Cam Young talked about his iPhone. 

And Xander Schauffele talked about trees. 

And Jesse Droemer talked about snakes. 

And Keegan Bradley talked about Bud Light and cereal. 

Talk, talk, talk, talk. It can be cheap, as the saying goes — but major championship press conferences are more than sessions full of other commonly spoken phrases. Maybe that’s due to what’s at stake. Maybe that’s because of the questions. But the answers are more than thoughts about the need to keep the ball in the fairway and the desire to make putts. There’s occasional gold spoken from the dais. 

After 15 press conferences over the past three days at the PGA Championship — should you be curious, the pressers lasted nearly five hours — here, then, are a few things that were spoken:

Cam Young was asked about his iPhone 

Young is reserved, but an easy way into a person’s personality is through a question into how long they scroll. 

“It depends,” he said. “If I’m on my own on the road, it’s a lot more. It’s probably four hours or something. And if I’m at home with my family, it’s probably more on the order of half that.

“I try to be conscious of it. So I know when I’m by myself, it’s somewhere in the four, four-and-a-half range, and when I’m not, when I’m at home, it’s usually two or under two.”

What does he look at when he’s on his own? 

“I don’t know,” Young said. “I go on YouTube. I like to read articles. I look at golf swing videos for more time than I’d like to admit, yeah.”

Luke Donald was asked whether he brings Ryder Cup talk to the dinner table 

To best capture the moment, here is the complete exchange between European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald and a reporter, with the reporter’s question in italics. 

Luke, you’re clearly a firmly organized fellow and very good at details and things. I’m just wondering how you cope with all the issues of the Ryder Cup? I mean, you must have had hundreds of questions before Bethpage, before you took the job on and since you agreed to do it. I’m wondering if you and Diane [his wife] have an agreement that over dinner you’ll talk about wine, painting and the family and anything other than the Ryder Cup?

“I think the dynamic between Diane and I is interesting,” Donald said. “I don’t get too involved — especially when it comes closer to the Ryder Cup.

“Right now we’re certainly having some discussions together at dinner whenever the time is right about the team spaces. Certainly I don’t talk to her about the golf course. She doesn’t really talk to me about ladies clothes.

“I just have complete trust in what she does, and she has complete trust in what I do. There are some overlaps. Like right now we’re talking about team spaces. There’s a distinct difference between part of the hotel to the other. One’s a ballroom, one’s sort of part of the old hotel, and which might be better for our team. Those are things we would discuss together.

“But there’s definitely stuff that I have complete faith in what she does, and she has complete faith in what I do. So we don’t need to go into too much detail then.

You don’t have a feeling, ‘Look, we have to stop talking about this. There are other things going on.’

“I mean, we talk about other stuff as well,” Donald said. “If something is needed [to be] discussed with the Ryder Cup that involves both of us, then we talk about it. If not, we’re just dealing with everyday life.”

Scottie Scheffler talked about why Masters practice rounds are so calm 

Scottie Scheffler was asked whether he treats major weeks the same as normal tournament weeks, and he said that wasn’t possible, as each environment is different — and the one at Augusta National was especially so. 

“When you look at the Masters,” he said, “you look at the practice rounds there, and the Masters is like the only place on earth where people actually follow the rules because they’re just afraid to get kicked out all the time. So those practice rounds are actually quite calm in terms of there’s not a lot of yelling, there’s nobody running around, there’s not a ton of noise. Except when you’re swinging, there’s camera clicks on every single shot because people are allowed to have real cameras out there. So you’re at the top of your backswing, for every practice round, it’s just camera clicks.

“You come here and there’s a lot of noise and a lot of energy. That’s why you can’t treat them quite the same because there’s so much energy around the tournament. You come into the press room, there’s more people, more fans, more noise. There’s just a lot more stuff going on.”

Xander Schauffele was asked about trees 

To set this up, a topic this week has been the trees at Aronimink Golf Club, or the absence of a few, following a renovation. That led to this back-and-forth between Xander Schauffele and the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson, who are friendly with each other. Ferguson’s comments are in italics. 

Pardon the vagueness, but do you like trees?

“I do like trees, Doug” Schauffele said. “Do you like trees?”

I like trees, too, Xander. Let’s do ‘Cat in the Hat’ next. In terms of a golf course …

“I know where you’re going,” Schauffele said. “Go ahead.”

Go somewhere then. Keep making me work.

“Yeah, when I hear certain designers saying, ‘I’m going to restore this course to 1915,’ I’m like, ‘Well, it probably takes a good 100 years for a nice tree to grow, just to take it out, just to say it was where it was before,” Schauffele said. 

