The Grill Room – LIV: May it rest in pieces

Writing from Town and Country, Missouri

Sunday, August 23, 2026

The idea was interesting to start with. A new series of golf tournaments combining individual and team play, ideally co-existing with the PGA Tour and European (now DPWorld) Tour. The Premier Golf League, it was dubbed.

Cooked up by some Londoners, all they needed was cash and players – and deals with the existing tours to squeeze into the calendar – to get it off the ground.

They almost got the cash. The Saudis were interested, then decided to steal the idea for themselves. Cash would be no problem as long as the world needed oil.

Players? They brought in Greg Norman, who a generation earlier floated the idea of a world tour, nearly got fellow Australian Rupert Murdoch to buy in, and then was shot down cold by Arnold Palmer in a meeting at the Shark Shootout. This time, Norman would be the front man, the recruiter.

Norman did reasonably well. Phil Mickelson was the first to jump, followed by Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Bryson DeChambeau and a host of other lesser lights. The last big get was Jon Rahm. Name players, major winners, but not all of them, and a Saudi study early on concluded that the new golf league would only stand a chance of succeeding if the top 12 in the world all signed up.

Rory McIlroy did not. Nor Scottie Scheffler. Neither did Tiger Woods, whose beat-up body has prevented him from playing just about anywhere in the 2020s anyway.

Deals with the existing tours? Well, Jay Monahan never returned the phone calls to Ponte Vedra Beach.

Undeterred, the Saudis took the LIV Golf League to the fairways anyway, with lavish hospitality construction on each course, eye-popping purses and a roster of players notable and not who signed for bonuses, some mere advances against purses, some nine figures and directly deposited in advance, some in installments.

The people responded. By yawning. Oh, on site, some tournaments drew good galleries. The opener in London was well-attended. The four years in Chicago – two at quirky Rich Harvest Farms, two at pedestrian Bolingbrook Golf Club – brought out golf-starved crowds large enough to look good on television. The first Saturday at Bolingbrook, 15,000 showed up, the second time, 18,000. There was fun to be had.

Many other weeks, you could fire a shotgun down the gallery ropes and not hit anyone. (Maybe that’s why there were shotgun starts.) The home tournament in Saudi Arabia didn’t pack in the locals, even played in the evening, out of the searing sun. Stops in Florida were greeted with indifference, whether at Doral, a Dick Wilson-Joe Lee layout outside of Miami that has had more facelifts than a Palm Beach dowager, or Orange County near Orlando, where a productive orange grove was sacrificed to create 18 uncreative holes.

At those stops, there wasn’t a need for crowd control, because there was no crowd.

There was also no television money to speak of.

Television, especially American television, you may have heard, is the mother’s milk of sport. It finances the Olympics, the NFL, every other alphabet league, professional and collegiate, you can think of, and golf – the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the LPGA, that is.

If you don’t have American TV money, you don’t have a chance. In 2022, LIV’s first year, it had exactly one station in North America carrying the action: CHCH-TV, good ol’ Channel 11 in Hamilton, Ont. A two-year deal with the CW followed, and the last two years, Fox and its cable networks have picked up the LIV world feed.

But what didn’t follow was the big money. As best as can be determined, this was a revenue sharing deal. If Fox sold commercial time and people watched, LIV would get a cut.

Judging by the number of ads and the ratings, it was a pretty thin slice.

Even with format changes – four rounds instead of three, limited season qualifying – and some feel-good stories, notably the return of Anthony Kim to the game, and in Adelaide, Australia, to the winner’s circle, LIV just didn’t move the needle. Talor Gooch won four times and is still a household name only in his own household. The same goes for Branden Grace, Eugeni Chacarra and Dean Bermester, each a winner once.

And the team golf? If you can name the four members of Stinger, call the producers of Jeopardy! and see if you can play.

LIV has about five guys people want to see, and one is Rahm, who appears to be pulling the ripcord on this golf Hindenburg before it hits the ground. Given the Saudi financial pullout, which prompted the cancellation of a stop in New Orleans and next week’s original team finale in Michigan, maybe those five guys should open a burger joint. But the name has been taken.

