Week XXVI Update - GREASY BOYZ

Jul 02, 2025

Hello Haters,

I was going to kick this thing off lamenting the heartbreaking loss of my boy, former Duke KA pledge Max Greyserman, but we are actually going to kick this week's blog off with SMASHVILLE.

Smashville

- Break out the Diddy Oil and think about your list of all-time pars (driver in the woods, punch out to 180, iron to thirty feet, roll in the par) because the original greasy boy, Patrick Reed, won LIV Dallas in the slipperiest fashion possible. After opening the day with a three shot lead, Reed bogeyed five holes on his front side to see him ultimately lose his lead late in the day. Unperturbed, Reed made par on the closing nine holes, just like your buddy who four-for-threes you to death, to get into a fourway playoff with Jinichiro Kozuma, Paul Casey, and Louis Oosthuizen. Those three golfers shot better rounds than Reed on Sunday, but could not come away with victory as Reed loaded himself up with lube and slid his birdie putt into the hole. With the win the Texas native, claimed his first win on LIV in forty-one starts and snuck way up my big board of golfers I want filling the back end of the Ryder Cup team at Bethpage. For those not in the know, this is a #greasyboy summer for your boy, because the golf may not be exactly pretty, but we are getting the ball in the hole (mostly). Watching Reed win in this fashion Sunday is a great mental image that I can take into the back-half and championship season of my club schedule. If the OGB (original greasy boy) can win without his best stuff, why can't I?**

- Also, just look at that forehead sheen #glistening:

Patrick Reed gets first LIV win via playoff at 2025 LIV Golf Dallas - Yahoo Sports

- Crushers won their third straight team title, but the real story on the team side is what in the world happened to my Smash GC? We were TRENDING and now we are back in last place. We finished eight shots behind the Range GOATS and twenty (20!!!!!) shots behind the fucking Magesticks. Disgraceful. Our captain, with whom I am having serious concerns about his ability to take us back to the top of the LIV standings, was playing badly, very, very badly. So badly in fact that in a fight of rage he smashed his club, smashed a tee marker, and withdrew due to illness, forcing the team to finish the final two and a half rounds with Luis Carrera (who??). The great ones play through illness and injury for the betterment of their team: Kirk Gibson, Michael Jordan, Tyrese Haliburton. That is what we call leadership. What Brooks did in the first round is called petulance. Brooks needs to lock it up before the team championship in August because if we waste a talent like Talor "the Throat G.O.A.T." Gooch in the middle of his prime, I will never forgive him.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming....

She had it in her mouth and the kids walked in. It was there. It was his for the taking. Potegieter was floundering a bit early and my boy, former Duke KA pledge Max Greyserman could not convert. That one hurt. Two missed shorties, a failed up and down for birdie on the par five 14th, and all of those close calls in the playoff. According to DataGolf, Standing on the 18th tee Max had a 36.8% chance of closing that thing out. He did almost everything right. He was fifth in strokes gained total on the day and shot -5 67. It is hard to argue with the play. He hit some good putts in that playoff, but lacked a little bit of that #greasyboy mentality to truly get this one over the line, a skill that he is going to need to develop if he hopes to grind out wins on the PGA Tour. This one is going to sting for a while, not going to lie.

With that being said, all congrats to Aldrich Potgieter for taking home the 2025 Rocket (gone but never forgotten Mortgage) Classic.* We here at 9 After Five have been IN on the 20 year-old South African speed demon for quite a few years now, so really this should have been a happy occasion! But unfortunately it had to come at the expense of our beloved Greyserman.

Deion Approach

- All in all, the Rocket (gone but never forgotten Mortgage) Classic was a pretty entertaining tournament held on a reasonably interesting classic Donald Ross design, which is currently now undergoing a renovation by Tyler Rae; however, there is not a single thing that Rae can do to that course because of the abomination that is the distance by which these players can hit the golf ball. We have beat this drum a bazillion times on here, but after watching Potgieter and Greyserman go driver-eight iron into a 556 yard par five, I think it is time is time to issue my plea to golf's governing bodies one more time: ROLL BACK THE DAMN BALL. Distance can still be a skill, but the scale at which these guys were picking apart this course is completely out of whack. On TV (and in person too really), one cannot tell the difference between a 350 yard drive and a 300 drive. Do you want to know what you can tell the difference between? How far one player drives it past another. If the ball is rolled back, it is not like the 300 yard driver will hit it up with the 350 yard driver. These things will be scaled.... distance and length will still be a priority. But instead of watching guys flip wedges and short irons, shots with very little consequence or variance, into EVERY green, we can see them hit longer clubs, clubs that are harder to control and require a more precise level of skill to pull off. I won't even go into all of the sustainability and cost reasons that the ball needs to be rolled back, but from a competitive standpoint the answer to all should be very simple.

- The US Senior Open almost saw some 1950s "greaser"-style brawls in the parking lot following an altercation between old Padraig Harrington and Roger Maltbie. Harrington got pissed that Maltbie refused to help him look for his lost ball. Malbie, who was doing on course reporting at the time, claimed that his producer said that he would be unable to do his job of reporting and look for the ball at the same time. Channeling their inner Jets and Sharks, the two nearly came to fisticuffs in the parking lot, which to be fair would have been absolutely sick. To me, this should have been a non-issue. First, Paddy, don't lose your ball. It is as simple as that. Second, despite the fact that the US Senior Open has fewer fans to spot balls than a men's major or even a regular PGA Tour event, they still have more fans than my Sunday afternoon game. Guess what happens when I lose a ball? Nobody helps me find it. Grow up, Peter Pan, Count Chocula.

Making the Turn

On the off chance you aren't posted near a body of water this Fourth of July weekend, you can always turn on the golf. The tour heads down to Silvis, IL and TPC Deere Run for the John Deere Classic.Last year sad-boy Davis Thompson fired the tournament record en route to a win over Michael Thorbjornsen and Luke Clanton. Interesting tid-bit, there have been 24 first time PGA Tour winners (and Thompson was a first time winner last year) in the tournament's 53 year history. Seems to be a pretty comfy venue to break out on tour. Maybe we will get another first time winner this year.... which would not be surprising at all given how terrible this field is. The field will feature Ben Griffin, which if he is the best player in your field you know it is rough, Hungjae, drip-lord J-Day, the Postman Cometh, Potgieter, Ca Raleigh, and David Skinns. This week's field will include just 1 of the top 10 and 9 of the top 50 DataGolf ranked players.*

The Memorial JB Holmes Watch

This field is absolute brutality, so I actually won't pile on Sneds, Kis, Palmer, and that whole crew for playing. Their presence at least gives the field a handful of recognizable names for the casual fan to follow. So instead, I am going to spend this section ranking 10 players in the field who have not had a win on the PGA Tour (if you did not make this list, then I must really not have an opinion of you as a golfer):

10. Michael Thorbjornsen - it is probably inevitable that he will win on tour and he is definitely the most talented on this list, but yawn.

9. Beau Hossler - he does rock sick tour visors, but he's been professional since 2016 so you'd think if he had it in him, it'd already have happened.

8. Carson Young - two aesthetically greasy boys made this list based on their facial hair and he is the one I want to win less.