The LPGA Heads West...

...from Arizona to California, where they'll play the DIO Implant LA Open.

Okay, this might get a bit complicated. Officially, Nasa Hataoka is the defending champion.  However, this event is moving from the Wilshire Country Club which hosted the event since 2018 (no event in 2020) to the Palos Verdes Golf Club. Likewise, last year's Palos Verdes Championship (now the JM Eagle LA Championship) is moving from the Palos Verdes Golf Club to the Wilshire Country Club.

As a result Marina Alex, who won at Palos Verdes last year, is defending the victory she won on this course. That means we have two defending champions this week and we'll also have two defending champions at Wilshire in about three weeks when Hataoka defends her victory on the Wilshire course.

Confused? So am I. But this week's purse is doubled from last year, likewise the other tournament's purse. I think the girls can get used to a little confusion!

Plus we'll be watching a pretty strong field. This is the second full field event of the LPGA season and it will have the Top4 players in the Rolex Rankings as well as 24 of the LPGA's 31 rookies. Fun stuff!

GC's live coverage begins at Thursday at 7:70pm ET. (Remember, California = prime time golf.)

Twofer Tuesday: Valero Texas Open

Twofer Tuesday scoots down the 80 highway miles to San Antonio from Austin for the Valero Texas Open.

After as many as seven tough rounds at the WGC—Dell Match Play, the Top16 in the OWGR are skipping the Valero Texas Open... but that's just fine with most of the players in the field. The Valero has a history of giving guys their breakthrough win, just as it did with defending champion J.J. Spaun last year. He's back to defend, along with some other past winners and a whole host of up-and-comers looking for their chance.

But a number of other players from the WGC last week are in the field, as this is their last chance to get an invite to the Masters. That alone should give us an exciting tournament.

Ironically, I hadn't looked at the PGA Tour's Power Rankings for this week before I made my Twofer Tuesday picks, but I quickly learned that my picks are #1 and #2 on that list when I did. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but I'm going with my gut here.

• Rickie Fowler
• Chris Kirk

GC's live coverage begins Thursday at 4pm ET, with PGA TOUR LIVE's streaming coverage beginning at 8:30am ET (schedule for the streams at this link). Roughly half the winners over the last decade have been first-timers, so we might see another new pro hitting the links at Augusta next week. Stay tuned!

The Limerick Summary: 2023 WGC—Dell Match Play

Winner: Sam Burns

Around the wider world of golf: Matt Wallace won the Corales Puntacana Championship, the PGA Tour's alternate field event; Celine Boutier won the LPGA Drive On Championship on the LPGA; Nick Bachem won the Jonsson Workwear Open on the DP World Tour; David Toms won the Galleri Classic on the Champions Tour; David Skinns won the Club Car Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour; Miranda Wang won the IOA Championship on the Epson Tour; Chandler Blanchet won the Roberto de Vicenzo Memorial 100 Years on the PGA Tour Latinoamerica; and Taichi Kho won the World City Championship on the Asian Tour.

My Twofer Tuesday picks met the same fate as the favorites in the March Madness basketball tournament. I had Jon Rahm, Jordan Spieth, Tommy Fleetwood and Min Woo Lee. In match play I don't give myself any points if they don't even make it out of pool play, so my stats don't improve this week.

• Top10s: 9 for 26 (8 Top5s, 1 Top10)
• Winners: 2 for 12 events
• Top20s: 11 for 26

It was the last WGC—Dell Match Play. As far as we know right now, the last Match Play tournament, period. So it was hoped that this would be a killer event.

Ironically, it went the way of the March Madness tournament. The Final Four has no seed higher than a 4 in it. The tournament has showcased upset after upset ever since the initial 64 teams showed up. And it's been an exciting run of up-and-comers getting down early but racing back to win and move on.

Same thing in Austin. The top seeds—Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy—fell to the lower seeds, Sam Burns and Cam Young. And the lower seeds duked it out for the Walter Hagen trophy.

For the last time, so far as we know. (Hopefully that state of affairs doesn't last long.)

And in that final round, Sam Burns crushed Cam Young. Nothing to be ashamed of, simply because it's hard to get your first PGA Tour win at a match play event, let along a WGC. He'll get his first win soon enough if he keeps playing this way.

But Sam picked up his fifth Limerick Summary. He's got a long way to go to catch up to Tiger, but this is a good start.

He wasn’t the favorite to win
But the March Madness fates struck again!
Scottie couldn’t beat Sam—
But then, neither could Cam—
So Burns took the Cup home in the end.

The photo came from this page at pgatour.com.

Adjusting for Uneven Lies (Video)

Here's a step-by-step explanation of how to set up for sidehill and downhill shots. This can help you save some shots during a round because... well, you're going to have some of these every round, aren't you?

All My Guys Are Gone...

Well, I'm totally shocked. All four of my picks in the WGC-Dell Match Play were eliminated in pool play. Even Number 2 seed Jon Rahm

• Tommy Fleetwood (24 seed)
• Jon Rahm (2 seed)
• Min Woo Lee (41 seed)
• Jordan Spieth (12 seed)

As hard as it is to believe, I guess it's just something about 2023. After all, if you've been keeping up with March Madness, the NCAA men's basketball tournament, you know the unthinkable has happened, As of Friday night, all 4 Number One seeds have been eliminated.

ESPN routinely runs a fantasy competition for basketball fans where they can submit a bracket thru a special app. Over 20 million brackets were submitted this year... and by last Saturday, the third day of the tournament, every single one of them had been busted.

Welcome to my life, friends. Maybe we'll all have better luck next year.

Hopefully we golf fans will have a match play tournament to get lucky in. Get it done, PGA Tour!

Jon Rahm's Trail Wrist Action (Video)

Personally I tend to feel this wrist action as if the golf club was a tennis racquet and I was making a forehand stroke. But for many of you, Russell Heritage's description of how Jon Rahm makes this move will work very well for your swing. This wrist action is often explained by teachers (I remember Martin Hall demonstrating this move in a couple of different videos) but only in terms of how the lead wrist moves. It's much easier to understand if you look at the trail wrist by itself, as Russell does here. 

Flat Wrist or Bowed Wrist? (Video)

If you want to square the clubface at impact, knowing how you naturally use your wrists is important. In this short video Alex Elliott helps you understand how wrist position affects how your forearms move at impact.