Good morning. This week is the RBC Canadian Open, and I’ll be there Saturday. That means I get to do the most dangerous thing in golf: watching the best players in the world, then convincing myself I can borrow one tiny piece of their swing.
IN TODAY’S NEWSLETTER we’ll get into:
The Canadian Open’s pre-U.S. Open test
Bryson’s weirdly calm major slump
Getting a phone call from Tiger Woods
PGA TOUR
Canada gets the pre-U.S. Open test
The North Course at TPC Toronto
This week’s stop is TPC Toronto’s North Course in Caledon, Ontario.
It’s one week before the U.S. Open, which makes this more interesting than a normal national open. Some players are trying to win. Some are just trying to sharpen their game for next week.
The field has some really good names: Brooks Koepka, Tommy Fleetwood, Matt Fitzpatrick, Justin Rose and defending champion Ryan Fox.
Rory McIlroy isn’t in the field, which is notable because he’s played the Canadian Open every year since 2018.
Brooks Koepka (left) & Tommy Fleetwood (right)
Who I’m watching: Brooks and Tommy.
Brooks is always more interesting the week before a major because his whole career is built around peaking for the biggest setups. If he looks sharp here, especially with his irons, the U.S. Open is going to get really interesting.
Tommy is the opposite kind of fun to watch in person. He’s not overpowering the place, but he’ll show off the small stuff: tempo, flight control, and how often he leaves himself in the right spot.
Course detail: The North Course finishes with a 581-yard par 5. I’m excited to see it live because it gives the best players a real choice late: attack, lay up, or try to make birdie without bringing the big miss into play.
TPC Toronto / 18th hole
READER POLL
Have you ever been to a pro golf event in person?
COMING UP
The U.S. Open comes next week at Shinnecock Hills, and Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler have already been out to scout it.
Shinnecock’s 14th hole in 2018 vs today
Shinnecock’s fairways are more generous than they were in 2018, but the rough still punishes quickly. Rory put it simply: if you miss the fairway by even a few feet, ‘you deserve a bad lie.’ He also said the course takes driver out of his hands more often than people might expect. Scheffler’s read was similar: it’s less about overpowering the course and more about placing the ball in the right spots.
Look out for Monday’s issue, where we’ll have a clear, in-depth course analysis on the U.S. Open.
LIV
Bryson is weirdly calm about the majors
Bryson DeChambeau has missed the cut at the Masters and PGA Championship this year, but he doesn’t sound panicked before the U.S. Open.
His line was almost too blunt: “I might miss all four of them in majors this year. That’s just golf.”
Bryson still says his swing is “very close” to some of his best golf ever, which is a little weird because the results are saying one thing and his internal read is saying another.
Worth watching: The U.S. Open will tell us which one is right.
LIV is also off until late July, with its next event listed for JCB Golf & Country Club in England. That gives Bryson, Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, and the rest of LIV’s major names a long runway into the U.S. Open and Open Championship. That can be useful for prep, but it also means fewer tournament reps before two of the biggest tests of the year.
TOP TIP
Gary Player has a simple tip for drawing the ball: don’t let your head drift forward too early.
If your head moves forward, it gets harder to release the club. The clubface can stay open, and the ball is more likely to leak right instead of turning over.
Player’s fix: set the ball slightly back, feel your hands work more to the inside on the takeaway, and keep your head back long enough to let the club release.
Try this: If you’re trying to draw the ball, don’t just think “turn it over.” Check whether your head is moving toward the target before impact.
QUICK HITS
The Australian Open became a golf tug of war: The PGA Tour is joining the DP World Tour, Golf Australia, and the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia in a three-year Australian Open partnership starting in 2027. The timing is the story. LIV showed in Adelaide that Australia can produce one of the loudest golf atmospheres in the world, and now the PGA Tour clearly doesn’t want to leave that market alone. My take: smart move. The Tour doesn’t need to copy LIV’s party model, but it badly needs more events that feel alive and different.
Olympic golf is officially back on the radar: Qualification for LA28 is now underway, and Los Angeles will add a mixed-team golf event. That gives Olympic golf something it has mostly lacked: a format casual fans can understand instantly. Country pride, men and women together, one leaderboard.
India gets two bigger names: Viktor Hovland and Ryan Fox have joined the field for the DP World India Championship, which runs Oct. 15 to 18, 2026, at Delhi Golf Club in New Delhi. It’s a small field update with a bigger message: more recognizable players are starting to show up in markets that used to sit outside golf’s weekly spotlight.
Tiger Woods’ phone call: Dottie Pepper, the American professional golfer and television golf broadcaster, said Tiger Woods once called her high-school friend Kim Galvin while Galvin was battling a rare cancer. The call meant so much, Pepper said, that it “helped her fight for another six months.”
MINI CROSSWORD
Today’s Golf Mini is Yoga
It’s a quick stretch for your golf brain before your next round.
WHAT’S THE RULING?
Your ball is in a bunker.
Before you hit, you notice your own footprints are right where you need to stand for the shot.
True or false: You’re allowed to rake those footprints before playing.
ANSWER
False.
You can rake a bunker after you play, but you generally can’t improve the conditions affecting your next stroke before you hit.
That includes smoothing sand where you need to stand, swing, or play the ball. Once the shot is over, rake away.
