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      When Professional Golfers Are Also Course Designers

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      Golf course design is now in an era of star architects, but professional golfers are still bringing their name and vast playing knowledge to projects.Ernie Els, a four-time major champion, won the 2007 HSBC World Match Play Championship at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England, host of this week’s BMW PGA Championship.The club, a sprawling complex of three 18-hole golf courses and a plenitude of amenities, was working to refresh the West Course, which hosted championship golf. Els was the architect in charge of the work.Wentworth is the home of the European Tour, which runs the DP World Tour, and has hosted this week’s flagship event since the 1980s. (Three times, Els finished as runner-up in the event.)The West Course was originally designed by Harry Colt nearly 100 years earlier. Colt was one of the early 20th century’s great golf course architects. He worked on some 300 courses, including the original routing of Pine Valley, often the top-ranked course in the world.Under Els’s direction, the bunkering at the par 3, second hole at West Course Wentworth was redesigned.David Cannon/Getty ImagesBut the game had changed, and Els, who was known for his smooth swing, was brought in to restore some of the original challenges that Colt had created — but that longer-hitting pros had rendered obsolete. One of the key fixes was rebuilding all the greens so they would have the firm bounce and fast speed that pros are used to.Ten years after that victory at Wentworth, Els finished the renovation. “There’s certainly no other golf course in the world that I know as well as Wentworth’s West Course, so you could say we were the logical choice,” Els said. “Obviously to have that opportunity was an honor, not just professionally but personally, too. I’d say I fell in love with the West Course before I’d even played it, seeing the World Matchplay on television, watching some of my heroes.”What Els had been asked to do, though, was something that has faded from popularity: be a tour pro who renovated a course.With the help of Brooks Koepka, shown at the Houston Open in 2021, Tom Doak was able to redesign Memorial Park and bring his vision for the course to life.Carmen Mandato/Getty ImagesPros once lent their vast playing knowledge to golf course design projects — often with an enormous real estate development attached — but when the economy cooled in 2008 and new golf course construction dried up, so, too, did pros’ involvement.Golf course design is now in an era of star architects, such as Tom Doak and Gil Hanse, whose vision for the game focuses more on purity and enjoyment than on creating overly penal courses that will frustrate amateurs and most likely never host a professional tournament. The original golf course boom in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, however, was fueled by great golfers like Willie Park Jr., who won the British Open twice, and Donald Ross, a pro from Scotland.Despite the recent trend, pros still maintain a role in course design, even if it is a very different one from decades past. It’s more in the collaborative mode of Els at Wentworth than the splashy one that saw golf stars of the 1970s and 1980s like Lee Trevino, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Don January and Billy Casper lend their names to developments.Geoff Ogilvy, the 2006 U.S. Open champion, shown during the third round of that competition, is now a director at the design firm OCM Golf. He said it helps him to be able to talk about his experiences at various courses.Stuart Franklin/Getty Images“If someone’s been a good golfer, people believe they probably know everything about golf,” said Geoff Ogilvy, the 2006 U.S. Open champion and a director at the design firm OCM Golf. “Some do; some don’t. But when I’m meeting members, I think it helps when I can wax on the virtues of the 13th hole at Augusta National because I’ve played there. It makes it easier.”His firm has worked on major restorations of courses in Australia and is currently working on Medinah Country Club’s Course 3, which will host the 2026 Presidents Cup, a series of matches between the United States and an international squad. (Ogilvy played three times on Presidents Cup teams.)But he has two partners in the design firm who know the intricacies of building a course. “It’s better to have three minds in there,” said Ogilvy, who won 12 times on the PGA and European Tours. “They’re routing and designing it. I’m working on a lot of the playability stuff. What would tour guys hit from here? Will guys go for that shot or get scared?”That intuition, particularly on the psychological part of the game, is valuable to designers, said Bobby Weed, an architect who worked with 17 PGA Tour player consultants when he build out the Tournament Players Club Network, a group of courses designed to host professional tournaments.“What I liked was their input into what scared them on a shot,” said Weed, who was mentored by the designer Pete Dye. “I liked to understand how they’re thinking, what their process was. It’s so different from the amateur golfer.”He said not every pro was as involved or knowledgeable and that some got more credit after the course opened than they deserved. But many of the pros who have helped design enduring courses relied on a solid team under their brand name. Jack Nicklaus had Bob Cupp and Jay Morrish. Greg Norman had Jason McCoy. Ben Crenshaw had Bill Coore. Jack Nicklaus, left, helped design the Sebonack golf course with Tom Doak. Michael E. Ach/Newsday Rm, via Getty Images“The first thing the pros bring is their name. They’re much more famous than any of us who never played professional golf ever will be,” said Doak, an architect who worked with Nicklaus to build Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, N.Y.“What they bring is much more focus on the individual golf holes and the strategy of the individual golf holes. What they don’t bring is the perspective that everyone who plays golf isn’t out there trying to shoot their career best.”Large destination courses are still being built, but many course designs these days are renovations — and they often lack the budget of a large, tournament-focused club like Wentworth.“The pendulum has swung toward architects because most of the market is being driven by remodeling,” Michael Hurdzan, whose course designs include Erin Hills in Wisconsin, which hosted the U.S. Open in 2017, said. “That means you’re going into an existing facility and fixing someone else’s mistakes with a limited amount of time, a limited amount of money and 300 critics who are members. It takes a lot of time, a lot of hand holding.”One such example is the Medalist Golf Club, in Hobe Sound, Fla. It’s a tough, popular course among pros. When it was built, Norman was given top billing as the architect, with Pete Dye second. But when the club underwent a renovation, Weed, who has worked closely with Dye, was called in to do the work.Some pros understand that their skills lie elsewhere in a project.Mathew Goggin, who played in 279 events on the PGA Tour, is developing Seven Mile Beach, a golf course in his hometown, Hobart, Australia. But he is clear that being a professional golfer does not make him a great architect.“I’m smart enough to know that I’m not smart enough to design a course,” he said. “You let the design team do what they do. I think you’re doing a disservice to golf-course architecture unless you really do it. I have no expertise in it whatsoever. What am I going to say? ‘Move that bunker over there?’”And good architects know what to listen to. Goggin said he complimented the architect, Mike DeVries, for creating what even Goggin thought was a really hard hole at Seven Mile Beach. DeVries listened and redesigned it. He wasn’t building it for a PGA Tour pro.Goggin said he used his reputation as a great golfer from the area to push the project along. “I used my profile to get a meeting with the government ministers,” he said. “I showed them the success of Barnbougle Dunes [a course in Tasmania], and we talked about how destination golf has an economic impact.”There are advantages architects get from working with pros that they can’t get elsewhere. Doak designed Memorial Park with Brooks Koepka, and the course hosts the Houston Open on the PGA Tour. With the help of Koepka, a great ball striker, it was much easier for Doak to see his vision come to life.“On the resort courses or the member course, you visualize the shot you expect to see — and you sometimes wait months to see it,” he said. “At a course for a tour event, you really only have to wait two or three groups to see it.” More

