MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Thursday, things will be business as usual for the first round of the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
But Wednesday was all about seeing what separates the ‘joes’ from the pros for the FESJC Pro-Am.
Believe it or not, a lot of what connects the pros and the amateurs and their love for the game of golf is movies.
It’s been two weeks since Adam Sandler’s smash hit sequel ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ hit the big screen, where a handful of players in the field made their acting debut.
” Really cool environment for us to be a part of, it was very fun to be able to see other make movies, and yeah, those guys are the real deal, that’s a good job and have a lot of fun doing up all the guy,s that’s pretty cool,” said Scottie Scheffler.
” I thought all of the guys did pretty good and it was really cool to a part of it and to be asked by Adam to be a part of it and it was really like a highlight for me,” said Tony Finau.
Also, this week marks the first time anyone has been allowed to play TPC Southwind in 2025 since the major, multi-million-dollar renovations were completed, restoring all 18 greens and tee boxes for the first time in decades, which forced the course to shutdown in January and the players took notice to how firm the new surfaces on the greens will be this week.
” Taking away the Bermudas around the green opens up a lot more shot opportunities than the greens themselves are super firm but they’re unbelievably pure. That first hop is just going to be firmer and you have to be coming from the fairway because the rough is high as I’ve ever seen it,” said Jordan Speith.
The first tee time for Thursday’s opening round is 7:20 a.m. when Matti Schmid tees off alone, since this week’s field only has 69 players instead of the usual 70 players, with world no.2 Rory McIlroy not participating.