Rahm, along with Bryson DeChambeau, is tied for 10th going into the final round of LIV’s stop near Indianapolis this weekend, three strokes behind leader Michael La Sasso, who won the 2025 NCAA Championship and has since faded into obscurity.

In contrast, Sunday’s final round of the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club features current (and two-time) U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark being chased by current (and twice-consecutive) Masters champion and career Grand Slammer Rory McIlroy, neither of whom are obscure.

McIlroy, against LIV from the start, said this when asked if the potential return of LIV’s star players to the Tour would enhance the Tour’s standing: “I would argue, have they brought value to LIV?”

Ouch.

And then this: “This is the best platform for the top professional golfers in the world.

“Were there some things at the start of LIV that the PGA Tour could have done better? Sure. You think back to the start with Phil unhappy with some stuff or whatever it was. Like, surely that just warranted a conversation instead of blowing the entire professional game up and doing something else. I've always felt like this is the best place to play professional golf. And I'm pretty sure if the PGA Tour were handed six billion dollars it would have done a better job with it.”

LIV boss Scott O’Neil has been showing around potential financial savior Ted Goldthorpe this week at LIV’s dance at The Club at Chatham Hills. Presumably their ride didn’t get lost, like a media bus did on Thursday. But if Goldthorpe, who heads venture capital outlet BC Partners, looks around, then looks again at the balance sheet, he’ll be smart if he tells O’Neil to get lost. As expected, the term sheet Goldthorpe signed isn’t a contract but a window of exclusive financial data access and negotiating time.

The guess here is when the final putt falls at Chatham Hills this afternoon, the curtain will soon follow. LIV will have lasted LXII tournaments – 62 if you’re not into Roman numerals. 

Meanwhile, the PGA Tour rolls on, at Bellerive this week where the BMW will bring in millions for the Evans Scholars Foundation and where the weekend was sold out. The Tour has a new driver in CEO Brian Rolapp and now has the burden of turning a profit for the outside investors brought on at the height of the conflict to help match the LIV purses. If LIV has a legacy, that will be it, of overturning the old ways of the PGA Tour by threatening it with competition.

How the Tour can untangle itself from the complicated process of running non-profit tournaments with for-profit investors expecting a return on their $1.5 billion investment, we know not. But Rolapp is a crafty one and may figure it out. He comes from the NFL, where the perennially-popular Green Bay Packers are a community non-profit enterprise.

No matter what, even with the revamped multi-tier schedule coming in 2028, the Tour will be here, and on your television screen. LIV, probably not. The word when it started was the Saudis would give their experiment five years to break even. It didn’t.

To quote an old pal, Bob Verdi, who said it first about the World Hockey Association: LIV Golf, 2022-2026. May it rest in pieces.

– Tim Cronin

Clark threatens to make it a runaway

Writing from Town and Country, Missouri

Saturday, August 22, 2026

Wyndham Clark, who leads the BMW Championship by five strokes entering the final round at Bellerive Country Club, says he has trouble sleeping on a lead.

Really? In June, he led the U.S. Open by six after 54 holes and hung on to win by one.

In 2024 at Pebble Beach, he led the AT&T (nee Crosby) National Pro-Am by a stroke after 54 holes and had to sleep on the lead two nights before classic Crosby weather wiped out the final round.

This would seem to be old hat to him. How soft will the pillow be tonight, Wyndham?

“I always sleep good, but it's more the angst when you wake up,” Clark said. “That's usually when I feel it. You wake up and you have that little pit in your stomach, you're excited to go play, and you wish you were teeing off right as you wake up so you didn't have to think about it. But it's also fun. That's kind of what we love as athletes and we chase after the moment, so I'm looking forward to it.”

He also has a secret to take the pressure off.

“Fortunately, I got a great girlfriend I can hang out with,” Clark said. “She distracts me and keeps me from worrying about what's going on and I stay in the present, so she helps a lot.”

The girlfriend is Emily Tanner, who recently left her California home for his spot in Scottsdale, Ariz., and was walking hand-in-hand with him Saturday after he finished off a 5-under-par 65 that positioned him at 17-under 193 at the three-quarter pole in this horse race.

