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      Tiger Woods Calls Phil Mickelson’s Viewpoints ‘Polarizing’

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      In remarks before the P.G.A. Championship, Tiger Woods distanced himself from his longtime rival, Phil Mickelson, who stirred controversy with his support of an upstart Saudi-backed golf tour.TULSA, Okla. — On Tuesday, when Tiger Woods spoke publicly for the first time since his stunning comeback at last month’s Masters Tournament, the expected topic was to be his continuing recovery from a near-fatal 2021 car crash. Woods did indeed say his reconstructed right leg felt stronger as he prepared for this week’s P.G.A. Championship, which begins Thursday at Tulsa’s Southern Hills Country Club.But perhaps for the first time at any news conference in Woods’s 30-plus years in the public eye, he spent nearly as much time discussing a longtime rival, Phil Mickelson, as he did himself. And Woods was not usually chatting about Mickelson in flattering terms.Woods was emphatic about distancing himself from Mickelson, who will not defend his P.G.A. Championship title and has not played since he made incendiary remarks in February in support of a Saudi-backed golf league that hopes to rival the established PGA Tour.While Mickelson in the past has privately reached out to Woods during his struggles, which have included a sensational marital infidelity scandal in 2009 and the aftermath of a tumbling car crash on a Los Angeles-area boulevard last year, Woods said on Tuesday that he has not contacted Mickelson.“I have not reached out to him; I have not spoken to him,” Woods said. “A lot of it has not to do with, I think, personal issues. It was our viewpoints of how the tour should be run and could be run, and what players are playing for and how we are playing for it. I have a completely different stance on that, so no, I have not.”Woods added: “We miss him being out here. I mean, he’s a big draw for the game of golf. He’s just taking his time and we all wish him the best when he comes back.”A poster of Phil Mickelson, last year’s P.G.A. champion, greets spectators at Southern Hills. Mickelson will not play this year.Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockBut after conceding that the social media landscape had escalated and quickly polarized the dispute between the PGA Tour and the breakaway league, Woods said: “And the viewpoints that Phil has made with the tour and what the tour has meant to all of us has been polarizing as well.”Mickelson applied for a release from the PGA Tour to play in the inaugural event of the upstart golf circuit, LIV Golf, next month outside London. The PGA Tour denied Mickelson’s request and any made by its members, and it has threatened to suspend or otherwise discipline players who play in the alternative tour’s events. In February, Mickelson provoked a hailstorm of criticism after he acknowledged Saudi Arabia had a “horrible record on human rights” — including the murder of a Washington Post journalist — but said he was still talking with, and aiding, the new tour because it was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to apply pressure on the PGA Tour. Earlier this year, Mickelson accused the PGA Tour of “obnoxious greed.” He later said his remarks were “reckless.”On Tuesday, when Woods was asked how his disagreements with Mickelson could be resolved, Woods replied: “I don’t know if he has to resolve it or not. I understand different viewpoints, but I believe in legacies. I believe in major championships. I believe in big events, comparisons to historical figures of the past. There’s plenty of money out here. The tour is growing. But it’s just like any other sport, you have to go out there and earn it.”When he wasn’t discussing Mickelson on Tuesday, Woods’s rebuilt right leg did look considerably stronger than it did last month when he labored to ascend seemingly every hill during the Masters Tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. During a practice round in Tulsa, Woods actually half-jogged up a steep incline.During the final round of the Masters Tournament last month at Augusta National Golf Club, Woods used an iron to support himself as he walked. Doug Mills/The New York TimesWhen asked how much he had physically improved during the last five weeks of additional rehabilitation for the serious injuries incurred in his 2021 crash, Woods smiled.“The first mountain I climbed was Everest,” he said. “So, yeah, I’m better than the last time I played a tournament.” He added: “I still have tough days, and things aren’t going to be as easy as people might think. Still, I’m doing better — more positive days.”But tellingly, Woods, who used to be known for almost ceaseless practice, especially with his putter, scoffed when he was asked if he can now practice enough.“Practicing a lot? No, I don’t do that anymore,” he answered. “Bending over for a long time, hitting a bunch of putts like I used to? No, that doesn’t happen — not with my back the way it is.”Some things, however, have not changed. Woods never showed up for an event unless he believed he could finish first. That resolve has not wavered.“I feel like I can — definitely,” Woods responded when asked if he could win. “I just have to go out there and do it. Starts on Thursday and I’ll be ready.”Jon Rahm, who is the world’s top-ranked men’s golfer and also in this week’s field, said he was not surprised that Woods wants to win every tournament.“Hey, the world wants him to win,” Rahm said with a grin.In what will be an eye-catching grouping, Rory McIlroy will play in Thursday’s first round with Woods and Jordan Spieth, who has won every major golf title but the P.G.A. Championship. McIlroy expects to see an upgrade from the Woods who started strong at last month’s Masters but faded in the final two rounds.“It’s been six weeks or so since Augusta?” McIlroy asked. “Six weeks is a long enough time to recover from that week and then build yourself back up again.” More

