OverDrive - Zecchino on Scheffler's building legacy, Deng's stellar start and Henderson's up and down tenure

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

TSN Golf Analyst Mark Zecchino joined OverDrive to discuss the headlines around the Tour Championship and CPKC Women's Open, Aphrodite Deng's incredible start, how her ball striking has contributed, Scottie Scheffler's greatness and his comparison to Tiger Woods, Brooke Henderson's inconsistency issues and more.

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I made it to my tournament and lost in the first round. But you got there on time. Intact Insurance. Your auto service ace. Certain conditions apply. from tariffs to trade deals the markets are changing is your portfolio ready for what comes next for all your questions you need a money guy calvin the money guy will help you develop a financial plan that includes the right levels of diversity the best way to navigate uncertain times with strategic advice from kelvin you can not only protect your investments you can grow them don't wait call four one six 457 plan or visit ask kelvin dot Let's go to Mark Sikino from Golf Talk, Canada, headquarters. Markle, welcome.

Do you have any grooming advice? It seems to be going around. Hold on, guys. This is TSM Sports Radio, right? I just wanted to double check. Actually, Jim, you know, as a pison, I've got many grooming issues, and they usually have to do with unwanted hair and unwanted in areas. Oh, gosh, oh, guy.

That's a book title right there. As you're seated at Golf Toc Canada headquarters, what's your goal? What is the golf story today? Is it in Mississauga or is it in Atlanta? Well, it's tough for me, right? Because, you know, I'm getting pulled in many directions because obviously Golf Tad Canada is on our women's championship, but I know Bob's been out there all day. Adam and I were out there earlier this week.

But in the same breath, you know, I work for the PGA tour and I've been covering the tour all year been to 20 plus QGA tour events already this season and have three more to attend so for me I was kind of covering

East Lake a little bit more intently I'm just amazed and in all of what Scotty Sheffler's been able to achieve this year what he's been able to achieve the last couple of weeks and I just I keep waiting

to see if he can keep it going keep it going And he even does, and he did it again today. And for me, I mentioned earlier this week to Adam. I said, I'm not calling this a run. You know, I said, Jordan Speef was on a run. Dustin Johnson was on a run. We've seen guys on runs.

This is the Scotty Sheffler era. It's different. This is something everyone needs to get used to because it isn't going away. It isn't a run. This is the next six to 10-year window of what professional golf looks like. So let's go a little closer to home here, Mark, before we get too deep into the PGA tour.

And, you know, the big tournament, the CPKC, Canadian Women's Open out at Mississauga Golf and Country Club. And big story is 15-year-old Aphrodite Deng, who became the first Canadian to win the U.S. junior not too long ago. She finds herself at five under par through the first round, a 66 out there in a tie right now one shot off the lead with about five other players, but she's 15, Mark, and, you know, what do you make of this incredible, incredible performance by an amateur player, obviously, who has dominated the junior ranks and is now, you know,

among the world's best players? Pretty, pretty fun to watch, isn't it? What an amazing story. And, you know, it's even crazier when you think about it. Obviously, it's a bigger story for us, a little closer to home, the fact that she was, you know, born and raised in Calgary, so, you know, there's the Canadian aspect to it as well. But it's funny when you think she's trying to become the second 15-year-old to do this. I mean, Lydia Toad did this, right, over a decade ago, right? It's like the LPGA tour, and the PGA tour is catching up to a certain degree, not to the same extent, but certainly catching up with play.

players coming off a PGA Tour university, and we saw Nick Dunlap, you know, win as an amateur, amateur, Luke Clinton, look what's happened with Ludwig Oldberg. So we're seeing, like, obviously, the PGA Tour and the men's game get much younger than it ever has been. But the LPGA tour was really ahead of this curve with teenagers, right? And it kind of reminds me to going back to a couple things. One, the younger players are so much more prepared now. You mentioned how she's dominated junior golf, and, you know, that's crazy.

