Range Report
No rounds for me this week. The clubs sat in the hall looking accusingly at me while my brother Bruce came on the pod and we all spent an hour rummaging through childhood memories instead.
We were back at Lahinch in our heads. Our house was right on the first tee. Dad was head greenkeeper and I have these vivid memories of being driven around the course on tractors and pickup trucks, never once swinging a club. Four to eight years old, surrounded by one of the great links in the world, and I was basically a tiny passenger in a hi-vis vest.
The line of the episode came out almost by accident. Bruce was talking about getting back into the game and said: "My imagination has not yet adjusted to my reality, so I think I'm a lot better than I am." I laughed. Ross laughed. I think he felt seen, but slightly attacked. That's the whole thing, isn't it? We've all got a swing in our head that bears no relation to the swing on the camera. Especially when you gave up being a pro 20 years ago, and have barely played once a year in 2 decades! Hello, Bruce….
Drill of the Week
Ross's "Bogey Blueprint" wedge thinking. Not a drill exactly, more a club selection rule, and it's the most useful idea I've heard in months.
The principle: pick the club that can't go too far, not the club that's perfect off the middle. If you've got 115 yards to a back pin and your PW maxes at 125, you're not taking the PW. You take the 54° that tops out at 100 and you swing it full. Worst case you're 15 short and putting. Best case you're stiff.
It works because we don’t strike it perfectly. We strike it like a mid-range handicapper, which is to say occasionally beautifully and often not. Take the club where your good shot is a decent and safe number, not the one where your good shot is the perfect number but your average shot is skiting it over the green into a bush.
Open of the Week
Torquay Golf Club, North Devon. Sunday 24th May. £35.
36-hole open, handicap limit 28, which is the bit that matters. A lot of the BIG opens have a handicap cap that quietly says "yeah, not you mate." This one says come along, bring your nonsense, see what happens.
£35 for 36 holes is barely the cost of a half-decent bag of range balls these days (looking at you, Bruce, with your £8-for-50 tears). The course is a clifftop layout with proper sea views and the kind of breeze that turns a stock 7-iron into a question.
Get the WhatsApp group involved. The 36-hole format means you can have a properly bad morning and still rescue the day after a bacon roll. If your group has the kind of lads who'd treat this as an away day, this is the one.
Course Spotlight
Sunningdale. It got the nod this week as the host for the 2028 AIG Women's Open, first time in 20 years. Heathland, Surrey, two courses (Old and New), and one of those clubs that everyone in the UK pretends they've nearly played.
Why it matters for a Course Addict at 14 handicap: heathland golf is the great forgiving game. Wide-ish fairways, generous landing zones, and greens that punish you only if you're properly wild. You can have a mediocre ball-striking day at Sunningdale and still walk in with a card you'd snap a pic of. Try that at Carnoustie and see what happens 😂
The 10th on the Old is the photo hole (downhill par 4, heather everywhere, the clubhouse in the distance), but it's the par 3s that linger. And the halfway hut sausage sandwich. Members-and-guests for the most part, but visitor tee times do exist if you ring early. This is a bucket list one, easily.
Gear
Cleveland's CBZ cavity-back wedges. Ross has just had three built (48° CBZ, 50° RTZ, 54° CBZ full-face, all graphite, 5-7 day turnaround), and the genuinely interesting bit isn't the kit, it's the philosophy from Cleveland's Joe Miller: most amateurs should be playing cavity-back wedges right up to the 58°.
Read that again! We've all been sold tour-spec blade wedges by clubhouse osmosis, then we wonder why a slightly thin one from 90 yards skips the green altogether and lands on the next fairway...! Cavity-back wedges are more forgiving on those strikes. Which is, you know, every strike for most of us. Me, at least.
Also in the bag this week: my new Garmin Fenix 7X Solar. Not tested on course yet. Looks like a blooming monolith on my skinny little wrist. But it looks cool AF, and it has about a million functions. I'll report back when I've actually played a hole. I took the plunge because they’re last year’s model and 50% off now.
The Story
LIV is dying, and nobody knows what to do with the bodies.
The Saudi PIF has confirmed it's pulling funding at the end of 2026. $5bn down, league folds in August. Which leaves 57 LIV players in a kind of professional purgatory, and Jordan Spieth, asked this week what happens to them, basically said "no idea." Golf Monthly went player-by-player trying to wargame the reintegration. It's grim reading. It's also fascinating.
For four years we've stood in clubhouses arguing about LIV. The bloke who hates it. The bloke who loves Bryson. The bloke who insists Rahm sold his soul. We've all done it. Now the soap opera's heading for its finale and we get to argue about a whole new thing: who comes back, who retires, who gets blackballed by sponsors.
I'd argue the most interesting case is Koepka. Five majors, just split with Srixon, equipment free agent, age 36, swagger intact. Does he crawl back to the PGA Tour? Does anyone make him crawl? Or does he just rock up at Augusta next April like the last three years didn't happen?
Meanwhile, at the Cadillac, Cameron Young is five clear and Spieth has changed his driver, fairway woods AND golf ball. A three-time major winner has done what we all do at 11pm on Golf Bidder. Except his full-bag-swap seems to be working 😆
Upcoming Tour
Truist Championship at Quail Hollow. This is the one. Rory's first start since winning the Masters. Going for a fifth Quail Hollow title at a course he could play with his eyes shut. Scheffler's skipping it, which takes away one of the biggest hurdles.
Watch for whether Rory's still riding the Augusta high or whether two green jackets have quietly engaged cruise mode (somehow I doubt it!). DP World Tour has the Turkish Airlines Open ticking over. PGA Championship in a fortnight, so expect more equipment shuffling than me after my latest 102.
Rules Situation
Your ball is deep in a bush. You can see it, you can identify it, you can just about reach it, but there's no way you're swinging at it.
This may or may not have been me last week on an otherwise beautiful day on the course 🙄
The ruling: unplayable lie, one-shot penalty, three options. Drop within two club lengths no nearer the hole, drop back on the line from the flag through the ball as far as you like, or go back to where you played the previous shot. You do not get to pop it out and place it next to the bush like a civilised person.
Of course you don't.
The Stat
Bruce five-putted from ten feet at the Dundonald Mid-Am and missed the match-play cut by one shot.
Ten feet. Five putts. In the wind, on rolled greens, with a card in his hand. The year before at Duddingston he made the last 16 at level par. Same player, same putter, different week.
If a bloke who shoots level par in a national mid-am can five-putt from ten feet, you can stop apologising for your three-jab on the 14th. We're all one gust away from disaster 😂
So: no golf, a monolith watch, and a brother who five-putted from ten feet. Reasonable week.
If you take one thing from this issue, take Ross's wedge principle. Pick the club that can't go long. The 15-cap version of you will thank the 8-cap version you're pretending to be.
And if you're entering Torquay, tell them the imagination-hasn't-adjusted-to-reality crowd sent you.
Cheers!
Colin