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      PGA Tour Denies Golfers Waivers for Saudi-Backed Tournament

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      The tour has made it clear it will suspend players who defect to Greg Norman’s rival LIV Golf series, which is set to make its debut in England next month.The PGA Tour has sternly refused to grant its membership the ability to play in the inaugural event of a rival Saudi-backed golf tour, which will make its debut next month outside London. The move, announced in a memo to tour members Tuesday night, was hardly a surprise — the PGA Tour is protecting its business — but in the most gentlemanly of sports, it exposed uncharacteristic rancor.It is also pressuring the world’s best men’s golfers, who are highly paid entrepreneurs, to choose sides over where they will collect their millions of dollars in compensation. And not inconsequentially, the focus of the dispute is often the source of the alternative golf circuit, LIV Golf, whose major shareholder is the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.The overwhelming likelihood is that only a small number of players with little standing on the established, American-based PGA Tour — plus a handful of golfers past their prime — will jump to the new golf series, which may not lack for money but currently lacks prestige, or even a TV contract.But if the start-up tour perseveres for years — also not a certainty — and keeps its promise to dole out purses that overshadow those on the PGA Tour, it could sow unrest down the line in a future generation of young pros, especially those raised outside the United States whose focus is not so centered on the PGA Tour.For now, scores of tour players, including everyone at the top of the men’s world rankings, have pledged their fealty to the PGA Tour.Several times, Rory McIlroy, a four-time major winner who is ranked seventh in the world, has declared the breakaway tour “dead in the water.” He has also disapproved of its underpinnings, saying, “I didn’t like where the money was coming from.” Aligning with McIlroy, 33, have been some dominant new faces of the game, like Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth.Caught in the dispute is one of the most renowned players in the sport, Phil Mickelson, who has stepped away from competitive golf for months since making comments in support of the breakaway league.Mickelson was one of several PGA Tour-affiliated players, including Sergio García of Spain and Lee Westwood of England, who applied for a release from the tour to play in the first event of a LIV Golf International Series at the Centurion Club near London from June 9 to 11.The tour is declining to grant those releases, which means players who choose to play in the LIV Golf event will be deemed in violation of tour regulations. Disciplinary action could include suspension or revocation of tour membership.Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, has made it plain to the players this year that the tour will suspend players who defect to the rival league. The same may be true for a player who wants to play even one tournament on the LIV Golf schedule, which includes eight events from June to October, including one in Thailand and five in the United States. In late July, the host site will be Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.Greg Norman, chief executive of LIV Golf Investments, at a news conference at the Centurion Club on Wednesday.Paul Childs/Action Images Via ReutersHours after the PGA Tour declined the players’ requests to play at the Centurion Club event, Greg Norman, a former major golf champion who is the chief executive of LIV Golf Investments, denounced the tour’s decision.“Sadly, the PGA Tour seems intent on denying professional golfers their right to play golf, unless it’s exclusively in a PGA Tour tournament,” Norman said. He added: “Instead, the tour is intent on perpetuating its illegal monopoly of what should be a free and open market. The tour’s action is anti-golfer, anti-fan and anti-competitive.”As if to up the ante, LIV Golf on Tuesday announced plans for more events from 2023 to 2025.The next step in the clash may be in court. Monahan has insisted that the tour’s lawyers believe its decision making will withstand legal scrutiny.While a court case will be less than riveting, the more compelling drama within the drama for golf will be Mickelson’s situation. He has only a few days to commit to playing in next week’s P.G.A. Championship, which he won last year when he became the oldest major champion at age 50. Mickelson has been linked to the LIV Golf circuit for months. In February, he was severely rebuked for incendiary comments attributed to him in support of the Saudi-backed tour.In an interview for a biography to be released next week, Mickelson told the journalist Alan Shipnuck that he knew of the kingdom’s “horrible record on human rights,” but that he was willing to help the new league because it was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to drastically increase the income of PGA Tour players.Shortly afterward, Mickelson, a six-time major winner who has earned nearly $95 million on the PGA Tour, was dropped by several of his corporate sponsors. He apologized and called his remarks “reckless.”Next week, perhaps while Mickelson is making final preparations for his return to competitive golf at the P.G.A. Championship, Shipnuck’s book, “Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Superstar,” will be released. It is expected to shed light on Mickelson’s gambling habits, among other things.Sergio García at the Wells Fargo Championship golf tournament this month in Potomac, Md.Mitch Stringer/USA Today Sports, via ReutersGarcía, another player who has long been considered a candidate to join the LIV Golf enterprise, recently expressed his support of the alternative tour in an unconventional way. Playing in last week’s PGA Tour event near Washington, García was apprised by a golf official of an on-course ruling that went against him. That decision was later determined to be erroneous (but not reversed). García, whose career PGA Tour earnings exceed $54 million, told the official, in a reaction picked up by a nearby television broadcast microphone: “I can’t wait to leave this tour.” He continued: “A couple of more weeks, I don’t have to deal with you anymore.”García, 42, represents the kind of professional golfer who might be most receptive to the promises of the LIV Golf enterprise. A Masters champion with 11 PGA Tour victories, he has been struggling to keep up with the more powerful, long-hitting young players taking over golf. His world ranking has slipped to 46th. He is also not American, like other golfers who are reported to have signed on with the breakaway tour. These players are most likely attracted to LIV Golf’s more global, and limited, schedule. Some players view the American tour as overbearing, restrictive and weighted toward events staged in the United States.In the meantime, there is a ruckus in the genteel world of golf. Its short-term impact is unlikely to rock the boat much. The question will be how long the rival tour can maintain sustainability, and whether that will be enough to seriously churn the sport’s customarily calm and lucrative waters. More

