Welcome to The Golf Album Blog’s First Annual PGA-NFL Draft.

 Welcome to The Golf Album Blog’s First Annual PGA-NFL Draft. While it might seem counter-intuitive that the athletes from the PGA and NFL have overlapping traits, upon closer inspection there are numerous similarities. In addition, as the sport evolves toward team games (see The Saudi Golf League and the Woods/McIlroy high-tech TGL, official player drafts will likely eventually occur in the golf world. As the football world waits with bated breath for tonight’s’ 2025 NFL Draft, officially known to the league as the “NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting”, to be held for the first time in Green Bay, Wisconsin (no "frozen tundra” jokes here), we now turn the podium over to the Golf Album Blog’s First Annual PGA-NFL Draft. Here are the first 8 picks.

Pick 1: Tennessee Titans: After a 3-14 season, team needs for the Titans are plenty; but first and foremost is the need for a quarterback. Will Levis, selected by the Titans in the second round of the 2023 NFL draft,  has largely been a bust, so the Titans need a player at the most important position in sports. Levis’ replacement must be a true #1 in talent, moxie, leadership and skill. Fortunately for the Titans, there is one golfer above all the rest that fits that description. PGA Commissioner Pro Tem Jay Monahan (soon to be replaced by LIV Golf head Yasir Al-Rumayyan, courtesy of the Saudi Public Investment Fund)  strides to the podium and announces, “Good evening, golf and football fans around the globe. We are pleased to be here in  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. With the first selection in the 2025 PGA/NFL draft, the Tennessee Titans select the 2025 Masters Champion, Rory McIlroy, from the Sullivan Upper School in Holywood, Northern Ireland.

(McIlroy strides on stage and momentarily doffs a Tennessee Titans cap before quickly replacing it with his omnipresent Nike cap.)

Pick 2: Cleveland Browns: The Browns have a major disappointment (of their own making) at the most important position in sports. Putting aside the moral implications, their trade for Deshaun Watson may be the worst trade in NFL history. In March, 2022, the Browns traded a 2022 first-round pick, a 2023 first-round pick, a 2024 first-round pick, a 2022 fourth-round pick, a 2023 third-round pick, and a 2024 fourth-round pick to the Houston Texans to acquire Watson. To add insult to injury, the Browns then gave Watson a five-year, fully guaranteed contract worth $230 million.

The Browns need not just a savior at the QB position, but someone to push the memory of the Watson debacle into the background and bring a new message of hope to the franchise. There is one obvious choice, the golfer whose skills not only transcend the sport but also whose extraordinary media attention could blot out the sun with a (mostly) positive message. "With the next selection, the Cleveland Browns select Tiger Woods, Stanford University and Jupiter Island, Florida.

Pick 3: New York Giants: Big Blue has several significant roster problems that must be filled after losing a franchise-record 14 games. For example, the offensive line has been a drawback for several seasons. However, the biggest problem stands alone. In fact, as the old NFL saying goes, when you have two quarterbacks, you don’t have a quarterback. Ancient artifacts Russell Wilson and Jameis Wilson (average age, 33.5; collective NFL experience, 23 years) were signed during the offseason. However, by all appearance the Giants are not looking to draft a QB with this pick. With Cam Ward gone with the first pick as expected,  their best bet is to pick a golfer who can shore up their offense and their defense, a golfer who is great from tee to green and also on the putting surface, a true two-way player. Commish Monahan intones, “With the third selection in the 2025 PGA-NFL draft, the New York Giants select the top-ranked – and best two-way - golfer in the world, Scottie Scheffler.“

ESPN’S draft Guru Mel Kiper, known for his canny draft evaluations as well as the best hair in the business, excitedly notes his surprise that Scheffler lasted this long  before being selected.

Pick 4: New England Patriots. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio (to the crowded Yankees’ Hall of Fame in the Sky). Or Bill Belichick (to college football wearing Carolina Blue). Or the GOAT (to Sin City, but still with an interest in the NFL).  Anyone, Bueller, anyone? This team had the worst offensive line in the NFL during the 2024 season. It ranked 31st in pass blocking and 32nd in run blocking last season, per Pro Football Focus. On defense, the Patriots were dead last in the league in sacks last season. Oh boy. Despite the many needs, first and foremost the Pats have to keep prize QB Drake Maye upright. So draft the golfer with size, long arms, good foot speed, long arms, a golfer that got that dog in him and long arms.  There’s one golfer that fits that bill. "With the fourth selection in the 2025 PGA-NFL draft, the New England Patriots select the golfer standing 6 ft 1, and weighing in at (generously) 225 pounds, from Northern Ireland and the Athlone Institute of Technology, Shane Lowry"

