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This topic aged like a carton of milk left in room temperature.

I take my hat off to Rory, WOWOW! That must have been WAY harder than winning it 8-10 years back. To struggle for a decade, and to finally achieve it, one of the great golf stories of the past 20-30 yrs. Boy and he tried to give it away! As for my prediction, obviously off off off. I truly think all the things l listed are real, but to a far less extent I was thinking. Maybe those were more true back in the 2016-2022 period. The pressure was huge, especially-obviously on the back 9. That blocked chip into the creek, that had to be all pressure. And I think the missed putt on 18 in regulation - that was crazy. It seemed like he didn’t take any time at all, that had to be insane pressure. But raising my hand, that pressure and those missed shots were nothing related to any of the factors I listed out! Just pure pressure, built up over 10 years, man o man. And watching the emotion, man that is touching, good for him, his family, for golf. And finally, to the guys I rubbed the wrong way, my bad, really not my style. You guys have been here for years, I’ve been here for 2 days. You’ve built a great site and a great community. Humble apologies, and if you don’t ban me I hope to come back and join up for some lively discussion. Peace!

Got my first hole in one yesterday, playing with son at Yocha Dehe (Cache Creek) in CA. 90% 9 iron, 140 yards, hole 16.

Thank you for sharing that. He was quite good wasn't he? I was curious, so took a look. He played 19 PGA Tour stroke play events in 2000. He was 263 under par (they did point that out at the end of the video). If you look at each event he played in and take the best score in each event for a player not called Tiger Woods, that combined field score was -259. So he beat the field - where the field resets every week - over the course of an entire season. That's mind blowing.

Update: we are officially booked for our Sunday round (6/22) at Cranberry Highlands golf course: Course Tour | Cranberry Township - Official Website Visit our gorgeous course and read descriptions about each hole. 11:10am | 11:20am | 11:30am | 11;40am tee times. Still working on the Saturday course.

If you're going to make claims, back them up with facts. Do you have any facts that support this claim that Rory does this when under pressure? Did the hyper aggression negatively affect his play when he won The Players this year making that 2 wins in 4 starts for him at that point? Can you provide some evidence directly showing how his hyper aggression has negatively affected his play? This isn't even accurate anymore, they called the divorce off. If you're going to criticize someone at least get your facts straight.

Current attendee list (10 confirmed, 1 tentative): @Hardspoon @iacas @bkuehn1952 @billchao @ChetlovesMer @Carl3 @StuM @vasaribm @DaveP043 @dennyjones @klineka (Tentative) I assume we'll have (3) total foursomes for planning purposes...maybe 4. I'll start to send out some preliminary thoughts on location and courses this week.

I figured out the issue. The guy in charge of match play was trying to post these through golf genius. But when he leaves the scores for holes blank, it defaults to net double bogey. So he was trying to post +10 for 18 holes instead of +5 for 16 holes. There is probably a way to do this correctly in golf genius, but he’s not going to figure it out. I posted the score manually, and it passes the sanity test:

Looks like a ball at rest moved by an outside influence. Replace the ball on the spot, estimate the spot if its not known. Rule 9.6. If the original ball isn't immediately available, use another ball.

Day 201 - 2025-04-19 Played Pinehurst No. 10 today. Was a treat, and @NatalieB shot 67 (reds).

