Weekend: J.T. Poston Books Masters Trip
Rounding up the latest winners. Plus, more Augusta National images surface and Scheffler brings the Green Jacket out for Gameday.
Admission: I did not see Arnold Palmer making national news eight years after his passing. Not that it was his doing. That’s doing. With an i.
Moving right along to golf news, we have a new member of the 2025 Masters field, a nice pair of wins for Australians who work with the same instructor, more images from Augusta National post-Helene, and Scottie Scheffler nailing his Gameday appearance.
Poston Wins The Shriners
J.T. Poston’s third PGA Tour win will send the North Carolina native to next year’s Masters and PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.
The 31-year-old closed with a final round 67 at the Shriners Children’s Open to hold off Doug Ghim by one stroke.
Ghim, the 2017 U.S. Amateur finalist and member of that year’s Walker Cup team, closed with 64-65 to make it interesting. Reportedly.
Poston is projected to move to No. 40 in the Official World Golf Ranking and will be making his third Masters start. He finished T30 there this year.
The highlights, even though I know the entire Quadrisphere was glued to every second of this one…
Elsewhere…
Hannah Green captured the BMW Ladies Championship in South Korea on Sunday to claim her second career wire-to-wire LPGA win. A birdie at Seowon Valley Country Club’s 17th hole proved the difference in a one-stroke win over Celine Boutier. Final round highlights can be seen here.
Elvis Smylie won the Western Australian Open title in a playoff for his first victory since turning pro three years ago. The 22-year-old birdied the first play-off hole at Mandurah Country Club to beat Jak Carter. Fun side note: both Smylie and Green are coached by Ritchie Smith, who also coaches Min Woo and Minjee Lee.
After 229 DP World Tour starts dating to 2005, Julien Guerrier took a little longer than normal to clinch his first win: it took nine holes in a sudden death playoff over Jorge Campillo to win his maiden DP World Tour event. The Andalucía Masters playoff equaled a record for the longest in tour history and moved the 38-year-old to 18th in the Race to Dubai. Jon Rahm posted a five-under-par final round of 67 to finish solo sixth at 17-under. Full highlights here.
Latest Augusta National Images Post-Helene
The teaser shot posted of Amen Corner confirms what we knew from the first drone shots posted a few weeks ago: Augusta National’s 11th and 12th greens survived despite Raes Creek reaching epic heights. However, the pines to the rear of the 11th did not make it.
The 11th has featured pines behind the green, dating to the earliest days of the course.
Images captured the day after Helene were noticed this week by the Nuclr Golf Twitter account. The original post, by an insurance agent in Augusta named Ed Bodenhamer, has since been deleted. However, the photos were picked up by multiple online publications, though not any American golf outlets.
Coupled with the images from a few weeks ago showing the course after the storm, the latest images match the damage seen in the first glimpses. While the club’s damage pales in comparison to what happened in the surrounding community, the photos are tough to look at knowing how different the property will look.
The latest batch also solve the mystery of what happened at the 16the hole.The drone images spotted by The Quadrilateral a week after the storm showed the 16th green either, (A) covered in silt, or (B) having been stripped of damaged turf in preparation for re-grassing.
The latest images appear to confirm that falling pines damaged the green, prompting at least a re-grassing.
Having to re-sod a green less than 180 days before the Masters is not ideal, there is only one place with a track record of resodding a green and making it playable in ridiculously short time.
The next view features the ninth fairway as it begins to descend down the slope, with the first fairway in the upper right and the eighth on the left edge:
Another recent image captured the extreme damage noted in the previous batch that seemed to stretch on a straight line from the sixth tee to the above location. This is the grove of trees between the third green and second fairway:
The final image shows another area of pines that took a hit between the Par 3 Course and cabins off the 10th tee.
U.S. Open Daily Tickets On Sale
In case you were seeking a ticket to a major sporting event that costs a third of a Ryder Cup daily ticket, here’s your chance! And you’ll get AmEx rewards points, too.
Scheffler Dons Green Jacket For Gameday
The Masters, Players and Olympic Gold medal turned up at ESPN’s preview show to tout his No. 1 ranked Texas Longhorns (who were handled by Georgia 30-15).
There were Lousiville jokes and some fun banter along with a pointless FedExCup appearance. But thinking of it this way: showcasing the least interesting trophy he won this year to get those impressions counts up to assure FedEx they are not badly overpaying, at least offered a reminder to the masses who’d already forgotten who won it back in August.
Scheffler went an impressive 7-3 with his guest picks:
Finally, this Friday will see the 12th World Series meeting between the Dodgers-Yankees and the first such showdown in 43 years. In case you were wondering, NLCS MVP and San Diego native Tommy Edman is not related to Xander Schauffele. And I’m not one of Steve Garvey’s sons…
I knew Arnie was long, but not THAT long!
"Reportedly"
That's top-notch.