Masters Week Has Arrived

April 08, 2024

The Breakfast Ball Buffet: April 8th

Good evening! Welcome to the Breakfast Ball Buffet, and more importantly, welcome to the best week of the year - Masters week 🌺

Here’s a look at today’s menu:

  • Valero Texas Open recap

  • Spieth’s wild week

  • LIV Miami recap

  • Nelly Korda STILL can’t be stopped

  • Masters week has arrived

Valero Texas Open recap

The Valero Texas Open was one for the ages! A pretty mild first 63 holes was capped off by a back 9 with some of the best golf we’ve ever seen in a few years.

22-year-old Akshay Bhatia shot a 63 to take the lead in round 1 and never looked back. With 9 holes left in the golf tournament, Akshay held a 6 shot lead over the field. It was over, I switched channels to the Womens NCAA Basketball Championship and didn’t think much of it.

However, Denny McCarthy decided to birdie the 10th, par 11, and then birdie every hole between 12 and 18 to shoot a 28 (!!!) on the back 9.

The tide completely turned, and Akshay was forced to make a 12 footer for bird on 18 to send it to a playoff. In electric fashion, the putt dropped.

He just happened to celebrate so hard that he popped his shoulder out of its’ socket. No, I’m not kidding.

There was more than a Valero Texas Open trophy (and $1.7M) on the line; Denny’s never won on PGA tour event before and Akshay’s sole win came at an event that doesn’t offer major exemption, so he needs this win for a bid to the Masters.

In the playoff, Akshay and Denny both teed off and layed up on the par-5 18th.

Denny goes first… and the man who birdied his last 7 holes to force a playoff chunked his sand wedge 30 yards short of the green. Splash. Seriously? 100 shots from there and Denny maybe hits one in the water - tough break.

Now it’s Akshay’s turn, but where’s Akshay…? Well, the 22-year-old literally left the hole for like 5 minutes, mid-playoff, to get a tape job done on his shoulder.

He runs back onto the fairway with his shoulder all taped up, and gets up-and-down for birdie to win the golf tournament. Legendary.

It doesn’t exactly help the “golfers are athletes” argument, but still legendary nonetheless.

What else happened at the Valero this week?

On Friday, Rory joined Smylie Kaufman on the Valero broadcast. It gave us this hilarious moment when Jimmy Walker snapped his putter on live TV.

On Saturday, Ludvig Åberg’s driver head flew off the shaft on a drivable par 4… don’t let that distract you from the fact that he still hit it to 15 feet ↓

We all know that the Jordan Spieth experience is basically the same as doing drugs.

On Thursday, he gave us this masterpiece of a scorecard:

Very Josh Allen-esque. He basically went for 380 yards, 5 touchdowns and 6 interceptions in a loss.

Then on Saturday, he played the 18th hole at TPC San Antonio in the most bizarre fashion you’ll ever witness ↓

He hit his drive miles left into the trees. Then he purposely laid up 75 yards left of the fairway, but got caught behind a tree. So, in very Jordan Spieth fashion, he decided to do this:

Yes. He hit it onto the roof of the clubhouse. ON PURPOSE. Literally 150 yards left of the middle of the fairway.

Anyways, he made double and that was that.

LIV Miami recap

After a tight battle on Sunday, Dean Burmester beat Sergio Garcia in a playoff to win.

Here’s some takeaways from LIV Miami:

  1. Rahm, Hatton, Bryson, Niemann, P-Reed all had solid weeks heading into the Masters.

  2. Anthony Kim hasn’t played pro golf in over a decade sure, but he’s just not good anymore. Dead last at +21. It’s good to have him for added entertainment value, but the reality is that any tour he’s on simply cannot be taken seriously, especially when the fields are that small.

  3. Brooks Koepka was abysmal. +7 for the week and got beat by nearly everybody in the field. He was really just awful across the board. But here’s the thing with Brooks; I’m not sure it matters even one bit. For some reason I still expect a big performance at the Masters this week.

  4. Tyrell Hatton is still hilarious.

Nelly Korda needs to be tested for PED’s

Nelly just won her 4th tournament in a row at the LPGA Tour’s match-play event.

She got off to a very rough start in the stroke play portion, and was +5000 to win the tournament on Thursday.

But, she battled back and absolutely dominated every match she played over the weekend.

Only 3 players have won 4 straight times on the LPGA Tour since 2000: Annika Sorenstam (twice, and got to 5 straight once), Lorena Ochoa, and now Nelly.

She’ll have a chance to tie Annika’s record at the Chevron, the LPGA’s first major of the year, in 2 weeks time.

Masters week has arrived

I got goosebumps typing the title of this section. I mean holy shit, after 9 months of major-less golf, we’ve made it to the best week of the year.

Although Masters week technically starts today, some stars were out for a stroll at Augusta National yesterday, including Scottie and Big Cat.

Here’s a quick overview of the next few days:

  • We’ll probably see 1,000 ‘Masters Preview’ twitter threads and articles (we’ll be doing one too on Wednesday 😬)

  • The Tiger hype train will begin with “he’s walking great” and “this is the best I’ve seen him hit it in years”…we’ll just have to wait and see for real on Thursday

  • Pairings and tee times will be released

  • The Masters Championship dinner pictures will be posted and we’ll critique the PGA and LIV dynamic

  • The Par 3 contest on Wednesday always delivers feel good moments and a few hole-in-ones

Take in every second and enjoy it. It’s the best week of the year.

Quick bites 🥓 :