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      Evian Championship: The Toll of Starting a Golf Career So Young

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      In a game full of players who turned pro in their teens, burnout is common.Asterisk Talley was faced with a tricky question after she made the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open, the second women’s major of the year. Would she have time to finish the homework that her teachers back home had assigned?“I have a bunch of homework and it’s all due today,” said Talley, 15, part of a growing number of young golfers playing at the highest level of the game.The admission spurred a raft of suggestions for excuses for why it wouldn’t get done, not least of all that she was teeing off late on Saturday, just a few shots off the lead.When asked after the second round if she was feeling any pressure, Talley responded: “Not really. I feel like I’m kind of used to it.”Women’s golf has been becoming younger for decades, and Talley is nowhere near the youngest player to tee it up in a major like the Women’s Open. Lexi Thompson, who is retiring this year at 29, was just 12 in 2007 when she qualified for her first one. (The youngest ever was Lucy Li, then 11.)At this week’s Amundi Evian Championship, Yana Wilson, a 17-year-old standout amateur from Nevada, is the youngest player in the field. Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Evian Championship: Angela Stanford Ponders the Past and the Future

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      She won the Evian Championship in 2018, her only major title. At 46, she is about to reduce her playing time.In 2018, Angela Stanford’s prospects looked bleak after she failed to birdie the 72nd hole of the Evian Championship in France.The leader, Amy Olson, however, later double-bogeyed the same hole, giving Stanford her first and only major title.Stanford had hoped to play in 100 straight majors, but the streak ended at 98. She failed to qualify and wasn’t given an exemption into this year’s United States Women’s Open.With this year’s Evian Championship beginning on Thursday, Stanford, 46, reflected on her 2018 triumph and future in the game.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.What is your favorite memory from the 2018 event?Finishing Friday afternoon. I’d played really well that day. Coming up at 18, the sun was setting and you could see the lake. That was kind of a cool moment. To have a chance to play for a major on the weekend was pretty special.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rory McIlroy Crashed at the U.S. Open. Here’s How He Recovers.

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      Two performance psychologists explain the mental strategies that help push past blowing a lead at a major.LONDON — Rory McIlroy was hardly the first golf megastar to falter down the stretch of a major: see Arnold Palmer at the 1966 U.S. Open and Greg Norman at the 1996 Masters.But for all the illustrious company, blowing a lead is still misery. McIlroy had not missed a putt inside three feet all season on the PGA Tour, and yet, with a one-stroke lead and the U.S. Open on the line at Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina last month, he missed a par putt from 2 feet 6 inches on the 16th hole. He then missed a putt on the 18th from 3 feet 9 inches.Victory went instead to Bryson DeChambeau after a great escape from a bunker on the final hole.McIlroy, still trying to end his decade-long major drought, could only stare desolately at the screen in the scorer’s room with his hands on his hips and then trudge to his courtesy car without further comment that day.#Pinehurt quickly became a hashtag on social media.“Yesterday was a tough day, probably the toughest I’ve had in my nearly 17 years as a professional golfer,” McIlroy posted on X the next day.Arnold Palmer at the 1966 U.S. Open where, like McIlroy, he blew a lead at the end of a major. Palmer never won another major after that loss.Bettmann/Getty ImagesHe has since withdrawn from the Travelers Championship to regroup and is set to return this week for the Genesis Scottish Open to defend his title. He will then play in the next major: the Open Championship.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Xander Schauffele’s Rising Fortunes

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      He won the Scottish Open in 2022 and his first major in May. And he’s headed back to the Olympics, where he took gold in 2021.In less than a decade as a professional golfer, Xander Schauffele, 30, has accomplished a great deal.He was a member of the United States Ryder Cup squads in 2021 and 2023.He won the gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Japan in 2021.And two months ago, he captured his first major, the P.G.A. Championship by a stroke over Bryson DeChambeau.Schauffele, who will represent the United States again at the Olympics in Paris this year, has won eight tour events, including the Genesis Scottish Open in 2022.With the Scottish Open beginning Thursday at the Renaissance Club in North Berwick, Schauffele reflected on his victory two years ago and his fondness for links golf.The following conversation has been edited and condensed:Schauffele won his first major, the P.G.A. Championship, by a stroke over Bryson DeChambeau.Jeff Roberson/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Open: A Masterpiece at Pinehurst Is Hosting Again

