of a polite debate than a straight strategy session. Palmer and caddie James Edmondson, who has won the Colonial club championship five times, talked through a few of the holes they’ve seen in other places, some of which they haven’t been particularly fond of.
“That was a turning point. There were a lot of people bitching about the money and some other things,” said Whitten, who was driving around the course on Friday in his Tartan plaid members coat. “This was an airing of grievances about some of the stuff he’s done across the country. At one point, Ryan said, ‘Tell me what you did on 17 at TPC Boston. Tell me what your explanation is, what you did with that green. I hated that hole.’ Gil explained why he did some of these things and both he and James went, ‘OK, I get it now.’ And then Gil explained what he wanted to do here at the club, so they kind of went back and forth.”
Soon after that meeting about a year ago, the paperwork was signed and Hanse agreed to help revamp the acclaimed club, which was designed by the duo of Texas’ John Bredemus and Oklahoma’s Perry Maxwell, and opened in 1936. The course ranks 85th on Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses 2022 list.
The project still needed the club’s support and to help garner favor Hanse set up a number of open meetings for club members to attend and poke holes in the plan.
After the meetings, which Palmer and Edmondson took part in, 85 percent of the members voted in favor of the plan, even with the hefty price tag.
“You can’t get 85 percent of the people to vote on what’s black and what’s white,” Whitten said. “So we were very happy with that kind of support.”
Palmer took part in the final walkthrough of the plans with Hanse and Tour officials in advance of this week’s event. The four-time PGA Tour winner said the end result will put a shine on a golf course that has been a stern test for Tour players for decades.
“It’s going to be spectacular,” Palmer said. “We kind of put our little stamp of approval, I guess you could say, of being a Tour player. I was able to talk about different shots we wanted to see, what we don’t do and don’t want you to do to the golf course.
“The plans are going to be unbelievable. This will be the best golf course in town easily, I think, after it’s all said and done. Just the way it plays, it stands up to the game’s greatest each and every year, and this course shows. I think it’s going to get harder for us, and I’m excited for the membership and for the city of Fort Worth.”
Ryan Palmer plays a shot from the first tee during the first round of the 2020 Charles Schwab Challenge golf tournament at Colonial Country Club. Palmer was the first player to tee off as professional golf made its return. Mandatory Credit: Raymond Carlin III-USA TODAY Sports
A much-needed revamp
Although the course is among the shorter on the PGA Tour, the reason for the redesign had little to do with adding length. In fact, that wasn’t even on the task sheet for Hanse, according to Whitten, who has been a member at Colonial for 31 years.
“We had significant drainage and irrigation problems. And our greens, depending on how bad the summer was were really getting stressed out,” Whitten said. “Our greens are thirty-something years old and they were having layer after layer fixing and this and sanding and all this stuff, so they got bigger. And when you do that, it creates an area that holds moisture in it, which isn’t good for the green and it needs to get in and out of the green. So holding moisture was a problem and so when it was all said this golf course has not been looked at in many years.”
Although a few greens were redone two decades ago, many of them had been untouched for much longer and so the plans call for adding a hydronic system about a foot below the putting surface which can circulate warm or cool water to alter the temperature of the soil.
Colonial members decided to stay with bentgrass and maintained much of the green complexes, but let Hanse work his magic in other areas.
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Positive reaction from players
That has some, like Jordan Spieth, eager to see what the 2024 version of the tournament will be like. Shovels will go in the ground to start the renovation as soon as a winner is crowned on Sunday.
“I always thought courses like this, Hilton Head, these classic courses that stand the test of time, it’s like what are you going to do to these places? I think that’s kind of everyone’s first response,” Spieth said. “Then I saw them, and I was like, wow, this looks really, really cool. It looks like it maintains the character of what Colonial is while creating some excitement on some holes that maybe could use a little bit of adjusting.
Jordan Spieth plays his shot from the third tee during the third round of the 2020 Charles Schwab Challenge golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Raymond Carlin III-USA TODAY Sports
“So changing a few of the tee lines where, instead of as much of a straight shot, you kind of see more of working the ball into a fairway. I’m not sure how much is public, but I know the idea of flipping the nines and making the 8th hole into the 17th, I think that might be the biggest change on the course from what I’ve seen. It looks like it might be a great par 3 to bring more of the creek and the river into play. So I’m always a proponent of that.”
