Nelly Korda’s role in my greatest loss, and a Ben Hogan gem

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

I’m blaming Nelly Korda. I have to fault someone.

You may be familiar with the Korda connection here. Last November, in this space, I’d written an article where I enlisted various LPGA pros to give a tip for my nephew on how to break 80. Lexi Thompson answered. Lydia Ko answered. And Korda, whose answer made the rounds a bit on social media — where the person she was directing her advice to saw it, which is not at all surprising, considering my 17-year-old nephew goes there and only there to understand the world around him.   

A short while later, he texted me. Four words. 

“I can break 80.”

Last Tuesday, Mason did. Actually, he has a few times now. He’s good. 

And better than his uncle now. 

We’ve played together since he was maybe 5 or 6. The record was one-sided, though as he improved with age, I somehow kept dialing up Tiger 2000 play. To that end, my favorite memory was, while playing a par-3 course a couple years ago, Mason asked me, “Don’t you ever miss?”

LOL.   

But now he can’t either. We played 36. First 18, the card read: Uncle Nick 89, Nephew Mason 83. To his credit, he didn’t say much. We went again. Second 18, I played better — 81. But so did he — 78. (For reporting purposes, I’m somewhere in the ballpark of a 14-handicap, though since my swing is more baseball than golf, I typically need some batting practice to get cooking, so there you go.) 

I’d lost. 

Twice.

Somewhere around hole 34, my wife texted, though by the words, she had a guess as to the results. “Can’t believe I haven’t heard anything all day about the golf.”

What could I say? The day was inevitable. I’m no longer invincible to him. He’s good. Very, very good.  

And I’m happy. Very, very happy. Is it bittersweet? Not at all. I want him to win, so I won too. Watching him figure out this unsolvable game is an extraordinary feeling. I’ve helped create a 300-yard driving, iron-flushing, chipping and putting monster. You know the scene in all the sports movies where the team wins and the coach is nodding in the background? It’s kinda like that.  

That said, I’m currently re-reading Nelly’s tips. 

Our next match is coming up soon. 

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. Speaking of teacher watching student … 

I had that vibe a bit watching Jordan Spieth and Scottie Scheffler in the same grouping at this week’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson tournament. The thought started after Scheffler had been asked in his pre-tournament press conference about his first- and second-round playing partner. 

“Jordan was three years older than us, and he was obviously really good,” Scheffler said. “I would say Jordan was always a guy we looked up to when we were young. Let’s say when I was 13, 14 playing in team PGA events here, Jordan was here playing in the Byron Nelson. He was a guy we looked up to and wanted to emulate on the course. …

“We were always looking at Jordan because he was a little bit older, a little bit better than us.”

Here, we won’t decide who’s better or who’s worse now; the scorecards can do that for us. But all of it really does encapsulate the birdies-today-bogeys-tomorrow nature of golf, doesn’t it? Spieth remains revered, though he’s not won a tournament in three years — and he’s not won a major since the 2017 Open Championship. 

Interestingly, a month later in ’17, Spieth took his first swing at the career grand slam, at the PGA Championship — played at Quail Hollow, which hosts this year’s PGA in two weeks. Does Spieth do it this go-around? The odds say no. What about in the years ahead? It’ll be tough. So then what? We’ll end the thought lightly today.  

It puts into perspective even more what Rory McIlroy just accomplished.  

Golf is hard. 

Another takeaway from the week — and for the weeks ahead

3. Speaking of golf being hard … 

This was great from longtime French pro Mike Lorenzo-Vera. Speaking this week on the Sliced Golf Podcast (which you can listen to in full here), Lorenzo-Vera said he had tried to recreate one of Tiger Woods’ more famous plays — his around-a-tree bunker shot at the 2019 WGC-Mexico Championship (which you can watch by clicking here).

Said Lorenzo-Vera: “Those guys can do things that even really good pros cannot do. I can give you one example. You know the shot in Mexico that Tiger hit around the tree from the trap? The year after, I went there and I threw six balls on the Tuesday. And I look at the shot, I couldn’t even get to like 40 meters of the green. The guy almost holed the shot with two clubs less, bending the ball more to the right. Altitude, temperature, it’s impossible to turn the ball, and the guy turns a 9-iron 140 meters 50 yards. And it’s pin-high. 

“Oh, why we don’t have majors in France? Because nobody can do that.”

4. Let’s stay with Woods.  

Thursday, McIlroy appeared on “The Tonight Show,” where he was asked by host Jimmy Fallon what Woods said to him after his Masters win. 