We're talking about a 15-year-old, but if we look at a bigger picture of what they're doing in NCAA and what they're doing in college and whatnot and the people they have around them, when they come out and they turn professional, they are so much more prepared to win. Coaches, mental coaches, fitness, understanding what their body and equipment do

and how they work together. It's more of a team concept, and the team has that individual male or female ready to win at such a younger age. And this is another prime exam. of that, and I don't see that changing any time soon. In fact, I think it's just only going to keep getting younger on both the female game and the men's game. And the other part of this that, you know, made me think of when I saw her score today, and I took a look at some of

her numbers, is that it's that old thing. It's a cliche, but the golf ball doesn't know who's hitting it, right, guys? I mean, it doesn't know where you are, right? It doesn't know what tournament you're in, it doesn't know what tour you're on. It doesn't know. And if you believe that you can hit the shots and you believe that you belong and go out there and commit the shots the rest doesn't matter she hit you know a ridiculous amount of fareways today she had 13 to 14 fairways hit a bunch of green she putted lights out she's not the longest in the field doesn't seem to matter she's going to get longer she's 15 so she don't have to worry about that what an amazing story and that's why i want to take it just her her age and you know

she's very fit lady but just maybe doesn't have that strength yet. So, you know, the lack of distance, how is she, you know, compensating, whether it's 10, 20, or 30 yards off the tee, what is she doing to compensate for that, you know, playing against ladies who have been, you know, working out and are that much more physically and mature? Well, 26 putts will fix a lot of things. Really? I better write that one down for my own game. She had 26 putts today. She just lit up the greens, and that'll obviously help a lot of other areas of your game.

But that being said in a bigger picture, I guess you can't really expect to go out, you know, every week, every day, every tournament around, and be the best putter in the field. But that's unrealistic. You can be a great putter and you can make up a lot on the greens over a season, over a 40 tournament, certainly on the greens. We've seen players do it in the past.

We've seen Jordan Spieth. Brian Harmon, a couple of years ago, the Open Championship, who was 55 of 55 inside 15, feet that week. I mean, that's crazy to think that you just don't miss a put all week inside 15 feet. That's just mind-boggling stuff. So it's not like it can't be done or hasn't been seats. But I think the recipe for her moving forward until the strength and the speed comes and maxes out is you're going to have to be good on the greens. You're going to have to be better with your shorter irons. And even this time and time again, listen, Trevor Emelman and

Zach Johnson won Masters in 07 and 08. This is in the middle of the Tiger Woods and Bubba Watson and Phil Mickelson. And, like, I mean, bombers were winning at Augusta, left, right, and center. And these two plotters who are giving up a ridiculous amount of yardage go out and win, you know, back-to-back masters by just being incredible from 120 yards in and making a large bucket of pun. So that's the recipe. If you're going to average 242 yards off the team, which is what she averaged today, which is likely somewhere in the neighborhood of about 20 yards shorter than probably some of the longer players in the field could be as much as 30, you know, talking about the Nelly Corters of the planet who, you know,

played on the PGA tour last fall, was hitting at 300 plus. I mean, if you're going to give up that kind of number off the T, be dialed in with your wedges and make sure you're starting those puts online. Mark, I want to vehemently dispute something you said. When I stand over the golf ball, it knows I'm going to hit it, and that's why it acts the way it does. And yesterday was a prime example. Well, we'll leave that alone. Here's the business angle I want to throw at you.

I agree. It is the Schaeffler era on the PGA tour, and if you go to any golf course, they'll talk about how great a golfer he is, and that's totally warranted. The ultimate comparison, though, goes to Tiger Woods, who was not only a great golfer, the best of his time. There's no question about that.

Maybe the best ever, but he was this big package of driving technology forward and developing revenue streams as he played. This individual Scotty Sheffler does not do that, but he is, you know, the best golfer that's on the tour today.

And the reason that I go to the personality part is because Liv took a lot of those names away. How does this project in terms of growth for the PGA tour sport? Like, how does that move forward under Scottie Shephler? You know, none of it makes sense, Jim.

Like, if we go back to 2024, EV numbers were down and people were, you know, hitting the panic button and there were conversations on, you know, top floors of towers in Manhattan and Pointe of Yer Beach and all parts of the world, USGA, et cetera. And there was concerned. and, you know, people trying to figure out, you know, okay, where do we go next? What's next?

blah, blah, blah. And a lot of people are going to point to Scotty Sheffler as the face of this tour and the face of the game because you are a thousand percent correct. Yes, he is the most dominant player in the game. Yes, he is the number one golfer in the world, and this is likely for a long time. But he's not the same marketing package, Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods was, you know, slightly more dominant, as that did it for a long time. long period of time, but did it

in a different way. There was fire in the belly. There was fist pumps. There were red shirts on Sundays. You opened the door to the game to a lot of people that would normally not be introduced. Obviously, you know, there was a barrier there that he smashed through. There's a lot of things like that

