the only weekend to care about golf is here
it's masters time, so here's my guide to the masters.
How do you do, fellow sporting enthusiasts? It has come to my attention that college basketball is over, it’s the fallow part of the NBA season where the playoff seeds are locked in but the playoffs themselves haven’t actually started, and it is no longer opening day of baseball. It’s the perfect time for a usually-marginal sport, albeit one chock-full of tradition and a bunch of other crap, to take center stage.
That’s right. It’s Masters time, baby. Golf’s Biggest Weekend. Because I am the only person in all of media who golfs (not true but whatever) and I must fearlessly promote my book, How Golf Can Save Your Life (available May 9th wherever fine books are sold, including right here), I am putting together this definitive guide to The Masters, the most Golf tournament in all the land.
Will Tiger Woods win The Masters?
I don’t know, probably not? But it’d be really fun if he did, because he is Tiger Woods and honestly who doesn’t love the idea of the only golfer they know about winning the only golf tournament they’ll watch all year, right? Like, come on dude. That’s obviously what everybody wants. Sadly, however, it’s most likely that this guy Scottie Scheffler will end up winning, because he’s the best golfer in the world right now and he won it last year.
But that’s the main guy I knew about! I don’t give a shit about Scomp Shuffler or whatever his name is.
Okay, fair. While Scheffler is a super-dominant force on the PGA Tour, he’s also pretty boring to watch: He’s just this dude who looks like he’s never taken his shirt off in his life who also happens to play technically perfect golf. His ascendence speaks to one of my main aesthetic criticisms of the modern Tour in general — it’s full of semi-anonymous guys who just kinda do their thing and make you go “oh yeah, him.”
Okay, so gimme something to hang onto, then!
I was about to get to my next point! There were a few technically fun golfers out there, but they all jumped ship to the LIV Golf, the infamous “breakaway tour / sportswashing endeavor” funded by the Saudis. I’m talking about Bryson DeChambeau, who tried to “solve” golf by getting so strong that he could cut out all the hard parts of a hole and hit the ball directly onto the green and sort of succeeded but mainly just made himself look like Popeye, hat and everything. Then there’s Pat Perez, who’s a “bad boy” in that he swears a lot and likes dumb shirts, and Phil Mickelson, who became a “media darling” because he “spoke his mind” but then made everyone mad because he “downplayed Saudi human rights abuses.” There’s now some pretty heavy animosity between the PGA guys and the LIV guys, who aren’t allowed to play in PGA Tour events, but because golf’s Major tournaments aren’t technically put on by the PGA the LIV guys can play in those. And so, almost inevitably, there will be PGA guys playing with LIV guys and there will be a lot of tension.
The most notable pairing in the first round probably involves Cam Smith, the excellent Australian who last year pledged his loyalty to the PGA Tour and then immediately took a gigantic check from LIV after winning the British Open. He’s playing with Hideki Matsuyama, who won The Masters in 2021, and Sung-jae Im, who has a really cool swing and just had a great finish at The Players Championship (don’t worry about what this is; it’s not super important). So all three have a viable chance of winning, which is neat. Also, Dustin Johnson, a PGA-to-LIV guy who looks like Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born and used to be the top-ranked golfer in the world, will probably do pretty okay too. LIV also has this guy named Brooks Koepka who seems like a real sourpuss but is “interesting” in that he is sponsored by Nike and is down to wear their collabs with Off-White or Nocta or whatever. He’s currently the highest LIV guy on the leaderboard.
Seems like those are the bad guys. Who are the good guys?
Rory McIlroy is definitely the “good guy,” to an almost comical degree. Tiger Woods kind of took Rory under his wing (paw?) when he came on the scene way back in the day, and this perception that he was “mini-Tiger” or whatever placed a bunch of pressure on him which I can imagine was pretty tough. But Rory’s won a bunch of tournaments in his career and more importantly has been the leading voice of the “fuck LIV Golf” contingent and has backed it up with some really stellar play. His stock is higher than it’s ever been! And yet… he’s never won a Masters. Is it his year? It would be very good for golf if it were his year, but because golf isn’t one of those sports where there’s refs who can subtly sway the outcome to “fit the narrative” or whatever, who knows what’ll happen.
That’s what’s happening on TV, sure. But will there be secondary content around The Masters?
Oh my god, so much content. All the Golf Influencers are all over Augusta National, which if you don’t know is the historic course where The Masters is played and enjoys such storied status in the game that everybody just kind of ignores its history of rampant racism and sexism (to learn more, check out Chapter Nine of Shane Ryan’s excellent book Slaying the Tiger) as well as the fact that it remains an idyllic monument to economic inequality and weird dumb rich-people stuff. But this is The Golf Weekend, and besides the course/tournament’s color scheme is based around this really iconic shade of deep green plus it has a “quirky” practice of serving randomly cheap pimento cheese sandwiches, so the whole thing makes for some highly engaging ’tent.
Are you also trying to cash in on The Masters content bonanza by writing this post?
No comment.
Fine. So who should I bet on?
I don’t know, man. This Substack is not sponsored by any gambling apps (yet!) so I have no incentive to pretend that gambling on golf isn’t a total crapshoot. However, I’m sure there are a bunch of ridiculous prop bets you could place this weekend if that would make you happy.