SI:AM | The Canadian Open Had Everything

Plus, parting thoughts from the French Open.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m going to spend the rest of the week thinking about the 290-yard par-3 at the U.S. Open.

In today’s SI:AM:

🇨🇦 “Glorious and free!”

🎾 Djokovic and Świątek dominate

🏀 Jimmy Butler’s unpredictable success

☀️ An interview with the Suns’ new coach

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Canada’s hometown hero

After a wild week in the world of golf, Nick Taylor gave fans of the sport exactly what they wanted yesterday: a dramatic finish to a great tournament.

Taylor, born in Winnipeg and raised in Abbotsford, B.C., became the first Canadian in 69 years to win the Canadian Open—and he did so with perhaps the most impressive clutch putt you’ll ever see.

Taylor made the cut by just two strokes after posting a lousy first-round 75. But he got back into contention with a course-record 63 on Saturday, moving him into a tie for eighth three shots behind leader C.T. Pan. Defending champion Rory McIlroy was among those in a six-way tie for second.

After another strong round Sunday (a 66, capped by birdies on the final two holes), Taylor wound up in a playoff with Tommy Fleetwood to decide the tournament. On the fourth hole of the sudden-death playoff, Taylor sunk a 72-foot putt to win the tournament.

It was the longest putt in the past 20 years to win a PGA Tour event—six feet longer than Jon Rahm’s clinching putt at the 2020 BMW Championship. Taylor’s clutch bomb sparked some wild celebrations at the Oakdale Golf and Country Club outside Toronto. One fellow Tour pro might have gotten a little too excited, though. Adam Hadwin, who like Taylor lives in Abbotsford, ran out onto the green spraying a bottle of champagne after Taylor’s putt went in and was immediately tackled by a security guard who had no idea that he wasn’t a fan. According to Hadwin’s wife, Jessica, he apologized to the security guard “in true Canadian form.” Another angle of the incident shows the security guard patting Hadwin on the back after apparently sorting out the misunderstanding.

The chaotic scene on the green was appropriate after what was a chaotic week for the sport. The PGA Tour’s shocking decision to potentially merge with LIV Golf dominated headlines all week long. But the news is less stunning when you look more closely at the PGA’s financial situation, as Bob Harig explains.

In recent years, because of both the pandemic and competition from LIV, the Tour has been forced to dip into its cash reserves. Those costs were adding up, Harig writes.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Tour had already spent $50 million fighting the lawsuit brought by LIV Golf for restraint. It dipped into its reserves for another $100 million to pay for increased purses brought on by the new designated events and the Player Impact Program, which doled out $40 million in bonuses last year and another $100 million this year.

The designated events and PIP were responses from the PGA to the threat of LIV poaching top players, offering players who stayed with the PGA opportunities for bigger paydays. But where is the money coming from? The PIP prize money came from the Tour’s reserves. The larger purses at designated events (with prize pools increasing by as much as $12 million per tournament) would be the responsibility of the tournaments’ sponsors beginning in 2025, and some sponsors have balked at the bigger bills, according to Harig.

The proposed partnership with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund isn’t necessarily going to solve all those problems, though, Harig points out:

​​There is no indication how the PIF will invest in the Tour itself or if funds from it will be necessary to prop up purses in the future.

It will be the main investor in the for-profit entity to be set up aside from the PGA Tour. How any of that mixes with or without LIV Golf is still to be determined as well. And all of it likely needs regulatory approval.

The PGA Tour clearly has its share of problems, and its proposed merger with LIV will likely be a drawn-out process that will be the main story in the sport until it’s resolved. But moments like Taylor’s win in his home country are a reminder of what keeps bringing fans back.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Thibault Camus/Aurelien Morissard/AP