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      Jack Newton, Golfer Whose Career Was Ended by an Accident, Dies at 72

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      He won several tournaments before losing an arm when he walked into the propeller of a small plane. After he recovered, he taught himself to play golf one-handed.Jack Newton, who lost to Tom Watson in a 1975 British Open playoff and tied for second behind Seve Ballesteros at the 1980 Masters before his professional golf career ended in a near-fatal aircraft propeller accident, died on Friday. He was 72.His family said in a statement that Newton, who had been living with Alzheimer’s disease, died from “health complications.” The statement did not say where he died.Newton won the Buick Open on the PGA Tour in 1978 and the Australian Open in 1979, as well as three tournaments in Europe, before his career — and nearly his life — ended when he walked into the propeller of a small plane he was about to board at Sydney airport on July 24, 1983.His right arm was severed, he lost sight in his right eye, and he sustained severe injuries to his abdomen. Doctors gave him only a 50-50 chance of surviving, and he spent nearly two months in intensive care before undergoing a long rehabilitation.Despite his near-death experience, Newton returned to public life, his jovial personality intact. He became a popular television, radio and newspaper golf commentator, a golf-course designer and the chairman of the Jack Newton Junior Golf Foundation, which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for up-and-coming players in Australia.Newton with his wife, Jackie, and their children, Clint and Kristie, in 1984. A year earlier, he had lost an arm in an aircraft propeller accident.William Lovelace/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesThe foundation’s annual tournament attracted a who’s who of celebrities and pro golfers in Australia, most of whom dressed up in outlandish costumes as encouraged by Newton.He taught himself to play golf one-handed, swinging the club with his left hand in a right-handed stance. He regularly had scores in the mid-80s for 18 holes — which translates to a handicap of about 12 or 14, one that most able-bodied amateur players would aspire to.Newton turned professional in 1971 on the European Tour and won his first event, the Dutch Open, the next year. A week later, he won a tournament in Fulford, England; in 1974, he won the tour’s match play championship.His playoff loss in the 1975 British Open came after Watson had a few lucky shots. A wire fence kept Watson’s ball in bounds on the eighth hole, and he chipped for an eagle at the 14th to claim the Claret Jug by a shot over Newton.“I always felt that if I came into a major with some good form, then I could be dangerous,” Newton said. “That’s the way I played golf. Once I got my tail up I wasn’t afraid of anybody.”Newton in action during the 1980 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.Augusta National/Getty ImagesAt the 1980 Masters, he finished the tournament tied for second with the American Gibby Gilbert, four strokes behind the 21-year-old Ballesteros of Spain.Gavin Kirkman, the chief executive of PGA of Australia, said that Newton’s “contribution and legacy will live on for many decades to come,” adding that he “was as tough off the course as he was on it.”Newton is survived by his wife, Jackie; two children, Kristie and Clint; and six grandchildren. His daughter was a pro golfer, and his son played rugby in Australia and Britain. More

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      The Roar of the Crowd Returns

