Fred Couples’ Ryder Cup change and my favorite ghost story

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.

Aaron Rai believed in ghosts. 

I was thinking back on that last weekend, when Rai won the DP World Tour’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship and folks learned more about the gentlemanly Englishman. His story is a good one, too, and on Instagram earlier this week, GOLF’s Dylan Dethier wonderfully gave all the reasons why. There’s an intellectualness to him. He’s a thinker.  

And that came across a couple of years ago as we walked down the 7th fairway at Oak Hill and talked about Buffalo Bill — who has been dead for over 100 years, but perhaps occasionally still visited a stream that cuts through the hole. 

I’d learned that as part of our staff’s preparation for the 2023 PGA Championship held at Oak Hill, then I kept digging. For a few years, Bill Cody lived near the course in Rochester, N.Y., But maybe kept returning. The club’s one-time historian, who I’d been told was a no-nonsense person, once wrote this:

“Some say there are ghosts at Oak Hill! 

“Walk down No. 7 fairway on a warm summer night, for instance. Huddled on the creek bank, they say, if you look closely, you may chance to see the dim silhouette of some fishing. Look more closely, and you may be able to discern a large rakish hat, a flowing mustache, and perhaps even boots. 

“That’s Buffalo Bill, they say. The sharpshooting Wild West showman who used to hunt and fish on these grounds back in the 1870s. … 

“William F. Cody, better known as ‘Buffalo Bill’ for his amazing skill with a rifle, spent his early years as a rugged frontiersman of the American West. In the 1870s, however, he brought his family to Rochester to live. 

“While here, the grounds that were later to become today’s Oak Hill were Buffalo Bill’s favorite hunting and fishing spot. At that time, he also was already active in his famous Wild West shows. 

“Although Buffalo Bill’s grave is on Lookout Mountain in Colorado, three of his family are buried in Rochester’s Mt. Hope Cemetery. 

“Should we really wonder at all that he may still be visiting Rochester now and then, and walking the green grass of Oak Hill’s beautiful fairways … when the nights are warm and still.” 

What a story! 

I called a pair of Buffalo Bill museums. I talked to a psychic medium in Rochester — and she taught me how to summon ghosts. I talked to Oak Hill’s current club historian, who agreed to walk down to the 7th with me when I got to the course. I also talked to a couple of players about it all, and mostly everyone shrugged me off when they learned I was writing about a potential visitor from the great beyond. 

Then there was Rai. 

Two days before the PGA, he was playing the 7th. I approached. 

Aaron, hey, this is Nick from GOLF.com. Can I walk with you a bit?

I could. 

OK, this will be the strangest question you’ll be asked all week, but … do you believe in ghosts?

He did. His reasoning was deep. “I think a ghost is also a spirit,” Rai said. “I think all living things have some kind of spirit. I just believe that; there’s more to living beings than just our physical form.”

We kept walking. I filled him in about Buffalo Bill. We reached the water. I delivered the words that the psychic medium told me. 

Nothing. 

At that point, I thanked Rai for his time and wanted to wish him well —but he interrupted me. 

He asked if he could try to summon the ghost. 

Yes, yes you can!

So he tried. Nothing again, unfortunately. I reached out my hand to shake his — but he wasn’t done. 

He wanted to know if we both could try. 

Yes, yes we can! 

And we did. But no Buffalo Bill. After this attempt, I thanked him repeatedly, and he was on his way.   

And I had the lead of my story two years ago. And today. 

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

One takeaway for the weekend 

2. Is this week’s Annika tournament the most talked-about LPGA event of the year? 

Yes, it seems like it. 

Could it be the most important, though?

One of the golf side of things, hell no. There are the majors. There’s next week’s big-money CME Group Tour Championship. The schedule is filled with meaningful tournaments. 

But there’s buzz this week. How many words and videos did you see of Wednesday’s pro-am featuring basketball superstar Caitlin Clark? How many sights and sounds will you see over the coming days from Kai Trump, the granddaughter of the president who received a sponsor invite to the Annika? 

