Weekend: Puig Takes The Australian PGA
Plus: Fuzzy Zoeller passes, Keegan Bradley wins the Skins Game, Rory McIlroy says LIV will need to keep spending, PGA gets Bethpage for free, and Nelly Korda is engaged.
A busy holiday week produced a healthy mixed bag of golf news: David Puig’s impressive win, Fuzzy Zoeller’s passing, Keegan Bradley’s dominant Skins win, Rory McIlroy’s cold/hard take on LIV’s future, a bizarre reveal that Bethpage will not receive a site fee for two future PGA events, and Nelly Korda’s engagement.
First, the appetizer to this week’s Australian Open at Royal Melbourne…
Puig Wins In Queensland
David Puig ran away from a crowded leaderboard to win the BMW Australian PGA by two over Wenyi Ding. The 23-year-old LIV golfer and former Arizona State star became the second Spaniard to win the championship. After posting his 18-under-par total and holding off another ASU great, Puig’s name was engraved on the prestigious Kirkwood Cup won by only one other Spaniard: Seve Ballesteros
Puig made three straight birdies starting at the second hole to take the solo lead before a run by Ding, the 21-year-old former Asia Pacific Amateur champion, who passed up a Masters invite to turn pro. Ding recorded four birdies in five holes to close out his front nine, but Puig offered no opening to the field after playing his final 40 holes in 13-under par without a bogey. This was Puig’s first DP World Tour victory.
“It means the world for sure,” Puig said. “And obviously, my name being with Seve’s name as the only two Spaniards to have won this event makes it even more special.”
Puig turns 24 during next Sunday’s Australian Open, where he and a strong field will be playing Royal Melbourne for a berth into next year’s Open and Masters.
Puig recently took up full membership on the DP World Tour and will admirably attempt to play a hybrid schedule between Europe while also still maintaining his status on Sergio Garcia’s Zeroballs. Other than Joaquin Niemann, no other LIV player has worked as hard to accrue world ranking points when not sportwashing for the Saudis. Puig played ten times this year in OWGR-eligible events, including a special invite to the PGA Championship. Another invite to Aronimink in 2026 appears likely thanks to the Aussie PGA win.
Puig revealed to the assembled Australian press that his Seve education came be the (very underrated) film about the late golf great, as well as from Lesion 13 GC & Pickleball’s club historian, Jon Rahm.
“You watch replays of every major he won and how he did it and his little movie that there is, seen it at least three or four times,” said Puig said of 2014’s Seve The Movie.
“He’s such a big figure for Spanish golf I’m kind of close with Jon Rahm and the stories that he has and all he knows about what Seve accomplished too, and everything…it’s just his presence and everything he accomplished.”
Fuzzy Zoeller, 1951-2025
Frank Urban “Fuzzy” Zoeller Jr. died on Thanksgiving Day, according to an announcement from the USGA.
The two-time major champion, winner of ten PGA Tour events, and beloved figure, who whistled his way around the course before making disastrous comments as Tiger Woods was en route to winning the 1997 Masters, died at age 74.
The Indiana native continues to be most famous for winning the 1979 Masters in his first try, and perhaps equally as much for the 1984 U.S. Open when he waved a golf towel in mock surrender after Greg Norman’s long par putt at Winged Foot’s 18th. Zoeller initially thought Norman made birdie to take the lead at four-under-par. And after a moment of processing back in the fairway, the outwardly easy-going humorist waved the towel while smiling at Norman’s apparent victory putt.
The moment remains one of the great acts of good-natured sportsmanship in the game’s history. A year later, the USGA gave Zoeller the Bob Jones Award.
Zoeller went on to shoot 67 to Norman’s 75 in the 18-hole playoff. A reminder that when—as long as his balky neck and back cooperated after he was injured in an Indiana high school basketball game—Zoeller at his best was hard to beat.
His lone Masters win gets better every year that a first timer fails to match his accomplishment 46 years ago. Zoeller is only one of two first-time Masters participants to win on his initial visit to Augusta National—everyone in 1934 was making their debut—after Gene Sarazen in 1935. No one since Zoeller has pulled off the feat. Ludvig Aberg was the most recent golfer to give the feat a run when contending in 2024.