Pick 5: Jacksonville Jaguars. Like those teams ahead of them in the draft, the Jags have multiple needs to fill in the 2025 PGA/NFL Draft. Running back would not seem to be a pressing matter, with star quarterback Trevor Lawrence having a terrible year in 2024. However, the Jags hired new head coach Liam Coen in the offseason.  Before joining the Jaguars, Coen served as the offensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2024. So boosting the offense should be top of mind for this draft team led by Coen. The pre-draft buzz now has the Jags perhaps taking the top running back in the draft, who is generally regarded to be Ashton Jeanty. Jeanty is described by Danny Kelly (no relation, as far as I know) of The Ringer as having “… a muscular, barrel-chested frame and runs with electric burst and rare balance…. He’s a patient but explosive runner who lets his blocks set up and run lanes develop before he hits the gas pedal and accelerates to daylight. He lulls defenders to sleep with rocker-step and hesitation moves before exploding past them. … He has loose, fluid hips and almost seems to disconnect his lower half from his torso as he jukes, strafes, and absorbs contact without losing his balance. He reportedly he has squatted more than 600 pounds.”
Barrel-chested? Disconnects his lower half from his torso? Can squat 600 pounds?  One golfer jumps to mind. The Jags run to the podium and select Bryson DeChambeau.

Pick 6: Las Vegas Raiders. New head coach Pete Carroll talks about “completing the circle of toughness” on offense, defense, and special teams. Carroll ran the “Legion of Boom” at his prior job in Seattle, and will strive to bring that attitude to Las Vegas.  One golfer whose toughness is unquestioned. After years of frustration in golf’s majors, either coming oh-so-close (11 top ten finishes in 26 majors prior to 2024), while missing the cut or finishing in 35^th or worse in  6 of those tournaments, this golfer broke through in 2024 with two major championships. “With the sixth selection in the 2025 PGA/NFL draft, the Las Vegas Raiders select Xander Schauffele."

Pick 7: New York Jets. The J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS are a M-E-S-S MESS MESS MESS.  How did that experiment with Aaron Rodgers work out?  And firing the head coach in the middle of the season? Now that Danny Snider has been banished to his mega-yacht in the Mediterranean (if the yacht isn’t named the “Good Riddance”, well, it should be) Woody Johnson appears to have assumed the mantle of the Worst NFL Owner (WONO). Perhaps the new regime (GM Darren Mougey and head coach Aaron Glenn) can right the Good Ship Green and White; Jets’ fans hope so. In the meantime, with team needs such as offensive line and wide receiver, the Jets go for the best athlete left on the board.  “With the seventh selection in the 2025 PGA-NFL draft, the New York Jets select Milton Pouha "Tony" Finau, from West High School in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Pick 8: Carolina Panthers. To say the cupboard is bare in Carolina on both sides of the ball is the  understatement of the draft, but let’s start here. The Panthers defense gave up the most points in NFL history last season (534). Woof. The Panthers need more help on the edge of their defense after adding two defensive tackles in free agency during the offseason. So the Panthers turn to the golfer with the size, speed and athleticism, and perhaps the smoothest swing on the planet,  to anchor the Panthers’ linebacker position for years to come. With the seventh selection in the 2025 PGA-NFL draft, the Carolina Panthers select Ludvig Aberg, all 6’2” and 190 pounds of him.  

Good luck to the NFL teams tonight. Enjoy the festivities, everyone, and I hope your teams select well.

© 2012-2025 R.E. Kelly

AMDG

 

Go, Rory!

 Go, Rory! Add your picture to this frame:

 

 

The Career Grand Slam awaits.  Best of luck this week.

 

© 2012-25 R.E. Kelly

AMDG

 

It’s the Mallet, Stupid.

 

Want to improve your handicap? It’s easy. Skip the golf magazine lessons and the how-to books, the never-ending stream of videos showing you how to straighten that slice or add yards to your drives (you old fogeys!).  Want to lower your scores, just go out and buy a mallet putter. Yahoo Sports details the thinking in the following article, at this link: 

As the recent Yahoo Sports article points out, mallet putters have become ubiquitous among top professional golfers, and the once-niche club has helped fuel two historically great seasons in 2024. 

Weapon of choice: 21 of the world's top 30 male golfers, and seven of the top 10, used mallet putters as of July — a stark contrast to 20 years ago, when 17 of the top 20 preferred blades. 34 of 46 PGA Tour events this year were won by a mallet-wielding golfer, and they've gained traction on the LPGA Tour, too: every top-10 player uses one.

