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Schauffele’s Thorny Encounter with a Cactus

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SCHAUFFELE'S THORNY ENCOUNTER WITH A CACTUS

Welcome to the desert, Xander Schauffele! During the first round of the WM Phoenix Open Thursday, Schauffele had yanked his tee shot left on the par-4 6th, and when he found his ball, it was safely just outside of a prickly cactus. Or so he thought.

Schauffele took his stance over the ball, his back to the cactus, only to find that he wasn’t totally comfortable. And can you blame him? He thought part of the cactus was loose from the rest, and he was right. A couple pads of thorns were dislodged from the desert plant, and right behind his ankles. So like any golfer desperate to make a score would do, he moved the loose impediment.

“It felt loose,” Schauffele said later. “So I went to go have a look with my right hand, and some people in the crowd are like, ‘He’s from San Diego.’”

They’re right, but what could that San Diego line mean?

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Well, Arizona-natives understand that while plenty of cacti are harmless and passive, others can be rather aggressive when moisture is around. Enter the cholla, one of those more-aggressive species of cacti that will latch on to any form of moisture that comes its way. Such as Schauffele’s right hand.

As he picked up the pads of thorns, PGA Tour Live broadcasters cooed in amazement. But when he tossed the plant aside, about “six or seven” needles stuck into his hand.

“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Schauffele joked to the crowd, slowly yanking the thorns from his fingers. Luckily for Schauffele it wasn’t any worse. He punched out from the dirt lie, landed on the green and made a rudimentary two-putt par. Naturally, he was asked by the press what it felt like to get needled during the round.

“It was just funny. I grabbed it, and had a bunch of thorns sticking in my hand. Someone yelled, ‘Oh, this kid’s from San Diego.’ And I was like, ‘Yes, that was a rookie move.’ So next time I’ll grab a towel or use my glove hand.”

It was a busy post-round press conference for Schauffele, whose caddie Austin Kaiser is currently quarantining after testing positive for Covid. He was asked four different times to explain his cactus situation, and it seemed like he was sharing some regret. But considering he made a more comfy lie for himself and it led to par, during a 4-under 67, well, there was not much regret at all.

“It was worth it,” he said. “I would have done it over again.”

This article originally appeared on Golf.com.

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Meet The Canadian Open Qualifier Tied To ClickIt Golf!

“This week was incredible,” he said. “A dream come true.”

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Josh Goldenberg doesn’t plan to quit his day job. But he had a great time dabbling in his old career.

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He gave up on pro golf, then qualified for his first PGA Tour event.

Read the full story here
https://golf.com/news/josh-goldenberg-rbc-canadian-open/?amp=1

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Bets & Babes: Betting on Birdies

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In this latest episode of Bets and Babes join me and my special guest Robert from the World Series of Golf as we tee up a whole new way to think about betting on the green.

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We break down golf betting basics, share hilarious stories and talk about how to bet in a way that might resonate with us ladies.

Whether you’re a total newbie or just curious how to make golf Sundays more exciting, this episode delivers fun, flirty, and smart tips to get you in the game. 🎧⛳💸

Click below to listen to the entire episode and leave your comments and suggestions for future episodes.

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The Bogey Man’s Guide to Accidental Course Exploration: Or, How I Found My Ball (Eventually) in the Rough of Life

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Ah, golf. The gentle game of precision, patience, and occasionally, profound personal humiliation. You know, the kind that makes you question all your life choices, particularly the one where you decided to spend your Saturday morning chasing a tiny white ball around 18 acres of manicured torture.

Boo here, reporting live from the depths of a particularly thorny patch of “rough” that I’m fairly certain wasn’t on the course map. My mission? To recount a tale of a golf shot so spectacularly off-target, it became less about breaking par and more about breaking new ground. Literally.

It was a glorious Tuesday. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and my swing felt… well, it felt like something. I was on the par-4 7th, a hole notorious for its deceptive dogleg and a bunker that swallows balls faster than a hungry teenager devours pizza. My plan was simple: a nice, controlled fade, landing gently just short of the green. A textbook approach, really.

What actually happened was less “textbook” and more “abstract expressionism.” My driver, bless its misguided heart, decided that “fade” was merely a suggestion, and “controlled” was a concept best left to professional pilots. The ball, a brand-new, gleaming Titleist Pro V1 (because, you know, optimism), launched with the trajectory of a startled pheasant and veered sharply right. So sharply, in fact, it cleared the cart path, hopped over the maintenance shed, and disappeared into what I can only describe as a dense, untamed jungle previously known as “the woods bordering the 7th fairway.”

Now, a lesser golfer, a more sensible golfer, might have declared it lost, taken a drop, and moved on with their dignity mostly intact. But I, dear readers, am Mr. Bogey Man. And the Bogey Man doesn’t abandon his children, especially when they cost $5 a pop.

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So, armed with a 7-iron (optimism again, clearly), a profound sense of misplaced determination, and a faint hope that perhaps a deer had picked it up and was using it as a chew toy, I plunged into the abyss.

The first five minutes were a blur of tangled vines, unseen roots, and the distinct feeling that I was being watched by small, judgmental woodland creatures. My pristine golf shoes quickly became mud-caked relics. My carefully tucked-in shirt became a casualty of low-hanging branches. I swear, I heard a squirrel snicker.

Then, a glimmer! A flash of white amidst the green. “Aha!” I cried, startling a family of robins. I pushed through a particularly stubborn bush, only to find… a discarded plastic water bottle. My heart sank faster than my last putt from 3 feet.

I pressed on, muttering to myself about the unfairness of golf, the existential dread of lost balls, and whether it was too late to take up competitive napping. Just as I was about to give up and declare the ball a permanent resident of the arboreal underworld, I saw it. Nestled perfectly at the base of an ancient oak, gleaming defiantly, was my Pro V1.

The triumph! The sheer, unadulterated joy! It was like finding the Holy Grail, if the Holy Grail was spherical and prone to slicing. I carefully extracted it, brushed off a few leaves, and held it aloft.

Then I looked around. I had no idea where I was. The fairway was a distant, hazy memory. The cart path? A myth. I was utterly, gloriously lost.

It took another fifteen minutes of bushwhacking, a brief but intense wrestling match with a particularly aggressive thistle, and the accidental discovery of what I’m pretty sure was a very old, very moldy sandwich, but I eventually stumbled back onto the course. My playing partners, who had long since finished the hole and were contemplating sending out a search party (or at least ordering another round of drinks), looked at me with a mixture of pity and amusement.

My score on the 7th? Let’s just say it involved a number that would make a mathematician weep. But the story? The adventure? The sheer ridiculousness of it all? Priceless.

So, the next time your ball decides to take an unscheduled tour of the local flora and fauna, don’t despair. Embrace it. See it as an opportunity for accidental exploration. You might not break 80, but you’ll definitely have a story. And isn’t that what golf is really about? (Besides the frustration, the lost balls, and the occasional snickering squirrel, of course.)

Until next time, keep those swings (mostly) in bounds, and remember: even a bogey can be an adventure.

Boo

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