As December winds down and January approaches, it’s time to look back on 2023 and reward some of the best moments the game of golf provided fans over the last year.
The staff at Golfweek originally had plans for a “Moment of the Year” but there was too much that happened both on and off the course to pick just one, so we’ve split the honor into two different awards.
From the TGL and LIV Golf to the Ryder Cup and the PGA Tour’s framework agreement with the Public Investment Fund, here are the Golfweek staff’s favorite off-course viral moments of the year.
Winner: Rory McIlroy in the Ryder Cup parking lot
A lot happened over the last year in golf, but a furious Rory McIlroy being held back in the parking lot Saturday night at the 2023 Ryder Cup takes the honor by a long shot. It’s rare in golf to see tempers flare this much, especially from someone like McIlroy (at least when Patrick Reed isn’t involved).
The final match of Saturday afternoon’s fourballs session got a bit heated on No. 18 after Patrick Cantlay, who was in the middle of a controversy surrounding his hat and player payment, drained what would become a match-winning birdie putt thanks to a few misses from McIlroy and Matt Fitzpatrick.
This outburst breathed some much-needed life into a Sunday singles round that ultimately didn’t matter given Team Europe’s massive lead and woke up a sleepy Ryder Cup.
Honorable mention: TGL dome deflates, postponing new league
Just weeks before the new Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy-led TGL was set to tee off, the tech-infused league’s dome collapsed, forcing the venture to postpone its start until 2025. Some of the biggest names in sports management are involved as team owners and some of the PGA Tour’s best players have signed up. From the tech to the team announcements, the TGL was moving fast and might have been bailed out by the delay.
“It was already in a rushed state so I think it’s only going to benefit it to start in (2025),” said Rickie Fowler.
We’ll never know if the TGL would’ve been ready to go by the first week of January, but we do know the image of the deflated dome will be one that fans won’t forget about anytime soon.
Honorable mention: Brooks Koepka calls out Matthew Wolff (repeatedly)
Honorable mention: Framework agreement announced
Nobody in the golf world expected to see Yasir Al-Rumayyan and Jay Monahan on CNBC on June 6. The news of the framework agreement for the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to create a for-profit golf entity took the sports world by storm and has hung like a dark cloud over the professional game for the last six months.