“I think people keep talking about distance and how the game is played, but just put a bunch of trees on a course — I think Hilton Head is a good example. Do I like Hilton Head? Not really. But it’s hard. It’s kind of crazy, if you look at the winning score at Hilton Head and the winning score at Doral — one’s called Hilton Head, and one’s called the Blue Monster — you’re like, I think the winning score at Miami is lower. It’s just funny when you kind of look at it in that sense.”

“That’s all I have to say to your tree question.”

Is it more framing, or is it more trouble?

“It’s just hard,” Schauffele said. “I think when you have — like this rough, for example, if we had trees in the rough and you hit it in it, this week you’ll see guys kind of gouging it towards the green. If there’s a tree there, you’d be chipping out sideways. This is the type of rough where you can’t get a ball to curve at all. You just grab a high-lofted club and hit a knuckleball and have it kind of trundle somewhere.

“There’s certain weeks where the rough is, you can kind of curve it a little bit. But there’s reasons guys are praying to be on the pine straw or dirt when they hit it off line, versus being in thick rough, just because you can get some movement on the golf ball.”

Collin Morikawa talked about his caddie’s help with his water bottle 

Collin Morikawa has been battling a back injury, and he noted who’s been helping him through it, including his caddie, who did a relatively simple task in which Morikawa was appreciative. 

“Yeah, it’s everyone,” Morikawa said. “I’ve got great physios at home, I’ve got a great physio on the road. Rick Sessinghaus and I have been working for quite some time and talking about the mental game and finding ways to feel comfortable out there. He’s a big, big proponent and component of me being able to play out here, so I owe a lot to him. 

“But I owe a lot of credit to Mark Urbanek, my caddie. At the Masters, we were doing things that just didn’t make sense from simply like him handing me my water bottle. I think it’s ridiculous for him to hand me my water bottle, but if it was going to save me one extra bend that was going to make me uncomfortable, he’s going to do it. So I give him a lot of credit over the last few months of sticking with me through the chaotic things I’m asking for.”

Jesse Droemer was asked about broken bones and snakes 

Jesse Droemer, one of the 20 club pros in the field, went into detail about previous injuries. 

“Yeah, I would say the biggest injuries that affected my golf,” he said, “I broke my left wrist pretty bad when I was probably 10. I broke three bones in my ankle in football. That was pretty rough. But yeah, it’s been 13 broken bones. It’s been a battle. But at the end of the day, it just makes me feel grateful to be healthy and to not have to deal with pain anymore.

A reporter then asked Droemer to confirm whether he had also once been bitten by a snake.

“Yeah, I was in my backyard, I was like 12 or so and stepped on a water moccasin,” Droemer said. “My mom didn’t believe me. I told her I just stepped on a snake, and she just kind of shrugged it off. Then I actually fainted, and my toe was about this big [a couple of inches]. So she had to rush me to the hospital. And then I used to go down into the Brazos River with a machete and boots and look for golf balls. So I had to fight off snakes for that.”

“But, yeah, that was pretty serious. But after that, I don’t really have a fear of it anymore, so …”

Fighting snakes?

“Well, I couldn’t afford Pro V1s back then,” Droemer said, “so I would sell the kind of beat-up ones and I would keep the best ones. So in tournaments I wasn’t going to lose a golf ball that I fought off snakes for.”

Rory McIlroy was asked about Scottie Scheffler 

Rory McIlroy, the world’s second-ranked player, was asked about what he admires about Scheffler, the top-ranked player. Answers to this type of question are oftentimes good, as they’re complimentary — and they give a peek into what the player would want for themselves. 

“I think it is, it’s his relentlessness,” McIlroy said. “It’s his — the comfort in which he does the same things over and over. It’s the little — it’s not flashy, but he dots his I’s and crosses his T’s and does all the right things.

“Yeah, I just think it’s that relentless pursuit of the process and not just letting the outcome happen. Whatever that means is what it means.

“I’ve said, again, I think his faith has a big part to do with how comfortable he is with doing that because he accepts whatever happens, whatever comes his way, and he moves on.

“He just doesn’t seem — there’s not a lot of volatility there in his life and in his game, and I think that sets him up so well for the future.”

Jordan Spieth was asked about grilling meat and his swing 

To properly capture this moment, here is the complete exchange between Jordan Spieth and a reporter, with the reporter’s question in italics. 

I read something where you used an analogy of grilling meat to describe the process of working on getting your swing back to where you want it to be. Where did that analogy come from and how is it going?

“I was just kind of thinking,” Spieth said, “I was smoking chicken in the fall on a big smoker I have and it got up to 155 quickly and then takes awhile. I was like, man, this kind of feels like — I was working on stuff and I was — it kind of feels like what I’m trying to do in the swing. I go play and it’s a little bit out of the barriers that we call sustainable. Kind of outside the margins that we call OK.

“So, I don’t know, I kind of was just thinking about it one day and came to me.

“But yeah, it seems to be — I don’t know how — if it’s that way for everybody and just seemed that way for me right now where, you know, it’s there, it’s there. It’s like close. It’s matching what I want to do. It feels good and it’s producing right stuff.

“And then, you know, if it just gets — it’s just not quite consistent enough yet to be able to be contending week in and week out.

“But I know what to do and how to get there. It’s just I have to stay the course and just trust that it will happen.”

Is [smoking] a hobby of yours?

“Not really,” Spieth said, “I’m very average. Probably a 15-handicap at it. In the fall, it’s fun sometimes.”

Keegan Bradley talked about Bud Light and cereal 

Bradley was asked how he celebrated his win at the 2011 PGA Championship, and he answered this way:

“So after the PGA in ’11, my mom and sister were there, and I remember my agent, Ben, was there, and I remember driving out of the Atlanta Athletic Club with the Wanamaker in my lap, holding it like this [in his lap], and we were looking at each other like, this is crazy. Like I was holding it.

“And then I went — we tried to — it was Sunday night. We were trying to get some beers or something. Everything was closed. And we went back, and I had Bud Light and cereal for dinner. We still have a picture of it in my house somewhere.

“And then I took the trophy and put it right next to my bed. I remember waking up in the morning and looking at it, like this is crazy. I can’t believe this.

“And then I got back, and a few of my buddies picked me up. I was single and 25 years old, and all my buddies picked me up from the airport. We went on a few-day celebration tour with the trophy, bringing it everywhere.

“One of those moments that you get to share with people, and you know, some of the fondest memories of my life.”

Did he remember the cereal?

“I forget what it was,” Bradley said. “… Whatever — I was starving. It was midnight. After you’re done with media, and I just remember like thinking, how surreal this was. It was Bud Light and cereal. It was the best meal of my life. Like one minute I’m a rookie and now I’m a major champion and I’m looking on my Twitter and every couple minutes, I’ve gotten 1,000 new followers. It was crazy, the night and the next following couple weeks.”

At the Masters last week, our fleet of content producers told a lotof stories — but not all of them! As ever, they came home with unused material still in their notebooks and noggins, which we’d couldn’t bear to see to go waste. So kick back, pour yourself one last Azalea and enjoy a few of our untold tales.

What Rory’s nervy moment looked like up close  

by Dylan Dethier

Rory McIlroy’s most stressful moment on Masters Sunday? It didn’t come until after he’d hit his tee shot on the 18th hole.

“I’d say walking off the 18th tee not knowing where my ball was,” McIlroy said post-round. “It could go anywhere. It could be anywhere.”

He was right to be concerned; he needed just bogey to win but had blasted driver so far right that it was well out of his sight and, as social-media griping will tell you, out of the reach of CBS’s cameras, too.

But based on sheer luck I was, at that moment, wandering up the right side of the 18th hole with a couple writers, including our James Colgan. A spotter found the ball first, a crowd began to swarm and form around it, and we joined the fray. 

When McIlroy arrived on the scene he seemed to sigh with relief. His ball had traveled so far right that he had a window. Punching back to the 18th fairway would have been treacherous, but an easier line existed: He could look up the 10th hole instead, allowing him to hit a high hook around and over the trees (and the massive leaderboard by the 18th green) to settle somewhere around the putting surface.

Two problems remained. The first was there were suddenly about a thousand people in his way. McIlroy and caddie Harry Diamond walked up their target line, working with marshals to try to push back the patrons. But McIlroy’s start line was so far right, and so many more people were flowing into the area, that eventually he seemed to just give up. He and Diamond had a short discussion: McIlroy confirmed that his ball would come out spinny, because it was sitting on pine straw. And then he readied to hit.

Then came the second problem: Actually executing that high hook, off pine straw, starting it over the heads of a massive group of patrons. I’m sure I see worst-case scenarios differently than one of the best golfers in the world, but I wondered if there would be any flinch from McIlroy, knowing that if he slipped and thinned one — or something similarly catastrophic — he could drill someone and blow the Masters all at once.

