Wyndham Clark’s funny admission, Scottie Scheffler’s unpleasant condition and Bryson DeChambeau’s cryptic LIV message

Welcome to another edition of The Grind, where we are actually going to miss LIV, or, at least, LIV 1.0. Not the actual golf part of it—although Anthony Kim’s comeback was awesome—or the whole sportswashing angle of it, but the stuff around it; the feuds between LIV and PGA Tour guys, the cringy, forced talking points like “Grow the game” and “Long LIV Golf,” and the viral moments like Bryson being clotheslined by a gallery rope.

Bryson also shot 58 once to win a tournament by draining a bomb on the final hole, but 10 times as many people will remember him losing to that rope. Sorry, Bryson. Heck, just in the final week, Bryson had a reporter shooed off the range, Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood exchanged daggers through the media and there was a report that Sergio Garcia’s Masters temper tantrum was the final straw for the Saudi PIF pulling its funding. This league! The Grind revolves around content and you could count on LIV to at least deliver on that front. Whether LIV 2.0 will continue that—or continue at all—remains to be seen. In the meantime, let’s chat about everything else going on in the world of golf.

WE’RE BUYING

Wyndham Clark: And just like that, we have a PGA Tour Player of the Year race again! A week after Scottie Scheffler’s eight-shot win in Memphis, Clark put forth his own dominant effort in St. Louis, although. Things did get a little tense on Sunday when playing partner Rory McIlroy pulled even, but Clark pulled away at the BMW Championship like, well, a BMW to win his third event of the season.

And in my mind, he’s in pole position for POY heading into the Tour Championship with more wins—and more majors—than Scottie this season, with a few others chasing. Regardless, if there was a second half POY Award, Wyndham would have already wrapped that up.

Miyu Yamashita: Now this one had absolutely no drama. The 25-year-old won the CPKC Women’s Open in Canada by NINE shots and tied an LPGA 72-hole scoring record along the way with a 257 total.

Yamashita also became the fastest Japanese golfer to reach four LPGA Tour titles, doing it in only 42 starts. “I was nervous,” Yamashita told Golf Channel after the final round. “I trusted my game and my shot and my swing.” She only shot 66 on Sunday, her worst score of the week, so I guess she really was nervous despite the huge lead.

The PGA Tour’s upcoming changes: Some of these proposed changes have been rumored for a while, but they became official on Tuesday. Or, at least, their proposals became official on Tuesday. The tour will be divided into two concurrent series (Championship and Challenger) and the postseason will undergo a major facelift. Most notably, the Tour Championship will become a two-week match-play event. This video does a great job explaining it all:

Now I’m not the biggest match-play proponent, however, the PGA Tour’s season finale has never quite figured it out with all the changes through the years so I’m not opposed to giving this a try. Especially if it means the tour can go to non-traditional venues like my personal New York favorite Sleepy Hollow as reported. Imagine how long the merch line will be if that happens?!

WE’RE SELLING

This penalty: I know rules are rules and they’re what separate us from the animals and all that, but this was a TWO-SHOT penalty on Shaun Norris?! Kicking away a poorly replaced divot?!

That seems downright cruel. Even worse was the fact Norris was co-leading the event when it happened. He wound up finishing in a tie for seventh place and you can’t tell me this ruling wasn’t a big reason why. That’s rough.

That Good Good/Callaway ad: But not as rough as this. The popular YouTube Golf channel Good Good Golf, which is hosting a PGA Tour fall event, did a partnership with Callaway and released an ad in which its biggest star, Garrett Clark, tackles a female golfer attempting to try his new driver. If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed that this saw the light of day.

Making matters worse were the inadequate apologies initially released by both, although, at least, the video was quickly taken down. Better apologies came a couple days later, but clearly, the damage was already done. We’ll have to see if the Good Good brand can overcome its bad bad judgement.

Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease: Scottie Scheffler revealed he contracted a "painful" case of this leading into the BMW Championship which made that Thursday round in which he was all the way at the bottom of the leaderboard at one point makes a lot more sense.

