A triumphant return, a questionable decision, Paddy’s golf advice

Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where every week is Milkshake Week — but especially this one. To the news!

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GOLF STUFF I LIKE

Perseverance.

This isn’t the first time Bud Cauley‘s been back here. But this time feels different.

Here is the Memorial Tournament, held this week as always at Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio. Cauley played this event for the first time in 2012, at just 22 years old. He made the cut that year, as he did in his next three return trips. The only year he’s missed the cut, in fact, was 2018, and that preceded something awful: that Friday night Cauley was a passenger in a car that went off the road, hit a culvert, hit a tree and flipped.

In the months that followed, Cauley said he felt lucky to be alive. He’d broken six ribs but mostly was relieved his injuries weren’t more severe. He made a remarkably fast recovery, returning to tournament golf after just a few months away. In his first trip back to Dublin, at the 2019 Memorial, he found something special and finished T9.

Cauley played through the summer of 2020 without incident before, out of the blue, his right side began to hurt. Doctors thought the pain could be connected to plates he’d had put into his chest following the crash, but when they went to remove the plates, bone had grown on top of them. Still, after removing some scar tissue they stitched Cauley up and hoped he’d be fine. Instead? Two weeks later, he was standing at home when his wife noticed his shirt was wet.

“[I] take my shirt off, there’s just a hole in the side of my chest,” Cauley recalled earlier this year. That was the first of several setbacks. Surgeries that didn’t heal well. A seroma. C-diff from the antibiotics. “Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong,” he said.

It was more than three years by the time Cauley returned to professional golf in early 2024. He competed on a Tour medical extension and made about half his cuts, although through 15 starts he hadn’t cracked the top 20. He didn’t play Memorial; things had changed in the years that had passed and it had been elevated to one of the Tour’s Signature Events. But he flashed some serious game with a T5 at the Sanderson Farms, showing signs of things to come. And then? Something special.

Cauley played his best golf in years in the right place at the right time, finishing T6 at the 2025 Players Championship, in the process fulfilling the terms of his medical extension and earning complete PGA Tour status for the rest of 2025. It would have been easy to experience a letdown after that, but he didn’t: Cauley followed with a T4 at the Valspar and a T5 at the Valero Texas Open. Then came last week’s Charles Schwab Challenge, where Cauley’s final-round 67 propelled him into third place — and in doing so qualified him for this week’s Memorial.

“It’s a place I’ve played at a bunch and had a couple of good finishes, so I’m excited to get up there and play,” Cauley said post-round, a class in understatement.

But he doesn’t have to say it — we’re happy to. This week is different because Cauley’s been through so much. Because he’s emerged out the other side. And because he played his way back here through the best run of golf of his professional career.

Going through hell and back — and then earning a triumphant return? That’s golf stuff I like.

WINNERS

Who won the week?

Just weeks after winning his first PGA Tour title, Ben Griffin earned his first individual PGA Tour title, reminding us once again that you haven’t done anything until you’ve done it. He talked about the stepping stones of his career, from retired pro (for several months in 2021) to, well, what’s next?

“Now I’m at the point where I feel like I’m starting to show that I am an elite golfer. I can compete against the best,” he said. That’s a special spot to be. Or so I would imagine.

NOT-WINNERS

But still winners.

Matti Schmid finished solo second at Colonial, somehow surviving six bogeys and a double on Sunday to contend for the win; he also played his way into the Memorial.

Scottie Scheffler finished just shy of a third title in as many starts, but his T4 with what seemed like his B-game was a plenty impressive result.

Tommy Fleetwood’s front-nine Sunday 31 got him in the mix but three back-nine bogeys doomed his chances; his T4 marked his 41st PGA Tour top 10, the most without a win by a significant margin. Fleetwood is currently playing good enough golf to belong in golf’s second tier (just below the major-winning Schefflers, McIlroys and DeChambeaus of the world); the entire golf world would love his win total to better reflect his game.

And Rickie Fowler played his way into the final group before fading to T16 thanks in part to a painful double bogey at No. 11; it was his third top-20 in his last eight starts as he’s settled into a rhythm of making a lot of cuts without seriously contending. Not a bad way to live — but we know Fowler expects more.

SHORT HITTERS

Five intriguing golf reads.

1. How do you capture the attention of the golf world in the U.S. Amateur Four-ball? By playing one-vs.-two — and winning. Our Alan Bastable was there for one of the more intriguing golf matches in recent history, ft. Marc Dull, who’s anything but. (HERE)

2. Lucas Glover added layers of intrigue to the driver-test debate that ignited during last week’s PGA Championship when he suggested plenty of pros sidestep the test by providing a backup driver, anyway. (HERE)

3. Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch laid out the latest set of challenges facing a potential PGA Tour – LIV reunification deal; you may or may not agree with Lynch’s views on LIV but his contextualization of player value and current contracts (Dustin Johnson’s up after this season, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau after next) is intriguing and central to any discussion around LIV’s future. (HERE)

4. The Athletic’s Brendan Quinn tracked a sometimes-hopeful, sometimes-despondent Max Homa at the PGA Championship. (HERE)

5. Any version of Michael Bamberger on Tiger Woods is worth your time. (HERE)

ONE BIG QUESTION

What was Matti Schmid thinking?

