⛳️ John Rahm to LIV?

Plus: A weekend with Phil Mickelson

Author

The Shanks Gator
November 22, 2023

Good afternoon! Welcome to Shanks, and a major thank you to our friends at PCKL who help keep this newsletter free.

We aren’t doing a full breakdown of The Australian PGA Championship, but it starts tonight. Cam Smith, Min Woo Lee, Cam Davis, Joaqiun Niemann, and Adam Scott are your headliners down under.

We’re betting on Japanese golfer Ryo Hisatsune, who’s had a phenomenal year and earned his PGA Tour card. He is +2,000 on Fanduel.

Golf Trivia: Who was the first Nike Golf athlete?

Here's what we've got for ya today:

  • Jon Rahm to LIV?

  • A Weekend With Phil Mickelson

  • Shots Heard Round The World

  • Golf Data

  • Thing We’d Buy If We Weren’t Broke

Jon Rahm to LIV?

It’s that time of year again…

The offseason - slow and boring.

Except the golf news cycle has been anything but boring since LIV came around and lit the world of professional golf on fire.

The “offseason” now means “LIV poaching season” and as long as they are around with their gigantic pocketbooks, there will be professional golfers interested in making the jump, and there will be a ton of rumors surrounding who those golfers may be…

Who’s saying what?

Well, that’s sort of the key piece here.

LIV-associated Twitter accounts love to pull stuff out of their @$$e$ whenever they have the opportunity.

It’s mostly fake news by anonymous social media accounts who have a knack for trolling people. (They are pretty good at it, we won’t lie).

But for every ten lies, some truth does manage to sneak through.

In this case, the rumors first began circulating from LIV Fan account Flushing It Golf. Who says the rumors have been circulating for weeks, that the money is agreed to, and his only issue is with the format.

Then, Bunkered wrote a piece saying “A well-placed source told us that any talk of an imminent switch is “wide of the mark” but did add that he is “closer to joining than he has been before”.

LIV has not commented one way or the other.

We would note, however, that Lou Stagner from Arccos is not full of crap and he added this:

Anyone else?

There’s also been some Patrick Cantlay / Xander Schauffele rumors, but that’s solely based on them both dropping out of The Hero World Challenge and them being, ummm, more money driven than others.

Shanks Take

Look, you can’t rule out anything when it comes to the Saudis.

They quite literally have THAT much money. They can overpay guys like Pat Perez and lose money indefinitely. This is a government we are talking about here, not a business seeking immediate ROI.

We won’t believe it until we see it, especially because Jon Rahm was so adamant about his love and respect for the history of the game.

$600 million dollars would give a lot of people amnesia, though.

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A Weekend With Phil Mickelson

This story comes to us from Monday Q. It’s written from the POV of Mark Baldwin, a golfer going through his second stage of Q School.

“Two weeks ago, my good friend and colleague, Monday Q Info’s Ryan French, mentioned he had messaged Mickelson on Twitter, asking if Phil would play a match with me to help me prepare for the second stage of PGA Tour Q school. Ryan wasn’t expecting to get a response, but just hours later he received one.

“You may be getting a call from Phil Mickelson,” Ryan told me with disbelief. 

That night came a text from a number I didn’t recognize.

‘Mark. It’s Phil M. Congrats on first stage. I’m happy to help get you sharp for second stage.’”

Golf Data

Shots Heard Round The World

Golf Thing We'd Buy If We Weren't Broke

The collab you didn’t know you wanted or needed? Malbon x 100 Thieves.

For those not in the know, 100 Thieves is an E-sports company.

Some may think it’s ugly, but this sweater reminds us of Duck Hunt for Nintendo. 100% being added to our Christmas list for that reason alone.

Trivia Answer: Seve Ballesteros, who represented them in the 1986 Masters.

That’s all folks! See you Friday Morning with our Ultimate Gift Guide for Golfers.