Golfpocalypse is a meandering collection of words about golf (professional and otherwise) that sometimes, but not always, has a point. Reach out with your questions or comments on absolutely anything at shane.spr8@gmail.com. We'll publish the best emails here.
It's Signature Season, and that means it's time for the return of Golfpocalypse, your weekly guide to the most intriguing storylines on the PGA Tour and major calendar, and also whatever random golf content is on my mind. Today, we are hyper-focused on the first signature event of the season, and these are the 10 items that have me at peak SESOD levels (Signature Event Stimulation Overload Disorder).
1. Return of the Tommy
There has never been a more exciting year for the rabid Tommy Fleetwood-watchers out there. He's always been a favorite, but last year the Englishman finally shed the last remnants of his luckless hangdog side and become one of the game's alphas. Winning the Tour Championship and then dragging the Americans by their noses up and down Bethpage at the Ryder Cup sent him to a new stratosphere, and now we get to see what he looks like after the transformation. What's it going to look like when he wears the skin of one of the two or three elites of the game? Is there even more pressure now that we all expect him to win a major? Can he possibly stay just as nice as he's always been, or will he come to the first tee on a motorcycle, with skull tattoos up and down his bare arms?
If nothing else, it's the best thing to watch on Thursday. He'll be teeing off with Bobby Mac on Spyglass Hill, and I pray we get some coverage.
2. Scottie dominance never gets old
I cracked up at this tweet by ESPN's Paolo Uggetti at around 4 p.m. on Sunday at Phoenix:
At that point, Scottie was still a shot or two off the lead and technically not that likely to win the event, but I knew exactly what Paolo was feeling, because I thought the same exact thing: This is over. We were wrong, of course. Math still applies, other golfers are still good and he finished two shots out of the playoff. But I think we were spiritually correct, in that Scottie officially has a kind of gravity around him that we haven't seen since Tiger. The fact that he had a serious chance was almost ridiculous, and if he had won, the feeling among the other players would have been close to hopeless. He can't be killed!
That said, I find his greatness riveting, and I want more of it. It goes back to golf being a little weird in this regard—it's so hard to dominate that when real domination happens, you can't get enough. If whatever weirdness befell him early in Phoenix is over, he'll win by 10.
3. Give me that weird weather
The Open takes a lot of the big-weather publicity in the world of professional golf, and deservedly so, but the Monterey Peninsula is an absolute juggernaut of weird weather, and we need to give it some respect. Tony Finau did good work on this front, showing how you can practically hold the green on a 110-yard hole with a driver that carries 250-plus yards when the wind is ripping off the Pacific:
It's not just wind, though—there's plenty of potential rain, and best of all, that velvety northern California fog. Too much fog and they'll call a delay, so you have to be careful what you wish for, but a little fog? We should be able to look at a little fog at work.
4. Jordan Spieth Sadness Scale
Currently, we are an 8.5. There's a certain amount of resignation at play here, considering how the last few years have gone, but there was something freshly disappointing about Phoenix, a course he's had success at before, but where in 2026 it just seemed to reaffirm our most pessimistic takes. We got a few fun "Jordan Spieth experience!" type tweets where he did his rollercoaster act, but then he chipped into the water on 17 and missed the cut, and our misery was comprehensive. What do you do with a man like this?
The answer: Watch him at Pebble—where he earned his spot, by the way, avoiding some of the sponsor's exemption controversy—and pray he doesn't accidentally kill himself.
5. Golf tweet of the week
We're going to keep it in-house this week with Digest's own Joel Beall, masterfully bringing together two events close to our hearts:
"Bad Bunny" wouldn't be a terrible nickname for Spieth, right? RIGHT?
6. Will the celebs justify their existence?
It feels like the sun is setting on the era of celebrities at Pebble Beach, and I say: great! I love Bill Murray (like any red-blooded American), but he stopped being funny at this thing a decade ago, and beyond that it's just an array of retired athletes cosplaying as professional golfers and very rich people being very rich. The "big names" this year are Travis Kelce, Alex Smith, Jake Owen, Condoleeza Rice and Ron DeSantis, among a few others, and they only get to play two days—no more celebrity Saturday.
That's a conscious change by the tour, which, along with the switch to a Signature Event, has helped them land a lot more high-profile players. Some might say that it's also made it less fun, but I'd respond with: Was it actually that much fun to begin with? Probably at one time, yes. But even if it comes off unsentimental, I like the reduced role. The fields were dismal before last year, and now we've got everyone in the world top 25 who's eligible to play (excluding the injured Justin Thomas, soon-to-return Patrick Reed and LIV's Tyrrell Hatton). I'll take that over a lousy field and a few comedians trotting out the same five jokes for three days.
7. Ranking the sponsor's exemptions
Best - Billy Horschel. We need our tireless energizer bunny back in the mix in a bad way.
Good - Sahith Theegala. Mic up his dad.
Okay - Tony Finau. Makes sense. Not that excited, but, yeah, sure.
Weird - Keith Mitchell. I like him, but why?
8. Weird, pointless stat of the week
If I gave you a hundred guesses, you wouldn't be able to name the current 2026 PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Approach. Go ahead, take 100 tries. I'll wait patiently.
Done? It's Jason Dufner. This is based on exactly one (1) measured round at The American Express, where he missed the cut, so it's even more pointless than usual. But still: Jason Dufner!
9. How do feel about Rory now?
Like Fleetwood, Rory McIlroy is making his 2026 American debut at Pebble, and it seems like we're in an interesting place with him. Despite Scottie having an objectively better 2025, last year was Rory's year. He had the best story by far at Augusta, then he got petulant for a while afterward, and then he was front and center for enduring the treatment of the miserable drunks at Bethpage. Now that the dust has settled a little bit, what comes next? The will-he/won't-he drama of getting another major is over, the career slam is complete, and in theory our tumultuous relationship with Rory could enter a period of stasis, perhaps even serenity.
In reality, though, Rory seems perpetually to find a way to become the biggest story, and I don't expect 2026 to be any different. I don't know how it's going to happen, only that it will happen, which is kind of exciting its own right. All of which is to say, watch this space, and please note that I made the most obvious prediction of all-time: Something wild will happen with Rory before Augusta.
P.S., would you believe Rory has only played at the AT&T three times? Once in 2018, when he was cut, and then only after they made it a signature event in 2024 and 2025 (when he won). Considering that he's also played in two U.S. Opens here and there's another coming in 2027, he must have really hated the pro-am aspect to skip it so routinely. If so, he wasn't alone.
10. One normie pick, one weird pick
The regular pick is Scottie Scheffler, because what else am I supposed to do? But the "weird" pick, which may be all that weird, is Jason Day. It feels like he barely exists anymore in The Discourse since he hasn't won in almost three years, but he's still right there at 34th in the world rankings, and it's ridiculous how consistent he's been at Pebble, with seven top-10s since 2015 and no worse finish than T-24. He's done everything except win, so why not?
More from Golfpocalypse:
The Internet Invitational was a story about fathers: Good, bad, and toxic
I've arrived at the brutal crossroads of the mediocre recreational golfer
Playing golf in bad weather is a mental paradise
I will no longer be entering nine-hole rounds, GHIN, and you can't make me
Rory's Masters win was the ultimate "dudes crying" moment in golf
Sympathize with Rory, because choking sucks