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      AUGUSTA, Ga. — The roars were absent or diminished for two Masters Tournaments, so many spectators kept away because of the pandemic.But Augusta National Golf Club’s gates have swung open once again for the wealthy masses to convene along the course. For all that has changed just about everywhere else, not so much has at Augusta. Of course it hasn’t: This is tradition-bound Augusta, for better or for worse.And so the Masters is, as ever, a sporting event with the (sometimes vanishing) sensibilities of a garden party, the rarefied attendance of an elite fraternity gathering and a golf spectacle equaled by few places.Pairing sheets, free to anyone who perhaps paid thousands of dollars for a general admission pass, rustle. Ice cubes clink in plastic cups, and sandwich wrappers crinkle. Balls catapult off driver heads, setting up shots and, in the meantime, anodyne commentaries to no one in particular. There are nervous laughs, urgent shouts and communal ducking and shoulder-clenching when a shot goes astray and lands on the crossway of an entirely different hole.There are no cellphones, no remote doorbell chimes, no one squawking on a conference call that you, too, have wound up joining. But there is, at last, noise.“They just live and die with your success or failure,” Tommy Aaron, the 1973 Masters winner, said of the spectators in 2020.And they and their exclamations are back. A cheer someplace prompts heads to snap around, the volume and direction suggesting what might have made one man’s day and ruined another’s.The roars have been building all week. Headed into the final day, surely the safest bet at Augusta is that Sunday will elicit the greatest ones of all.Spectators leaving the golf course after the horns sounded to alert that lightning was in the area and play had been suspended during practice rounds on Wednesday.Cellphones are not allowed on the course, but the Masters provides free phones for patrons away from the action.Patrons posed outside the clubhouse dining area.The concession area during a practice round. While some prices have gone up slightly this year, it is stilll pretty cheap to eat and drink at Augusta National.Fans following a shot hit on the the 13th fairway in the second round.A young boy watching the golfers on the practice green.The crowd watching Bryson DeChambeau hitting from the tee on the third hole during the first round. More

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      At the Masters, Tiger Woods Will Take Some Ice With That

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      In Woods’s improbable quest for a sixth green jacket, his recuperation regimen may be more important than any read of any green.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods stood in the glorious sunlight of a Georgia spring one afternoon this past week, a lingering dose of warmth before the frigid, hellish hours ahead.“Lots of treatments, lots of ice, lots of ice baths, just basically freezing myself to death,” Woods said of his plans before his next tee shot at Augusta National Golf Club. “That’s just part of the deal.”Rare is the athlete whose medical history has been more scrutinized and documented — by doctors, as well as by plenty of armchair experts in tournament galleries, living rooms and the news media — over the decades. But with Woods pursuing his sixth Masters Tournament title not even 14 months after a car wreck made a leg amputation a possibility, the 46-year-old golfer’s recuperation regimen may be more important than any read of any green.“If he can walk around here in 72 holes, he’ll contend,” said Fred Couples, the 1992 Masters winner who practiced with Woods before the tournament opened on Thursday. “He’s too good. He’s too good.”Couples was perhaps overly optimistic when he spoke on Monday. Woods shot a spectacular 71 on Thursday and a 74 on Friday to put his score at one over par headed into the weekend. Taken together, the rounds, up and down as they were, were remarkable showings of the ferocity and grit that helped Woods to dominate his sport for years. But those pre-cut outings were expected to be the least taxing.Woods spoke throughout the week about how he had little concern for his golfing skill, even as he openly worried about the wear and tear on a body that had its easiest days long ago.So he and his team must spend the hours between rounds trying to achieve dueling ambitions: reducing the swelling that comes with traipsing around the topographical nightmare that is Augusta, and keeping Woods’s surgically rebuilt limb “mobile and warmed up, activated and explosive for the next day,” as he put it.“Most sports, if you’re not feeling very good, you got a teammate to pass it off to, and they can kind of shoulder the load, or in football, one day a week,” Woods said. “Here we’ve got four straight days, and there’s no one that’s going to shoulder the load besides me. I’ve got to figure out a way to do it.”Woods stretches his injured right leg as he waits to tee off on the 8th hole.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAccording to Woods, he has not taken a day off from his rehabilitation efforts since he emerged from the three months in bed that followed his one-car wreck near Los Angeles in February 2021. The crash left him with open fractures of the tibia and the fibula in his right leg, and it led surgeons to add rods, plates and screws to his leg.The subsequent recovery has required trade-offs and gambles and, in something that is not new for Woods, unshakable confidence in his own talents, thrown off as they might be.Some changes appear somewhat easier to accept than others, like new shoes to help with stability on the course. But experts have also developed protocols for before and after rounds — “after I go ahead and break it out there, they go ahead and repair it at night,” Woods said on Friday — that have dramatically expanded the timeline that comes with playing.Those approaches, which may stretch for hours, have left Woods with less time for, say, hitting a thousand balls a day and refining, again, the nuances of his game.“It gets agonizing and teasing because of simple things that I would normally just go do that would take now a couple hours here and a couple hours there to prep and then wind down,” he said. “So, activity time, to do what I want to do, it adds more time on both sides of it.”The goal, he has said, was to build up the stamina that powered him and every other winner at Augusta, to give enough relief to make competitive golf more of a possibility than a pipe dream.But the strategies can only dull, not extinguish, the pain, which Woods said is present “each and every day.”He insists, though, that pain is not a problem. By his account, he did not have any unexpected physical setbacks in his first days back at Augusta.The question for Woods — and for everyone else left standing in the field at Augusta — is how long a leg already refashioned can hold up under such protracted duress. The course, lengthened this year, now stands at 7,510 yards, the longest in the history of the tournament, which was first played in 1934. Woods’s predictions have only gone so far.“I expected to be sore and not feel my best, for sure,” Woods said on Friday. “It’s the combination. I can walk this golf course — I can put on tennis shoes and go for a walk, that’s not a problem. But going ballistically at shots and hitting shot shapes off of uneven lies, that puts a whole new challenge to it.”He soon trudged off, presumably for another night of ice. More

