GTM Golf Club — Week of July 2, 2026
Dustin Johnson just let a streak die over a scheduling conflict. Meanwhile a sales startup nobody outside the game has heard of pulled $60 million. Different weeks, same energy.
🏌️ THE DRIVE: DJ Walks Away From 38 Straight
Dustin Johnson has started 38 consecutive majors. The last one he missed was the 2017 Masters, and only because his back gave out on a staircase. This time there's no injury. His 2020 Masters exemption ran out, he had to go through final qualifying at Dundonald in Scotland, and Monday night his name was just gone from the sheet. His agent says it was logistics. LIV isn't playing over there, the flights don't line up, and a 42-year-old two-time major winner decided a Tuesday qualifier in the wind wasn't worth it. So he'll miss the Open at Royal Birkdale — his first Open since 2009. Sometimes the streak doesn't end with a bang. It ends with a guy looking at his calendar and shrugging. (Reuters, BBC)
⛳ THE FAIRWAY: Somebody Paid $60M for a Shared Google Doc (Sort Of)
Aligned raised a $60 million Series B led by PeakSpan. The pitch: one link after the first call, no logins, and the buyer, the whole buying committee, and the rep all work in the same room. They call it an AI Deal Workspace now. Underneath is a "Deal Brain" that watches what the buying group does between meetings — who opened what, who went quiet, where it stalled. That's the stuff your CRM never sees because your reps never log it. Deel, SimilarWeb and WordPress run their hard deals on it. They claim 30% faster cycles, 15% higher win rates, 70,000 sellers, a million buyers a month. ARR tripled in a year. The digital sales room was a punchline in 2021. It's a category now, and the caddie who actually reads the green is the one getting paid. (AI Weekly, Globes)
🏴 THE GREEN: Goldman Just Funded a Robot That Says No to Your Loan
Taktile pulled $110 million. Goldman's growth arm led it, with Tiger Global and Index along for the ride. Two ML engineers started it in Berlin in 2020, went through Y Combinator, and now banks and lenders use their software to make the high-stakes automated calls — approve the loan, flag the fraud, decline the applicant — without a human in the chair. Total funding is up around $184 million and they're opening a São Paulo office. The whole 2026 money story in one line: the checks are going to companies that own the decision, not the ones that just show you a dashboard about it. (TT Press, Fortune)
🎙️ FROM THE CLUBHOUSE: The Kid Who Wouldn't Stop Winning in Europe
While DJ was clearing his calendar, Eugenio Chacarra won the Italian Open in Turin. Second straight DP World Tour title. It punched his ticket to Royal Birkdale, so one American legend skips the Open the same week a hyped-up 26-year-old plays his way in. Chacarra's the excitable one — fist pumps, big talk, a kid who left college early, bounced through LIV, and is now clawing back toward the PGA Tour the hard way, one European win at a time. Two guys, one Open spot. One of them wanted it more. (ESPN, Golf Digest)
Got a scoop, a hot take, or a story we missed? Drop it at gtmgolfclub.com and we'll run it down.
🍺 19TH HOLE
Lucas Glover is 45. He won the U.S. Open in 2009, the same year DJ started his Open streak. On Thursday he walked into the John Deere and shot 63 to grab a share of the lead. Same week one legend decided the flight wasn't worth it, another one teed it up at 7 a.m. and went low. Age is a number. Showing up is a decision. (Golf Channel)
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