There's no Tiger Woods, but the PGA Tour has another strong field this week for the Travelers Championship. Here are our experts' best bets.

Golf brands come and golf brands go. That’s simply the way of the world. There was a time when Penfold Golf was the name in golf balls in Europe. That time, however, is long gone. So, it’s fair to ask why is an English squash pro living in Philly trying to bring the brand back in North America? It’s also fair to ask if we really need another Direct-to-Consumer golf ball brand.

Penfold’s history is a fascinating look at the way things used to be. The new Penfold Golf is an interesting look at the new reality of golf: if you have a story to tell, there’s a business opportunity.

Penfold. Albert Penfold

“There’s a massive nostalgic appeal to Penfold,” says Gavin Perrett, co-owner of Penfold Golf and the man in charge of bringing Penfold to life in North America. “It was the best golf ball in the world in its time.”

Never heard of Penfold? You’re not alone. But if you’re a European of a certain age or an avid James Bond fan, you may well know at least some of the Penfold story.

Albert Ernest Penfold made his golf ball bones back in the Gutta Percha days. He was a kind of rubber savant who figured out a way to make a pure white Gutta Percha that was easier to find than the normal dull gray ones. By 1919 Penfold went to work for Dunlop Golf and developed the very first ball to carry the name Maxfli.

Sunday TV Sports
* NASCAR Race Hub on Fox: 1.433 million viewers.
* NASCAR Talladega rain coverage on Fox: 2.059 million viewers;
* RBC Heritage final round on CBS: 2.044 million viewers;
* Everton-Liverpool on NBC: 997,000 viewers;
* Chelsea-Aston Villa on NBCSN: 612,000 viewers

The PGA Tour’s “Return to Golf” featured pretty solid viewer sizes given the Sunday rain delay, with noticeably strong performances during Golf Channel’s broadcast of PGA Tour Live’s Featured Group coverage.

The numbers were comparable on CBS and well up on Golf Channel compared to the 2019 Travelers played last year in the same slot.

From ShowBuzzDaily:

Note that Golf Channel picked up 1.2 million viewers when CBS signed off in part of the country due to teh delay.

Iain Carter pens this BBC piece on the PGA Tour’s first two weeks.

When filing he was not aware of two more players withdrawing to start Travelers Championship week when he noted the European Tour’s plans this July:

The bubble is leaky. When the European Tour resumes on 22 July stricter regulations will be in place with all participants, officials and media required to stay in designated and, where possible, on site hotels.

No one will be allowed to breach the bubble and, unlike in the United States, the media will also have to undergo testing before being admitted.

The PGA Tour is expected to announce some bubble patches Wednesday at the Travelers. Perhaps PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan may even appear to address the start like other leaders in sports have after a positive test.

Royal Liverpool clubhouse, photo by Geoff Shackelford

In his weekly Daily Mail golf column, Derek Lawrenson says news may be coming soon on Royal Liverpool getting pushed back in The Open rota so that Royal Troon can retain its 2023 centenary date.

The cancellation of the 2020 Open has pushed the schedule back a year, with Royal St George’s hosting in 2021 and The Old Course in 2022.

Lawrenson also tested out what will be the courses new par-17th hole whenever The Open returns (photo below). The new hole was created in addition to other adjustments by Mackenzie and Ebert.

Leaving aside the two new holes showcased when Portrush returned to the rota last year, this will be the first time we've seen a brand new hole on one of the established Open courses in recent memory.

It's good to report, therefore, it's a beauty, with dramatic views over to Hilbre Island, and quite a talking point too in these days of ever-longer courses, given it measures under 130 yards.

Week three of the 2020 “Return to Golf” has seen two more players withdraw or intend to from the Travelers Championship. And it’s only Tuesday.

Cameron Champ tested positive upon arriving at the event after not playing last week’s RBC Heritage, and according to GolfDigest.com’s Joel Beall, must self-isolate for ten days.

Later in the evening, Graeme McDowell told Golfweek he is withdrawing Wednesday morning after his caddie, Ken Comboy, tested positive before traveling to the tournament. McDowell played the first two events, missing the cut in each.

From Eamon Lynch’s Golfweek story where McDowell and Comboy share the sequence of events.

Comboy suspects he may have been exposed to the virus after the Charles Schwab Challenge in Texas two weeks ago. McDowell’s private plane was too small for his party, so his longtime bagman took a commercial flight to Orlando that he described as “packed” with passengers. On Monday, he and McDowell attended the funeral of a friend, then drove to Hilton Head, S.C. for the RBC Classic.

On Thursday, Comboy said he had a mild sore throat and went to bed early. After missing the cut Friday morning, the pair drove home to Orlando that afternoon with McDowell’s trainer, a six-hour journey.

Cameron Champ is out of the Travelers Championship after becoming the second golfer on the PGA Tour to test positive for the coronavirus.

Jordan Spieth says competitors can just focus on "pure golf" coming down the stretch of PGA Tour events without having to deal with "fans and roars and that kind of stuff that make an impact."

Should we roll back the golf ball, is square the future of shoe design, and what brand would you NOT let sponsor you? All this and more on episode 42 of No Putts Given.

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Seldom do our test results make us do a double-take. But in the case of the 2020 Mallet Putter test, we not only rubbed our eyes and blinked to make sure we were seeing the numbers correctly but we triple checked the data. Sure enough, the 2020 winner blew out the competition and took Best Mallet Putter of 2020 in a landslide.

2020 isn’t just the year of extraordinary results but also the year of the boundary-pushing unique design. This year’s 2020 mallet putter field featured putters of every color, shape and size. Some were too big and some were too bright but the Odyssey Triple Track fits just right.

