by Golf is Solved
Once you’ve watched Torrey Pines through the lens of optimal strategy, I doubt you’ll ever watch professional golf the same way again. You develop an appreciation—or disgust—for the power of modern strategy and how a golf course like Torrey Pines tests or fails to test the best players in the world. You also see right past the many tired, ill-conceived narratives about golf courses, most of which are barely hanging on by a thread at this point.
Through 11 holes on Sunday, Maverick McNealy was 8 under at Torrey Pines South, and he’d hit only three fairways. Yes, the Torrey Pines South Course notorious for its knee-high rough where, according to some people, “you absolutely must find the fairway.” Now, don’t get me wrong, being in the fairway is advantageous. The problem becomes leaping to the conclusion that accuracy is tested because the rough is thick.
Often, modern strategy gets described as bombing the ball into the rough and hacking it out from there. That’s oversimplified, though, and not really an accurate characterization. What’s actually happening is golfers have learned that one of the fundamental tenets of optimal scoring is that you must take penalty hazards out of play. When a golf design combines penalty hazards with narrow fairways and little to no severity in the penalty associated with a wide miss, especially on the side opposite of the penalty hazard, golfers can bash the ball down the friendlier side without a consequence for errancy.
No hole in professional golf better encapsulates this concept than the fourth hole at Torrey Pines South. The fairway is about 30 yards wide, and a penalty hazard lines the left side. If players were to target the center of the fairway off the tee, they would bring the penalty area too much into their range of outcomes. Therefore, they favor the right side of the fairway and blast away, a strategy that’s further reinforced because missing wildly far right is fine. A tee shot that misses way right just finds rough, which is sometimes trampled down by spectators. To be clear, you don’t want to be in thick rough. You’d obviously prefer to be in the fairway. But when the cost of prioritizing the fairway is a potential penalty shot, the reward is not worth the risk. In 2025, the vast majority of professional golfers understand this. McNealy certainly does. And he isn’t the only one.
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Maverick McNealy's fourth hole on Sunday at Torrey Pines South.
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Scoring information for the fourth hole on Sunday at Torrey Pines South.
One of the most interesting moments of the tournament happened on Sunday when McNealy’s tee shot ricocheted off a spectator on the right side of the 17th hole into a horrible lie in the rough just above the fairway bunker.
McNealy didn’t make a bad swing and block his drive out to the right. He was aiming there, eliminating the penalty area down the left side. If it weren’t for an unfortunate bounce off the spectator, Mav could’ve had a strong opportunity to make birdie, and we might be talking about him as the Genesis Invitational champion. Even despite the bad break, he managed a par and still had the tournament in his hands before failing to birdie the 18th.
I encourage you to spend a couple of minutes clicking through McNealy’s shot trails on the leaderboard. Check out where he hits his tee shot on No. 7 on Sunday. This is dominant strategy at the highest level. You can reject it, you can yell at me and tell me that I’m wrong and that thick rough tests accuracy, but that does not make it so.
In terms of implications for the future of golf, in my opinion, the intrigue is not which current and future golfers figure out the optimal strategy. If you’re a Tour pro and you don’t understand it, you’re being beaten by someone who does. If you’re an aspiring professional who’s resistant to playing this way, you probably won’t make it.
The more intriguing angle is what this means for the future of championship-level design. Which architects will understand that thick rough does not demand accuracy? Which architects will build golf courses hoping to host professional tournaments with enough width to accommodate the modern dispersion pattern while assessing a penalty for wild misses? Which venues and/or governing bodies will insist on thoughtful placement of tournament infrastructure so that wide misses are not bailed out by free drops? And how many more major championships with 25-yard wide fairways lined by thick rough on both sides do some people have to watch before realizing professional golfers aren’t being tested the way they think they are?
Anyway, if you don’t believe me, watch how Scottie Scheffler picks his way around Bay Hill in a few weeks.
Ludvig Reigns
On the results front, there’s a new sheriff in town and his name is Ludvig Aberg. A few weeks ago, the 25-year-old led the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines through 36 holes before coming down with illness and sputtering out to a T-42 finish. He teed it up the following weekend at Pebble Beach but ultimately withdrew, not yet recovered from the illness.
Setting those two results aside, Aberg has been on an incredible run dating back to his professional debut in the summer of 2023. Entering this past weekend, Aberg had two professional wins under his belt—the 2023 Omega European Masters and the 2023 RSM Classic. Aberg opened the 2025 season with a T-5 at The Sentry, his sixth top-five finish since the start of 2024, all of which came in strong fields. Most notably, he finished solo second in his major championship debut at last year’s Masters.
Aberg is outfitted with a complete skill set. He drives the ball as well as anybody, has effortless speed, flushes irons, and is proficient with his short game and putting. The full skill set was on display over the last four days at the Genesis. Ludvig entered the final round two shots back of the lead and missed three consecutive putts under 10 feet on Nos. 4-6 while McNealy bolted ahead. He then rebounded with six birdies and zero bogeys over his final 12 holes, punctuated by a testy two-putt birdie from just over the back of the 18th green to a front pin location.
A statement win felt long overdue and dispelled the odd narrative that Aberg lacks the tenacity or skill set to win a significant golf tournament. Aberg described the feeling of contending down the stretch as “almost addicting.” I suspect he’ll get to scratch that itch again many more times throughout his career.
In other results, World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler hit about as many uncharacteristically loose shots as you’ll ever see him hit in a golf tournament and finished T-3. Rory McIlroy led the field in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and continued to demonstrate much-improved command over his on-course strategy. He lost nearly seven (!) strokes putting to the field on the weekend and finished nine shots back at T-17.
Australia Delivers
Last week, LIV Golf’s UK division released company financials from the 2023 fiscal year. The Money in Sport Substack summarized some of the disclosed figures, or you can find the full financials on this landing page. One not super-surprising takeaway is that LIV has burned through a lot of money.
However, one of my biggest takeaways is the success of LIV Golf Adelaide, LIV’s premier event which makes up 44% of its non-U.S. revenue. Most of LIV’s tournaments may not work particularly well, but Adelaide delivers. It was apparent from watching this year’s tournament over the weekend that the crowds are as passionate and knowledgeable as fans at any tournament on any professional golf schedule.
If there are no other lessons to be learned from the past few years of exorbitant spending across tours, much of which has not delivered fan engagement or sponsor satisfaction, it should be clear that Australia deserves a prominent position in the professional golf calendar. A country so rich with golf history, talented players, enthusiasm for the sport, and an abundance of world-class courses has been neglected by much of the golf world for far too long.
I understand flying to Australia is an inconvenient proposition for American-based players. And yes, prize money earned in Australia is taxed at a high rate. But if the status quo precludes Australia from hosting high-profile, star-studded tournaments, then the status quo deserves to be shaken up. LIV hasn’t ignored Australia and it’s yielded its most (only?) successful event. No matter how the golf landscape shapes up over the next few years, it would be a shame if Australia isn’t given the recognition and stature it deserves.
Results wise, Joaquin Niemann took home the hardware. Next stop, a top 10 in a major?
This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