The mallet effect: Putts comprise roughly 40% of all strokes (~28 of 70 per round) on the PGA Tour. So yes, a single club can make a huge difference. Just ask top-ranked Scottie Scheffler and Nelly Korda, who found great success in 2024 after embracing the mallet.‌

• Scheffler's putting was the one thing holding him back early this year, and his switch to a mallet at Bay Hill immediately paid dividends: He won four of his next five starts and eight of his final 15, including the Masters, Tour Championship and Olympics.
• Korda, to be fair, won six times this year with her blade. But after missing three straight cuts and recovering from injury, she switched to a mallet. Since then, she's finished 2nd, 5th and 1st in LPGA events, and drained five straight birdie putts on Sunday to win The Annika.

One notable blade enthusiast? Tiger Woods, who won 14 of his 15 majors, 66 of his 82 PGA Tour titles and $94 million with his iconic Scotty Cameron, which remains in his bag today. (The Scotty Cameron  2024 Xperimental GOLO 6.2 LTD Putter will only set you back a measly $1,299.00, online everywhere. I think Tiger can afford it.)

Oh, and Scheffler won the Hero World Challenge in Albany, Bahamas on December 8^th, posting a score of 25 under par. Yikes. Good luck beating this Scottie any time soon.

 

 

© 2012-24 R.E. Kelly

AMDG

Rory Carries Coals to Newcastle

The other day, I visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. to visit the Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment exhibit. While strolling through neighboring museum rooms packed with incredible art, I came across several works by Joseph Mallord William (J.M.W.) Turner, one of my favorite artists. The work that struck me most viscerally was Turner’s Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, 1835. As the museum explains:

Turner excelled at capturing the beauty and mysteries of light. Cool, white moonlight contrasts with warm, yellow and orange firelight. Shimmering reflections animate the water’s still surface.

The setting is the port of Newcastle, England, where coal from inland mines is being loaded onto ships. Coal was used to fuel the factories, mills, railroads, steamships, and other great machines that were transforming Britain during the Industrial Revolution… Here Turner brings the great force of his romantic genius to a common scene of working–class men at hard labor. Although the subject of the painting is rooted in the grim realities of the industrial revolution, in Turner's hands it transcends the specifics of time and place and becomes an image of startling visual poetry.

An almost palpable flood of moonlight breaks through the clouds in a great vault that spans the banks of the channel and illuminates the sky and the water. The heavy impasto of the moon's reflection on the unbroken expanse of water rivals the radiance of the sky, where gradations of light create a powerful, swirling vortex.

To the right, the keelmen and the dark, flat–bottomed keels that carried the coal from Northumberland and Durham down the River Tyne are silhouetted against the orange and white flames from the torches, as the coal is transferred to the sailing ships. To the left, square riggers wait to sail out on the morning tide. Behind these ships Turner suggested the distant cluster of factories and ships with touches of gray paint and a few thin lines. Through the shadowy atmosphere ships' riggings, keels and keelmen, fiery torches, and reflections on the water merge into a richly textured surface pattern.

Aside from the staggering beauty of this work, I was reminded of the expression, “carry coals to Newcastle”. This idiom originating in Britain means an act that is pointless or superfluous, since at the time that this phrase was coined Newcastle was the center of coal distribution in Great Britain.

I was also reminded of this expression upon reading the Rory McIlroy recently spent three weeks working on the shape of his swing. According to the Associated Press in a recent article, the No. 3-ranked McIlroy said he has been hunkered down in a studio — first in Florida, then in New York — for three weeks, just hitting balls at a screen with a modified swing and not even looking at the flight of his shots. He hasn’t liked the shape of his swing for a while, he said Wednesday, and wanted a more robust one that could hold up in the most pressure-filled moments following a number of missed chances this season.

Sorry, Rory, but to the untrained eye of a thirty-handicapper, your swing looks perfect. If I were to teach a young person the golf swing, I would rely on Ben Hogans’ Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, Harvey Penick's Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf, and videos of Rory McIlroy’s golf swing.

I can understand Rory’s frustration with his game in 2024. Despite winning his 6^th Harry Vardon trophy for his triumph in the Race to Dubai (formerly the Order of Merit of the European Tour) by virtue of his victory at the DP World Tour Championship last week,  his failure to make two putts in the three-foot range at last June's U.S. Open must still sting. I’m the last person to be offering advice concerning this aspect of the game, but perhaps working on the flat stick might be more productive when it comes to Rory’s winning major tournaments in 2025. I’ll be rooting for him.

 

© 2012-24 R.E. Kelly

AMDG

 

 

 

Car LIV, Where Are You?