At MyGolfSpy, our job is to provide independent, unbiased and objective testing of products to help you make more confident purchasing decisions. We do this by employing consistent testing methodologies and advanced golf analytics inside our 100-percent independent test facility. You are then able to leverage the industry’s richest set of head-to-head data to help unlock your full potential. Our testing yields unparalleled data which equals unparalleled insight for the golfer.

For 2020, stop buying golf equipment you like and start buying equipment you want to keep. Don’t spend a dollar unless it improves on what’s already in the bag.

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Nice work here by Andy Johnson at TheFriedEgg.com to explain the next big step for the National Links Trust’s effort to save some architectural gems.

National Links Trust (NLT), a non-profit headed by Michael McCartin and Will Smith, plans to make a multi-year, multi-million-dollar investment in the East Potomac, Rock Creek Park, and Langston golf properties.

As The Fried Egg previously reported, NLT has partnered with management company Troon Golf, developer Mike Keiser, and a trio of leading design firms. Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design hopes to restore Walter Travis’s reversible layout at East Potomac; Hanse Golf Course Design has agreed to improve Rock Creek Park, a William Flynn design; and Beau Welling, a senior design consultant for Tiger Woods’s TGR Design, looks to renovate Langston.

Kudos to all involved fr putting in the time and effort.

A few of Andy’s past contributions to highlighting this cause:

Lee Westwood believes Rory McIlroy has “probably had a rethink” after his declaration last week that European Tour golfers have no right to complain about avoiding America during the COVID-19 outbreak. McIlroy mocked players for not willingly quarantining for 14 days with their families in Florida. (You know, because nothing says fun like Florida in July with 4000 people a day testing positive for a coronavirus, versus, oh, Europe in summer.)

James Corrigan reports for the Telegraph on Westwood—one of the players essentially called out by McIlroy given the choice to stay in England for the PGA Tour’s restart—having had a rethink, which is probably code for a apology text was sent and dutifully accepted.

That’s great news since it seemed like an unusually insensitive stance McIlroy took toward his European Ryder Cup peers.

Golfweek’s Jason Lusk and Adam Schupak report that “most” of Golf Channel’s Orlando-based staff will be laid off in two waves. The news was delivered in a Microsoft Teams call by an unnamed executive and human resources officer.

All employees will be allowed to reapply for their jobs – if they’re still available. Those whose jobs are eliminated in Phase I will find out as early as Tuesday that their current jobs will end August 29. Those in Phase II will be let go sometime between Oct. 31 and Dec. 31.

“As we announced in February, Golf Channel will be moving its media operations primarily to NBC Sports’ headquarters in Stamford, Conn., by year-end, while GOLFNOW and GOLFPASS will continue to operate from Orlando,” a Golf Channel spokesman said in a statement to Golfweek on Monday.

The report says only “a small fraction of existing jobs are expected to be made available for relocation” to Stamford, Connecticut. Initially the move was announced as part of a “geographic consolidation”.

The lost jobs come in all categories, from camera operators to producers to website writers, Golfweek was told by several people familiar with the layoffs, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity since they are not authorized to address the matter publicly.

Golf Channel’s parent company, NBC Sports, recently renewed its PGA Tour television rights deal at a significantly higher price despite sliding ratings and cord-cutting, with the PGA Tour taking on more production, as first reported here.

The Guardian’s Ewan Murray reports that the 2020 Ryder Cup will likely become the 2021 Ryder Cup next week.

Talks between the PGA of America and the European Tour, who preside jointly over the Ryder Cup, and local government officials in Wisconsin are now close to completion despite a public line of “no change” to existing arrangements. Work on the spectator build at Whistling Straits, ordinarily well under way by now, is not believed to have meaningfully started.

In last week’s poll, the majority here voted for the Ryder Cup to be postponed a year.

Minus fans, the PGA of America confirms reports of plans to to move ahead with the PGA Championship in August. Undoubtedly this is a shame on so many levels, particularly with the organization returning to the west coast, on a true public course and where the galleries would have been such a big part of the week.

The details from their press release, including ticket refund information for those who planned on going.

For Immediate Release:

2020 PGA CHAMPIONSHIP TO BE PLAYED AT TPC HARDING PARK WITHOUT SPECTATORS

Brooks Koepka Goes for Rare Three-peat in 

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The 2020 PGA Championship at Harding Park in San Francisco will take place the first week of August without fans, the PGA of America announced Monday.

June 22, 2019

2020 PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park Will Have No Spectators

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Filed under probably not coming to a retail store near you, TaylorMade and Callaway, the market leaders in the driver category both have new models on the USGA’s Conforming Clubs list this week.

As per usual, the USGA doesn’t provide the measure of specificity we’d like, and so while we wait to hear back from both companies, all we can do is speculate.

TaylorMade SIM Tour

Missing among a 3-deep sea of SIMs at retail this season was a SIM Tour. For the past several generations of drivers, TaylorMade has offered an undersized tour head in the 430-440 cc range. With three drivers in the lineup and golfers still clinging to the myth that TaylorMade has too many SKUs or updates its driver lineup every six months (it doesn’t – hasn’t in years), it made sense not to offer a small driver at retail. Given a choice between a wee-headed, low spin, low MOI Tour head and a high MOI draw-biased head, the numbers say SIM MAX D was the smarter choice for the mass market.

As I said, it’s speculative, but given how TaylorMade has used the Tour designation recently, the odds are that this is the sub-460 model missing from January’s launch.