The PGA TOUR is in shambles

Good morning and welcome to the Breakfast Ball Buffet, your snarky companion for all things golf – because who needs sugar-coating? Here’s what we have on-tap for today:

• PGA TOUR policy board beef 🥩

• Way-too-early PGA Championship talk 🐅

• Wells Fargo preview & betting corner 💰

• A tribute to golf’s Harry Potter 🧙

PGA TOUR policy board beef

The PGA TOUR policy board dynamics are far more political than I expected. Rory quit the policy board last year, but was recently asked by some of his peers to rejoin.

Here’s what you need to know about each “side” of the situation ↓

The narrative of Rory and Tiger having any sort of beef is complete BS, but I can also confirm that Rory and Cantlay can’t stomach one another, and that Rory has never been a huge Spieth fan.

At this point, Rory should just spite the TOUR and go to LIV. I don’t actually believe that and it definitely won’t happen, but the TOUR screwed him over big time.

I couldn’t think of a bigger F U in golf history than Rory taking 700 million LIV dollars after all this.

It’s been 11 months since the Framework Agreement and there is no PGA-LIV deal in sight.

The last 3 years are the perfect example of how to destroy a sport from the inside. The players are richer than ever, and the product is as bleak as ever. Hard to stomach.

Way-too-early PGA Championship talk

First up, look who was scouting Valhalla on Wednesday 👀

On top of the TW hype, we have great news: there’ll be no asterisk for next week’s PGA Championship because Mr. Gooch is in the field!

The PGA of America sent Gooch, along with a few other non-qualified LIVers (Reed, Burmester, and Puig) “special invites” to the PGA Championship.

This comes a week after Gooch made it very clear that he’s too cool to grind for major exemptions, which is pretty ironic.

Anyways, I can’t wait to see how he performs, and I also can’t wait to watch Twitter explode over his every move.

Wells Fargo preview

After a couple less-enticing events over the last few weeks, this week’s Wells Fargo Championship is the first event in the massive stretch of summer golf that lies ahead.

All the best players on TOUR are in the field this week except Scottie (not playing due to the imminent birth of his child) and Ludvig (knee injury).

Quail Hollow is a ball-strikers paradise and one of the best courses we get to see on TOUR all year, and it’ll give us a great idea of which guys are in good-enough form to win the PGA Championship next week.

Before we get into our picks, here’s a look at the FedEx Cup standings at the season’s halfway point ↓

Also worth noting that Nelly Korda is playing this week, looking for her 6th straight win. She might have a Met Gala hangover, so we might have to fade her this week.

Buffet bets

Since nothing we’ve been doing has been working, we’re gonna change up our strategy this week. Instead of betting with our heads, we’re gonna bet trends.

Without further ado, here’s what we like this week ↓

Our favorite favorite: Rory McIlroy (+750) — Coming off carrying Shane to victory at the Zurich, he’s now had two months to work on the swing changes, and no one is better at Quail than Rory. We’ll take him to win his 4th Wells Fargo this week.

Middle-of-the-pack nuke: Cam Young (+3000) — Once again, he’s gonna win eventually and we’ll be on him until he does. At a course that fits his game perfectly, +3000 is too good to pass up. Nuke it 🚀

Long shot of the week: Mathieu Pavon (+9000) — This guy is so low key, but that’s only because he’s new on TOUR. He’s a premium ball striker and it wouldn’t shock us one bit if he has a great week.

Matchups PAR-lay (+433): Bhatia over Lowry, S.W. Kim over Spieth, and Young over Matsuyama. Let’s run it.

A tribute to golf’s Harry Potter

It’s been 13 years since the passing of the late and great Seve Ballesteros, @flushingitgolf blessed us with some old footage of Seve being a wizard.

Imagine the level of sorcery needed to flop a 3 iron out of a bunker like that?

Quick Bites 🥓

LIV’s trade deadline and free agency: Teams will be able to sign and trade players as if its the NFL/NBA/NHL. You already know some crazy sh*t is gonna go down 😂

Michael Block is getting his own CBS Special: CBS and Paramount+ will air "One Moment in Time: Michael Block's Miracle in May" on Saturday, May 11.

NBC finally has a commentating crew for the US Open: Shocking how long it took them to fill these spots for a major, but at least it’s done with. Only if we still had Johnny Miller, who was a GOAT on the mic.

“You wanna go at it? Let’s f*cking go!”: Another golf course fight dropped and it’s a must watch.