That lofty total matches the 54-hole tournament mark set by Jason Day at Conway Farms in 2015 and equaled by Justin Rose at Aronimink, like Bellerive a par-70, in 2018.

Clark’s nearest pursuers are Rory McIlroy, who also shot 65 and with whom he will embark on the final round at 12:50 p.m. Sunday, and Patrick Cantlay, whose 66 also brought him to 12-under 198. Chris Gotterup and Gary Woodland are at 11-under 199.

A 65 on the weekend after a pair of 64s is solid, but Clark’s round could have been really good. After playing the first 36 holes without a bogey, he doubled the first hole, playing it like a 14-handicapper. After a sparkling stretch of 11 holes in which he went 8-under, including an eagle via a 12-foot putt on the par-5 eighth after an approach from 259 yards, he was cruising, seven strokes ahead of the field. A pair of par saves from bunkers also aided the cause.

Then came the last two holes. He lipped out a 56-inch birdie putt on No. 17, then dropped a stroke at the last – an actual bogey! – when he failed to get up and down from just short of the green.

“I’ll be pissed off for 10 minutes, then I’ll be all right,” said Clark, showing no sign of smacking a locker, as he famously did in the U.S. Open at Oakmont last year.

The eagle and birdie putts he made it the stretch from No. 8 to No. 14 added up to 77 feet 6 inches, valuable real estate considering the winner here will take home $3.6 million.

Clark has a secret for that as well.

“It (the hole) doesn’t necessarily look bigger, it's more you start seeing the lines and you're so much more committed. You're like, okay, that's exactly it. And then you just stroke it and the ball goes in. Versus maybe days that you aren't putting as good, kind of second guessing lines and you trust one and it misses and then the next one. It's more you just really trust your read and the ball starts going in.”

McIlroy, whose 65 allowed him to tread water and remain five back, came into the picture with an inward 31 that featured five birdies. He’s trying to become the seventh player, and first since Tiger Woods in 2007, to win the Western Open / BMW and the Masters in the same year. Clark would be the first since Jack Nicklaus (1967) to capture the Western and the U.S. Open in the same summer, and ninth overall, going all the way back to Willie Smith, who won the first Western and fifth U.S. Open, in the summer of 1899.

“I didn't hit my first fairway today until the 10th hole,” McIlroy said. He hit only four of 14 in all.

“Playing this golf course from the rough isn't fun,” McIlroy continued. “But I hung in there, my short game saved me a couple of times. And I got some momentum coming in with those birdies on 15, 16 and 17 and then a good up-and-down at the last. I'm in a good spot going into tomorrow in terms of where I'm at on the leaderboard, but it's going to take a heroic effort from one of us to catch Wyndham.”

If one goes by the old dictum that one must be within five strokes of the lead to challenge on Sunday, only McIlroy and Cantlay, whose 66 finished with an approach to 20 inches for a stone-dead birdie at the last, have a shot at catching Clark.

“I feel like my game's in a good spot and ready to go shoot a low one tomorrow,” Cantlay said.

He has to think that way, but Clark will be sleeping soundly as well.

Around Bellerive

Scottie Scheffler scored 2-under 68 and is tied for 15th at 5-under 205, a dozen strokes back. He’ll collect a $23 million bonus Sunday anyway as the points leader entering next week’s Tour Championship. … If play ended Saturday, the last of the 30 spots at East Lake would go to Sungjae Im, whose even-par 70 had him solo seventh at nightfall. … With a bit of a breeze (11 mph from the northwest) for the first time all week, Bellerive played a bit harder. The field of 50 stalwarts averaged 69.260 strokes. … The gallery of 40,000 will be matched by a similar crowd on Sunday. … The Western / BMW 54-hole record for largest lead is nine strokes, by Walter Hagen at Olympia Fields in 1927. In the playoff era, it’s seven by Tiger Woods in 2009. Clark is the 10th player to lead by five after three rounds.

– Tim Cronin

Here comes the Texan

Writing from Town and Country, Missouri

Friday, August 21, 2026

Psst. Here comes Scottie Scheffler.

Remember him? Big Texan with the big swing and big resume.

And the big score – a whopping 2-over 72 – on Thursday.

That’s the guy. Friday, on a Bellerive Country Club course that was close to defenseless with no wind on a moderately humid day, Scheffler went ’round the grounds in 5-under 65, moving him from a tie for 44th at daybreak to 25th in the BMW Championship at nightfall.

He’s still nine strokes in arrears of leader Wyndham Clark, but he’s moving forward.

It turns out Scheffler was under the weather on Thursday, and still wasn’t 100 percent on Friday, but well enough to speckle his scorecard with seven birdies, including five after the turn for an inward 5-under 30.

“Yesterday I didn't get off to the start I wanted to,” Scheffler said. “I played better today on the back. Today I didn't get off to that great of a start either, but played better on the back nine. I'm not where I would like to be. I'll probably have to have four nines like I did on the back nine today and that will give me a chance to win.”

Scheffler birdied the 10th, 11th, 13th, 14th and 17th holes, the feature a 30-footer for a deuce on the par-3 13th.

Up ahead, overnight co-leader Clark crafted a second straight sparkling 6-under 64 for 12-under 128 to take command by a stroke over fellow overnighter Gary Woodland. The two U.S. Open champions – Clark is the holder of the title – will be off last on Saturday around 12:45 p.m.

Clark hasn’t made a bogey in 36 holes, the only player in the 50-man field with that boast, and with a diet of six birdies a day, could fatten his wallet considerably if he keeps that up. He was almost embarrassed by his feat.

“It's a little unfair to Bellerive, just simply because of the time of year, it's so soft, it's hard to make the greens firm,” Clark said. “Then, any time we get to play in Zoysia, we're all so good and able to control our distances and kind of do whatever we want with the golf ball. So those two things make it look … easy, but it's not. Yeah, make it look comfortable. It's not an easy course by any means. You see guys making bogeys left and right. It is challenging. It's a great golf course. I just think it's because of the soft conditions.”

Woodland, in adding a 5-under 65 to his original 64 for 11-under 129, didn’t see his game as perfect, but it was good enough.

“I lost it a little bit on the back nine, lost some shots to the right, and I was able to adjust, kind of take a step back,” Woodland said.

He went back to the most basic thing possible.

“I checked my grip, which is a key from (instructor) Randy Smith,” Woodland said. “I checked my grip and hit four really great shots coming in on 17, 18, so proud of the adjustment I made there.”

Woodland, who amazingly has not played in the season-ending Tour Championship, made another adjustment this week, switching golf balls but staying within the same brand. He went to the new Titleist Pro V1x Double Dot, placing aside the regular Pro V1. Woodland likes to spin the ball, and this one spins just right to his eyes.

“I know it’s going to be good for me down the road, but it’s been amazing for me right now,” Woodland said. “This type of (Zoysia) grass adds spin, so being able to control my distances, the ball’s helped me a ton this week.”

The top 30 in points advance to the Tour Championship at East Lake Country Club in Atlanta. Woodland came into the week 31st and currently projects as 17th.

Meanwhile, birthday boy J.J. Spaun, spry at 36, was briefly the lead thanks to a 67 added to an opening 64. The aggregate of 10-under 130 places him solo third at the halfway point of this no-cut fandango, with $20 million on offer and $3.6 million earmarked for the winner.

With low scores in profusion, it was hard to move up, but, surpassing Scheffler’s feat, Viktor Hovland did courtesy of a 7-under 63, which moved him from a tie for 37th to joint 12th.

Around Bellerive

The St. Louis golf fan is a hardy species. They came out in force again Friday, with around 35,000 on hand according to a Bellerive person in the know. That’s on top of 28,400 for Thursday’s opening round and a decent gathering, perhaps 8,000, for Wednesday’s pro-am. With both Saturday and Sunday sold out – about 40,000 a day – the four-day total will be over 14,000. WGA tournament VP Vince Pellegrino told a St. Louis TV station they could have sold 10,000 more tickets but wanted to guarantee a premier fan experience by not overcrowding the galleries. … The second-round scoring average of 68.117 was the fourth-lowest for a single round in Western Open history, trailing only two rounds at soggy Aronimink in 2018 and a similar round at Conway Farms in 2015.

– Tim Cronin

Woodland feels home at home

Writing from Town and Country, Missouri

Thursday, August 20, 2026

Gary Woodland has been through the wringer, and still feels caught in it at times.

In the first round of the BMW Championship, he felt at home, and it paid off with a round of 6-under-par 64 on a Bellerive Country Club course that yielded no lower score and only a handful, authored by fellow U.S. Open champions Rory McIlroy, Wyndham Clark and J.J. Spaun, and current John Deere Classic winner Chris Gotterup, to match it.

Meanwhile, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler stumbled to an opening 2-over 72. He was 4-over and last in the field of 50 at one point.

Woodland won the 2019 U.S. Open, and four years later was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Surgery was successful, but a bit of the tumor could not be removed and Woodland was left with post-traumatic stress syndrome, notably the fear of being approached from behind.

He played with no fear on Thursday, hitting 11 of 14 fairways and 17 greens – all but the last in the latter case, which cost him his only bogey of the round.

Mostly, Woodland felt comfortable, in part because, at about three hours from his boyhood home of Topeka, Kan., this is as close as the PGA Tour comes to it, and because he’s played well at Bellerive before.

“I looked at some videos of the 2018 PGA,” Woodland said after signing his scorecard. “My swing was a little shorter then. I've been working on some other things and kind of got away from that a little bit. I like a lot of the things I'm doing better now than I was doing there, but I just tried to get a little more solid at the top and, man, it allowed me to control the ball really well.”

That translated into the best numbers he’s posted since winning the Houston Open earlier this season. Among his highlights were a 54-foot birdie putt on the par-4 seventh and a 102-yard holeout for eagle on the par-4 11th.

“We were trying to hit it 105,” Woodland said of his sand wedge from the fairway. “I probably flew it one or two past where I wanted to, but it was nice to spin back into the hole.”

Now to keep it up. In 2018, he led the PGA after 18 and 36 holes, opening with a 64 then as well setting a record for the halfway point (10-under 130) and eventually finishing tied for sixth, six strokes behind winner Brooks Koepka.

For Woodland since his surgery, golf is one thing and inspiring others just by playing is another.

“I know I'm fighting for a lot more than playing golf,” Woodland said. “I'm hopefully having a positive impact on a lot of people's lives just showing up and fighting. Knowing that I'm struggling every day and hopefully – I mean, I had a kid follow me last week from came over from New Zealand who's got an inoperable brain tumor. He was 11.

“So there's, hopefully I'm having a bigger impact than just showing up and showing that I can still compete and play out here and live my dreams. The big deal is I'm struggling and I'm still living my dreams. I hope people see that and try to do the same thing.”

The five-way tie at the top is the largest in the tournament after 18 holes since the quintet of Bob Gilder, Bill Glasson, John Huston, Phil Mickelson and Sean Murphy were deadlocked at sunset Thursday at Cog Hill in 1994. The record is a seven-way tie after 18 in the flood-shortened 1987 Western on the combined Butler National-Oak Brook layout.

Clark birdied the last three holes to match Woodland, his 64 coming in the heat and humidity the St. Louis area is known for. His 38-footer for a deuce on the par-3 16th was followed by 5 1/2- and 6 1/2-footers, the latter set up by what he called a chipped 8-iron, on the last two holes.

“I just maybe added a little bit more speed in my putts,” Clark said. “I was leaving everything just short or just missing on the front nine. It's amazing on greens like this, you see a couple go in and then you feel like you can make all of ‘em.”

For McIlroy, the return to form was a reverse from last week in Memphis, where he struggled from tee to green in the St. Jude sauna.

“Days like this are encouraging, obviously,” McIlroy said of the bogey-free jaunt. “There's still a lot of work to be done. But for first round with what I'm trying to do, middle rehearsal on the takeaway, all that sort of stuff, it went as well as it could have today."

As for Scheffler, who drew many in the gallery of approximately 28,400 that McIlroy did not, his aim and distance control was off from the start. He bogeyed four of the first seven holes, then steadied himself and was 2-under the rest of the round. He was also heckled at least once, on the 12th tee from a presumably overserved patron in The Ridge, one of the many hospitality areas on the course. Scheffler glared in the direction of the voice for a long time, then drove into the right rough and salvaged par.

Around Bellerive

The scoring average of 68.500 on the par-70 layout is the second lowest first round in Western Open / BMW history, surpassed only by the 68.130 at Aronimink, also a par 70, in 2018.   It’s also the fifth-lowest overall. … Chris Gotterup, one of the co-leaders, called Bellerive “a good golf course that's not overly penalizing. I think you can get it around and make some birdies here, but you can also make a couple easy bogeys. Where, last week (at TPC Southwind), you could make a triple in a heartbeat. I don't think you're going to see anyone shoot a 10-under out here either. I could be wrong, someone's probably going to do it tomorrow now.” … Of the nine first-timers in the BMW (a.k.a. the 123rd Western Open), Ryo Hisatsune had the best start, a 5-under 65. The other rookies are Michael Brennan (69), Nico Echavarria (69), Alex Fitzpatrick (66), Nicolai Hojgaard (73), Jake Knapp (67), Matt McCarty, Kristoffer Reitan (67) and Michael Thorbjornsen (66). … The big gallery prompted the WGA to ask fans to ride share or car pool the rest of the weekend. The main public parking lot at Family Arena nearly filled up for the first round. The weekend is sold out and Friday is nearly sold out.

– Tim Cronin

Who's playing for second?

Writing from Town & Country, Missouri

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

Walter Hagen, the swaggering swatter who made professional golf a spectator sport a century ago, used to waltz into locker rooms and say, “Who’s playing for second?”

Scottie Scheffler, who swaggers quietly but swats similarly to Hagen, could ask the same thing if he was similarly boastful.

Scheffler, the defending champion, is the favorite for the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club for a simple reason: he’s here. He’s tops in the world ranking, he won last week in Memphis, and while it was only his second win of the season, he won by eight strokes.

That’s a margin of victory Scheffler has brought back into vogue in the post-Tiger Woods era, and it sends a stark notice to the rest of this elite field – the 50 best players on the PGA Tour – that his midseason slump, which lasted a whole week when he missed the cut at the Scottish Open, is over. He has two wins and 11 other top-four finishes this season, and 50 top-threes in his career. Jack Nicklaus, he was told, had 165 top-threes, 46 in majors.

“I think (consistently) giving yourself chances to win says a lot,” Scheffler said. “I talk a lot about how hard it is and difficult it is to win out here on Tour. The best way to win tournaments is to give yourself as many opportunities as you can. So that is nice for me to have some numbers where I'm giving myself opportunities to win.

“Hopefully I'll be able to continue to do that going forward. But I think the consistency of putting myself in contention week in, week out is something that I'm very proud of.”

Aside from who lifts the J.K. Wadley Trophy this week and the Tour Championship bowl next week, most things have already been decided. Scheffler locked up the top bonus from the pot of gold FedEx distributes by winning last week. He’ll soon find an extra $23 million in his Tour account for leading the playoff parade, that on top of the $10 million bonus for leading the regular season. His pile of finishes should lock up player of the year honors from both the players and the writers.

Asked if winning the Masters and next week’s Tour Championship could change some minds, Rory McIlroy, the only player who could accomplish that, nixed the notion.  

“I’m not the player of the year,” McIlroy said. “No chance. Scottie is.”

“There's two weeks to go, but I firsthand watched him for the first two days last week, and he if he keeps playing like that, if he gains nine strokes on the greens every week, we're all F’d,” said McIlroy, using the initial.

There’s one more monetary stat attached to Scheffler this week. If he finishes in the top three, he’ll pass Tiger Woods in career earnings. Scheffler comes in with $119,964,411 to Woods’ $120,999,166. (Rory McIlroy is third with $116,488,372, and can got no better than second if he wins the tournament and with it the $3.6 million first prize.)

“I’m not really close to him in terms of career wins,” Scheffler, with 21 Tour wins to Woods’ 82, said. “What, am I like a fourth of the way there?

“Tiger did a lot for the game of golf and he put us in a position where we're able to earn some pretty good stuff financially, so that's something we're very grateful for. Tiger's contributions to the game, when you look at where the purses were at before he came out on Tour to where they're at now is a pretty stark difference and we're very thankful for his contributions to the game, and hopefully we'll see him back out here competing again soon.”

Scheffler, whose first victory under the PGA Tour umbrella was the WGA-sponsored Evans Scholars Invitational at The Glen Club in 2019, recalled the mini-tour days when of 2018 and prior when he and Doc Redman were barnstorming the country, trying to cash in the small tournaments and make the big time in Monday qualifiers.

“I played I think three mini-tour events, and a couple of them I traveled with my mattress pad in my car because I could sleep on the floor, it was going to be more comfortable than the hotel bed, so I slept on the floor in the hotel rooms,” Scheffler recalled. “I think it was maybe in, I think we were in Lufkin, Texas, I stayed at this house and I just brought my mattress pad, I just slept on the ground, it was just easier. I knew it was going to be a quality bed. Just little stuff like that. Like, good memories and fun stuff and good buddies I still have from this day that I met just from playing golf.”

If that was luxury to Scheffler, there were real rough spots.

“I think my car was running out of oil,” he continued, remembering one trip with Redman. “It was the old Yukon, and I literally had to call my dad, because my dad is Mr. Fix-it, so I never had to fix anything growing up.

“We were somewhere in Nebraska, and I had to call him and say, ‘Hey, dad, this is embarrassing, but can you help me figure out how to check the oil in this car.’ Like, it says it's run out of oil, but everything's fine. Where is it in this car. It was easier than me trying to Google it in the middle of nowhere, I was like, I'll just call my dad, he'll help us figure out.

“Now I know how to check the oil.”

Not that he has to. Just his bank account. And trophy case.

A vote for the Western Open

Rory McIlroy values the traditions of golf. Asked Wednesday if there’s too much money in the game, he first said, “We’re not Bobby Jones out there, not playing for prize money,” and then added, “We turned pro to make money playing golf. I mean, that's a part of it. But I don't think it should be front and center in terms of, like, what we're talking about, right. Like, it should be about other things.

“We should play into the history of, this is the Western Open. This was started in 1899. We should play into that history. That should be what we are talking about when we come to these tournaments. Yes, BMW are putting up the money and that's amazing that they do, and they support golf all over the world. But this tournament has so much history, and I think that some of that as we've gotten into, like, commercializing the PGA Tour, has gotten lost. I think there's a way to thread that needle and be able to do both.”

McIlroy never played in the Western Open when it went by that name, a sponsor, beginning with Beatrice, attached to it beginning in 1987. His first appearance was in the fourth edition sponsored by BMW in 2010. He finished tied for 37th in his only start at Cog Hill, didn’t play in 2011, then won at Crooked Stick in 2012. He has six top-eight finishes since.

Around Bellerive

Adam Scott is the only player in the field who played in the 2008 edition at Bellerive. Then 28, he’s now 46 and still ranked 51st in the world, along with 27th in this week’s field. He also played in the 2018 PGA Championship here, playing in the final group with winner Brooks Kopeka on Sunday. “It’s pretty fresh in my memory, really. Probably because I played well that week,” Scott said. … With a 50-man field, all play is off the first tee all four days. Thursday’s first tee time is 9 a.m. TV coverage starts on ESPN at 9 a.m. and moves to Golf Channel at 1 p.m.. … Cardinals legend Ozzie Smith played in the Akshay Bhatia-Nic Echavarria group in the pro-am. … IndyCar’s Graham Rahal was with So Woo Kim and Tommy Fleetwood. … U.S. senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) played with Scheffler and Scott. … A $20 million purse goes a long way. Last place in the 50-man field gets $66,000. The winner banks $3.8 million, or about 62.8 percent of what Jack Nicklaus earned ($5,734,031) in his regular PGA Tour career. Nicklaus, the best player in history, stands 350th on the career money list.

– Tim Cronin