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
The Weekend 9 is doing a bracket.
A golf one. But it’ll be a little different. It has to be. Sure, we could pick a winner out of a field of 64, and we’d all debate, but one, would we really pick someone other than Scottie Scheffler, even with the hand woes; and two, it’s been done before. That said, I’m stealing another idea. At a newspaper I once worked at, in an effort to let off some steam, we used to do the “Annoyance Bracket,” where a few of us would find 64 things that, yes, annoyed us in the newsroom, we’d drop ’em all in a bracket — then advance them based on how the men’s basketball tournament played out. For example, if the five seed out of the West Region won the hoops tournament, then the five seed in the West Region of the “Annoyance Bracket” would also win, and we’d have a good laugh. (If you’re in “Severance” cubicle land yourself, you really must give this a go.)
Here, we’re going to take just the structure to crown a champion among the 64 best men’s pro golfers (though a golf annoyance bracket would be pretty great, too; we’ll be sure to pocket that thought). Our 64 will be the top 64 ranked by the folks over at Data Golf, as they include LIV Golf results, and pros will advance — or be bounced — based on how their corresponding men’s basketball seed fares.
With that, here’s the bracket:
South first round
1. Scottie Scheffler vs. 16. Patrick Rodgers
8. Sergio Garcia vs. 9. Alex Noren
4. Bryson DeChambeau vs. 13. Abraham Ancer
5. J.J. Spaun vs. 12. Maverick McNealy
3. Tyrrell Hatton vs. 14. Jacob Bridgeman
6. Denny McCarthy vs. 11. Ben Griffin
2. Patrick Cantlay vs. 15. Taylor Moore
7. Si Woo Kim vs. 10. David Puig
West first round
1. Jon Rahm vs. 16. Laurie Canter
8. Jason Day vs. 9. Davis Thompson
4. Xander Schauffele vs. 13. Alex Smalley
5. Ludvig Aberg vs. 12. Wyndham Clark
3. Patrick Cantlay vs. 14. Byeong Hun An
6. Keegan Bradley vs. 11. J.T. Poston
2. Tommy Fleetwood vs. 15. Nick Taylor
7. Sungjae Im vs. 10. Adam Scott
East first round
1. Rory McIlroy vs. 16. Thomas Detry
8. Lucas Glover vs. 9. Tony Finau
4. Sepp Straka vs. 13. Christiaan Bezuidenhout
5. Robert MacIntyre vs. 12. Max Greyserman
3. Hideki Matsuyama vs. 14. Dean Burmester
6. Akshay Bhatia vs. 11. Tom Kim
2. Joaquin Niemann vs. 15. Sahith Theegala
7. Michael Kim vs. 10. Will Zalatoris
Midwest first round
1. Collin Morikawa vs. 16 Louis Oosthuizen
8. Daniel Berger vs. 9. Taylor Pendrith
4. Shane Lowry vs. 13. Stephan Jaeger
5. Corey Conners vs. 12. Viktor Hovland
3. Justin Thomas vs. 14. Harry Hall
6. Aaron Rai vs. 11. Brooks Koepka
2. Russell Henley vs. 15. Kurt Kitayama
7. Sam Burns vs. 10. Min Woo Lee
On Monday, and the following Monday, I’ll update this file, and I’ll provide updates in future Weekend 9’s. There’ll be upsets; we’ve seen some already. The winner gets a golf clap.
Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the Weekend 9.
2. Whom do I have in my basketball brackets? Houston in the men’s, and USC in the women’s.
One takeaway / one feel-good story from the week
3. Keeping with the theme, the week gave us a Cinderella story, too.
Playing the PGA Tour’s Valspar Championship, via its Monday qualifier, was Andre Chi, who 9 to 5 works as the assistant pro at Deepdale Golf Club up in Manhasset, N.Y. Earlier in the week, the tireless Ryan French of the Monday Q Info website shared his story, and, after his first round on Thursday, Chi shared more.
His dad, through magazine clippings, introduced him to the game before YouTube took him the rest of the way. Tiger was a model. Adam Scott, too. Chi’s road then took him to an NCAA Division III national title, before he took a club pro job. But the 24-year-old is a stick. And he’s a dreamer. He continued to compete. And this winter, he took what he called a gamble — on himself. He’d go down to Florida. And he’d just play. Cash would be extremely tight — “there’s money going out, no money coming in,” he said Thursday. Who knows what would happen, but you live only once.
Chi fell short at Q School and at two other Monday qualifiers. But then came the breakthrough. He was in the Valspar. Chi played a practice round with Scott even. “So, yeah, it was a great time, he’s super generous, super nice,” Chi said. “He was trying to give me a lot of advice on this golf course and how to tackle this golf course and it was awesome,” Chi said. “It was awesome.”
Thursday was tough. He shot an 81. Didn’t matter. One start may mean more.
“I’m not sure if it’s set in yet,” Chi said. “I’m just trying to put one foot in front of the other right now and trying to soak everything in. I think once this week’s over, I think it will kind of hit that I did play in a PGA Tour event, but right now, I’m just trying to figure out my putting.”
Another feel-good story from the week
4. Thursday, Angela Stanford was named Solheim Cup captain. The day before the announcement, she was with friend and fellow pro Kim Kaufman, who is undergoing chemo treatment for cancer.