that you got with Tiger. You're not getting with Scottie Sheplears. Scottie Shepler is ho-hum, A to B. It's brilliant, more in its simplicity than anything else. But unless you're a golf purist, it's a real hard thing to package and sell and put something tangible dollars. Then you turn around this year and coming off a year of his dominance,

where he continues to be dominant, and everything is up. All the TV numbers are up. And it's not just in places like the Masters where Rory Macroy completes a career grand slam. It's not just the easy ones. TV numbers were up at the one-flight Myrtle Beach classic opposite field event for a playoff that had Ryan Fox, McKenzie Hughes, and excuse me, but the third player in that playoffs escaping me, but none of us would know them if we hit them with our car,

so it doesn't matter. It actually proves my point. Why are the numbers up? Why are, how is this working? Because it's a complete opposite to 2024. So it's going to think a lot smarter people to figure out out of packages, to your point, Jim. The one thing I do know is it'll be by committee.

You don't replace Michael Jordan. You don't replace Tiger Woods. You do it by committee. And the good thing for the PG-Tours, they have a lot of young, very exciting, talented players coming up. They've still got Rory and his prime. They've still got really recognizable names on classic venues with heritage and history behind it. So the overall package has never been stronger. But, yeah, you can't go one-to-one with Woods and Sheffler.

You know, you talk about the women's game and it getting younger. it was 10 years ago last week that Brooke Henderson won her first LPGA tour event at age 17 and obviously since then she's she's become the winningest pro golfer in our country's history she's got two majors 13 wins she's got plenty of money in her resume and yet lately she hasn't been able to find her game

I think it's the longest slump of her career here without a win going on two and a half years and today she shoots an even par 71 at the CPKC Women's Open at Mississauga, four bogeys, four birdies, kind of, you know, an up and down round for an up and down year where she's only had one top 10. I wanted to get your theory. What do you think is ailing, Brooke, and why are we not seeing what we have seen from her in the past? Well, first, you know, a little bit of a victim of our own success, right, guys?

I mean, just a tremendous career, the most successful professional golfer our country has ever produced. So the bar is very high for her. But you're right. This has not been a good year. Today, again, it was the same thing that's been bothering her all year. The ball striking, especially with the irons, the irons have really been a problem this year, abysmal. Coming in and this week, she was outside the top 100, I believe, was 112th in strokes gain approach on the LPGA. And this is for a player who's...

lived inside the top 20, inside the top 10 with the irons. So this is a real fall from grace with ball striking when it comes to Brooke Anderson. Now, that's off to her today. That round could have been completely lost. She finished strong with, you know, three birdies coming home to scrape it back to respectability and stay in this golf tournament. We've got a long way to go.

It could have really easily gone the other way through, you know, nine to 12 holes. And we're going to really put her behind the eight ball to make it for the, to the weekend, but she fought through because she wants to do well for this crowd. She loves the support. She's done great under pressure. Remember, we all celebrate what Nick Taylor did 23 at Oakdale, but Brooke Henderson did it before Nick Taylor did it, right? She's been here.

She's done that, so she knows how to get it done. I'm in the belief, and I'm not close enough to this to know, but I've been close enough to situations like this before to have. an opinion. And if I look at the data and strictly go by the numbers and watch the performance, and it's been a bit of an 18-month kind of progression to where we are now, it might be time to start hearing some information in a different way. Change it up in the camp, have a different set of eyes, maybe you reach out to a new instructor. I'm not necessarily suggesting that there's an overall change and we rip apart the golf swing because I've never been a fan of completely

rebuilding your swing, I think that's a trap door that have ruined so many professional golfers. But I do think that hearing information in a different way and getting a new thought or a new set of eyes, something fresh could not hurt her. And it's funny to go back to our original conversation

about our 15-year-old near or at the top of the leaderboard, a lot of us forget that book's been out there a very long time and successful in a very young age. And you've got to wonder, when you start that young in the ladies' game, is there a burnout? You know, as you approach, 30 or get around 30 or get into your early 30s.

You know, in the big picture, in your late 20s or whatnot, we're all sitting around guys like us. We think that's super young. We're like, wow, I mean, you've got your life ahead of you. But when you've been playing competitive golf at that level for 10 plus years, that takes its pound of flesh. Marco, thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Have a great night, guys. Thanks for having me. Mark Sikino, live from Golf Talk Canada headquarters. Seasoned gamer or just video game curious, this week in gaming, is the podcast for you. We break down the latest in the world of video games, from basics to beyond. The hottest gaming news, insight and industry leaders, and more weekly. Join me, Naomi Kyle, and stay ahead of the game with all the latest updates.

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