He has not played well in 2020. But the rescheduled trip to Augusta National is coming. Is there enough time to flip the switch for his title defense?

OUR JOB IS YOUR GAME

Player’s irons. The “crème de la crème.” The aesthetically pleasing iron that gets your golfing juices flowing. We all know what they are, we all aspire to game them and many of us fall for their siren call.

Sadly, there is a caveat. Player’s irons are not for everyone.

If you don’t have strong ball-striking skills, you’ll likely benefit more from the forgiveness found in the 2020 Most Wanted Game Improvement Iron or the 2020 Most Wanted Player’s Distance Iron.

But if you are a lower-handicap golfer and a strong ball striker, the 2020 Most Wanted Player’s Iron test is for you.

Patrick Cantlay closed with a 7-under 65, rallying from 4 shots behind, to beat Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas on Sunday in the Zozo Championship.

Both Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are working as hard as ever to prepare for the 2020 Masters.

At the 2020 ZOZO Championship and played at Sherwood Country Club, Mickelson was his usual gale force of energy working his coffee/launch monitor/intense warm-ups. Each ZOZO day Tiger was visible in the fitness trailer (doors open for ventilation!) preparing his body ready for play.

Still, Sunday’s late back nine grouping with Adam Long featured plenty of mediocre golf by their lofty standards and a sense that weekend groups featuring the two legends will be rare.

Rex Hoggard writes for GolfChannel.com:

It was a starkly unceremonious end for the two legends who were grouped together in a PGA Tour event for the 38th time. Sixteen strokes off the lead to start the final round of the Zozo Championship, this was a formality. It also was likely the anti-climactic end to a largely anti-climactic head-to-head history between the two titans.

They’ll find themselves in a manufactured group for Rounds 1 and 2 at an event starved for attention somewhere down the road, but the chances of the duo landing together in a meaningful weekend tee time is about as likely as the two sharing a plane ride home.

Volunteers and security watch Patrick Cantlay finish off ZOZO Championship win

A season review of major winners and this year’s November Masters may look back kindly on Patrick Cantlay’s ZOZO Championship win. Coming in his native southern California at Sherwood Country Club, Cantlay held off Justin Thomas and Jon Rahm, two other very likely Masters favorites in 17 days.

While we normally look to play at Riviera, Bay Hill, Honda and TPC Sawgrass for signs of Masters readiness, 2020 left the PGA Tour with a sense of responsibility to give players the chance for a legitimate tune-up. Sherwood checked all of the boxes as a sensational and proven tournament venue. A nice mix of playing styles were in contention and while the softened green contours, five par-5’s and immaculate conditioning produced incredible scoring, the ZOZO field was adequately separated.

Cantlay heads to Augusta as a 25-1 shot and with a big win to go with strong play there last year. He finished T9 in the 2019 Masters after briefly leading Sunday.

And as Ben Everill notes at PGATour.com, his final round 66 came on a course he had never played until this week despite going to college nearby.

It's two weeks away. Patrick Cantlay is clearly ready. But Tiger and Phil? Who knows? Augusta National in November? We'll see. The Zozo Championship offered some insight, but there's still so much left unanswered.

CNBC’s Alex Sherman takes an in-depth look at how major media companies are preparing to lose another 25 million cable subscribers and why that may be expediting the demise of several channels.

The story is of particular note for golf given the references to Comcast (NBC, Golf Channel) and Discovery (GOLFTV). But also because all signs point to streaming becoming the required way to get your tournament viewing. Given that the platform is not the preferred way to watch for golf’s older demographic and is still remarkably clunky, it would appear golf’s major organizations relying on cable arrangements have a lot to lose.

As always please hit the link and read the entire story. Here are a few highlights for discussion purposes, starting with this

Moreover, a vicious cycle is settling in that could accelerate cable bundle defections. Distributors like Comcast and Charter no longer care that much whether or not a customer buys traditional pay-TV. The price of a video bundle has gotten so high, there’s little margin for them -- especially compared to broadband internet service.

“You get to that point of financial indifference, then you’re seeing the EBITDA margins go in the right direction and continue to increase,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said last month at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference. “That’s one of the big pivots of Comcast the last decade.”

So instead of threatening blackouts to lower rates, pay-TV operators are accepting rate hikes, passing them along to subscribers, and accepting the fact that price-sensitive customers will cancel TV and go to internet only.

