Happy Monday. You’ve got back-to-back calls today — we get it. Tell them your Zoom is running long and give yourself five minutes.

Welcome to Frost Delay — Perfect Putt’s Monday read. Mondays at work, you’re looking for any excuse to grab time to yourself, take your eyes off a calendar that already looks like a crime scene, and do something that doesn’t involve a status update. This is that thing.

Every Monday we get you caught up on everything that happened in golf over the past seven days. Tournaments, business news, what’s worth paying attention to this week. In and out.

Two gears:

• Mondays — Frost Delay. Last week in golf. Five minutes. You’re welcome.
• Thursdays — Perfect Putt. The weekly deep dive on golf’s business and economics.

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On the course

Matt Fitzpatrick wins the Valspar. Quietly, efficiently, correctly.

A week after finishing second at The Players, Fitzpatrick made birdie on the 72nd hole at Copperhead to beat David Lipsky by one. Bogey-free 68 on Sunday. First PGA Tour win since 2023. Done.

Fitzpatrick doesn’t generate the noise of a Scheffler or a Rory. He just finished second and first in back-to-back weeks at two of the biggest events on the calendar.

Final leaderboard: 1. Fitzpatrick −11, 2. Lipsky −10, T3. Jordan L. Smith −9, T4. Schauffele/Im −8. Winner’s check: $1,638,000 from a $9.1M purse.

DeChambeau wins again. Two straight. On two different continents. Both in playoffs.

LIV went to South Africa this week — the series’ first-ever event on the continent — and Bryson won again. This time at The Club at Steyn City outside Johannesburg, defeating Jon Rahm in a playoff after both finished 26-under 258. The week before: Singapore, also in a playoff. That’s $8 million in 14 days.

He joins Niemann and Koepka as the only players with five or more LIV titles. He arrives at Augusta in the kind of form that makes betting markets uncomfortable. He also said his driving is still off: “I’m still pulling that dang driver. I’ve got to fix that.” Two wins in two weeks and his main complaint is a miss left. Sure.

Which brings us to the question of the week.

Is DeChambeau getting better — or is the LIV field getting worse?

It’s a fair question. The Fried Egg’s Joseph LaMagna did the most honest analysis available: LIV has five to eight genuinely elite players, a handful of promising young talent, and then a steep drop-off. Of those six names at the top — Rahm, DeChambeau, Hatton, Niemann, Reed, Ortiz — they combined for nine top-10 finishes in majors across 2025. Nobody else on the entire roster managed one.

And the offseason didn’t help. Brooks Koepka left. Patrick Reed left, telling The Telegraph: “Let’s be honest, it’s the best tour in the world.” The biggest new addition was Thomas Detry.

DeChambeau himself acknowledged it in January: “Things have got to change. Things have got to improve.”

The honest answer is probably both. He’s genuinely peaking. The field is also genuinely thinning. Those two things can be true at the same time — and they make the Augusta narrative a lot more interesting than it would be otherwise.

Phil Mickelson also returned this week after four events out due to a family health matter. He shot 7-under and collected the minimum payout. At 55, with relegation looming, he has nine events to secure his roster spot. Nice to have him back.

On the LPGA: Hyo Joo Kim wins the Fortinet Founders Cup.

Wire-to-wire at Sharon Heights in Menlo Park, holding off Nelly Korda on Sunday. Kim at −16, Korda −15. Winner’s share: $450,000 from a $3M purse.

Kim was never seriously threatened all week. She hit 71% of greens in regulation and ranked first in the field in strokes gained approach — the kind of performance that makes a wire-to-wire look easier than it is. Korda, who had the best finishing kick in the field, simply ran out of holes. Two events in, a win and a runner-up. The season is going just fine.

The business of golf

The Tour’s restructuring plan is ambitious. The math is not cooperating.

Rolapp’s six themes from The Players are still generating reactions through Valspar week, and the more people look at the numbers, the more complicated this gets.

The headlines are appealing: 21 to 26 elevated events, bigger fields with a 36-hole cut, a marquee West Coast season opener, expansion into major media markets, a promotion-and-relegation system, and match play in the postseason. Theo Epstein is in the room. Tiger is chairing the committee. Change is coming.

But here’s the problem. Money in Sport’s analysis of the 20 Tour nonprofits that actually publish financials found fewer than seven tournaments that can realistically support Signature Event economics. The Tour currently subsidizes $145 million in prize money annually — 60% of the total for nonprofit-hosted events. Rolapp wants to double the number of elevated events while also expanding into major markets that previously lost Tour stops when sponsors walked. That math does not work unless existing sponsors pay substantially more, or some events simply disappear.

PGA Tour Enterprises shareholders — Strategic Sports Group chief among them — are expecting returns. You cannot keep subsidizing the product while delivering returns to investors. Something has to give.

