It was an eventful week in golf — well, not maybe for Dustin Johnson.
Golf Channel, Hailey Garrett, Jessica Hadwin
Hello, friends!
Happy Monday and welcome to another week of the Rogers Report. Morale is high over here for a few reasons: spring is finally here, my golf game is coming together and my two favorite college basketball teams — the Providence Friars and the Villanova Wildcats — are headed to the Sweet 16. Life is good! I don’t blame you if you paid more attention to March Madness than the golf over the weekend. In fact, I commend you for it, because I’m here to fill you in on what you missed.
Let’s get to it.
The Hadwin family
Jessica Hadwin may be the unsung hero of golf twitter. She and her PGA Tour husband, Mark, met on Tinder a few years ago, forming a marriage that has resulted in some hilarious golf-related social media content. Before we get into what she was up to at the Valspar, though, let’s review some of her earlier work.
I think I want to be friends with Jessica Hadwin. She’s witty, knows golf and isn’t afraid to make fun of herself (sound familiar?). She’s also, it appears, is an amateur artist. At the Valspar — which welcomed the field with personalized parking-spot murals last week — Jessica provided the highlight of the week on social media by commissioning her own personalized update.
Also worth highlighting: these videos of Jessica and Mark’s daughter, Maddox, watching Dad compete at the Valspar on television. So, SO wholesome.
That’s it — I’ve been convinced! I use the powers bestowed upon me as GOLF’s social media manager to declare Jessica Hadwin the Queen of Golf Twitter™.
DJ’s world ranking
This could be a telling season for Dustin Johnson. He just dropped out of the OWGR top 10 for the first time in seven years, and at age 37 (wow I can’t believe he’s 37!), it’s possible the two-time major champion could adopt a lighter playing schedule in the coming years. I was deep in thought over this possibility — and the subsequent possibility that I’d exhausted more brainpower on the issue than DJ has — when I came across the following post from Paulina Gretzky.
Dustin Johnson and his youngest son, River
Paulina Gretzky
A few things to note here. (I’ll forego my comments about sneakers on the couch because once you’ve won the Masters, that’s probably allowed.) Half of me looks at this photo and thinks, “Wow! DJ doesn’t need to care about his golf future. He cares about spending time with his family, which is what really matters.” The other half of me is stunned to learn that DJ actually watches golf! He sat around on Sunday and watched Sam Burns win … just like the rest of us.
Truthfully, I think we care way more about what DJ is doing than DJ does, but we have to keep caring for just a little bit longer. The social media posts from his wedding are going to start surfacing in just a few weeks!
The funniest Ryder Cup captain of all time?
Henrik Stenson was named the 2023 European Ryder Cup captain last week, and it got me thinking: is he the funniest Ryder Cup captain in the history of golf? Remember the 2014 Open Championship, when he suggested Tiger Woods was scared to play with him? And what about the time in 2015 when he declared that Viagra was the only drug Olympic golfers needed to be tested for? The evidence is overwhelming, which is why I dug through the social media archives so we could take a look back at some of his best moments.
This Tweet is so old that you may have to open it in a new tab to watch the attached video, but it’s well worth your time. Stenson shares the best prank he ever pulled on a fellow golfer, which includes him dressing in disguise, breaking into Carl Pettersson’s hotel room, demanding money, and breaking not one but two computers out of anger. Then there was the time he was asked about his chances at the Tour Championship…
“…I mean, it shouldn’t be too hard to wipe the floor with these guys this week, right? There’s no one that’s playing great and is sky-high on confidence and no one with a bunch of majors and no one else that hits it 330 off the tee, so it shouldn’t be that hard.”
Good one, Stenson. Next up, we have him pretending to be Sergio Garcia’s caddie during a tournament round.
And who could forget the hilarious prank war that he has going with Ian Poulter?
Fast forward to December, when Stenson gave a hilarious interview after playing the wrong tees at the Hero World Challenge. Not even Jordan Spieth could keep it together for this.
And, if the outstanding evidence weren’t enough, we have Henrik’s children. These interviews with Stenson’s son, Karl, prove that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree (kids don’t get an impeccable sense of humor from nowhere, y’know).
Hype man Joel Dahmen
I love just about every part of golf, but one of my very favorite things about it is the way competitors cheer each other on. It’s something you don’t often see in other sports, and Joel Dahmen once again proved that he is one of the most relatable players on Tour over the weekend at the Valspar Championship.
Walk around any PGA Tour event and you’re going to see people drinking. But most of the time, those people won’t be card-carrying Tour members.
The exception here is Joel Dahmen, who headed out to watch Davis Riley and Sam Burns face off in extra holes on Sunday afternoon at the Valspar Championship. He showed up in a t-shirt with seltzers in hand, looking like any old golf fan! You’d never know he was a PGA Tour winner. Dahmen looked more like a dad taking the day off from yardwork to attend a tournament with his buddies than a guy who’s earned $8.3 million on Tour.
JT’s joggers
It’s SO 2019 to be discussing the merits of joggers and hoodies on the golf course, but the topic still seems to rile up lots of people on Twitter. On a graph where “offensiveness” is the x-axis and “offense taken” is the y-axis, joggers fall pretty high up there for golf fans. We’ve seen it before with Erik van Rooyen, and we saw it again with Justin Thomas on Saturday.
JT on Saturday at the Valspar
Julio Aguilar/Getty Images
Listen, I wear joggers on the golf course and I don’t really care what these guys wear out on Tour. I guess my only take here is that maybe JT should’ve paired them with a more athletic-looking shoe in order to make the whole look more cohesive. But let’s not let his Saturday attire overlook what really matters: the fact that he finished third on Sunday and is now one of my Masters favorites.
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