Meanwhile, media companies are shifting their best content to their new streaming services. The result for consumers is higher and higher prices for lower and lower quality.

If that wasn’t disturbing enough there is this:

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Ally McDonald celebrated her 28th birthday by notching her first LPGA Tour victory, holding off Danielle Kang to win the LPGA Drive On Championship-Lake Reynolds Oconee.

England's Ross McGowan kept his cool to win the Italian Open by a single stroke on Sunday to clinch his second European Tour title.

Approved in 2015, the 44-room extension to the historic Rusacks hotel on historic links road is looking anything but historic. Or befitting the Auld Grey Toon.

Approved and expected to use “traditional” materials, it appears the scale and blond sheen will be an eyesore for decades. Maybe by the 200th Open in 2072 it’ll take on the aged patina one would have expected the planning commission to have demanded from the outset for this sacred real estate.

The Scotsman’s Martin Dempster posted these photos today, October 24, 2020. So much for the grey ole

Wee day out with @carol_dempster at start of a week off and that building work at the side of 18th on Old Course is continuing to take shape pic.twitter.com/P08FoN2vR1

— Martin Dempster (@DempsterMartin) October 24, 2020

A tradition we sincerely hope is unlike any other: the October run-up to a rescheduled Masters culminates for most players with the ZOZO Championship final round at Sherwood Country Club.

Normally we get the West Coast and Florida swings to build up to Augusta. This year, we have a collection of fall events that are not the usual building blocks to Augusta, though at this week’s ZOZO, a fun test rewarding all types of player.

The leaderboard heading into Sunday’s finale features several expected Masters leading contenders and any number of possible upstarts with a shot. Eleven players are within four strokes of Justin Thomas’s one-stroke lead over Jon Rahm (63).

Adding to the intrigue: cooler and breezier conditions forecast for Sunday at Sherwood, which nobly stood in as the host venue for the Japan-based event. After three days of fairly benign conditions, players may face a bit more on top of hoping to capture a PGA Tour title so close to the Masters.

Key notes from the PGA Tour:

Phil Mickelson was seven-under through eight of his ZOZO Championship holes Saturday before posting 67 at Sherwood, but more noteworthy was the way he walked back his early week comments on Houston. Or was that some post-Commissioner-text-message breakdancing?

Anyway, a few days after questioning a pre-Masters Houston Open appearance because 2000 spectators were going to be allowed, Mickelson has had a change of heart. Maybe.

From Rex Hoggard at GolfChannel.com:

He told GolfChannel.com this on Saturday: “That’s not a deciding factor. I’m sure the Tour will do a great job of making it safe.”

He went on to mention a bunch of first world dilemmas he faces in this all important scheduling decision. They involve rye grass. Carts. Other things. In case you care.

Justin Thomas rounded into form late in the third round at the Zozo Championship at Sherwood on Saturday, giving him a one-stroke lead over Jon Rahm heading into Sunday.

Another strong month for rounds played, this time up 25.5% according to Golf Datatech.

From their summary:

Entering October, play was up 8.7% nationally versus the same period a year ago. That reflects a year-to-date increase of about 29 million more rounds, even with the loss of about 20 million rounds during the spring due to Covid-related shutdowns.

Every state in the continental U.S. has seen increases in play of at least 2% for each of the past three months. A major drop in precipitation helped fuel a 46% September rounds-increase in Minnesota, while other Midwest states also saw notable increases: Illinois (+35%), Wisconsin (+29%), Michigan (+27%), Indiana (+27%) and Ohio (+26%).

Justin Thomas and Jon Rahm will chasing the win. But Sunday will also see Tiger and Phil together ... though way, way, way off the lead.

Amid changes due to the coronavirus pandemic, Tiger Woods is happy that one Masters tradition, the Champions Dinner, is still scheduled to take place.

Ally McDonald will carry a one-shot lead over Bianca Pagdanganan into Sunday's final round of the LPGA Drive On Championship-Lake Reynolds Oconee.

Englishmen Laurie Canter and Ross McGowan share a three-shot lead entering the final round of the Italian Open.

U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau posted to Instagram story that he hit a drive that carried 401.3 yards and had a ball speed of 211 mph and a hang time of 8.2 seconds.