I was just thinking about this. 60 majors played in since 2010. 42% of them top 10 finishes. 22% top 5 finishes. My goodness, 9 straight top 10 finishes at the US Open, regarded as the toughest course set up for the Majors. WTH! That is different than jacked, so no. No, it doesn't. It is tough to win majors. He is in rare company by winning the career grand slam. It is much tougher to win majors in the 2010+ years than it was prior. Look at the most majors list. If you cut it off at 5+ majors. There are 21 golfers ever to have 5+ majors. 17 of them won their first major prior to 1987. Maybe you could say he should have two more if things go his way. I don't think he should be near 10 or anything like that. 5 is reasonable at this point. He is tied for 15th ever. He probably has like 20 to 28 more competitive major rounds in him. Maybe in like the short term yes, but he would have gotten used to it in short order. He is a world class athlete in the golfing world. His ability to feel his golf swing is nearly unmatched. To say that him getting a bit bigger in 2014 has impacted him over the next 11 years, without him just figuring it out is really an absurd statement. Tiger Woods changed his swing like 3x and was elite. He got bigger, not jacked, and was elite. We are not talking about Olympic weightlifters here, or jacked body-builders. FYI, doing weightlifting through a full range of motion gives you more flexibility. Do you want to know who can get into the deepest squats in the world, people with gigantic legs, the Olympic weightlifters. Want to know who can't get down into a deep squat, lazy people who don't work out. Could muscle mass as the "extreme" side of things cause some interference in a particular golf motion, sure. Rory isn't even close to being that size. Yea, it could be mental. Sometimes you just need to get over the hump again even though you have 4 majors in your pocket. You only get 4 chances a year at this. You have to be on your game to have a chance on Sunday. So, for the stars to align for him to have the chances to even learn from his mistakes is not that much. Being T-5, 6 strokes back and not having that pressure on the Sunday is not a learning experience on how to close out a tournament. It makes sense why it could take this long. Also, he is playing against other good golfers. Sometimes, the best golfers in the world get beat. Nope, it isn't. I would agree it was loss of confidence or nerves, plus other golfers just taking it from him than it being related to him working out. I am actually willing to say, it is 0.0000000000000000000000001% related to him working out. So, round that off to ZERO! Let's not play the victim card here. He wasn't able to bomb it 330 yards prior to 2014 because he was a kid who still had baby fat on him. Look at the rolling 10 round average since he started. It looks pretty typical. Lots of ups and downs because you can't be on all the time. Even back in 2014, he never really had a 10 round average were his stroke's gained approach was negative. If you say his size causes him issues, then there should be something crazy here. The dips in 2014 on look the same. Did he have some early year crazy spikes, sure. Sometimes a golfer catches fire for a year. There are things call outliers for a reason. So, this is probably why you started this. You dislike Rory and want to wish it into existence that he would never win another Master. Again, you are not the victim here, so stop these self-deprecating comments to try to buy some sympathy.

Does TST have an annual award for worst take ever? If so, this thread should get an early nomination. And while Rory is in great shape, he’s far from super ripped. IIRC, when asked he said that the green jacket he was wearing, which wasn’t tight on him at all, was a 38R. Not exactly Schwarzenegger size.

He explained it in the post round interview @ 6:12. It's a good interview where he talks about the mental struggle to win at Augusta, how there's been a lot of pent-up emotions since 2011 and that final round probably being one of the toughest days he's ever had on a golf course. I absolutely recommend spending 26 minutes on it. It provides some good insight on him as a player and person. There's been a lot of talk about him not winning majors and The Masters, which has been difficult for him. He's obviously got the game to win, but nerves seems to be a big reason why he's missed out on many of them. Some people seem to expect the best players to have a mind void of nerves and mental challenges when a lot is on the line, but that's simply not how it works. Some deal with it better than others, regardless of talent and skill. Rory seems to be one that struggle to keep nerves in check in those tense situations. This win is a huge monkey off his back and hopefully it will help him deal with those nerves the next time he's in a position to win a big tournament. That's the kind of person you don't even bother engaging with. No matter what you say and what evidence there is, they'll have an explanation for it.

Did you tell them that the PGA has nothing to do with the Masters?

I went to a concert when Rory was on 16. What did I miss?😜

This happened to Jordan Spieth as well. He won 3 majors. 2 in 2015 and 1 in 2017. Then he got all buffed up and now he doesn't win majors anymore. It's his huge muscles that are ruining his game. 💪

I’m 3 for 3 in willing Mickelson’s ball to find the water! 13, 15 and 16!

Just tell Tiger you'll give him $10M if he lets you beat him on one hole. Hell, give him $25M.

Lots of clubs institute this MLR. Even when conditions don't lead to a lot of lost balls. I see no problem with it. It does mean you're hitting your fourth (if your tee shot is missing), of course.

Of course, we're going to give preference to those who can do both. But right now we aren't at the limit of 16, so… probably fine.

Shedeur freeeeeeeeeeeeeeee fallin'. I'm definitely on board with the "Shedeur is bad" takes. Am I right? Dunno. Milroe's still there. I feel like he has way more upside than Shedeur but again, I could be wrong. He seems at least as good as Malik Willis to me though. My physical therapist loves Will Howard but he went to Ohio State so his opinion can't really be trusted. He any good?

I mean… Pickett's small hands won't be able to hold it down very well. 🙂

Got my second birdie of the year. One for each 9 hole round I've played this year. I'm using Bent Tree Golf Course in Sunbury as my home course because that's where the Wednesday Night league I'm in this year is. Hole 17 is a 130 yard par-3 with a green the size of a flea's footprint. Last night there was almost no breeze to speak of and it played at about 126 yards. I hit a smooth P-wedge to about 15 inches. Even I couldn't miss that putt. Tap in Birdie.

