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
“Everybody has a game plan until they get punched in the mouth.” — Mike Tyson
I love that quote. It always makes me think. There’s the bravado side — Iron Mike heard your chirps, but you weren’t going to bark after a glove to the chin. But there’s also the exposure side. Tyson seemingly implied that it’s game over, and in his opponents’ cases, it mostly was. But looked at another way, one ‘punch’ gives you a person live and in living color. There’s no more script. How they react in the moment says some things.
It came to mind as I watched TGL on Tuesday — and specifically as I watched Tiger Woods misinterpret standard caddie talk and his red polo become unbuttoned.
To catch you up, during play in the one-month-old, simulator-based league, Woods hit a tee shot 294 yards on a 481-yard par-4, he asked his caddie, longtime Woods confidante Rob McNamara, for a yardage, and McNamara said, “99.” You may know where this is going. In such cases, caddies typically drop the ‘1,’ as it’s a given if you just look ahead. But Woods took it as 99 yards, grabbed a wedge, dumped it short, and hilarity ensued. Teammates laughed. ESPN announcers laughed. You laughed.
Everyone laughed at Woods, the 15-time major winner who tries to guard his public image and words as if he’s defending a lead on the back nine at Augusta. Sometimes he’s successful. Sometimes he’s not. Tuesday, he wasn’t. He was punched in the mouth.
So what did we get? Friday afternoon, I went back to watch. He was animated, mostly toward McNamara. He repeated himself; in the first minute after the mistake, he said “99” five times. He laughed. His tone of voice changed. An in-play interview with ESPN’s Marty Smith was great, too.
Started Smith: “The greatest of all time, Tiger Woods, is still attempting to analyze what the hell just happened. But at least you can smile.”
Said Woods: “No, I heard 99 yards. And so I went out there and hit it 100 yards, and one of the most embarrassing moments in my golfing career just happened.”
Said Smith: “But breaking it down in real life, that’s how you guys speak on the real golf course.”
Said Woods: “Yep, I know that.”
Said Smith: “And you can see the pin and you know it’s 200 yards.”
Said Woods: “I know, I just screwed up. I mean, that was embarrassing.”
It was something. Two weeks after he announced the death of his mother, all of it was likely welcomed too.
Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the Weekend 9.
2. The second-best part of the scene? Tom Kim losing it. He may still be laughing.
One takeaway from the week — and the weeks ahead
3. Thursday, via a statement, we were updated on the negotiations on a funding deal between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. Read the statement:
We have just concluded a constructive working session at the White House with President Trump and H.E. Yasir Al-Rumayyan.
Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, we have initiated a discussion about the reunification of golf. We are committed to moving as quickly as possible and will share additional details as appropriate.
We share a passion for the game and the importance of reunification. Most importantly, we all want the best players in the world playing together more often and are committed to doing all we can to deliver that outcome for our fans.”
– Statement from Commissioner Jay Monahan, Player Director Tiger Woods and Player Director Adam Scott
In short, a meeting was held, and talks are progressing, which is more than nothing, but less than something. But the feeling is a deal is close. What it looks like is speculative, though a comment from Adam Scott to the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson was notable. Wrote Ferguson:
“I wouldn’t be surprised — or I wouldn’t judge anyone, the members — if reunification happened and they weren’t happy with how it happened,” Scott said, pausing to rub his eyes with both hands before adding, “I hope they’re not spending as much time talking about it as I have.
“I wouldn’t hold it against anybody if there were negative emotions attached to it, the thought of players coming back.”
A deal isn’t going to stop this conversation. Far from it.
4. ‘Bringing the best players together’ is 2025’s ‘growing the game.’
Best non-GOLF.com read for your weekend
5. What am I reading (besides the thoughtful prose of my colleagues)? This article is worth your click.
Here, Andrew Beaton of the Wall Street Journal writes about AimPoint, a topic that’s received plenty of ink here, a golf website, but not so much on a well-respected, business-based website, and I’m always interested in the fresh perspective. The story was excellent. There’s detail on AimPoint’s proponents and opponents, along with who started it and how it started. I’ll tease the story with just the lead, which is great, too. Wrote Beaton:
When the best golfers in the world line up a putt these days, many of them look completely deranged.
Their process for reading greens everywhere from Augusta National to St Andrews involves standing over the line of the putt, closing one eye and sticking a couple fingers in the air as if they’re trying to hail a cab to the clubhouse. Never in the centuries since a bunch of Scots started malleting balls toward a cup had anyone studied greens quite like this before.
Best instruction tip for your weekend
6. A video from Andrew Lewis, a teaching pro based in Dallas, caught my eye, both for its information and its creativity. In it, Lewis dropped a ball on a mat, placed a wind gauge to the left of it and turned on his wife’s “fancy new hair dryer” behind it, giving him a read on when wind may start to affect the ball on a putting surface.
7. The name of Adri Arnaus, a longtime DP World Tour pro from Spain — or what sounds like his name — is in “Dames,” a song from Biggy, a South African rapper. Below is the song, (most of the words are in Afrikaans) and below that is a recently shared video of Arnaus rapping the song in Spanish.
The refrain is deep in my head now.
Another golf story that may interest only me
8. The Holyhead Golf Club in North Wales was forced to close its 18th hole — after a neighbor complained that too many golf balls were going onto their property. The story was first reported by David Powell of the Daily Post, and you can read it in full here.
What live golf is on TV this weekend?
9. Here’s a rundown of live golf on TV this weekend:
4 a.m.-9 a.m. ET: Magical Kenya Open final round, Golf Channel
1 p.m.-3 p.m. ET: Mexico Open final round, Golf Channel
3 p.m.-6 p.m. ET: Mexico Open final round, NBC
What you’re emailing me
10. Let’s do 10 items! I’ll occasionally hold this space for thoughts emailed to me, and this was more reaction to a slow-play item written two weeks ago.
I couldn’t help but respond regarding players needlessly being told to speed up on the golf course. I live in southern Arizona, and my neighborhood courses are inundated with tourists and snowbirds from November to April every year. Most of them are polite and respectful, but I continually encounter people who seem to think that taking six hours to play a 6,300-yard course is fine. I continually hear them saying things like, “I’m retired so I don’t care if it takes me eight hours” or “If they’re in a hurry, they shouldn’t be playing golf” or “If they want to do something fast, they should go running,” etc. (I’m guessing these are the same people who get in the left lane of the freeway and then drive exactly the speed limit and say, “I’m going the speed limit so they can just go around!”).
These people don’t seem to realize that most of us AREN’T retired and DON’T have all day to play golf! When a foursome is routinely taking 20 minutes to play every single hole (hitting multiple tee shots, looking for lost balls like they’re made of gold, taking 4-5 practice swings before every shot, etc.) it just ruins it for everyone else. It all boils down to just common courtesy and simply letting faster groups play through.
A feel-good moment for your weekend
11. Let’s do 11 items! Below is a video of Dean Burmester at last week’s LIV Golf Adelaide event.
The gesture wins the week. Shoot, it may have just won the year. (To view the video, click the white arrow in the middle of the photo.)
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Nick Piastowski
Golf.com Editor
Nick Piastowski is a Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across the golf space. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit the golf ball farther and straighter, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash away his score. You can reach out to him about any of these topics — his stories, his game or his beers — at nick.piastowski@golf.com.