Now that the Fedex Cup has been completed (how did that handicap to Scottie Scheffler work out, by the way?)and the hubbub surrounding the Saudi Golf League a/k/a LIV Golf,  has ridden a flop shot over to the judicial system, it’s worth assessing the damage so far. What damage, you say. As LIVer-in-chief Phil Mickelson generally observed in a recent Sports Illustrated phone interview, the upstart league has been good for both the Saudi golfers and the PGA.  In response to the massive swag offered their members to defect to the Saudi League, the PGA has committed north of $160 million dollars to the coming year’s purses on the PGA Tour, as well as doubling the kitty of the ludicrous Player Impact Program (PIP), which will award $100 million to the top 20 players who help generate interest in the game. (Hilarious. Are there even 20 golfers who generate interest in the game? Not for me.) The PGA’s  new Earnings Assurance Program will also create a league minimum salary of $500,000 for fully exempt members, while also helping with travel expenses. As mentioned in the prior post on this subject, Gordon Gekko is smiling somewhere.

So the burning questions remains, what does the name “LIV Golf “ represent? Well, the "LIV" in the LIV Golf Tour's name isn't an acronym. It is the Roman numeral for the Arabic numeral 54.

What does that mean in the context of the LIV Golf Tour? Greg Norman, LIV's CEO and commissioner, explained in a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, “54 is the lowest score you could shoot if you were to birdie every hole on a par-72 course, so there is an aspirational aspect to the thinking. It is also the number of holes to be played in each LIV event.” (One might be forgiven if she thought that 54 is also the average age of LIV golfers so far, although Champion of the Year Cameron Smith’s defection does bring the average LIV golfer’s age down a tad.) Indeed, LIV Golf players will play just 54 holes in total, as the start-up's tournaments are only three days long. Of course, most events and tournaments on the PGA Tour last four days and 72 holes. (and no, there will be no jokes about the LIVers allowed to use walkers on the course in their upcoming tournaments, not in this blog.)  So, while the LIV Golf Tour may look like a strange name on paper, there sappers, at least on paper, to be a somewhat defensible reason they chose it. And it's less revealing than the descriptive (and off-putting to many golf fans and others) "Saudi Golf League" moniker.

The term “54” serves as another reference for us more mature linksters. Growing up, there was  an American sitcom that aired on NBC from September 1961 to April 1963 called Car 54, Where Are You? The Wikipedia article describes the show as follows:

Filmed in black-and-white, the series starred Joe E. Ross and Fred Gwynne as Gunther Toody and Francis Muldoon, two mismatched New York City police officers who patrol the fictional 53rd precinct in the Bronx. Car 54 was their patrol car. Much of the series is set in the station house, with commanding officer Captain Block ordering his men to answer neighborhood police calls, or investigate baffling cases that have stymied the force at large. Toody and Muldoon often blunder into these cases, encountering the criminals accidentally and proceeding on a wrong assumption. By sheer perseverance, inadvertence, and luck, Toody and Muldoon bring each case to a successful conclusion.

 

 

The lyrics to the Car 54 theme song provides some perspective to the uninitiated (no need to parody these lyrics, by the way; their silliness - and outdated references (Khruschev? Idlewild?), speaks for themselves):

There's a holdup in the Bronx,
Brooklyn's broken out in fights;
There's a traffic jam in Harlem
That's backed up to Jackson Heights;
There's a Scout troop short a child,
Khruschev's due at Idlewild;
Car 54, Where Are You??

The term Mutt and Jeff might be the way to describe Toody and Muldoon, who were the odd couple before The Odd Couple. Toody was short, stocky, nosy, and not very bright. College-educated Muldoon, on the other hand, is quite  tall, quiet, and more intellectual. These opposite qualities between Toody and Muldoon were the basis of the comedic structure of the show. To this young viewer, the show was hilarious. Fred Gwynn went on to star in stage, television and cinema. His last, and perhaps most memorable movie role was Judge Chamberlain Haller in the classic movie  My Cousin Vinny (his attempts to comprehend the New York accent of Joe Pesci, as recently-graduated lawyer Vinny Gambini, are the stuff of which cinematic masterpieces are made.)

 

 

I think of LIV golf as the equivalent of Car 54. Putting aside the Toody and Muldoon comparisons (you figure it out), the Saudi Golf League appears to be stumbling to limited success due to perseverance,  inadvertence, and luck, with a heavy dose of chutzpah and moolah (and now, lawyers.) Certainly, LIV CEO Greg Norman has been pursuing his dream of establishing a competing golf tour for decades, and, as luck would have it, the Saudis have ample means to engage in sportswashing with a sport that has interest to golf fans around the world. However, two clouds appear on the immediate horizon: Rory says no to LIV golfers representing Europe in the next Ryder Cup, and the WGHOF is not counting LIV results in its player rankings. Both stances, if maintained, could deal a stinging blow to the perceived success of the Saudi Golf Tour. In fact, if it’s luck runs out, the Saudi Golf Tour could end up being backed up to Jackson Heights.

 

© 2012-22 R.E. Kelly

AMDG