Tour Guide: Non-Nelly Storylines at the Chevron

You would think that once the Masters ends that the golf world would slow down. Instead, we have another major, a signature event, and Scottie Scheffler wrap-up to somehow fit into a single Tour Guide. We figured out how to do it, but what would a Club TFE introduction paragraph be without a little setup and complaining? Anyway, today’s Tour Guide dives deeper into the Chevron Championship, takes a look back at a memorable trip to Harbour Town in 2004, and picks out the six shots that led Scheffler to victory at Augusta National.

Non-Nelly Chevron Storylines

By Meg Adkins

Angel Yin – In today’s newsletter, I wrote about Nelly’s Jekyll and Hyde performance at last year’s AIG Women’s Open. Angel Yin’s stats that week were almost the exact opposite. She gained a whopping 12.7 strokes putting while losing almost four strokes from tee to green. After being out with an injury for the first part of this year, Angel’s putter came out of the gates hot two weeks ago in Las Vegas. For the three rounds of stroke play, she once again topped 12 strokes gained on the green. Angel’s fantastic personality and sense of humor make her a great watch anytime she tees it up. When she’s rolling the rock better than everyone in the field, it’s truly entertaining stuff. It’s just her second start of the year this week, but if she stays hot with the putter and mines extra motivation from her playoff loss last year, Angel could easily contend once again.

Atthaya Thitikul – Thitikul has even fewer reps than Angel Yin coming into the first major of the year. The Vare Trophy winner for last year’s lowest scoring average hasn’t played since last fall at the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship. She’s been sidelined with tendon pain in her left thumb, and had planned to come back for a tune-up in late March at the Ford Championship in Arizona. That didn’t come to fruition, so Atthaya, who goes by Jeeno, will make her first start this week. The 21-year-old also had a chance to take home her first major at Chevron last year, but thinking she needed birdie to catch Angel Yin, she went aggressive with her approach on 18, only to see her ball roll off the front of the green into the water. A brutal ending for Jeeno, especially as she ended up only needing a par. On the other hand, you try sticking a wedge close after you just witnessed your playing partner hit a capital-S Shank a few moments earlier. (Sorry A Lim Kim).

So Yeon Ryu – The 33-year-old announced last month that The Chevron will be her swan song. A two-time major winner (2011 US Women’s Open and 2017 ANA Inspiration Chevron Championship), So Yeon is beloved by her peers, so keep an eye out on social media and the broadcast for what should be a heartwarming farewell. So Yeon won both of her majors in playoffs, but the 2017 ANA Inspiration Chevron win is mostly remembered as the “Lexi Thompson Ball Mark Incident.” So Yeon wasn’t playing with Lexi when she was told of the penalty on the back nine on Sunday, but the two met in the playoff. So Yeon sealed the deal with a birdie on the first hole, and from that day on Lexi Thompson has never really been the same on Sundays in majors. The firestorm that resulted took away much of So Yeon’s glory, but boy did it make for some excitement on Twitter. Check out the reactions from some very recognizable names. Bring back old Golf Twitter!

Six Shots of Scottie

By Will Knights

The masters is far too big an event to focus on just one shot. So today we’re going to look at the six most impactful shots from Scottie Scheffler’s Masters victory.

First round, No. 12, second shot – At this point in the tournament, Scheffler was just two-under and five shots back of the mark set by DeChambeau earlier in the day. He needed to get going, but instead he dumped his tee shot into the back bunker on Golden Bell. Facing a putting surface that sloped away from him and a green surround that would stop the ball dead, Scheffler landed this bunker shot on the one square foot that gave him hope. It found the bottom of the cup and would be his first of four second-nine birdies on his way to a 66.

Second round, No. 3, second shot – This shot was so impressive I wrote a whole article about it. In short, Scheffler showed with this one shot why he is so much better than everyone in golf right now.

Third round, No. 13, third shot – There isn’t much analysis to be done here, other than he really needed this eagle to reset his tournament. Things were slipping away on Saturday. Then, all of a sudden, they weren’t.

Final round, No. 5, second shot – If you look back at the beginning of Scottie’s final round, it wasn’t pretty. His approach into No. 1 was short, he hit his third long on No. 2, and then he went long again on No. 4. The best iron player in the world didn’t have any distance control. On No. 5, he landed a 7-iron exactly where he wanted, and the rest was history. His distance was immaculate the rest of the day as the Scottie we all know came back to life.

Final round, No. 9, second shot – This Sunday pin on No. 9 is sinister. Anything short comes 30-40 yards off the front of the green, and yet if you’re too cautious you have a very delicate putt back down the slope. Coming off another birdie on No. 8, Scottie hit this wedge perfectly to the top of the slope and let it feed back down to the hole.

Final round, No. 14, second shot – Scottie would go on to birdie Nos. 15 and 16, but for my money, the birdie on the 14th was the final nail in the coffin. Ludvig Åberg was still within reach, but Scottie asserted some dominance with perfect distance control yet again. Anything right of this pin feeds so far away from the hole, but there was no chance Scottie was missing to that side. His final nine holes of the 2024 Masters could serve as a blueprint for anyone who wants to compete at Augusta National.

Memory Lane: 2004 MCI Heritage

By Jay Rigdon

Harbour Town has always felt like a unique PGA Tour stop. For one thing, there’s a lighthouse that looks straight out of a beach-themed Hallmark Christmas movie. For another, it’s a shorter, tighter course, a layout that usually allows the PGA Tour’s coterie of poofers to make some real hay.

One sign it rewards a certain type of player: the number of repeat champions in the record books there. Just over the last 30 years, there have been five champions who had won the event previously. That includes five-time champion Davis Love III, three-time winner Hale Irwin, two-time winner Boo Weekley (whose back-to-back run was ended in 2009 by the Boo-Stopper, Brian Gay), and two-time champ Jim Furyk. But in 2004, Stewart Cink won in a five-hole playoff over Ted Purdy, the second of Cink’s three titles at Harbour Town.

Watching that video, the first thing I noticed was the pants. Cink’s pants put Jason Day’s balloon-like scripting at the Masters to shame. You can almost imagine Day seeing this twenty years ago and enacting the Jared Leto fashion show meme. Second, man, Stew Cink is a big dude. That’s an underrated aspect of his whole career: the guy is just enormous. A strapping figure.

I was in high school and therefore probably didn’t watch this event, but I can’t describe how much that compilation made me want to take a nice Sunday afternoon nap. It just screams “rest your eyes for a bit.” Also, lol at “MCI” being a title sponsor. Cink’s win was livened up a bit by some good old-fashioned aughts rules controversy, as multiple people called in to the Tour to report that Cink had improved his lie in a waste area. As Jim Gorant wrote for SI, that proved to be an empty accusation, with Slugger White heavily quoted. Given how the current Tour features plenty of players not ashamed to improve their lie a bit from time to time, maybe we should bring back the call-in police. (Counterpoint: nah, let’s not, actually.) Gorant also notes that Cink’s long putter would likely soon be outlawed, which reads a bit comically in 2004 given that anchoring wasn’t officially banned until 2016. Cink ended up winning again at Harbour Town post-ban, in 2021.

One other bit of trivia from the 2004 edition: it was the PGA Tour debut of the reigning champion golfer of the year, Brian Harman. At the time he was in the midst of a different reign as U.S. Junior Amateur champion, which is how he got an invite to play his first event on the pro circuit. He shot a very respectable 82-76, missing the cut but clearly not suffering for it long-term.