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      Golf Shoes Are Getting a Makeover Thanks to Streetwear and Sneaker Culture

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      If you’ve seen golf shoes on the street, it is because one of the world’s most conservative sports has been getting a fresh look on the course.Streetwear — long the provenance of New York hip-hop and California surf culture — has been making its way to the green grass of golf courses.“Golf has started to get cooler, and it’s become less standoffish because there are parts of the sneaker community that have embraced it,” said Jacques Slade, a sneaker YouTuber and golfer who has been vocal about the need for more golf shoes that reflect sneaker culture.Hip-hop culture and sneakers have always had a close relationship, but the tie between hip-hop and golf might not be too far of a stretch, said Ankur Amin, an owner of the New York streetwear boutique Extra Butter. He said golf’s aspirational appeal has helped its style connect with his customers.“So much that we do in street culture is about pursuit of the good life,” he said, “and so much about golf represents that, the same way Moët & Chandon or Louis Vuitton does.”Tiger Woods, a Nike-sponsored golfer, brought a lot of new fans to the sport in the late 1990s, but dwindling interest in his products during the 2010s paved the way for a streetwear crossover into golf. Nike and a subsidiary, Jordan Brand, began releasing collectible silhouettes as golf shoes, such as the Air Max 1 and the original Air Jordans.Sneakerheads salivated. “You have people that’ve grown up with the Jordan Brand,” said the rapper and golf entrepreneur Macklemore, who has done sneaker collaborations with Jordan. “It makes sense that people are going to go nuts.”Brooks Koepka wore Nike while playing in the 2019 Masters Tournament in Augusta, Ga. Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnd sneaker culture’s grip on golf has only continued to grow. While the pandemic has devastated a number of institutions, it has also boosted participation in golf, as well as other activities conducive to social distancing like running, hiking and cycling, according to the NPD Group, a market research company.“Once golf courses started opening up again, the business just took off,” said Matt Powell, the vice president of NPD Group and an analyst for the sports business, who said participation was also slightly up before the pandemic.Many people bought golf sets at entry-level prices in 2020, he said, an indication that newcomers were picking up the sport. “Any of the beginners who are buying $400 golf sets are not going to drop $120 on golf shoes,” he said. “They’re going to play in sneakers.”Sneakers have always been an overarching part of the millennial generation’s fashion choices, but now some adults in their late 20s and 30s have the disposable income to play golf — or, at least, to try it. Locations of Top Golf and Five Iron Golf, in some ways the sport’s equivalent to bowling alleys, have also opened across the country, which has made elements of the sport more accessible in urban areas where courses are harder to find.“Golf is a game that’s very traditional, but if you look at millennials and all the generations that are following them, they’re never afraid to do something a little bit different,” said Gentry Humphrey, the former vice president of footwear at Jordan Brand who led the company’s entry into the sport.Gentry Humphrey led Nike into the golf market before he retired from the company last fall.Charley Gallay/Getty ImagesBefore Humphrey retired last fall, he also spent time leading Nike’s golf business. Part of Humphrey’s philosophy has been to transform Nike and Jordan sneakers that collectors covet into shoes that can actually be used on the fairway. “Kids are wanting to go out there,” he said, “and they’d rather go out there in something fresh.”Although producing these golf sneakers may seem as simple as adding high-traction soles, there are also other considerations like waterproofing and modifying the cushioning.