Michael Thorbjornsen wins first PGA Tour title, breaks it down

Michael Thorbjornsen just became the newest name on the PGA Tour's winners list, and he didn't get there quietly. At the Rocket Classic, the 24-year-old entered the final round 4 strokes back, then went out and shot a bogey-free 7-under 63, capped by a 25-and-a-half-foot birdie putt on the 18th, to win by 2 shots over Xander Schauffele. It's his first career Tour title, and it came the same week he sat down for a full interview with Fore Play.

Fore Play

@ForePlayPod

Full interview with Michael Thorbjornsen OUT NOW in today’s Fore Play Pod: t.co/aZtdA36Hoe

What makes the win stand out beyond the number is how he actually holds the club. Thorbjornsen plays with a 10-finger baseball grip, a setup so uncommon on Tour that Fore Play flagged it as the story angle in itself. He's used it his entire career after trying the standard options and hating both — overlap left him feeling like he had no control, and interlock, in his words, just hurt his knuckles. Names like Bob Estes and Scott Piercy have made the baseball grip work at the highest level before him, but they remain the exception, not the rule.

Fore Play

@ForePlayPod

Swing your swing… One of the PGA Tour’s best young players just won with a 10-finger baseball grip. Presented by @Chevrolet

Thorbjornsen's path here wasn't exactly a surprise to anyone who followed junior golf — he beat future Tour winner Akshay Bhatia to win the 2018 U.S. Junior Amateur, then went on to Stanford before entering the Tour in 2024 as the top-ranked player out of PGA Tour University. He'd been grinding for this one; he came into Rocket Classic week ranked 69th in the FedExCup standings, and the win locks up a spot in the playoffs and — for a guy who was 8th to break through this season alone, right behind Jackson Koivun the week before — officially ends the wait.

But it wasn't all grip talk and leaderboard math on the pod. Fore Play also got into Thorbjornsen's side hobby, which might be the most unexpected detail of the whole interview: he's a serious LEGO builder, with a nearly 5-foot-tall Eiffel Tower and a 4.5-foot Titanic — both north of 9,000 pieces — sitting in his office.

Fore Play

@ForePlayPod

The newest PGA Tour winner’s LEGO resumé might be as impressive as his golf resumé 🤯

It's a fun juxtaposition — a guy who just outlasted a stacked leaderboard with a grip most instructors would tell you to abandon, unwinding by assembling 10,000-piece builds by hand. Between the win, the grip, and the LEGO reveal, Thorbjornsen went from a name casual fans didn't know to one of the more interesting new stories on Tour in the span of a single week.