I got this disease when we took the kids to Disney World a few years back and there was a 12-hour period where I legit thought I was dying. And that was followed by a few weeks of gnarly blisters, mostly on my hands, which required me to wear gloves just to type. In other words, Scottie’s T-12 might be more impressive than any of his wins. And you can now add another statistical category that he leads the PGA Tour in: strokes gained blisters.

ON TAP

The PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup Playoffs conclude with the Tour Championship, AKA the event that also determines the FedEx Cup, AKA that event that used to feature a staggered start, AKA that event that still features the biggest tournament purse of the year. That last part might not feel as big with the FedEx Cup bonus money actually being paid out after last week and Scottie Scheffler taking home an additional $23 million—in addition to the $10 million bonus he got for being No. 1 in the standings during the regular season. But it’s still $40 million up for grabs among only 30 players this week. And we had Larry of Tom & Marty's Golf Twitter fame on this week's episode of The Loop podcast to make picks and roast our Chris Powers.

Electric stuff.

Random tournament fact: This is the 20th year that the Tour Championship has served as the conclusion of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Tiger Woods won the first year (2007) under this format. By eight shots. For the youngsters reading this, he was the Scottie Scheffler of his day.

RANDOM PROP BETS OF THE WEEK

—Scottie Scheffler will finish DFL this week: 10 MILLION-to-1-odds

—Scottie Scheffler will win this week: 3-to-1 odds

—Scottie Scheffler will wash his hands more going forward: LOCK

TWEET OF THE WEEK

This should also be the video of the week, but I loved the tweet as well:

Blockie! The ultimate showman! And how about that T-5? He’s a legit PGA Tour Champions stud.

PHOTO(S) OF THE WEEK

Bryson DeChambeau signed off from LIV 1.0 with a trip down memory lane and this cryptic message:

“It was a good run.” Now, he also said something “fun” is coming during his post-round interview on Sunday. Anyway, we’ll see. At this point, it seems like if there is a LIV 2.0 it will revolve more around Bryson than even the first version.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK

In the meantime, Bryson continues to make entertaining YouTube content:

That's a pretty wild birdie.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK (TOURNAMENT DIVISION)

Frank Nobilo didn’t seem thrilled by how Wyndham Clark addressed this shot:

It doesn’t look that bad to me, but this also isn’t the first such video involving Clark this year. And it makes that Shaun Norris penalty seem even crazier. Regardless, Golf Twitter—and Frank Nobilo—will be watching Wyndham like a hawk going forward.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK (ARCHIVE DIVISION)

This one always pops up on the timeline during Tour Championship week:

And I watch it every time.

THIS WEEK IN CELEBRITY GOLFERS

The PGA Tour and LeBron James are joining forces on a new event that will bring the tour (sort of) back to Firestone:

Has a celebrity golfer ever impacted the game this quickly? Impressive stuff from King James.

THIS WEEK IN PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION

Wyndham and Emily Tanner celebrated their latest win together:

The win also came just three days after Emily announced on Instagram (in a paid partnership ad, of course) that she was moving in with Clark. “I am so excited that I finally get to live with my best friend and start our new chapter together.” Aww. Which leads us to this funny admission from Wyndham . . .

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Fortunately, I've got a great girlfriend I can hang out with. And she distracts me, and keeps me from worrying about what's going on, and I stay in the present. So she helps a lot.” —Wyndham Clark. That’s great, Wyndham. Although, maybe she distracted you a bit too much on Sunday.

THIS AND THAT

Congrats to Scott Jamieson on earning his second DP World Tour event nearly 14 years after his maiden one. If Scottie Scheffler happens to be reading, now that’s a long winless drought. . . . Congrats to South Carolina QB LaNorris Sellers on having zero classes and one internship at a driving range during his senior year. Talk about a dream schedule. . . . Brad Faxon’s former Rhode Island home mansion compound sold after being listed for $13 million:

I guess the saying "Drive for show, putt for dough" still applies to some golfers. . . . And, finally, we’ve reached the take-your-kids-to-work part of the summer because camps and vacations are over: