Five Things: PGA Tour's Revamped Postseason and Solheim Cup Captain's Picks

Former LPGA caddie and Fried Egg Golf contributor Matthew Galloway riffs on the five things he's thinking about this week in golf.

Playoffs?!

The PGA Tour is making wholesale changes to its postseason format, and I really enjoyed Fried Egg colleague Joseph LaMagna’s reaction to the revamped Tour Championship. My thoughts on the two-week, match-play season finale (these are NOT playoffs!) are rooted in venue selection. With the luxury of a smaller field and match play, the Tour can, and should, think outside the box when it comes to host courses. Rory McIlroy agreed. 

“History is a big part of it. Even you take the U.S. Amateur last week at Merion, watching that on TV was really cool,” said Rory. “I'm not saying that that's what the Tour Championship is going to be like, but if you think of places like Merion, you think of some of the courses that the USGA have sort of had a monopoly on over the past 50 to 100 years, places that the PGA Tour either haven't went to or maybe sometimes can't go to, those are the sort of courses — especially if we're going to go to a smaller footprint and a limited size of crowd, you can all of a sudden go to some of these historic venues, and especially playing match play. It doesn't matter, you can go to a 6,600-yard golf course and par is irrelevant. I like that idea as well."

My hope is that the Tour can avoid too many marketing folks getting in the mix and clogging up this new-and-improved Tour Championship with sponsor activations. Go to the non-traditional venues that fans are eager to see, lean into match play, and put the competition in the spotlight.

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Unsurprising Captain's Picks

Both 2026 Solheim Cup team rosters are officially set after U.S. captain Angela Stanford announced her three selections on Monday, which came as no surprise to me: Rose Zhang, Megan Khang, and Lindy Duncan. 

I don’t particularly love the Megan Khang selection given her poor recent form, but I can get behind her value in the team room, operating as an energy catalyst, especially playing overseas. I also think there might be some supportive data with Justin Ray helping behind the scenes. Rose Zhang has been trending the most on paper, even despite a back flare-up. Lindy Duncan, described as one of the best putters on the team, ranks 25 on the LPGA in Strokes Gained: Putting. Expect Duncan to be the steady player you need in foursomes play. 

The rest of the players up for selection — outside the very new and promising professional, Kiara Romero — were very uninspiring. 

Surprising Captain’s Announcement

European captain Anna Nordqvist made the surprising announcement that she would retire at the conclusion of this week’s FM Championship. I’ve known Anna for a long time now, and this one caught me off guard. I would've loved to see her go out playing for one last time on the European side instead of captaining it, but she didn't have that crystal ball when she was asked to take the helm two years ago. Anna has had a splendid career, most notably as a three-time major winner in three separate decades after she burst onto the scene by winning the 2009 LPGA Championship. She went on to win six more times on the LPGA and represent the Europeans an astounding nine times in the Solheim Cup. Anna will go down as one of the greatest Swedish golfers of all time. 

Off the course, Anna has personally dealt with a lot over the last few years. The unexpected death of her husband in 2023 really took a toll on her, and as a friend, I hope she can find her footing in life away from professional golf. I hope for the best in her next endeavors — and I will always envy her ability to putt from off the greens. 

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‍An Interesting Ruling

Recent court rulings surrounding the NCAA and college football eligibility sparked a debate with the leaders of my state golf association. If a top college golfer were to somehow play as a professional in a PGA Tour-affiliated (or even LIV Golf) event, would they still have college eligibility? It seems as though the major conferences are working to rule that out with football, but it raises interesting questions with the NCAA, NIL, and the blurred lines of amateurism in golf these days. I wouldn't say it relates to the reinstated amateur debate, since I don't see any 30-year-old insurance salesmen going back to play their fifth year of college golf. The best golf example would be the Arizona-based Grass League, which hosts team events on TV and pays out decent money to players. Check out their website, look at the rankings, and you will find known amateur golfers listed. If that doesn't go past the point of amateurism, I really don't know what does.

Canadian Open Cleanup

Miyu Yamashita quietly opened the LPGA record book last week at the CPKC Women's Open when she tied the lowest 72-hole score in LPGA history with a 23-under 257 for a whopping nine-shot victory, which also matched the tour’s largest margin of victory. It was a remarkable performance from the budding 4-foot-11 Japanese star who is now ranked fifth in the world after the win. I’ll be the first to say I was slightly skeptical after her AIG Women's Open victory last year and thought she surely couldn't putt the lights out every week, but Miyu has since proven me wrong! She leads the tour in SG: Putting by nearly a half-shot margin at 1.47. To put that in perspective, Jacob Bridgeman leads the PGA Tour in SG: Putting at .74. What makes her season-long putting performance even more remarkable is that she is 147 out of 153 players in driving distance for the year. Her game is relies on out-of-this-world putting performances, and when the golf course fits her eye, Miyu is the player to beat. 

It's a great example of the spread of talent that exists in the women’s game, where often no two players and skill sets are alike. The future of women's golf also showed off last week with two young Canadian teens finishing in the top ten: 17-year-old Anna Huang, ranked 36th in the world, and Stanford commit Aphrodite Deng. Both earned spots for this week's FM Championship at TPC Boston. My final note from the CPKC: every year when I trot out my defense of why I think the Evian Championship is truly a major, the Canadian golf fans come at me in droves saying the Canadian Women's Open should be the fifth major instead. I have to say, a 23-under blitzing at a bland venue really doesn’t seem that major to me, now does it?