Charlie Woods’ heartfelt letter to Tiger, PGA Tour CEO thoughts

Welcome! Where are you, you ask. I’m calling this the Weekend 9. Think of it as a spot to warm you up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We’ll have thoughts. We’ll have tips. We’ll have tweets. But just nine in all, though sometimes maybe more and sometimes maybe less. As for who I am? The paragraphs below tell some of the story. I can be reached at nick.piastowski@golf.com.

For a few minutes, he listened to how great the U.S. Open was because of its ability to test a player. But then the man seated to my right wondered:

Why not play it every week? 

Not at Oakmont, he said at a presentation we were at Thursday night. But he asked why couldn’t this week’s Travelers Championship, for example, have the Open’s knee-high rough and zero-inch-high greens, along with other score-busting defenses. The man also said he was mostly unfamiliar with the pro game, so he hoped for forgiveness if his question sounded funky — and those in the know, of course, can offer some answers, among them being that the U.S. Open, as a major, should be special, and you’d think the pros wouldn’t appreciate the weekly slaughter. But all of it did get me thinking, especially this week, when there is such a contrast between the high-scoring Open and the typically low-scoring Travelers:

What do you, the golf fan, prefer more: pros looking like world-beaters, or pros being brought to their knees?

Of course, the answer can certainly be that you like a little of both, or that a low score sometimes doesn’t fully reflect a course’s difficulty, as the best in the world are the best in the world for a reason: They’re really freaking good, no matter the park. Earlier this week, Scottie Scheffler said as much, when asked if TPC River Highlands, the Travelers’ host, was too easy.

His answer was somewhat lengthy. 

“Golf’s funny in that sense,” he said. “People, when they watch golf, it’s not like other sports where you want us to look like y’all when we play golf. It’s one of those funny things. You watch the NBA, and you’re like, I wish they couldn’t dunk, I wish they were scoring less, I wish their shooting percentage was lower on 3-pointers. If you watch tennis, you’re like, man, I wish the ball was going slower so they look like me out there playing tennis. It’s not like that.

“As much as some people want us to feel like them, professional golf is different than amateur golf. We get a lot of time to prepare to go out and play. The guys out here are really good at golf. If you stand here on the driving range and watch a range session, that ball doesn’t go offline very often.

“I think sometimes, especially in this day and age, people get way too caught up in the winning score being what is a proper test. I think a proper test is good shots being rewarded and bad shots being punished. I think this is one of the best golf courses for that.”

Scheffler then reviewed a few of Highlands’ holes. 

“There’s opportunity out there, and there’s also punishment,” he said. “You look at the closing stretch. Fifteen, if you hit a good shot, you’ve got a birdie opportunity; if you try to bail out right, you’re going to be in a bunker short right of the green and have a 40-yard bunker shot, a hard shot. Sixteen, if you hit a good shot, you’re going to have a good look at birdie; if you bail out and go long, it’s a tough chip down the hill. Seventeen, you hit the fairway, you have a chance to hit in there close to the pin; if you hit it in the left rough, you probably can’t get to the green. That’s what we look for in golf courses, in terms of you want good shots to be rewarded and bad shots to be punished. It’s as simple as that.

“The winning score, I think people get way too caught up in. I’m not saying necessarily that even-par is a bad winning score. Some weeks like the U.S. Open, you hit two great shots and you’re going to get rewarded with a par. That’s fine. That’s good, too.

“Across the board, the way we get tested in professional golf is very good. We play different types of golf courses, different types of grass, we play different types of winning scores. We just see different tests, and I think not one is better than the other.

“The most frustrating thing for me when I play a golf tournament is when you see good shots not getting rewarded and bad shots not being punished properly. That’s all we look for. Do we care that 22-under wins this week? No.

“I played good last year, and if they somehow change it to 12-under by making the pins in silly spots and doing things to trick up the golf course, what we want is a fair test. I think having birdies at the end sometimes is a pretty exciting finish. That’s really all there is to it.”

But again, what do you think? My email address is in the first paragraph. 

Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the Weekend 9. 

One takeaway from the week — and for the weeks ahead

2. This week, we were introduced to Brian Rolapp, the PGA Tour’s new CEO, and while opinions on his performance won’t be fully formed for some time, we can judge his first public words, which can accomplish a number of things. They can inspire. Or they can bore. They can agenda-set. Or they can ramble. They can be warm. Or they can be cold. They can intimidate. Or they can embrace. 

Here’s a sampling of some of the back-and-forth, with reporter questions in italics, followed by Rolapp answers and some thoughts:

What is the priority in — one of the big topics of golf the last three years has been the fractured nature and trying to pull it back together?