After qualifying by winning that January’s Andy Williams San Diego Open, the 27-year-old Zoeller relied on the green-reading eyes of club caddie Jariah “Jerry” Beard en route to a playoff win. Zoeller memorably threw his putter in the air after a six-foot birdie putt to beat Ed Sneed and Tom Watson.
“What the heck is a Fuzzy Zoeller?” Beard famously said upon learning he’d been assigned the first timer in 1979 whose nickname was an expanded version of his full name.
“He led me around like I was a blind man,” Zoeller told Ward Clayton for Men On The Bag. “That seeing-eye dog was great. He told me where to hit it and where not to hit it. He told me on the par 5s when to go for it in two shots and when to lay up. Those guys know.”
Those guys were the club’s largely black caddie corps. Zoeller’s affinity for Beard and their partnership made his dreadful 1997 comments all the more mysterious and embarrassing for a sport attempting to move past its racist image. Apparently, it was just a really, really bad attempt at humor by the perpetually joking Zoeller.
To keep his back from acting up, Zoeller projected an impression that he was loose as a goose by whistling, smoking, and chatting up anyone in his vicinity. That made the comments even more perplexing given the edge in Zoeller’s remarks. Comments that started out by referencing Woods as “that boy.”
“So you know what you guys do?” Zoeller said to reporters under the Big Oak after his round. “Pat him on the back, say congratulations, and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year.”
As he walked away, Zoeller looked back and said, “Or collard greens or whatever they serve.”
The remarks’ location only added to the cringe factor. Augusta National did not have a sterling record on race relations at that point. If not for the astonishment over Woods’ dominant, record-setting performance that immediately ranked with the greatest performances in golf history, the career low for Zoeller could have overshadowed the victory. Nonetheless, it was a massive news story that took Woods time to process and saw Zoeller beat up in press coverage for weeks after the Masters. Woods knew every player’s tendencies before arriving to the pro game and understood Zoeller’s tendency to use jokes as a golf course tension breaker. But he understandably never could get over the bite in Zoeller’s comments made in front of television cameras.
“I’m very good at knowing where people are coming from,” Woods said at the time.
After the incident, Zoeller continued to attend the Masters and missed only one Champions Dinner in November, 2020, because he was still recovering from heart bypass surgery. He played the Champions Tour with some success, including a win in the 2002 Senior PGA at Firestone. But after the Woods remarks, Zoeller was permanently stained by the remarks. The controversy also converted one of the most engaging characters in the game into a sometimes hostile figure who still loved hanging around the range to banter with his contemporaries.
I approached Zoeller at a Champions event with hopes of writing something about the ‘79 win for an upcoming anniversary. In prickly fashion, he essentially told me to get lost. A few minutes later, he called me over to where he was hitting balls and gave me a speech about “you guys” laced with other nonsensical hostility (despite my interest being all about 1979). The Zoeller I’d loved watching as an aspiring golfer was still consumed by the press reaction to his remarks. What a bummer. He was such a blast to watch play golf.
Zoeller’s carefree swing and tempo started with an unusual move: the clubhead hozzle rocked side-to-side behind the ball at address before stopping with the club past the ball. Then he’d take the club back inside. His hands were abnormally low at address, and he was hunched at address. The unorthodox action and pre-shot ticks produced an effortless form of ballstriking that could never be mimicked successfully.
Zoeller’s thick torso gave the impression of an all-arms action that actually produced more rotation than it appeared and plenty of power. He had a strong grip, but was not afraid to change it for certain kinds of shots. Throw in his banter with galleries or caddies, the general kindness to all around him, his constant efforts to never take himself too seriously, the later-in-life croakies holding the sunglasses in place, and it’s no surprise that he was invited to three early Skins Games. Zoeller’s personality and play were vital to keeping the event’s early momentum going. His humility and late-bloomer rise from Edison Junior College—before transferring to the Houston juggernaut—makes him one of the modern game’s great success stories despite 1997’s embarrassing misstep.
Four children survive Zoeller: Sunny, Heidi, Gretchen, Miles, and multiple grandchildren. He lost his beloved wife, Diane, to Alzheimer’s in 2021.
Zoeller will be buried at St. Mary of the Knobs in Floyds Knobs, Indiana. A private viewing from 11-12 pm on December 12th will precede a public visitation from 1-5 p.m., before a private funeral mass on December 13th at 11:00 a.m.