It’s been a while since I have heard golf commentators as collectively disdainful of a decision as I did watching Schmid play his bunker shot at the par-4 17th hole on Sunday. Schmid, already down one, hit his approach into a greenside bunker, where he drew a poor, partly plugged lie. Given the circumstances, many pros would have thrown caution to the wind and played at the hole anyway, hoping for a miraculous outcome in pursuit of victory. But Schmid played away from the hole, intentionally aiming for the rough to, as he said, limit his damage and try to make 5. CBS’s Dottie Pepper criticized the decision in real time, the broadcast booth echoed her sentiments and Golf Channel’s withering post-round analysis lined up with the view that this was a poor, bizarre decision. As for Schmid’s explanation?

“Well, it was blocked, and there was not a lot of sand, I would say, so I knew it would kind of come out hot.

“I mean, the only two places were right of the green or long left, and I think then I would have had to chip up and over. So right even though the grass was a bit more tricky, I think the up-and-down was a little more straightforward. At that point I just tried to make a 5, and thankfully I did it.”

In reality? I think they’re right, though it’s unlikely it would have made a difference. Schmid navigated a touchy up-and-down for bogey, which would have likely been his score regardless of bunker strategy. But when he chipped in for birdie at 18 he forced Griffin to hole a four-footer to avoid a playoff. With a margin that slim, everyone was left wondering what would have happened had he chased some magic one hole earlier, too.

ONE SWING THOUGHT

From Padraig Harrington.

We could probably just borrow from Paddy every single week for this section, but I thought this post-round analysis from the Senior PGA was self-deprecating, insightful and relatable, as Harrington can so often be.

“I think one of the worst things you can do on the golf course is judge and analyze,” Harrington said. “After, let’s say, 26 holes, I knew I’d missed two greens this week and hit a couple of par 5s. That was horrible information to have in your head. You shouldn’t be aware of how many fairways or how many greens because we don’t play fairways and greens, we play score.”

He continued:

“Every day should be just a score. You should never be analyzing a round as you’re playing it. There’s no doubt, the fact that I knew I’d hit lots of fairways and greens meant I was analyzing my round. In a perfect world you wouldn’t even know what score you’re shooting, you’d just be playing.”

RYDER CUP WATCH

The next American tier…

There’s something intriguing happening with the U.S. Ryder Cup team. It may be too early for this to matter, but it’s an intriguing trend nonetheless: there’s a group of journeymen vying for spots on what has for years been a recognizable, star-studded team. (Note: I’m hoping to write more in-depth on this in the coming days, but here’s a start…)

The top five on the U.S. side are blue-blood Ryder Cup vets — Scheffler, Schauffele, things of that nature. But the ever-underrated Russell Henley at No. 6 offers a fitting transition to the next tier, which is led by Harris English at No. 7 and includes Andrew Novak (No. 8), Maverick McNealy (No. 9), J.J. Spaun (No. 11) and Ben Griffin (No. 13). None of ’em are younger than 29. None of ’em have played a Ryder Cup. None of ’em are notably big hitters. And none of ’em (this is an admittedly dumb metric, but speaks to their wattage) have more than 40,000 Instagram followers. Entering the year I would have guessed that the bottom half of the U.S. Ryder Cup team would be a battle between big-time established stars (think Tony Finau, Keegan Bradley, Jordan Spieth, Max Homa, Wyndham Clark) and young, up-and-coming smashers (think Akshay Bhatia, Michael Thorbjornsen, Luke Clanton). Instead? We’ve got a completely different, fascinating mix. What a game.

TEAM USA RYDER CUP RANKINGS

1. Scheffler 2. Schauffele 3. DeChambeau 4. Thomas 5. Morikawa 6. Henley 7. English 8. Novak 9. McNealy 10. Harman 11. Spaun 12. Cantlay 13. Griffin 14. Berger 15. Finau

TEAM EUROPE RYDER CUP RANKINGS

1. McIlroy 2. Lowry 3. R. Højgaard 4. Hatton 5. Straka 6. Fleetwood 7. Rose 8. Åberg 9. Wallace 10. Detry 11. Norgaard 12. MacIntyre 13. Olesen 14. Hovland 15. Canter

Full standings here.

ONE THING TO WATCH

I’m admittedly transfixed by the ProV1-box-as-lunchbox move from Rickie Fowler‘s caddie here. Can honestly say it’s never something I’ve considered. This 10-second clip is art.