The Rahm-inator melts in England. Bridgeman shows why he was picked for the President’s Cup and the Master actually Mushed a golfer right out of the tournament. We got a good one. Let’s get into it.
PGA Recap
Jacob Bridgeman won the inaugural Biltmore Championship Asheville, and he did it in a dominant fashion. He started Sunday five shots back and quietly erased the entire deficit with a career-best, bogey-free 10-under 61. Eagle on the 8th, birdie at the turn, then birdies on 13, 14, and 15 in a row to put the whole thing away, and capped off with one more on 17 for just to show off. Final score: 26 under, which gave him a two-shot win over Ben James, who also shot a 61 himself. Bridgeman's second win of the season comes at the perfect time. He heads straight into the Presidents Cup as a captain's pick, which means every doubter who questioned the selection just got a nose thumbed in their general direction.
JT Poston deserves a mention too. He started the day a staggering 11 shots back and shot an 11-under 60, the low round of the entire week, to rocket into a tie for 5th. Can you imagine shooting these numbers on anything but a 9 hole? These guys, I tell ya. That's the kind of round that doesn't win you a tournament but absolutely makes people notice your name.
The course itself, a Jack Nicklaus design in the Blue Ridge Mountains, played ‘short’ by modern standards (I like my confidence building local track at just over 5000 yards), at just over 7,200 yards, and the field made it pay for it. Reachable par 5s and rolling terrain turned this into a birdie-fest all week, closing out the "regular season" portion of the Fall series on a genuinely fun note.
Worm of the Week
We're sliding over to the European-based DP World Tour for this week's Worm, and do we have a good one.
Jon Rahm, the two-time major champion, former World Number 1, a man who has spent his career being mentioned in the same breath as the best golfers alive, finished dead last at the BMW PGA Championship. Not "missed the cut and went home disappointed" dead last. Actual, literal, finished-behind-every-other-golfer-in-the-field dead last, at Wentworth, the DP World Tour's flagship event, the one all the big names show up for.
He shot 78 and 77. That's the worst 36-hole score of his entire professional career, beating out a previous personal low he set back at the 2018 U.S. Open. For a guy who's stood on the podium at Augusta and hoisted a U.S. Open trophy, watching your name sit at the very bottom of a leaderboard full of players you'd normally be lapping is the kind of thing that makes even the pros look mortal for a week. However, there is one trophy with a placard that John’s name sits atop this week.
There's chatter swirling about his future with LIV Golf 2.0 that may or may not have had something to do with it. Rahm insists it hasn't been bothering him, but two rounds like that from a player of his caliber tend to make people wonder out loud anyway.
Everybody has a bad week. Not everybody has a bad week loud enough to finish dead last at their sport's biggest European stage. Rahm, this Worm’s for you.
Chili Dip Golf Tip
How to Actually Read a Green
Reading greens feels like a mystical skill some people just have and others don't, but it's really just a handful of habits most rec golfers never bother to build. Here's how to actually do it instead of just squatting behind your ball, squinting one eye and hoping that slope you see isn’t just the result of Friday night’s beer pong loss.
Look at the green before you're even on it. Start reading the break the moment you're walking up to it, not once you've already marked your ball. Notice the overall slope of the green as you approach. Most greens tilt in an obvious general direction (often away from a mountain, toward water, or following the natural slope of the land around the course). That big-picture read matters more than people think.
Find the high side and the low side. Every green has a "high side" (uphill) and "low side" (downhill) relative to your ball. The ball is always going to break toward the low side eventually — gravity doesn't care about your read, it just does its job, ask Newton. Your goal isn't to guess the exact number of inches of break, it's to correctly identify which direction the ball wants to go.
Crouch behind the ball, but do it right. Get low, roughly a few feet behind your ball, looking directly down the line toward the hole. You're not trying to see individual blades of grass. You're trying to see the overall tilt of the surface between you and the cup. If you can, also crouch behind the hole looking back at your ball for a second opinion on the slope.
Walk the putt, don't just look at it. If you're allowed the time (the group behind hasn’t launched their drives into your golf carts on the fairway), walk from your ball to the hole along your intended line. You'll feel slope changes in your feet that your eyes will completely miss from a stationary crouch. This is genuinely one of the most underused tools in green reading. Your feet are more honest than your eyes. Just don’t trample someone else’s line.
Trust your first read. The single biggest mistake hackers make on the green is standing over the ball, getting a good initial read, then second-guessing themselves into a completely different line right before they putt. Your gut instinct, formed from the walk-up and the crouch, is usually more accurate than the anxious last-second adjustment. Commit to what you saw the first time.
When in doubt, play more break, not less. Amateur golfers overwhelmingly under-read break rather than over-read it. If you're torn between "this looks like it breaks a little" and "this looks like it breaks a lot," go with more. Nearly every missed putt from a recreational golfer misses on the low side because they didn't play enough break, not because they played too much.
Mastering these habits won’t make you a scratch putter, but you'll stop missing putts for reasons you don't understand, which just might be the bigger win.
Today in Golf History
On this date in 1930, Bobby Jones began the tournament that would complete the single greatest season any golfer has ever had, and almost certainly ever will.
By this date back then, Jones had already won the British Amateur, the British Open and the U.S. Open that year. He had three legs of what constituted the slam back then (the Masters didn’t exist yet and the PGA Championship wasn’t considered top tier like it is today). All that stood between him and something no one had ever done was the U.S. Amateur Championship, starting September 22 at Merion Cricket Club in Pennsylvania. He won it. Not just won it, he dominated it, closing out the final match against Eugene Homans so completely that Homans conceded on the 29th hole of a 36-hole match. There wasn't even a reason to keep playing.
Four majors. ONE CALENDAR YEAR. Never done before. Never done since.
Here's the part that makes it almost unbelievable by today's standards. Jones did this as an amateur. Two of the four events he swept were amateur championships, because in 1930, some of the best golfers alive still played strictly for the love of the game rather than a paycheck. Jones never turned pro, not once, not ever. He beat the best professionals in the world in the two Opens while also cleaning up the amateur fields, then retired from competitive golf entirely at 28 years old, at the absolute peak of anyone who has ever played this sport.
He didn't stay retired from golf entirely, though. A few years later, he co-founded a little tournament called the Masters, which is still going pretty well for itself.
Winston has never won a Grand Slam, retired at his athletic peak, or founded a major championship, but he did successfully avoid a fire ant hill last Tuesday. Baby steps, or wriggles in his case.
The Degen Den
Well folks, it was bound to happen eventually. We mushed a golfer so hard that they quit after round one. Rasmus Hojgaard carded a couple double bogeys and a triple on his way to a 7 over 78 and apparently on his way back home as well. He withdrew after round one giving no reason for doing so. We know why Ras, and we apologize profusely! Here’s the rest that resulted in a finish of 10,282 out of 16,646 entrants. Is golf season over yet? 😢
We apologize to your entire family Mr. Hojgaard. You too Gomez
On to Medinah Country Club in my hometown state of Illinois for the President’s Cup. By the way, have you noticed how frighteningly easy it is to deposit to your Draftkings account? Hmmmm…. Anywho, here we go. I’m just gonna post my lineup for the 5 buck contest and save the tears for next week:
Godspeed to all who appear above, you’ll need all the help you can get
Disclaimer: These picks are provided purely for entertainment purposes. If you gamble, don’t gamble. If you don’t gamble, carry on wise one.
Golf Joke of the Week
A guy asks a woman to grab his car keys from his pocket because his hands are full of groceries. When she does, two golf tees fall out. She picks them up and asks, "What are these for?" He says, "To keep my balls in the air while I'm driving." She nods and says, "Wow. Cadillac really thinks of everything."
As always, thank you for reading my drivel. If you want more drivel, check out the latest from the blog here! Ya know you want to, just click it.