Said McIlroy: “He said, ‘Welcome to the club, kid.’ Which was just so cool.”

McIlroy also said he received a message from Elton John. Sort of. 

“That was incredible. So I actually haven’t been able to connect with him. So his assistant left me a voicemail and said, ‘Sir Elton would love to congratulate you in person. The only problem is, he doesn’t have a cellphone. So you might get a call from a number in Windsor, England, from a landline.”

5. One more Woods item. 

This was also great. Golf data guru Lou Stagner tried to figure out the probability of a 10-handicap winning one hole over 72 holes against prime Woods, and you can read the X thread by clicking here or by scrolling below.

Best non-GOLF.com read for your weekend 

6. What am I reading (besides the thoughtful prose of my colleagues)? This article is worth your click. 

Here, TGL gets the Vanity Fair treatment, in a story written by Andrew Zaleski. Among the gems in the article, this was good:

Golf, one might say, is a sport that has long managed to alienate swaths of society without even trying. It’s the quiet activity of country clubs that takes hours to complete. (Though the origin of the line is disputed, many writers, the cheeky bunch we are, have described golf as being of such considerable length that it’s enough to “spoil a good walk.”) For many, it’s maddening to follow, let alone learn. Whiff opportunities abound, the sort of stuff that can turn middle-aged men apoplectic right after unironically uttering the phrase “There he is!” 

Vanity Fair did bring back to mind that McIlroy watched “The Devils Wears Prada” on the Sunday night before his Players Championship playoff win in March. 

Best instruction tip for your weekend   

7. I heard this as part of an interview for a story I’m working on for PGA Championship week. It’s good. 

“I remember in ’89, I spent a whole day with Ben Hogan, and he told me he’d never made a hole in one. And he said, I didn’t know you’re supposed to aim at the flags. And I have a beautiful colored poster, an oil painting he gave me of his shot at Merion. … And he signed it to me, which I cherish. But Hogan’s story on that shot was, he said, I hit it about 70 feet left of the flag, and that was the general area I was aiming for. And he gave it to me and signed it because he said, I want you to tell the players you work with, they want to win, you got to be patient. And he was a very patient player. But you’d think from reading about him that he’d just shoot at every flag as good as he hit it. But it’s hard to hit it that good if you shoot at every flag. 

“But the discipline it takes to look at your target and not let your eyes and mind wander over to the flag when you’re shooting towards the middle of the green, that’s discipline.”

A golf story that may interest only me 

8. LIV Golf’s Iron Heads GC have their own beer. Original Beer Company brewed a pale ale as LIV plays this week in South Korea, the country in which the brewery is located.  

A tweet that I found funny 

9. I enjoyed this. Last week, at LIV Golf’s event in Mexico, Cam Smith’s ball was picked up by a fan, the spot was marked with a tee — and the fan put the ball on the tee. You can watch the clip by clicking here or by scrolling below. 

Another tweet that I found funny 

10. Let’s do 10 items! I’m deeply fascinated by Oz the Mentalist, and he recently visited Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay and their caddies — and he discovered Scheffler’s ATM pin code. You can watch the clip by clicking here or by scrolling below. 

What golf is on TV this weekend?

11. Let’s do 11 items! Here’s a rundown of golf on TV this weekend:

— Saturday

10:30 p.m. (Friday)-3:30 a.m. ET: LIV Golf South Korea second round, FS1

1 p.m.-3 p.m. ET: The CJ Cup Byron Nelson third round, Golf Channel 

3 p.m.-6 p.m. ET: The CJ Cup Byron Nelson third round, CBS 

3 p.m.-6 p.m. ET: Insperity Invitational second round, Golf Channel 

6 p.m.-9 p.m. ET: Black Desert Championship third round, Golf Channel 

— Sunday 

11:30 p.m. (Saturday)-4:30 a.m. ET: LIV Golf South Korea final round, FS1

1 p.m.-3 p.m. ET: The CJ Cup Byron Nelson final round, Golf Channel 

3 p.m.-6 p.m. ET: The CJ Cup Byron Nelson final round, CBS

3 p.m.-6 p.m. ET: Insperity Invitational final round, Golf Channel 

6 p.m.-9 p.m. ET: Black Desert Championship final round, Golf Channel 

A golf / non-golf thought 

12. Next week, I’m heading back home again. 

Five years ago, my mom died. Just over a year later, my dad died. For various reasons, we never had any kind of service or reception for them, but next Saturday, we finally will. Maybe one day in this space, I’ll write about everything involved here. 

But for now, I’ll say just that mom and dad would love that their grandson beat his uncle in golf. 

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