🏌🏻 Tiger Woods Climbs 430 Spots

Good morning. Today’s edition is packed with a whole lot of news that’s looking forward and inwards.

Without much ado, and not to be much esoteric, let’s dig right into the movers and shakers that just made news…

Top stories In today’s edition:

• Qualifiers for all 2024 Signature Events

• Tiger Woods Climbs 430 Spots in World Rankings

• Rory Beats DeChambeau's Driving Record: Quips Ego

• Tiger Woods on How to Hit a Stinger

ALBATROS
Qualifiers for all 2024 Signature Events

Cameron Smith is exempt through age 60 as a former Open champion (2022). Meanwhile, provided he remains an amateur, Jasper Stubbs of Australia is in via his victory at the 2023 Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship in late October.

The second leg of The Open Qualifying Series required a playoff to determine the champion but it didn’t impact who’s headed to Royal Troon for the 152nd edition of The Open Championship.

With an eagle on the par-5 18th hole, Joaquin Niemann outlasted Rikuya Hoshino for the title. They snare the first two of three exemptions reserved at The Australian Golf Club a few miles south of Sydney.

Min Woo Lee finished alone in third, but he was one of eight in the field already exempt into The Open, per the R&A pre-tournament.

So, the final berth goes to Adam Scott (pictured), who shared fourth place with Scotland’s Grant Forrest and Laurie Canter of England.

See the full list of qualifiers in this article.

TWEETS
Worth Mentioning

EAGLE
Tiger Woods Climbs 430 Spots in World Rankings

Tiger Woods made his latest long-awaited return to professional golf at the 2023 Hero World Challenge in The Bahamas, finishing 18th in the 20-man field at Albany Golf Club.

While the 47-year-old's trending game was cause for optimism, perhaps more importantly, there were also Official World Golf Ranking points on offer at Albany Golf Club. Having dropped to his lowest-ever spot in the standings recently, Woods' 18th-place effort helped him climb from 1,328th up to 898th courtesy of 2.4 points.

As well as gaining $130,000 in prize money, Woods moved up 430 spots in the OWGR despite featuring in his first event since withdrawing from April's Masters.

Woods is back in action at the PNC Championship between December 14-17 at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando, Florida.

LOCKER ROOM
What else is making news

• Nominees announced for Jack Nicklaus Award, Arnold Palmer Award: The five nominees for the Jack Nicklaus Award as the 2023 PGA TOUR Player of the Year are (alphabetically) Wyndham Clark, Viktor Hovland, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler. The four nominees for the Arnold Palmer Award as the 2023 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year are Ludvig Åberg, Eric Cole, Nico Echavarria and Vincent Norrman.

• A new report suggests Tiger Woods could be splitting from longtime partner Nike. The brand has paid the golfer hundreds of millions of dollars during his career.

• Using golf to prepare girls for a career in STEM.

• Landon Silinsky previews the Grant Thornton Invitational and gives his picks for your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups.

• What you need to know about the World Champions Cup this week at Concession in Bradenton.

• Sunday was a wildly successful day for LIV Golf League members Joaquin Niemann and Dean Burmester in two of golf’s oldest national opens. Niemann, the Torque GC captain from Chile, won the ISPS Handa Australian Open in a two-hole playoff against Japan’s Rikuya Hoshino at The Australian Golf Club near Sydney. Burmester, part of the all-South African Stinger GC team, won the Investec South African Open by three shots at Blair Atholl Golf Club in Johannesburg.

• Here is the prize money payout for the LIV Golf Promotions event.

BIRDIE
Rory Beats DeChambeau's Driving Record: Quips Ego

Such is McIlroy's distance, he set a new PGA Tour driving distance record in 2022-23, with his average of 326.3 yards beating Bryson DeChambeau's previous best.

On Sunday, McIlroy defended the reported decision to rollback technology in golf balls, stating he "doesn't understand the anger" and claiming the call "will make no difference whatsoever to the average golfer."

In his tweet, McIlroy wrote: 'I don’t understand the anger about the golf ball roll back. It will make no difference whatsoever to the average golfer and puts golf back on a path of sustainability. It will also help bring back certain skills in the pro game that have been eradicated over the past 2 decades.…'

In response to the comment, one user fired back with the question 'if you don’t think 5-10 yards makes a difference why did you pursue increasing speed? It doesn’t matter, right?' Following the tweet McIlroy, who is never afraid to shy away from the answer, responded with just five words: 'More than anything else, ego.'

DRIVING RANGE
Tiger Woods: How to Hit a Stinger

Tiger Woods' secret weapon can now be yours. Watch and learn as one of the best to ever do it shows you how to hit his patented Stinger off the tee with P·7TW irons.

PAR FOR THE COURSE
December 5: This Day In History

1982: 2004 U.S. Amateur champion Ryan Moore was born. He won his second of two U.S. Amateur Public Links titles in 2004, becoming the first player to win both the Amateur and the Amateur Public Links in the same year – he also won the 2004 NCAA individual championship.