This is one of those needlessly confusing magical weeks in professional golf where there are two PGA Tour events occuring concurrently. You have options for your golf viewing pleasure, and while the events are fairly disparate, they’re contested in areas famous for good spirits.
After the PGA Tour bailed out the (European) DP World Tour with a cash infusion, they also propped it up by cross-pollinating some of the Tours and players in a few select instances. This is one of those instances.
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The Scottish Open has long been a staple of European Tour golf, and normally a tune-up for the British Open. It offers similar weather, similar time zones, and somewhat similar golf courses. The PGA Tour used its purse power to squeeze onto the Scottish Open dias, co-sanctioned the event by upping the prize money and offering FedEx Cup points, and leveraged that to bring some of the big US stars over to Europe for a couple of weeks. All this bolsters ratings and the somewhat scant bank accounts of the DP World Tour.
The Scottish has decidedly found a home at the Rennaissance Club – even if they haven’t decided how to pronounce it. It is both linksy and parkland in nature – it has 3 holes along the Scottish coast but was orignally carved out of a pine forest. After a spring and summer of big golf events jammed too close to each other causing some big names to skip a week here and there, all the big names will be on property this week. And because it is technically a DP World Tour event, some LIV golfers are able to play like Jon Rahm.
Back in the States, the PGA Tour is holding an “alternate field event” in Louisville, KY at the Hurstbourne Country Club. The field of the ISCO Championship is less familiar that the Scottish field, unless you’re a week-in week-out golf junkie like myself. You have your Luke Lists, your Christiaan Bezuidenhouts, Tom Hoges and Denny McCarthys, and you have your Jackson Koivuns and J.B. Holmes to boot.
Dawgs in the Genesis Scottish Open field: Chris Kirk, Harris English, Brian Harman, Sepp Straka
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‘Dawgs in the ISCO Championship field: Davis Thompson, Brendon Todd.
The purses will probably tell you most of the story. In Scotland, they’re handing out $9 million in total and $1.575 million to the winner. In Louisville, its cut to $4 million in total and a paltry $720,000 to the victor.
Because of the time zones, the Scottish will be on Golf Channel Thursday and Friday from 11am-2pm ET, Golf Channel Friday and Saturday 10am-noon and then noon-3pm on CBS. The ISCO will be exclusively on Golf Channel 4-7 pm all four days.
So different tournaments, different continents, different time zones, different fields, and different distilling. But they both have former Bulldogs. Enjoy your break from soccer, and as always…
GO ‘DAWGS!!!
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