“We didn’t want it to just be a basketball shoe that moves to the golf course,” Humphrey said, adding that Nike had developed new shoe technologies like the integrated traction bottom — a rubberized outsole without hard spikes that players could wear all day.Another part of Humphrey’s strategy has been to provide a wider platform to start-up golf brands through product collaborations. For instance, Eastside Golf, a brand started in 2019 by the professional golfers Olajuwon Ajanaku and Earl Cooper, who played together at Morehouse College in Atlanta, aims to increase diversity in the sport and introduce younger to it.Earl Cooper, left, and Olajuwon Ajanaku are the founders of Eastside Golf apparel.Julio Cortez/Associated Press“Who said you can’t play golf in a T-shirt?” said Cooper, the first African American all-state golfer in Delaware. “When they created these rules, minorities weren’t even allowed to play. People are trying to hold on to a tradition that was already broken or flawed.”Ajanaku, who designed the trademark for Eastside Golf’s clothing line, which features a Black man in bluejeans wearing a gold chain and baseball cap while swinging a club, said the prominent placement of a person of color on the company’s products was a milestone.“For us to actually have a logo of a Black man playing golf on our clothes speaks to everyone that has not felt welcome in the sport,” he said.Eastside Golf’s logo was shown prominently on the tongue of their Air Jordan collaboration, which used the silhouette of the original Air Jordan IV, a retro sneaker that is highly regarded among sneakerheads. The golf spikes were removable so the sneakers could also be worn off the course.Shoes that are convertible or can transition easily from the green to the clubhouse are one of the key innovations that have helped open up sneaker culture within golf. For fashion-minded individuals, half-inch spikes on the bottom of a sneaker can significantly alter the aesthetic of the shoe. So, brands are increasingly opting for subtle traction on the bottom of their golf shoes instead of straight spikes.“There were so many people buying the golf product collaborations, but didn’t even play the game,” Humphrey said. “My phone was ringing off the hook more for the Eastside Golf collab than for some of the projects we did with Christian Dior. The sport is looking for another shot of energy, and this was a great way to introduce something new to it.”Daniel Berger wearing Adidas during a practice round at the 2022 Masters.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn tour, eagle-eyed golfers or sneaker collectors may have spotted these shoes on the feet of Bubba Watson, 43, or Harold Varner III, 31, but even younger pros are also bringing a different swagger to the PGA Tour, Slade, the sneaker YouTuber, said. A lot of the players on the tour now, he said, “grew up listening to Travis Scott or Tyler the Creator. They’re coming into this world with a totally different perspective.”Last summer, Extra Butter, Amin’s boutique, collaborated with Adidas on a streetwear golf collection inspired by the film “Happy Gilmore” that included golf shoes, sneakers, balls and putter covers. The store is also introducing new golf-based brands to its inventory, like Radda, Whim and Manors Golf.“From the beginning of hip-hop culture, there’s always been this air of wanting to represent what you aspire to,” said Bernie Gross, Extra Butter’s creative director. “We come from backgrounds that don’t represent this, but this is what we hope to achieve one day. Golf is part of that.”Rappers are also getting into the golf business. Drake launched a 10-piece golf collection with Nike that was worn by Brooks Koepka, a four-time major champion. And Macklemore, the Seattle-based rapper, launched his own golf line — dubbed Bogey Boys — in February 2021.Musician Macklemore, wearing a ‘Bogey Boys’ hat and clothing, played in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Monterey Peninsula Country Club last month.Orlando Ramirez/Getty ImagesMacklemore started playing just two and a half years ago while on vacation, and was immediately hooked. But even before he hit his first 5-iron out of the fairway bunker, he was thrifting for classic golf looks from the 1970s. He started his independent golf brand because he saw a market in new players who wanted to bring a unique style to their on-course looks.Since its launch a little over a year ago, Bogey Boys, whose looks are inspired by the swag of golfers like Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino, has sold out of its first collection of limited-edition products, partnered with Nordstrom and opened its first retail location in Seattle in September.Still, beyond collectability, style and functionality, Eastside Golf’s founders believe there are bigger takeaways for the conventionalist sport.“Golf can learn from the sneaker culture,” Cooper said. “Sneaker culture is all about individuality. That’s what golf has been missing.” More

