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Yes, This Really Happened in 2023: Boardroom Tiger, Block Fever and Brooks's Return

As the PGA Tour wraps up its season this week, The Ranking looks back at some of the more unpredictable moments of the year.

Gary Van Sickle

Yes, This Really Happened in 2023: Boardroom Tiger, Block Fever and Brooks's Return
Yes, This Really Happened in 2023: Boardroom Tiger, Block Fever and Brooks's Return /

This week, The Ranking looks at crazy things that happened in 2023.

The Spanish Inquisition was not included because, as Congressional spokesperson Monty Python has explained many times, “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

You probably didn’t see that coming…

10. Andy Ogletree, a former U.S. Amateur champ and LIV player, won an Asian Tour event played last week in England. An Asian Tour event in England? What’s next, a British Open in Singapore? The Asian Tour joining the Big Ten Conference? It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

9. Phil Mickelson lost $100 million gambling on sports, his total betting exceeded more than $1 billion, and he discussed—but didn’t—wager $400k on the U.S. to win the Ryder Cup in 2012 (he would’ve lost), according to professional gambler and ex-Phil friend Billy Walters in a new book. It’s no wonder Phil took the LIV Golf money and ran to the bank. A gambling addiction is no laughing matter, much like how The Ranking staff needs to hit a MegaMillions jackpot just to get back to even for their career of buying lottery tickets.

8. The PGA Tour Policy Board added Tiger Woods as a player director, giving tour players a majority on the 12-man board for the first time. Woods was part of a group of 40 players who signed a petition for commissioner Jay Monahan asking for more player control. So Woods, after a career of trying to stick it to The Man—and very successfully sticking it to The Man time and again—is now … The Man? Get Alanis Morissette on Line 2. This actually is ironic.

7. The upside of making bold preseason predictions is that if you’re right, you can crow about it, and if you’re wrong, nobody remembers. Here are some gutsy preseason picks from another golf outlet's panel of experts last January: Rory McIlroy will complete the Grand Slam with a Masters win (oops, he missed the cut!); Tiger Woods will contend at Royal Liverpool (drat, he didn’t play); and Rory, Tony Finau and Xander Schauffele are Player of the Year picks (curses, the trio combined for all of two wins this calendar year). Those picks were good right up until they weren’t. What did The Ranking predict? The Ranking stays out of the forecasting business ever since it backed up on the truck on Enron shares.

6. A club professional stole the show at the PGA Championship, where Michael Block hovered on the edge of contention going into the final round at Oak Hill, played with McIlroy, dunked a magnificent ace at the 15th hole and made a crazy up-and-down at the 18th to crack the top 15 and earn a spot in next year’s PGA Championship. The Ranking would like to be the first to announce that Michael Block has also agreed to join the Big Ten Conference for the 2025 season.

5. LIV Golf defector Brooks Koepka came back with a vengeance, first challenging for a Masters title and then slamming the door in classic Major Brooks fashion on the final nine to win the PGA Championship. Koepka would be a lock for PGA Tour Comeback Player of the Year after his knee injuries, which swayed him toward LIV’s guaranteed money, if only he was still a PGA Tour player. Koepka is halfway to double figures in major championships, a number he once set for himself, and if he doesn’t end up on the U.S. Ryder Cup team then captain Zach Johnson is making a serious miscalculation.

4. Lucas Glover joined the small club of professional golfers who battled the yips and won. Glover found a long putter he could love—the L.A.B. Mezz.1—and rebounded from years of putting woes to win back-to-back titles at Wyndham and at Memphis, the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs. Here’s a 43-year-old The Ranking can root for—a superlative ball-striker with determination; a guy that writing legend Jim Murray or Dan Jenkins (we forget which) liked because Glover favored Frank Sinatra music; and did you see Glover’s young daughter bawling her eyes out in Daddy’s arms when he won in Memphis? If that didn’t make you teary-eyed, you’re probably AI.

3. A posse of orange-clad spectators followed Rickie Fowler around Detroit Golf Club and celebrated when he outlasted Collin Morikawa and Adam Hadwin in a playoff at the Rocket Mortgage Classic to get his first win after a four-year, 96-tournament drought. Even the laid-back Fowler got a little emotional, saying, “It’s just been a long road.” Even though Rickie is personally responsible for a lot of middle-aged fat men all-but-bursting-out of orange shorts—Rickie’s trademark color—his victory was overwhelmingly popular. Especially at Farmers Insurance, where he made a mint doing commercials with that guy who won an Oscar.

2. An opening 75 left Nick Taylor tied for 120th in the RBC Canadian Open in June. The outlook was bleak until a third-round 63 vaulted him into contention. Sunday, Taylor became the first Canadian in 69 years to win his national open and he did it in volcanic style, sinking a 72-foot eagle putt on the fourth playoff hole to beat Tommy Fleetwood in an electrifying finish. Proud Canadians will be talking about this moment for years to come. That, and how much ice they chipped off their windshields in the morning when they went to work in November.

1. Earth wobbled on its axis June 6 when the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund shockingly agreed to a merger/takeover to combine PIF’s LIV Golf enterprise into a “collectively owned for-profit entity” and a lot of other jibber-jabber. What happened to the PGA Tour’s we-will-fight-to-the-last-man stance? Greed was victorious. The Tour didn’t want to hurt its questionably-non-profit-status-bottom-line any more by trying—so it climbed into bed with the sportswashing Saudis. Wrote ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt: “So you preach loyalty to a tour and convince guy not to take 8- and 9-figure deals based on that loyalty and on the source of the money. Then those guys find out on Twitter YOU took the very same money?” In unrelated news, Davy Crockett and the Alamo defenders announced a joint working agreement with Santa Ana’s Mexican Army to share proceeds from the new Texas territory. Also, LIV Golf has officially been added to the Big Ten Conference’s new Global Division.

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Gary Van Sickle
GARY VAN SICKLE

Van Sickle has covered golf since 1980, following the tours to 125 men’s major championships, 14 Ryder Cups and one sweet roundtrip flight on the late Concorde. He is likely the only active golf writer who covered Tiger Woods during his first pro victory, in Las Vegas in 1996, and his 81st, in Augusta. Van Sickle’s work appeared, in order, in The Milwaukee Journal, Golf World magazine, Sports Illustrated (20 years) and Golf.com. He is a former president of the Golf Writers Association of America. His knees are shot, but he used to be a half-decent player. He competed in two national championships (U.S. Senior Amateur, most recently in 2014); made it to U.S. Open sectional qualifying once and narrowly missed the Open by a scant 17 shots (mostly due to poor officiating); won 10 club championships; and made seven holes-in-one (though none lately). Van Sickle’s golf equipment stories usually are based on personal field-testing, not press-release rewrites. His nickname is Van Cynical. Yeah, he earned it.

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