“Yeah, I think everyone is talking about that. My view is I come in with a pretty clean sheet of paper. I also come in knowing that there’s a lot to learn. Everything that works in the football world may not work in the golf world. When it comes to that situation particularly, I think the fans have been pretty clear. They want to see the best golfers competing against each other. I think as a golf fan. I agree with that. When it comes to the situation with LIV, I think that’s a complex situation that’s probably something I should learn more about before I speak. But I will say my focus is on growing the Tour, making it better and really moving on from the position of strength that it has.

The takeaway: He named LIV out loud. But he was vague. 

Roger Goodell signed through ’27, no imminent signs of slowing down on his end, but your name in the media has been mentioned as being on the short list of potential names to consider as far as the next NFL commissioner. Why was now the right time for you to change leagues and step into this new role at the PGA Tour?

“Well, I loved working at the NFL. I’ve learned a ton from Roger. He’s been my boss for a long time and a mentor for a long time. I felt for me, again, a lot of people focus on who the next commissioner is. I don’t. I focus on the job I have.

“I was just really drawn to the opportunity here. Again, I mentioned and I said this to the players, when you’re in the seat I’ve been in for a while, you get to look at a lot of different opportunities, and they don’t come up — unique ones don’t come up very often. This one did, and it was a chance to really do something different and help grow a game and a sport that I love.

“That’s really where my focus is, is the PGA Tour, and I’m really excited about it.”

The takeaway: I think this is one of the most interesting questions: Why did he leave?

Do you think that in terms of the PIF negotiations, do you think from what you’ve seen from the PGA Tour that the Tour can go on without a deal with the Public Investment Fund?

“Again, I’m not close enough to any of those discussions, but I will say what I saw regardless of that is a very strong Tour. I see a strong product. I see strong golfers. I think the Signature Events have been a huge and important progression in the sport. So I see strength that — just don’t take my word for it, look at the underlying fundamentals; they’re strong.

“I think that really speaks to some of the changes that have been made in the last few years.”

The takeaway: Rolapp didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. 

When this kind of leaked last week, there were some people on Twitter pointing out you don’t have a golf handicap. In your open letter today, you said you love golf and you play golf. If you would give us a little more detail.

Yeah, my golf history — first of all, my first job in high school, I worked at the turn at a country club in Washington, D.C. area, Congressional Country Club. That’s where I got gas money. So that’s how I was actually introduced to the game, on employee day actually learning to play golf.

“I skipped quite a bit of classes in college playing, and then career and family started, and I took a long time off from the game because my career, my family got in the way a bit, but I’ve taken it up in recent years ago.

“I have four children. Three of my boys love to play. I really love being out there with them. There’s very few times when you get four hours with your kids, and I don’t know if they like it because they get lots of questions. So I play. I probably play maybe five to 10 rounds a year. Not as much as I would like to.

“I will say you would have to ask the board and search committee. No one hired me for my golf game here. That’s not my job. My job is to do other things. But I’m a big fan of the sport.”

The takeaway: This wasn’t robotic. 

Another takeaway from the week — and for the weeks ahead

3. Fields Ranch East at PGA Frisco, steps away from the PGA of America’s headquarters, is making its major championship debut this weekend with the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, and the reviews should be worth watching, as the facility should be in line for multiple PGAs. (It already is hosting the 2027 and 2034 men’s PGAs, and the 2031 women’s PGA.) 

One exchange in particular was making the rounds, though, with reporter questions in italics.

I was going to ask you, you will be playing in more heat tomorrow. Is that going to be a challenge for golfers?

“Yeah, I definitely think it’s going to be a challenge,” Angel Yin said. “It’s going to be good golf-wise because the ball will fly further and make the course a little bit shorter. I like playing on faster greens so I’m going to like that.

“And then, yeah, it’s going to be a battle of hydration and keeping focus. Because this golf course is quite boring, so…

What do you mean?

“That’s what I mean,” Yin said. “It’s just kind of repetitive and there are challenges, but it’s very subtle. Stepping up on the tee — what did I start on? — the back nine gets really repetitive on the tee.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s not something that’s controversial. I was shocked. Did I say something that’s going to drop the bomb? Maybe Gil’s [designer Gil Hanse] going to give me a call. ‘How dare you trash on my golf course.’”

Boring is not bad.

“It’s just the way it is,” Yin said. “It’s little challenges and I think that’s also a challenging part.”

Best instruction tip for your weekend 

4. Scheffler, after his Travelers first round, said that his second shot on the par-5 13th hole was “pretty much exactly what I was trying to do” — which led to a reporter asking how often that happens. 

“Very rarely throughout a tournament do you hit one exactly how I intend to,” Scheffler said, “and that was one of the few.”

So if the world No. 1 doesn’t hit ’em all on the screws …  

A golf tweet that may interest only me 

5. The tweet below, which I saw on the Ping account, was interesting. Below that tweet is an explanation of what happened. 

Where I’m playing golf next week

11. Let’s do 11 items! I’m off to Vegas in a few days, and I’ll be playing two or three rounds. I have a new swing thought, too. Watch out. 

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