Skippin' Rory, duelin' Cam and Scotty and the Alex Fitzpatrick encore: 10 things for the Cadillac Championship

In 2026, there are eight signature events, four majors and one Players Championship. That's 13 events, which feels like an easy bare minimum for the world's top players. There's no longer any rule about how many they have to play—unlike past years, you're not going to get fined for skipping—but when you have one of the world's best players skipping multiple signatures, what are we even doing? I can understand Rory missing the Heritage the week after he won the Masters, but two weeks in a row feels like a bit much.

Here's the bigger question: If Rolapp is successful in pushing through a schedule with something like 20-25 "big" events on the calendar between signatures and majors, how do you resolve this problem? On a very basic level, how are you going to get these guys to show up every week when, at least in Rory's case, 13 is too many? Or what about DeChambeau, who seems like he'd be content playing the four majors and doing YouTube content the rest of the time? Where does the authority come from? This feels like a problem.

(Side note: I've been doing some research on Walter Hagen, and found that in 1926, he played 195 holes in a week to win the PGA Championship on Long Island back when it was a match play format, played a 36 hole exhibition the next day at Winged Foot, went to Ohio two days later for an exhibition, then went to Massachusetts the next day for a two-day match against Francis Ouimet. THESE KIDS TODAY ARE SOFT!)

2. Is it cool to name an entire course the "Blue Monster"?

As much as I get sick of the novelty names for difficult stretches on tour courses—your Bear Traps, your Snake Pits, your Green Miles—I'm not sure I like just giving the scary name to an entire course. Also, "Blue Monster" is the formal name, unlike those other informal nicknames, and that feels a little cheap and unearned, like if I started calling myself "Gunsmoke." I mean, in the six years between 2008 and 2013 when they had a WGC here, the worst winning score was 16 under. And those fields didn't even have Talor Gooch. I think we need to step back a little on the full course labels. Just pick your hardest two holes, call them "The Devil's Vortex," and be done with it.

3. Alex Fitzpatrick might be the most fun part of this tournament

Before he and Matt pulled off that phenomenal ending at the Zurich, Alex was bound for the city of Antalya and the Turkish Airlines Open, but all of a sudden he has a 2.5-year exemption and a spot in the Cadillac Championship ... where he will not join his brother, who is taking this one off after a ridiculously hot six-week stretch. People are a little mad about Alex's exemption—I think it's completely fine for one tournament a year—but he almost instantly becomes the most intriguing part of Doral. What if he wins? What if he suddenly becomes one of the best players in the world, and the next decade is just a duel between him and his brother for dominance? What if Scottie Scheffler breaks down crying and says he wants to be the "third Fitzpatrick." You'll say none of that is likely, but it's pure possibility right now for the second Fitzy, and that's fun.

4. Are we in the age of amazing duels, and might we get Scottie-Cam here?

Golf is famous for denying us the one-on-one duels we crave, but it occurred to me that we are really being spoiled here in 2026. Scheffler-Fitzpatrick at the Heritage was probably the best of the bunch so far, but Fitzpatrick-Young at Sawgrass was a great one, we got a sneaky Rory-Scheffler backdoor duel at Augusta, and you even had Bhatia-Berger at Bay Hill and the wild six-man duel at Pebble Beach. I am definitely getting greedy, but I badly want to see Scheffler and Young fight it out, largely because they have similar dispositions under pressure and I think are bound to be two of the best players of the next five years. I was slightly disappointed with Young at Augusta—thought he'd handle the pressure maybe 25% better—but he was pure ice at the Players, and Scheffler is pretty simply the best pressure player in the sport. This is a signature event, so the odds are still small, but if golf is dealing us a hot dueling hand in 2026, we may as well shoot for the moon.

5. Ranking the sponsor's exemptions

Fine: Max Greyserman. He's going to have to win at least twice on tour before I can reliably distinguish him from Jacob Bridgeman, Austin Smotherman and Kevin Streelman. (Not really on Streelman, but it made me laugh to include him.)

Visor: Keith Mitchell. I rate this inclusion "visor" because it occurred to me that if he didn't wear a visor, I'd know almost nothing about him. Thank you for the visor, Keith.

Best: Joel Dahmen. We still love him after the breakup with Geno, right? We're sad, but still love them both, and you won't force us to choose? I think that has to be the official line.

Also Best: Max Homa. The Cadillac is going for a real "cool kids" vibe with these exemptions. Anyway, I'm not going to go full Spieth emotional roller coaster with Homa, but I am intrigued by that T-9 finish at Augusta.

6. The Jordan Spieth Sadness Index (JSSI)

Last week we raised it an 8.9, and he didn't play in the Zurich, so in theory it should remain the same, but you know what? We're lowering it to 7.6 just because we get to see the man again. Dad is taking us on a fishing trip, and you better believe that even though he's abandoned before at the last minute, we're going to be out on that porch, fishing pole and tackle box in hand, blinded by optimism and with no memory of the devastating past. Also, how can you watch a hole like this and not love him??

7. Golf Tweet of the Week: What happens when the money runs out?

No jokes this week, this is just really good reporting from Bob Harig about what comes next in professional golf after both the LIV and the PE money pipeline gets shut off. People love to say that LIV was good for the game even if it goes away, because it turned on the money pipeline at the PGA Tour and provoked necessary changes, but what if it actually just hyper-inflated everything and screwed them in the end?

8. One normie pick, one weird pick

I'm rocking with Cam Young for my normie pick, even though it feels like the absolute worst Scheffler will finish is third, but for the "weird" pick, let's go with Adam Scott, who won this thing the last time it was here and who, I feel, has one last big win in him at age 45. Is that sufficiently weird? Probably not. Let's go with Joel Dahmen in the feel-good story of the year.

9. Rogue Golf Take: Stop overreacting to road Ryder Cup losses

I wrote that Jim Furyk was a solid choice for Ryder Cup captain since he returns the team to the task force system that got us back on track—at least at home—after 2014, and the biggest objection I got afterward was the Paris Ryder Cup. Here's the thing, folks: It's incredibly hard to win a Ryder Cup in Europe, against Europe. You know how I know that? Because we haven't done it since 1993. Does anyone deny that Furyk is smart, or that he played an equal role with Stricker and Love in getting the team back on track via the task force? He would have won at Hazeltine and Whistling Straits, just like they would have lost in Paris. The real mistake is in overreacting to a bad road loss, like we did in Rome—that's how you end up with Keegan Bradley, and a disastrous home loss, and the need to course correct. Furyk knows his shit, and while he'll probably lose at Adare Manor, he'll restore sanity to the process.

10. Rogue Non-Golf Take: Men must be unapologetic about their dorky hobbies

I've gotten really into birds, and I can't help it. It hit me last year after kinda creeping around my subconscious for a couple years before that, and now I'm thinking about birds roughly 75% of my day. When people find out about this, I get the same comment: "You're officially a middle-aged man." Yeah, well, you know what, pal? I DON'T CARE. There's a reason people love birds the world over, and I won't apologize for falling under the spell of my precious shrunken sky dinosaurs. Tomorrow at dawn, I'm going after a rare sedge wren at a waterfowl impoundment, and I wear that truth proudly. People in general, and guys in particular—I say men in the section title because it feels like the bulk of the weird hobbyists are men, but I certainly include all lady nerds in this as well—must own their hobbies, whether it's birds, model trains, or sourdough, or whatever. We may be stereotypes, but if it sparks the brain, you have to seize it. The only exception here is video games, which should be illegal after age 12.