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      With Son as Caddie, Stewart Cink Gets a Hole in One

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      Cink sank the 24th hole in one on No. 16 in Masters history. He would have rather made the cut.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Stewart Cink knew the shot had a chance, the way so many shots seem to on No. 16 at Augusta National Golf Club. So did his youngest son, Reagan, who was his caddie for the Masters Tournament.The ball thunked onto the green, commencing a leisurely, 11-second roll before it fell into the cup for Cink’s first hole in one in 20 appearances at the Masters. Cink, who had wielded an 8-iron, raised his arms and embraced his son. A double high-five followed.“Happy birthday,” Stewart Cink told his son, who turned 25 on Friday, Reagan Cink recalled in an interview later. “It’s a pretty good present.”The marquee shot hardly redeemed Stewart Cink’s frustrating week at Augusta, where he missed the cut after scoring a 76 on Thursday and one shot better on Friday, leaving him at seven over par. But the shot was a bit of a balm.The setting was familiar for hole in one aficionados: With Cink’s shot, No. 16 has now been the site of 24 such successes over the history of the tournament, which was first played in 1934. No Augusta hole has surrendered more.Known as Redbud, the par-3 hole runs just 170 yards, making it the second-shortest at Augusta. Players strike the ball over the water to a green where three bunkers lurk nearby.“The way I do things with my approach shot, I don’t just try to hit a number — I try to hit a zone of numbers, usually like seven to 10 yards of space,” Cink, whose best finish at the Masters was a tie for third in 2008, said after his round. “On that one, I knew to push it a little further back because that bank brings the ball not only left but also back toward the tee. So that extra couple yards is exactly where it landed, and it hit my spot. It was the exact right curve, perfect contact.”Like his father, Reagan Cink said he thought the shot could find the cup. With his father still hoping to make the cut after finding the water at No. 15, Reagan Cink tried to keep his ambitions in check as the ball made its way toward the pin.“When you think it’s going,” he said, “then it pretty much never does.”True enough. But that did not stop his British Open-winning father from expecting the ball to wind up in the cup.“Usually a lot of times anyway, you hear it was kind of a mis-hit or whatever,” Stewart Cink, 48, said. “This was not a mis-hit. This was exactly the way I would have drawn it up. It was like a dream shot.”And as he watched the ball travel, the spectators sitting close by became a giveaway about its trajectory on the green.“They knew it was in, and they all got up,” he said. “When they got up, I knew it wasn’t missing.”No. 16 has seen a burst of hole-in-one activity in recent years, with nine golfers now having aced it since 2016.“It’s very special,” Tommy Fleetwood said after he holed a tee shot on No. 16 last year. “Doing it at a major is great, doing it competitively is great, but at Augusta is probably just another edge.”But Cink, who had been playing exceptional golf recently, would have sacrificed the triumph for a chance to play on Saturday and Sunday.“I’d throw the hole in one ball right in the water if I could make the cut and compete for two more rounds, but I’m missing the cut,” he said. “That stings more than the hole in one. It doesn’t boost my spirits like missing the cut hurts my spirits. I absolutely loathe not playing here on the weekend, and it hurts.”The shot, though, did make for an easy birthday present for Reagan.He got to keep the ball. More

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      Playing the Masters Is Different With Tiger Woods in Your Group