• Jon Wertheim has 50 parting thoughts from the French Open, including musings on Iga Świątek’s dominance and Novak Djokovic’s history-making 23rd major title.
• The Heat weren’t able to regain any footing in the Finals after dropping both games in Miami. Now the Nuggets look to close it out tonight at home, Chris Herring writes.
• Michael Rosenberg writes that while no one could have predicted Jimmy Butler’s NBA success, “they knew there was something special about Butler, something almost mystical, like a secret passageway that some people walk past 100 times a day without noticing, while others can’t stop staring, fascinated by where it might lead.”
• Read what Suns coach Frank Vogel has to say about his plans for one of his new team’s biggest stars in an interview with Chris Mannix.
• These 10 players could be first-time Pro Bowlers in 2023, according to Conor Orr.
• Manchester City’s triumph in the Champions League final gave them trophies in the three biggest competitions they played in this season. But Jonathan Wilson writes that their triumphs shouldn’t be unanimously celebrated.
• Kevin Sweeney reveals five boom-or-bust NBA draft prospects.

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Aliyah Boston’s vicious block on Sug Sutton.

4. Diamondbacks rookie Corbin Carroll’s triple on a hit that would be a double for almost any other player.

3. The in-booth video of 84-year-old Yankees announcer John Sterling getting hit by a foul ball and continuing to call the game. Red Sox infielder Justin Turner, who hit the ball, signed it for Sterling.

2. Pirates pitcher Mitch Keller’s nasty sweeper with two feet of late movement.

1. Brittney Griner’s season-high 29 points against the Fever.

SIQ

The Baseball Hall of Fame’s first induction ceremony was held on this day in 1939, honoring 11 living inductees from a group of 25 players, managers and executives who had been elected over the previous four years. Of the 12 players elected through BBWAA up to that point, who received the smallest share of the vote?

• Walter Johnson
• Willie Keeler
• George Sisler
• Cy Young

Friday’s SIQ: Think back to a time long, long ago, when the world of men’s professional golf wasn’t driven by a will-they-won’t-they relationship between the PGA Tour and the financial wing of the Saudi Arabian government. It was a simpler time, a time when four touring professionals hopped on YouTube to drop an absolute banger of a music video. Released 12 years ago this weekend, the Golf Boys made waves with the official video for their song “Oh Oh Oh.” Who were the members of golf’s (in)famous boy band?

Answer: Ben Crane, Bubba Watson, Rickie Fowler and Hunter Mahan. The foursome blessed or disparaged the internet (depending on your perspective) with a two-minute-and-16-second pop video, complete with coordinated dances and overly dramatic slo-mo closeups.

In a 2021 oral history by Golf’s Alan Bastable, Crane admitted that the Golf Boys started when he launched a comedic and satirical channel on YouTube. Watson, Fowler and Mahan all approached him asking to be a part of his sketches, he says.

Watson told Golf that during a dinner with his wife, Crane and Crane’s wife (along with “fifth wheel” Fowler) he mentioned the boy band idea. “Hey, we’re boring, right?” he recalls saying. “We’re golfers. We take forever to play golf. What can we do to show a different side of us, who we truly are?”

With Mahan’s interest solidified as well, they got to work. (They also had, at one point, a fifth member in Ryan Palmer, but he couldn’t make the video shoot and his opportunity was lost.) It turns out that Crane’s friend who helped him with his channel, Sam Martin, had a song for them, and, believe it or not, Martin went on to work with Maroon 5, Jason Derulo, One Direction, Nick Jonas and others.

“That ‘Oh, oh, oh, oh oh oh oh’ chant was something I had written for my brother’s band,” Martin told Golf. “Then I just adapted it for the Golf Boys. I used it because no one else wanted it. It’s hilarious that it actually worked out that I ended up writing songs for actual pop acts. This is the first song that I had that worked in the public.”

The video went viral soon after it was posted. Farmers Insurance sponsored the video and committed $1,000 to charities for every 100,000 views. The video now has over eight million views. The Golf Boys reunited for a second song (“2.Oh”) in 2013.

As far as their golf careers are concerned, Watson was the highest ranked player at the time at No. 12 in the Official World Golf Rankings and has had the most notable career since, winning the Masters in 2012 and ’14. Fowler, too, has seen his career take off in the years since the video, reaching a career high of No. 4 in the world. Mahan also reached No. 4, with his last official win coming in ‘14. Crane also last won in ‘14. —Josh Rosenblat