How many new folks will be curious about everyone else? Maybe a few. 

Maybe they’ll stick around, too. 

Because the golf alone should be enough to get you to tune in. 

3. I thought it was strange, though, that you could see only about a half-hour of Trump’s play during Thursday’s broadcast. 

Another takeaway for the weekend 

4. On SiriusXM’s “Katrek and Maginnes On Tap” show this week, Fred Couples had a suggestion for the Ryder Cup.  

There needs to be fewer people near the players. 

“I know that’s really selfish to say, and it’s all that I know,” Couples said on the show. “I know that when I go play at Augusta, even after ’92 when I won, you go out Saturday and Sunday, you don’t want your car full of 10 people. You’re driving to the course, I want to go on my own terms, the car comes back, it picks everyone else up. I don’t want to say hi to 400 people, I don’t want to be in line at breakfast. I want to go with my partner. Let’s say I was playing with Davis Love in 1993, but I don’t want to be around a lot of people. And at the Ryder Cup, we’re around a lot of people.

“The answer is, so are they. There are team dinners, there’s a big dinner where you put a tuxedo on, and all that — that’s part of life. But I think in the team rooms, I would really like to just see the 12 guys and maybe even their caddies, but there’s no real reason for the caddie to be in there unless he’s telling them, hey, in my locker I got my rain gear, it looks like it’s going to rain. I just think less is more to these players. When they go play in the majors, they don’t have people around them. And I think in the Ryder Cup, you just have too much around you, and I think it’s upsetting. 

“And then when you get behind, then guess what happens? Everyone pats you on the back; ‘we’re going to get them today.’ You’re not going to get them today unless you go out and get them. I’m not a rah-rah guy, never have been. The Presidents Cup is much, much, much easier to run than the Ryder Cup for a captain. But I just feel like there’s so much sensation of it’s a rah-rah thing, and I just don’t see it — I see it as golf.”

Couples then had a thought on the crowds.  

“I think it got out of control in New York. I wish, let’s just say you and I were golf fans and we went to New York to watch. Fifty-thousand people watching four groups? It’s impossible. And you say, well, how do we do? There wasn’t 50,000 people when I played, and they made money, and they did great. Now it’s a cash cow, but you don’t need 50,000 people watching four groups of golf. 

“It’s impossible to see; it takes the sting away.” 

You can listen to the complete show here. 

One more takeaway for the weekend 

5. Ahead of this week’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship, Sahith Theegala was asked for a memory of his grouping in 2021 with Brian Morris, a Bermuda pro who died in 2023 due to cancer — and Theegala shared this story of the colorful player. 

“Well, he said some words that I can’t repeat here, but one of the statements was — it just made me laugh. He was talking about, hey, man — this was like early on in the time. Like I didn’t know how to bring up the cancer with him, but at some point I was just like I’m just going to talk about it, he seemed so chill. 

“Like, ‘Man, how’s it been, how’s everyone treating you, like what’s your prognosis?’ 

“He’s like, ‘S**t, Sahith, now that I have cancer I can say whatever the F I want, I can do whatever I want, I can ask for something. 

“In the darkest times of his life and I’m sure those around him, he’s able to be — still show his humorous side and never took it for granted every day that he still had a life. There was a lot moments like that out there. 

“He hit some — he whiffed a few shots, and the first thing, he put his hand around me and just gave me a hug. He’s like, ‘Sahith, F this game, man, it’s the worst game ever.’ 

“But he also said multiple times it’s the best game ever and golf has saved his life pretty much. I think he attributes a lot of his kind of just relationships that he made through golf and why he felt like he was so lucky in his life.”

A tweet that interests me 

6. I thought the tweet below was interesting. 

One non-golf story 

11. Doesn’t the Weekend 9 typically appear on Fridays? It does. So why Thursday? Because, over the weekend, I’m visiting a couple of colleges with my nephew. 

Please feel free to email me conversation topics for the 10-plus hours we’ll be in a car. 

“>