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      “It’s way different when you play with Tiger,” Stewart Cink said. Often, it’s hard to hear a thing.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Joaquín Niemann could not hear his caddie.He had made another Masters Tournament. He had navigated the thicket of spectators. Now, as the 23-year-old Chilean stood at Augusta National Golf Club’s first tee on Thursday, Gary Matthews, who was carrying Niemann’s bag, may as well have been anyplace else.Such is life playing alongside Tiger Woods.It was only weeks ago that Woods, whose doctors weighed amputating his leg after a car wreck last year, seemed certain to miss the Masters. But his decision to play in the tournament, his first professional competition since November 2020, instantly transformed how spectators would follow the action — and any player accompanying the five-time Masters winner at Augusta National.Woods’s presence in a pairing or group has long defined the playing environment around his slice of just about any tournament, with his fans, and quite often just the curious, offering up a barrage of cheers, commentary, cameras, bustle and scrutiny. The spotlight, it seems, only barely tilts away from him, if it does at all.And so the chaos, or whatever counts for chaos on a golf course, can make Fred Couples — a Masters champion, once the world’s top-rated golfer and a hero to baby boomer duffers — look more like an afterthought than a leading man. It can render Stewart Cink, a British Open champion and one of the finest golfers of his era, a merely thrilling bonus, or Francesco Molinari, also a British Open winner, something less than a pairing’s marquee name.“It’s way different when you play with Tiger anywhere, and Augusta National is no different,” said Cink, who has often had an up-close view of Woods at the Masters, and who had a hole in one on No. 16 on Friday.At times, Joaquín Niemann struggled to hear his caddie because of the crowd.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWoods, who earned the first of his Masters green jackets 25 years ago, has long commanded one of the largest Augusta galleries, with some other champions certain that a “Tiger roar” through the pines simply sounds different than cheering for other players. And with Phil Mickelson, one of Woods’s rivals for attention and affection, absent from this year’s Masters, Woods is even more the player with the greatest following around Augusta this week.The frenzy of this particularly intense week began well before Niemann, Woods and Louis Oosthuizen found themselves peering down the 445-yard No. 1 on Thursday. Couples, who played in his 37th Masters this week, joined Woods for a pair of practice rounds and was left agog on Monday, the first day the course was open to spectators.“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he marveled. Couples said he found a way to get to the tee where Woods’s fans “were only four deep.”He added, “They wanted to see the big guy, and they saw him, and they saw good golf. He gets that here all the time.”But frequency does not necessarily make the scenario easier for others pursuing their own ambitions.“The biggest thing is just the energy in the crowd and the intensity of the reactions and the scrambling for position,” said Cink, whose best finish at Augusta was a tie for third in 2008. “There’s a lot of movement out there.”Cink said that Woods had routinely tried to keep it a fair fight by allowing others to finish playing a hole before he did, keeping the crowd in place just a little while longer.“When you play with him, it’s busy, it’s noisy,” said Molinari, who won the 2018 British Open at Carnoustie when he was paired with Woods and, the next year, played with Woods on Sunday at Augusta. “I don’t think it makes a big difference if it’s here or somewhere else.”Woods, mighty as he is, has only so much control.Woods chatting with Oosthuizen, left, and Niemann on the 8th tee.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Thursday, the spectators began to amass around the first tee box long before Woods emerged from the clubhouse to start his tournament. A drone flew overhead. At least one man shouted “let’s go Tiger!” at least twice, though it was hard to tell in a crowd that seemed about 25-deep in places so people could see Woods (or maybe just the top of his cap) as he took his first shot.Niemann and Oosthuizen received polite, restrained welcomes from the crowd, which started to break up as soon as Woods, who hit first, finished swinging his driver, all the better to get a head start down the fairway or to the second green, to see Woods again.The din quieted enough on later holes that Niemann said he could, in the end, hear Matthews as he played his way to a three-under-par 69. He said he had even come to find pleasure in the enormous crowds.“They were always telling me to make sure you try to finish before Tiger, that way the people don’t start moving,” Niemann said. “But they were really respectful, so it was an enjoyable round.”Daniel Berger suggested that a worse fate than being paired with Woods was playing just in front of him.“If you are one or two ahead of him, then it’s always a struggle with people trying to run up to see him,” said Berger, who debuted at the Masters in 2016.Padraig Harrington, another British Open winner who has played with Woods, had a similar assessment.“It’s very difficult if you’re the group ahead of him,” he said. “It’s very, very difficult because the crowds are watching him and they’re moving on to see him. When you’re playing with him 20 deep, you can’t hear a thing because there’s so much going on.”But Harrington, who has won two Opens and a PGA Championship, had no complaints about life with Woods as a playing partner.“He’s actually one of the easiest guys to play with over the years,” he said. “He’s a very simple guy to play with. He plays golf. He says ‘good shot’ only when you hit a good shot. There is no messing around, no rubbish about it.”Woods and Fred Couples bumping fists during a practice round on Monday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPractice rounds are, of course, less pressurized, and Couples, who has long been close to Woods and is now in the twilight of his career, signaled that he sometimes plays the court jester. It appeared that way this week when Woods played with Couples, who won at Augusta in 1992, and Justin Thomas, who was born the next year and was 3-years-old when Woods first won the Masters.“I like to tell them stories, but usually on the tees it’s very quiet and I let them do their thing, and as soon as we step down the fairway there will be a story about this guy or that guy or me or Tiger,” Couples, who said that Woods and Thomas make him hit last, recalled this week. “Then we laugh until we get to a ball.”The crowds are always thick, and always watching, and always bouncing. But Couples said there is a benefit of playing with Woods and Thomas, all of the theatrics and distractions aside.“It’s nice because they only want to play nine holes,” Couples, 62, said. “I am great with nine holes.” More