Bradley’s Skins Win Another Reminder Of What Might Have Been
Taking eleven skins and $2.1 million in the first Skins Game since 2008? It’s hard not to see a successful Black Friday piling onto Keegan Bradley’s post-Ryder Cup regrets. While it’s generally ridiculous to read much into a Skins win given how often the format rewarded someone for mediocre play until one right moment, the dominant performance will haunt whatever regrets he might have had for not attempting play in the matches as either a captain or by resigning the post. Bradley’s team lost by two points at Bethpage Black, a course the world No. 14 loves and knows well.
Overall, the new Skins Game was much more watchable than any of the recent silly season garbage at Shadow Creek. Thank the proven format. But the live, 18-hole affair also provided a few reminders of what made the original Skins game work:
It was tape-delayed and aired over two days with nine holes at a time airing on Saturday and Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. By going live to plug Amazon’s lineup of Black Friday sports, the all-in-one approach put a lot of pressure on players and announcers to yap a lot without saying much (including way too many reminders that these guys are Lenny Bruce, Carlin and Pryor all wrapped in one sweet-swinging package.
Back in the dreaded day when Skins was new and produced by Don Ohlmeyer, announcers like Vin Scully didn’t have to remind us how amazing the guys were because they weren’t tacky jocksniffers. Plus, the golf was good, the key moments edited to fit the time slot, and the contestants were legends who needed no ego massaging. In a few cases, they were naturally gifted golf comedians (Trevino, Zoeller, etc.).
The original Skins went to dramatic places that looked unlike anything people had seen in televised golf (Desert Highlands, PGA West). Nothing against Panther National, but between the litany of fairway catch basins installed to make the converted swamp drain, and its open, windy, and soulless setting, the course did not seem like a place anyone would desperately need to play. It was also a tad awkward finding out from guest announcer Justin Thomas just how little he had to do with the co-design bearing his name. But you gotta love the honesty!
Sponcon stuff was certainly part of the original, but as with most stuff done to appease sponsors during a live broadcast we’ve gone from having a nice a hole-in-one car—that Lee Trevino famously won—to stuff like nails-on-chalkboard chats with Tommy Fleetwood about what driving a BMW means to him.
McIlroy: LIV Needs To Spend Another Five Or Six (Billion)
Speaking at the CNBC CEO Council Forum, Rory McIlroy made news by suggesting he sees little way out of the pro tour wars and expects LIV to have to keep spending if the sportwashing enterprise wants to survive.
“I think for golf in general it would be better if there was unification,” he said while speaking to reporter Scott Wapner and alongside TPG President and B-speak jargon master Todd Sisitsky. “But I just think with what’s happened over the last few years, it’s just going to be very difficult to be able to do that.”
LIV Golf has totaled billions in costs since beginning in 2022.
“As someone who supports the traditional structure of men’s professional golf, we have to realize we were trying to deal with people that were acting, in some ways, irrationally, just in terms of the capital they were allocating and the money they were spending,” McIlroy said. “It’s been four or five years and there hasn’t been a return yet, but they’re going to have to keep spending that money to even just maintain what they have right now.
“A lot of these guys’ contracts are up. They’re going to ask for the same number or an even bigger number. LIV have spent five or six billion U.S. dollars, and they’re going to have to spend another five or six just to maintain where they are.”
In (potentially) related news, Puck’s John Ourand reports that LIV is nearing a deal to farm out its television production to EverWonder Studio, a subsidiary of Redbird Capital that’s co-financed with Abu Dhabi-based International Media Investments (IMI). That should get the spending down!
In other news out of the CNBC forum, new PGA Tour Commissioner CEO Brian Rolaff confirmed the accuracy of recent remarks by Harris English regarding a schedule shakeup built around avoiding NFL and college football.
“These are the types of debates we’re having,” Rolapp said. “How does the schedule look? How do you make bigger events? How do you actually stream them together in a season that you can understand? Part of professional golf’s issue is it has grown up as a series of events, that happened to be on television, as opposed to how do you actually take those events, making them meaningful in their own right, but cobble them together in a competitive model, including with a postseason that you would all understand whether you’re a golf fan or a sports fan.”
Newsday: Bethpage Hosting Future PGA Events For Free