But McIlroy played quickly, as he had all Sunday afternoon. He hit a high hook, definitely a little hookier than necessary; I wondered if he’d started it a little further left, subconsciously, to avoid my catastrophic scenario. And then, as he strode after his ball, following its flight, the crowd began to close in around him.

This sort of swarm never really happens at the conclusion of the Masters, at least not in recent decades; the rope lines are well established. (Granted, Tiger Woods was nearly taken out at the knees in a similar situation in 2019.) But quickly, almost from nowhere, security appeared from the crowd and the trees, and an informal barrier went up to give McIlroy a lane to hustle back to the fairway. We headed up the right side of the hole and around the green, hoping for a glimpse of the final putt, glad to have had a front-row seat to the final full swing of an historic Masters.

The *other* happiest place on Earth

by Josh Berhow

At the Masters, you’ll find cheap sandwiches, really green grass and well-behaved patrons. Those are givens. But what always gets me is that everyone is so happy. 

And they should be! Think about it — where else on Earth is everyone universally thrilled to be in one place? (As a parent who went to Disney World a week before the Masters, I can promise you Magic Kingdom is not the answer.)

And that blissfully hypnotic state lingers well after patrons leave Washington Road. Because the second-happiest spot I found last week? It was the tiny bar at the Augusta Regional Airport, where, as I waited for my return flight home, a Masters after-party was in full swing.

Few of the revelers knew one other but happily mingled at shared tables. Drinks were flowing, and the bartender generously poured doubles. Everyone shared stories about where they went and what they saw and what they ate and how it felt. Most were sunburned, several were clad in Masters gear and everyone agreed the course is — stop us if you’ve heard this one before — way hillier than it looks on TV.

One guy from Iowa paid John Daly $100 to sign his brother’s stomach and had the video to prove it. Another from Minnesota raved about his first time in swanky Berckmans Place. Plastic bags stuffed with thousands of dollars’ worth of Masters merchandise — hats, mugs, polos, posters — lined the floor.

“The only thing I didn’t get was a gnome,” one man said. “I’d offer anyone $200 for one right now.”

I smiled and nodded. He seemed so happy I didn’t have the heart to tell him what was hiding in my backpack. 

My favorite Masters Sunday tradition

by Alan Bastable

At a tournament defined by traditions, my colleagues and I have one of our own: Masters Sunday lunch in the Augusta National clubhouse.

Around 11:30 a.m., before the leaders have put their pegs in the ground in earnest, seven or eight of us pile into golf-cart shuttles outside the Press Building for the short ride to the shuttle drop-off by the leader board near the golf shop. From there, it’s a short hike up a tightly mown slope, a hard left turn at the famed old oak where golf’s sparkly people convene (is that . . . Sir Nick?!) and in through the back door of the clubhouse where a guard carefully eyes our credentials. Then it’s a few paces through a well-appointed dual-winged reception room and up a spiral staircase to a floor that houses, to your left as you exit the stairwell, the Champions Locker Room, and, to your right, a rectangular dining room that spills out on to a veranda that offers bird’s-eye views of all the sparkly people and even glimpses of the first tee.

If there’s a better way to start your Masters Sunday (other than smoothing balls on ANGC’s range in preparation for a starting time), I’d like to hear it! Some years we get a table outside; other years, like this one, the only available tables are in the dining room, which lacks the more casual al fresco appeal of the balcony but comes with its own perks such as having a front-row (table?) seat to such miscellany as the names on the Augusta National Jamboree honors board or the display case with President Eisenhower’s stylish knit polo.

The menu, like just about everything else at the club, is clean, simple and elegant. Green ink on white stock. The kitchen’s offerings aren’t fancy, either. Cheeseburger, flounder sandwich, spicy chicken nachos, a sampler plate with three of Augusta’s signature sandies, etc. In one of the dining room’s corners, a door leads to a small men’s room, where you’ll find a framed print of “Comme nos maîtres,” a famous cartoon by the French artist Boris O’Klein that playfully depicts seven dogs doing their business on their hind legs. The name of the piece translates to “Like their masters.” That’s another thing about Augusta, you notice something new on every visit.

But back to our meal. It’s always an in-and-out affair — maybe 45 minutes tops — but in the quiet of the clubhouse, away from the pressures of our keyboards and cameras, time has a way of slowing down. We share stories from the week, toast with Azaleas (pro move: swap out of the vodka for tequila) and generally enjoy one another’s company in a setting unlike few others. Then the check comes. Back to work.

