And it will remain that way for now as 2025 champion Brandon Holtz lost, 2 and 1, to Jonathan Fricke in the first round Monday at Wisconsin's Sand Valley Resort. The man Holtz beat a year ago in the final, Bobby Massa, however, is moving on. The 38-year-old from Dallas earned medalist honors over the weekend, then came out and Brett Viboch, 4 and 3, in the opening round. Massa is a reinstated amateur, which is something being followed closely this week after seven of the eight quarterfinalists a year ago were former pros—to the chagrin of many who are hoping the USGA will speed up its review of the reinstatement process and make more stringent the rules for getting your status back. AmateurGolf.com broke down the numbers as to how many former pros made it to match play this year, finding 27 of 64, including 11 of the top 16. 

More than 80 percent of your improvement in score comes from avoiding bogeys compared to making more birdies.

And this is crucial for golfers hoping to break 80.

A 10 handicap may only makes one less birdie per round ton average than a scratch, but they make almost two and a half more double bogeys, and that accounts for about half of the entire difference in those two handicaps.

And the data shows that there are some patterns in how they're making these bigger mistakes, as you can dive deeper into below...

—he claimed a fourth victory of 2026 Sunday at the FedEx Open de France—can be tied to an array of skills and attributes. His special-edition Bettinardi DASS BB1 Flow putter, however, is part of the picture, too. Fitzpatrick first put the club in his bag in July around the Open Championship. This past week, he picked up nearly two strokes on the field and ranked fourth in strokes gained/putting at Le Golf National on his way to a three-shot triumph. Now, that putter’s unique design, which includes distinctive face grooves in a semi-circular pattern in the center of the face, is available as a special part of Bettinardi’s BB Series ($550). The BB1 Fitz Flow features a thinner flange and a short flow-style neck design. It’s milled from 303 Stainless Steel with a 350-gram headweight. The face groove pattern was a team effort between Fitzpatrick and the Bettinardi design team, and evokes the shape, style and feel of the C-groove pattern of the Yes! putter that Fitzpatrick used earlier in his career. His latest version also includes a honeycomb pattern on the sole to keep the putter from slipping on slicker putter surfaces.

According to the LPGA, the former chief brand officer at Dude Perfect is leaving to "be present with his family." Coleman was charged with leading global marketing, brand, communications, content and fan engagement. His focus was on accelerating audience growth, deepening relevance with younger fans and storytelling of LPGA players. Storytelling and social media have gotten a boost in the last year, but TV ratings for the final day of this month’s Solheim Cup, one of the tour’s marquee events, were down nearly 40 percent from 2023, the previous time the event was played in Europe. According to Sports Business Journal, only 170,000 people watched on Golf Channel during Sunday singles, which was also fewer than the 179,000 people who watched Saturday, despite the fact the match was deadlocked in a 8-8 tie entering the last session.

An LPGA spokesperson said the tour is not filling Coleman's job title, but has hired Taylor Strick to lead the marketing team as a senior VP. Also joining the tour is Ryan Ogle, formerly with the PGA of America, to oversee the operations of the Solheim Cup and CME Group Tour Championship.

By going 9-2-1 in the one-on-one session, the U.S. overcame a three-point deficit to win 17-13. And they did it by doing the thing they didn’t do the first three days at Medinah: win holes down the stretch. On Sunday, American players won 22 holes over the 12 matches on the back nine. Interestingly, 12 of those wins came with pars, hinting at the notion that the Internationals might have finally run out of gas. 

If you were watching the final day of the Presidents Cup—or any day, for that matter—you probably don't need to see any stats to know that putting is not Corey Conners' strength. However, it was particularly bad at Medinah on Sunday as the Canadian lost the first four holes of his match with Justin Thomas before losing 5-and-3. Here was a sampling:

Anyway, as of late Sunday afternoon, Data Golf had Conners at an insanely bad -4.62 strokes gained: putting, a full THREE shots worse than anyone else on the greens. Yikes.

As insufferable as athletes have made this saying, Scottie Scheffler likes to "keep the main thing the main thing." The main thing being golf. He doesn't really want to talk about much else. Not LIV, not politics and certainly not the decision, whether it was his or U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker's, to sit out Saturday afternoon's foursomes session at the Presidents Cup. The thing Scheffler doesn't understand, of course, is that golf fans were very puzzled by that move, and wanted to know more about what went into it. Banks was doing her job asking Scheffler about it on Sunday, but the World No. 1 was irked by the timing of it. He had just won his singles match against Nico Echavarria, earning the Americans another huge point:

OK then!

Both the question, and the response, are perfectly fair. We're sure this won't become an oddly polarizing moment on the internet or anything ... 

There are a lot of opinions out there about President Donald Trump spending his weekend jetting between Tennessee-Texas and the Presidents Cup with a war rumbling on in the Middle East and gas prices continuing to punish American consumers. You probably have one and lord knows I do, BUT sometimes you have to call a spade a spade, and this spade was pretty dang cool.

AF1 also buzzed the tower at Neyland Stadium on Saturday, but it wasn't enough to inspire the Volunteers to an upset of No. 1 Texas. American Presidents Cup fans will hope second time's a charm at Medinah, otherwise it will be a long afternoon for the stars n' stripes, who currently trail the Internationals 10.5 to 7.5 after three days of play.