Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where we’re getting ready to explain the difference between “PGA” and “PGA Tour” for the next six days. Silly sport. To the news …
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Going right to left.
When is a five-foot birdie putt something much, much more? When you add some important context.
Below you’ll find a five-footer posted by golf writer Rob Hernandez. It’s a birdie putt. In a 5-for-1 playoff. For this Arizona site’s final qualifying spot. For the biggest event on the LPGA schedule, the U.S. Women’s Open at Erin Hills next month.
But here’s the thing: that’s a 5-time major champ holing that left-handed putt. And she’s a right-handed golfer. With the yips.
Rewind nearly two decades and you’ll recall that Yani Tseng was a prodigy. Between 2008 and 2011, she won five majors — all before she’d turned 23. She spent two years as World No. 1. Expectations went through the roof. But then, simply put, golf got hard. There was talk of a “slump” as early as 2012, and it’s safe to say a lot has happened in the 13-plus seasons since that last major. Tseng’s most recent battle is with the yips, which is why in her latest comeback she has flipped sides to become a left-handed putter. She freely admitted as much in an interview with Golfweek‘s Beth Ann Nichols last month. “To be honest, I had the yips. I just couldn’t make the short putts,” she said.
So making a short putt to advance to the biggest tournament in women’s golf is very cool. It’s a testament to her resilience. Because I can only imagine how easy the game felt when she was racking up majors in her early 20s. And I can only imagine how hard the game must have felt in the years since, and how jarring it must be for a pro who has been to the mountaintop to admit that hey, I can’t do this. But now she is doing it, in a new way, and Tseng will play the U.S. Women’s Open for the first time since 2016 — the year her game began to disappear.
Now, if you really want to dream: Tseng is missing just one major in her quest for the career Grand Slam: this one, the U.S. Women’s Open (ignoring, for our purposes, the new-school Evian). She’s 36 — the same age as Rory McIlroy, who completed his own grand slam by winning the Masters last month after a drought of more than a decade. She was watching; she posted a photo of Rory afterward, and wrote this, roughly translated:
“Rory has waited 11 years. He tells us with his actions that we should never give up our dreams. As long as you persevere, spring will eventually come.”
Tseng probably won’t win the U.S. Women’s Open. But she has gone to the game’s highest peaks and gone deepest trenches — which means that it’s cool to see her keep going.
Who won the week?
Sepp Straka won the Truist Championship at Philadelphia Cricket Club, the biggest title of his life. With the win came a check for $3.6 million as well as a one-of-one cricket-bat trophy; the tournament is expected to return to Quail Hollow in Charlotte, N.C., next season.
Jeeno Thitikul won for the first time on the LPGA Tour this season, although she’d already logged four top-fives; her four-shot victory at the Mizuho Americas Open inched her that much closer to World No. 1 Nelly Korda.
“I’m just trying to do my part. I’m just trying to improve myself every day,” Thitikul said, getting sentimental. “Winning or not, I’m just — I think the real win that I have, it’s all the people around me.”
Ryan Fox won the PGA Tour’s additional event, the Myrtle Beach Classic, with a chip-in on the first playoff hole. It doubled as a present for his wife.
“On Friday I said, ‘What can I get you for Mother’s Day?’ She goes, ‘Well, a trophy would be nice.’ I guess I lived up to my end of the bargain there.”
Martin Couvra, a 22-year-old French DP World Tour rookie, won for the first time at the Turkish Airlines Open thanks to a final-round 64. He started the day four shots back but surged past the rest of the field with a flurry of front-nine birdies.
Lucas Herbert won the International Series event in Japan, firing a final-round 64 to finish five shots clear of the field. Per DataGolf, Herbert — who plays mostly on LIV — will be the best player in the world not invited to this week’s PGA Championship; DG has Herbert at No. 31 in its ranking, although he’s just No. 167 in the OWGR.
And Sophia Popov won the Carlisle Arizona Women’s Golf Classic on the Epson Tour, a meaningful Mother’s Day victory with her father on the bag and in front of her two-year-old daughter Maya. It was her first win since the 2020 AIG Women’s Open.
But not losers, either.
Shane Lowry has been playing ridiculously consistent high-level golf. Since the BMW Championship in August of last year he’s played 18 individual events (including a handful on the DP World Tour) and logged 15 top-20s — although I’m not sure he would have been comforted by that as he walked off 18 after a brilliant approach followed by a deflating three-putt that left him T2. He’s up to a career-best No. 10 in the OWGR.
Justin Thomas finished T2 alongside Lowry, his third top-two finish in four starts. Patrick Cantlay’s T4 finish was his highest finish since T3 at last year’s U.S. Open. Tommy Fleetwood’s T4 was his best result since a T3 at last year’s Masters. Cameron Young’s T7 was his best result since last summer. And Rory McIlroy’s ho-hum T7 was just the latest in a string of high finishes for the World No. 2.
Another one-off looper win.
Beware the short-term caddie… Sepp Straka’s fill-in Drew Mathers was a last-minute add to the team when Straka’s usual guy Duane Bock went out with an injury last week. It’s not just that Mathers, a mini-tour pro who plays with Straka at home in Birmingham, Ala., had never caddied on the PGA Tour. He’d barely even seen a PGA Tour event; he could remember just one day of tournament golf he’d been to in person. Whatever his winner’s fee (it could presumably be split with Bock), it’ll help with Q-School.