Loitering with intent (around Tommy Fleetwood!)

by Michael Bamberger

Over the past maybe eight years I have noted, in the pages of this website, that my three favorite golfers are Tommy Fleetwood of England, Franceso Molinari of Italy and Jordan Spieth of Dallas. My guess is that Molinari knows my face and name, that Spieth knows my face but not my name and that Fleetwood knows neither, despite my various efforts. Once, for instance, I told him that, by coincidence and during the last British Open there, I was seated next to his aunt at an outdoor café on a Sunday in downtown, Birkdale, England, during a British Open. Tommy said he knew the café and that she likely was eating there after church. You may know that the Open is returning to Birkdale this year.

On Sunday, Fleetwood went off a full two hours before Rory McIlroy, his Ryder Cup teammate, but Fleetwood stayed around after his middle-of-the-pack finish to see how the whole thing would play out. When McIlroy won, Fleetwood was among the players hanging by the clubhouse to congratulate him. What a lovely thing to do — but what else would you expect from this golfing gent? There’s a reason he’s in my Top 3. By the way, and a quick aside, his final-round 63 at Shinnecock Hills at the 2018 U.S. Open has to be one of the best rounds of golf ever played. I would say that’s like shooting a 60 at Augusta National on Masters Sunday. You may know that the U.S. Open is returning to Shinnecock in June.

Maybe 20 or 25 minutes after McIlroy made his winning six-inch putt on Sunday, Fleetwood was standing on front of the clubhouse, waiting on a ride. By the front I mean the side of the clubhouse at the end of Magnolia Lane, facing Washington Road. I have heard some people refer to this as the back of the clubhouse, which I don’t understand, except that it is back if you have a course-centric view of the world. That part I do get.

Anyway, Fleetwood was standing there, by himself, waiting on a ride and not wearing anything with a Swoosh, as he is no longer a Nike brand ambassador or whatever the right term is for that. He was wearing what seemed to be a custom-made pair of sort of beige beltless pants with a billowy legs. The Eisenhower Era meets the Jerry Ford years.

“In the ‘70s a lot of guys used to wear pants like that,” I said. I was loitering with intent, looking for something to write about. That is, something to write about related to the winner. They did wear pants like that, to a point. The pants then were much tighter, often garish in color and made of polyester. Fleetwood’s pants seemed to be made of a fine lightweight wool. “They were called Sansabelts. Johnny Miller wore ’em. Tom Weiskopf. Lot of guys.”

“Sansabelts,” Tom said.

“From the French, sans belt.”

That is, without.

Tom nodded, with ever-so-modest enthusiasm. Soon, his ride arrived. He finished T33. — Michael Bamberger

Rory McIlroy’s good luck charm

by James Colgan

One of the unusual pleasures of watching the Masters broadcast is that most of the views are totally unobstructed. Nobody other than the players, the caddies, the camera crews and Dottie Pepper fill the camera shots inside the ropes — the throngs of golf dignitaries, sponsors, agents, managers and scribes are left outside the ropes with the rest of the people.

Pepper has an unusual honor in the center of the fold. Since 2020, she has served as the only inside-the-ropes broadcaster in Masters history, tracking the highest-leverage groups for the network and collecting datapoints from the middle of the action.

But that’s where this story gets funny. Over the last two years, nobody has seen more of Rory McIlroy at the Masters up close than Dottie, who followed the back-to-back green jacket winner for the seventh time since the start of the 2025 Masters on Sunday afternoon.

Yep, you read that right, Pepper has been on McIlroy’s bag for seven of eight tournament rounds since the start of his star-crossed 2025 Masters start, seeing all but Friday’s second-round rebound in 2025 from the best seat in the house.

In that time, she’s seen some underrated gems — like McIlroy’s second on the 5th on Sunday in 2025 — and some true stinkers, like his tee shot on the 18th with the tournament on the line last Sunday. That’s when Pepper and the rest of the CBS team were thrust into an unenviable position, when McIlroy’s mega-right drive resulted in a mad search for his chunky second-shot, which the broadcast team briefly lost as it traveled from the pine straw into the front-left bunker.

The moment was a reminder of the vagaries of golf TV broadcasting, though nobody at home struggling to make sense of the most consequential moment of the tournament had much patience for it. McIlroy didn’t help matters by playing his second and third shots as if he was worried the meter in the Champions Parking Lot was about to expire.

Eventually, Pepper restored order with a quick blurb on the location, the forthcoming shot and the quality of the lie. And McIlroy soon delivered a tournament-clinching tap-in.

No guarantees that Pepper will be on McIlroy’s bag at the beginning of next year’s Masters, but McIlroy surely won’t squeal if she is. They have a good thing going.