Depends on a lot of factors, but often… my 60 fits the needs.

Y'all will enjoy the course. It has a good mix of scenery, tougher holes, mildly jaw-dropping holes, and so on.

Elbow feeling better, hit some balls on range a few days ago, and spent 15-20 mins working on slow backswings, then hitting into net today

Good overall post Matt. Parity has continued to grow. There have been periods of sublime golf last ten years from others like Speith, DJ, Koepka and Scheffler who have been/are wunderkinds of there own. Rory has had the longest sustained hang time at the top with and sometimes above these stalwarts. While accumulating no. of majors is a black and white measuring yardstick of glory, explaining away the logic (i.e., here are five reasons of why not...) of not winning one is not as black and white.

The upside is that you're so tense now that you can always blame your body for playing poorly.

Oh, I'm sad now. By his definition I am "jacked". Do I have to go back to being described as "in not too bad of shape for a guy of my age"? 🤣

But it makes it crystal clear that the major drought had nothing to do with his physique, since he was able to do all of that with that physique.

It's been a while since I practiced. Injuries compounded last year and I could play but I didn't want to make anything worse with repetitive stress so I shut down practicing basically in early summer. Just kind of getting back into things now and I'm not surprised to see I've regressed a bit. Hitting the ball well enough to get 8 GIR yesterday but the misses can be really bad - tops and toe shanks. Just settled right back into the constant problem areas in my swing, mainly the wrists/club position at A4 and not recentering properly. Going to focus on getting solid contact consistently back before anything else.

One made a topic here about how Rory would never win a Masters… last Thursday afternoon! 🤣😜

That it’s difficult is obvious, but part of what makes it difficult is impossible to see. The mental game. Some players thrive under pressure, while others crumble completely. Having the mentality to win major events is no good if you don’t have the game for it and having the game may not be enough if the nerves and stress cause too much trouble when the heat is on. Rory put a lot of pressure and expectations on himself, but it surely doesn’t help with all the media attention around his lack of major wins the last decade. He said in the interview that having all those legends of the game (Tiger, Jack etc.) saying he will win it one day just added to the pressure. They probably meant for those to be words of encouragement, while they had a negative effect on Rory. Ever since Tiger dominated, new promising players were “the next Tiger”. Rory has as good a game when he’s on, but Tiger was at a different level, over a long period of time. Anyone would be nervous in Rory’s shoes last week. How it would affect their game is very individual.

So, @klineka and @Zeph are you guys trying to imply that winning majors is difficult? Perhaps, that's why Rory becomes the first golfer (not named Tiger Woods) in almost 60 years to win a career Grand Slam?

Happy for Rory. Sad for Rose. Not sad for Bryson.

Emotionally drained

All that buffing up, lady troubles…if only he..oh….nevermind.😏

He’ll prob win 3 more now

UPDATE: Even if I decide to retract my grovel, that first 5 holes was the most electric start that I can recall seeing at the Masters? Wowow! Even with my hyperbolic prediction, I’d hate to see him fall back now

C'mon Rory I need someone to root for! Plucky little Irish midget but he's likeable

Are you trying to claim the accomplishments of Rae’s Creek? Are you Rae’s Creek?

I did it all for the Stussy.

Agreed - I wasn’t a fan of his in the early years, but I’ve grown to have more respect for him than nearly everyone else on Tour. His last few holes today were so deflating I prefer older Rory better, the Anti-LIV Rory

Here's a drinking game for you. Every time the announcers say "The influence of Ray's Creek" or "Take your medicine" you take a drink. Just so you know I've been watching it for 10 minutes and I'd already be drunk.

The latest episode on low spinners vs bounce was very good. I listened while chipping in the basement. You all do a good job on letting each other speak and ask questions we would ask. 005: Low Spinners vs. Using the Bounce — What's the Better Short Game Move? Podcast Episode · The Spin Axis - Golf Podcast · 04/08/2025 · 19m

Had a good round today! Birdied 3 holes today to push me to -10 Birdied holes #2, 8 and 11

Right hand in particular too strong, face pretty closed coming down (resulting in you trying to push the ball right with the path).

I'd find a free fitting, take your clubs, and see what you can see. For example, we have a PXG fitter come to our academy every Tuesday, and he's great about sharing info about why he's having you hit a certain shaft or clubhead or something. And… if you don't see much of a change, skip it.

On my calendar thx @Hardspoon for putting this together