Spieth said a recent Tour stop highlighted what can happen when a historic track is refurbished, while keeping history and the original designer’s intent in mind.
“Last week at Oak Hill you saw a renovation that was done extremely well and very highly regarded by, it seems, critics and players alike,” said Spieth, who missed the cut this year, but has plenty of success at the Charles Schwab, including a win in the 2016 event. “Change is sometimes better, sometimes not necessary. I think here Gil will do a really good job of maintaining the integrity while adding even some more character and modernization to it.”
Former champion Spieth had never missed the cut in 10 previous starts.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Even with a PGA Championship in Western New York inconveniently interrupting a pair of PGA Tour events in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, the field at the 2023 Charles Schwab Challenge was strong with 11 of the world’s top 30 players making the trek.
But the cream didn’t necessarily rise to the top as many of the most highly ranked players at Colonial Country Club either failed to make the weekend or found themselves flirting with the cutline at the conclusion of play on Friday. Local favorite and former champ Jordan Spieth, who had never missed the cut in 10 previous starts, was among those who finished on the wrong side.
Here’s a look at some of the biggest stars who missed the cut, which settled in at 1-over 141 through two rounds of play. The cut at the Charles Schwab Challenge is the top 65 and ties.
“I was just playing with my son. I wasn’t even holding him or anything.”
FORT WORTH, Texas — Jordan Spieth can be unpredictable on a golf course. Pulled drive, miraculous recovery, lipped-out short putt, nothing’s out of the question when the 13-time PGA Tour winner is navigating his way through a tournament.
But get Spieth off the golf course, and he’s prone to the same mundane mishaps as the rest of us.
For example, when it was first revealed that Spieth had injured his wrist, forcing him to withdraw from the AT&T Byron Nelson, his hometown event, few could have conjured a more boring backstory.
Spieth told the media at the Charles Schwab Challenge that the cause of his injury wasn’t anything thrilling, but rather a strange tweak while playing with his 18-month-old son, Sammy.
“I was just playing with my son. I wasn’t even holding him or anything. I was just pushing myself off the ground while he was like laughing and going side to side. Something just popped and jammed, and then all of a sudden, I couldn’t move it and got on it right away,” Spieth said. “Ended up with an MRI the next morning and went through a few specialists and tried to figure out the right plan for it.
“I was pretty surprised I was able to play last week. … So I thought, if I could get through four rounds and I was not going to make anything worse or jeopardize anything going forward, then I thought it would be worth it and you just never know. Turns out you can’t really kind of fake it into a major. You kind of really need to be as prepared as possible.”
Spieth didn’t fare poorly at Oak Hill, but after a slow start — he shot 73 in the first round — he clawed his way back to a top-30 finish with a 69 on Sunday.
He’s hoping for an even better showing this week at Colonial, a place where he consistently played well. Spieth has posted eight top-10 finishes in 10 starts at this historic track and after putting the wrist through the rigors of a souped-up Oak Hill, he believes he should be ready to complete this week.
“I got better each day, and hand held up, wrist held up really well. At this point, I don’t feel like I’m rushing things,” Spieth said. “I think I’m on par with following the docs I’ve talked to, and it’s kind of a week-to-week thing because it’s something that can get worse, and if it does, I need to cut it off immediately.
“Ideally, I make it through this stretch, then have a little break in the summer prior to the Scottish, and that rest will probably help a lot. But I’m doing a lot of recovery stuff day to day that I’m not used to doing, but it’s been helping.”
The 29-year-old University of Texas product has five top-10 finishes this season, including a T-4 at the Masters, and was a lip-out away in a playoff with Matt Fitzpatrick from defending his title at the RBC Heritage in April and recording his 14th career Tour title.
And at Colonial, he has one victory (in 2016) and three runner-up showings. He’s hoping for more magic this week, assuming his wrist can handle the load.
“I’ve had some great memories here. This week feels like a home game without maybe the extra that the Byron is for me,” Spieth said. “So I’m able to stay at home, but I also kind of feel … I feel the support without maybe the added-ness that I always kind of felt at the Byron. And it’s a course that’s fit my game really well over the years.
“So really excited. Game’s been in a really good place this year, continuing on an upward trajectory.”