Adam Scott, who sits on the committee, put it diplomatically: “I don’t think there’s anything drastically wrong with the PGA Tour... but it can’t sit still.”

Rolapp’s timeline: modest changes possibly by 2027, real structural reform not until 2028. Thirty-plus committee meetings. No baked cake. His words.

📈 The market

Two golf stocks. Both had a rough week.

One significant update before the numbers: Topgolf Callaway officially renamed itself Callaway Golf Company and changed its ticker from MODG to CALY on January 16. MODG is no longer a live ticker.

Acushnet dropped more than five percent in a week where the broader market fell nearly three. No fresh analyst note this week, but the story hasn’t changed: management has guided to ~$70 million in tariff headwinds for 2026 and is treating price increases as a last resort.

On the tariff backdrop: the Supreme Court’s February ruling struck down the IEEPA authority behind most of the Liberation Day tariffs. Trump responded within hours with a 10% global tariff under Section 122 — a statute that’s never been used before, capped at 150 days, and already being challenged in court. For golf equipment companies, the uncertainty is almost worse than the tariffs themselves. Acushnet is still budgeting $70M because nobody knows what July looks like.

On Callaway: the Leonard Green & Partners deal is done and closed. Callaway received approximately $800M in net cash proceeds and is now back to being a pure-play equipment and apparel business. D Magazine ran a piece this week on how Topgolf lost nearly $1 billion in value under Callaway’s ownership — acquired for $2B in 2021, sold at a $1.1B valuation. Callaway’s CEO Chip Brewer’s current framing: “a return to a pure-play golf equipment company.” Hard to argue with that reframe.

⚡ Quick hits

GOLFZON moves its global HQ to Virginia. The South Korean simulator giant is relocating its global business team to Chantilly, Virginia, under a new Global Business Division led by GOLFZON America CEO Sean Pyun. The U.S. is now officially the center of gravity for the indoor golf arms race. The Koreans came to win.

Tiger is “working on it.” His exact words during TGL this week: “Sometimes I have good days, sometimes I have bad days. Disc replacement is not a lot of fun.” On days the back acts up: “It’s hard to just move around.” He’s not ruling out Augusta. The Masters website currently lists him as making his 27th start. Polymarket puts his odds of playing at 40%. His odds of winning are roughly the same as Zach Johnson’s. The man has earned the right to keep us guessing.

Rory is staying home until Augusta. After finishing T46 at The Players while still managing his back, McIlroy confirmed the Masters will be his next start — skipping Valspar, Houston, and the Valero. His back is fine. He’s off painkillers. And his Champions Dinner menu this week confirmed what we already knew: wagyu filet, yellowfin tuna carpaccio, grilled elk sliders, sticky toffee pudding. The reigning Masters champion is eating well and resting. Everyone else should be worried.

Michigan has more public golf than almost everywhere. The NGF confirmed Michigan leads the U.S. with 748 publicly accessible courses — 86% of its total, versus a 72% national average. More than the combined total of 45 other states. Golf’s total annual economic impact nationally: $102 billion. Michigan, apparently, is America’s summer golf capital. Florida disagrees but the math doesn’t care.

Bolton wants the 2035 Ryder Cup. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham officially announced Hulton Park will bid for the 50th Ryder Cup. The numbers: £240 million for the purpose-built course, £69.8 million committed for infrastructure, £1.2 billion projected economic boost. Tommy Fleetwood is backing it. England hasn’t hosted since The Belfry in 2002. Formal bids due in April. Let’s see if they can beat out London Golf Club and Luton Hoo, which is apparently billing itself as “the Augusta of Europe.” Bold claim.

Bain Capital bought Concert Golf Partners from Clearlake for $1.3 billion. Under Clearlake, Concert Golf doubled revenue and EBITDA across 39 private club locations. PE appetite for private club consolidation remains as strong as it’s ever been. The money keeps finding its way to the fairway.

The Players final round drew the largest TV audience since 2021. NBC averaged 4.4 million viewers, peaking at 7.1 million. Third consecutive week of five-year highs for PGA Tour Sunday audiences. Whatever the Tour’s structural complications, the product is working on television. Rolapp noted.

What to watch this week

Masters week is April 7. The field is largely set. Scheffler is the betting favorite. Rory is second. DeChambeau — two straight wins, both in playoffs — is the most dangerous dark horse in the field.

Niemann, for the first time in five years, is not in the field. He’s received two straight special invitations from Augusta. This year: nothing. After seven LIV wins, he’s currently ranked 176th in the world. That’s the OWGR problem in one data point.

The Valero Texas Open and Houston Open still stand between now and Augusta. But the golf world's attention has already left.

Frost Delay drops every Monday. The Perfect Putt deep dive drops every Thursday. If this is useful, share it with a member of your foursome.