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      The No. 2 course at the country club is a gem by the architect Donald Ross. This is its fourth Open.Golf is a game where coincidence and chance can lift or deflate even the most skilled players. Those at this week’s U.S. Open at the Pinehurst Resort & Country Club’s No. 2 course will certainly get good and bad breaks in the native areas off the fairways; the same holds true for the bounces their balls will take around the greens.But chance played a big role in the very creation of the course by the architect Donald Ross that became the United States Golf Association’s first anchor site in 2020 for the U.S. Open. (That means every five years the club will host the national championship.)In 1899, Ross was working at Royal Dornoch Golf Club in Scotland, wrote Lee Pace, the author of “The Golden Age of Pinehurst: The Story of the Rebirth of No. 2.” After hearing a golfer from Boston talk about how quickly golf was growing in the United States, Ross and another club employee decided they both wanted to go to America. But someone needed to stay in Dornoch to keep that club running.So the two friends figured there was only one fair way to decide who would go to America and who would stay in Scotland: a coin toss.Ross won the flip and emigrated, arriving in Boston. There he began working at a local golf course that was near the home of James Tufts, the founder of Pinehurst Resort & Country Club. In 1900, Tufts hired Ross to work at Pinehurst in the winter when the course in Massachusetts would be closed. With that chance assignment, so began Ross’s love of the North Carolina sandhills, which he said reminded him of his home in Dornoch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Open: At Pinehurst, the Caddies Are Key

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      With their knowledge of the course, they can save players “several strokes a round.”Willie McRae, a caddie who spent more than seven decades at the Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, the host of this week’s U.S. Open, was a beloved figure who did his utmost to help his players.“My dad would always tell the story that his job depended on what kind of tip he got,” said Paul McRae, his son who is a golf instructor at the Pinehurst Golf Academy. (His father died in 2018 at 85.) “He’d occasionally come home with holes in his pocket so he could drop a ball for a golfer. Those other guys would say, ‘Man, you sure play good when Willie is here, but you don’t when Willie isn’t around.’ He knew how to make players feel good.”Pinehurst is a cradle of American golf. Donald Ross, one of the most prolific golf course architects, lived in the town and tested out ideas about course design at the club. But it also has an underappreciated role in American caddying.What was once a profession that was looked down upon, caddying has gained respect over time. It’s now an integral part of the experience at golf resorts around the world. After all, there is no one else who spends five or six hours with guests as guides, psychologists and storytellers.“During the last U.S. Open, Justin Rose came in early and took my dad out on No. 2 so he could read the greens for him,” McRae said. No. 2 is the championship course. “My dad caddied for Ben Hogan. Hogan would ask him, ‘Where should I aim?’ My dad would say, ‘Aim at that tree.’ Hogan would say, ‘Which part of the tree?’”The caddie Willie McRae at the 2014 U.S. Open at Pinehurst.David Goldman/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Open: Remembering Payne Stewart’s Dramatic Win in 1999

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      Those who knew him talked about the man and the putt he sank on the final hole. “I did it, lovey,” he whispered to his wife. A few months later, he died in a plane crash.The 2024 U.S. Open, which begins on Thursday at the Pinehurst Resort & Country Club’s Course No. 2 in Pinehurst, N.C., will be hard pressed to match the excitement that took place on the same course, and in the same tournament, a quarter century ago.At the 1999 Open, Payne Stewart, 42, knocked in a 15-foot putt for par on the 72nd hole to outduel Phil Mickelson by a stroke. Stewart, known for his flashy wardrobe — he wore knickers — atoned for the four-shot lead he had squandered on the final day of the Open a year before at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.The victory in Pinehurst was Stewart’s third major title; he had captured the P.G.A. Championship in 1989 and the U.S. Open in 1991.In October 1999, heading to the season-ending tournament in Texas, Stewart died in a plane crash that also killed five others.His widow, Tracey Stewart; his caddie, Mike Hicks; Peter Jacobsen, a friend and former tour pro; and the NBC analyst Gary Koch reflected recently on Stewart and his triumph in 1999.Their comments have been edited and condensed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At the P.G.A. Championship, Club Pros Get a Chance to Play

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      They have the opportunity to play their way into the field. Michael Block did it last year and impressed the sport by finishing 15th.Michael Block, the club professional from Southern California, electrified the crowds at last year’s P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., holding his own against the best touring professionals in the world.But after making the cut, his first hole didn’t bode well for a successful weekend.“I had 25 feet — the easiest two-putt in the world — and I three-putt it,” Block recalled last week. “I started to think, ‘Oh no, this is how it’s going to go today.’ As we’re walking off the green, Justin Rose puts his arm around me and said, ‘Let’s settle in, Blockie, and have a good day.’ For him to say that?”Rose, a major champion and Ryder Cup stalwart, was like so many other people at last year’s P.G.A.: supportive of a magical, if improbable run.Block, 46 at the time, did settle in and eventually finished tied for 15th, which got him an automatic invitation into this week’s P.G.A. Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky. But more than the highest finish for any country club pro in the modern era of the P.G.A. Championship, he captivated the audience, inspired other club pros and earned the respect of touring pros who saw how well Block, who had been running his pro shop a week earlier, could play.“Watching Michael Block do what Michael Block did gave all of us this inner sense that it’s doable,” said Matt Dobyns, the head golf professional at the Meadow Brook Club in Jericho, N.Y., who will be making his sixth start in the P.G.A. Championship this week. “That’s part of the challenge for us — believing you can do it. I’ve played with Michael. He’s a great player, but I can play with him.”“His play gives you this glimmer that it’s possible,” Dobyns added. “It’s tough when you have a full-time job and playing golf is just one part of it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More