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      Nick Faldo Talks About Retirement and More

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      The six-time major champion has retired after 16 years as a CBS analyst. It’s given him time to consider playing one last tournament.For the first time since 2006, England’s Nick Faldo wasn’t in the booth this past season as the lead golf analyst for CBS.He was on the range — and not just the driving range. A six-time major champion from 1987 through 1996, he was at his home in Montana.Faldo, 66, the only four-time winner of the BMW PGA Championship, which begins Thursday at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England, discussed recently those victories and the game that has meant so much to him.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.Do you miss your job at CBS?Yes and no. I loved being with the guys, but I had enough of being out there every week. They’ve just done 23 tournaments this season, and I couldn’t do that anymore. I’ve been flying since I was 19, when I went on tour. I’ve got plenty to do. [Golf course] design work is going very well. It’s just nice to be chilling and doing your own thing each day.Are you paying attention to the tour?Not as much. I’ve rarely watched it on TV. I’ve watched it maybe through highlights on social media. I’m more interested in the Ryder Cup because I’m going. I think it’s going to be really big, a great atmosphere.Nick Faldo and Fanny Sunesson, his former caddie, at the 2022 British Open.David Cannon/Getty ImagesWho do you think will win it?I think our backbone looks more impressive than America’s backbone at the moment, to be really honest.What do you mean by the backbone?The top six. Back in my day, [former Europe captain] Tony Jacklin said, “You six, you’re playing five matches. You’re doing the heavy lifting.” We said, “Fine.”So, are you going as far as to say that Europe is going to win?Yeah, I would. We should.Has Team Europe’s captain, Luke Donald, picked your brain at all?Yeah. I bumped into him at the [British] Open. A couple of little ideas I had, mainly for practice. I won’t say what.Of your four victories at Wentworth, do any one of them stand out?Well, I really enjoyed the one at Royal St. George’s [in 1980] because we played that in May. And that golf course in May, if you get just a little bit of rain on the links, is perfect. That week, all I practiced were one, two, and three irons. It paid off. I remember hitting one iron into 15, that tiny little green. It was one of the key shots on the way to winning. That turf was so gorgeous to hit off.What kind of player does the Wentworth course suit?A pretty accurate one. There are trees literally left and right. That’s its main character.Nick Faldo after his win at Royal Birkdale in 1978.Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesThe victory over Ken Brown, in 1978 at Royal Birkdale was a big one, wasn’t it?That was the very first 72-hole [tournament] I won, which was amazing because I had already played a Ryder Cup. On the putting green, I was holing like 40-footers, thinking, “Oh, this is good.” I won about 10,000 pounds. How about that? It was the PGA. It was big. I loved it.Are you playing any golf these days?Yeah, I’ve got a nice club here and a really nice range, a [Tom] Weiskopf course. I still like to pop up there and belt balls.What do you get out of it?Well, that’s the great thing about our game. I go up there, and I’ve got different spots on downslopes and sideslopes and I whack away. I wear myself out for an hour and a half, and I still learn something. And I think I’ve still got it. Isn’t that great? That’s 50 plus years later. I’d love to play one more [tournament]. I want to get myself fit and strong.Where?I don’t know yet. I want to get Fanny [Sunesson, his former caddie] on the bag.Are you serious about this?Yeah. I want to play something. And the big word is, Can I enjoy it? That’s the only goal. Somewhere [on the senior tour] where I have time to gear up. I’ll try to do something next year. I got to. I’ll be 67 next summer. More

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      Sharks on an Australian Golf Course Made a Watery Grave Like no Other

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      A group of bull sharks ended up spending 17 years in a lake by a golf course’s 14th hole, suggesting that the predators can live in low-saltwater environments indefinitely.For nearly two decades, the Carbrook Golf Club near Brisbane, Australia, had the ultimate water hazard: a lake teeming with bull sharks.It all started in 1996 when raging floods swept six young bull sharks from a nearby river into a 51-acre lake near the golf course’s 14th hole. When the floodwaters receded, the sharks found themselves stuck, surrounded by grassy hills and curious golfers.The sharks spent 17 years in the lake, sustaining themselves on its large stock of fish and on the occasional meat treat provided by the club’s staff. One shark was illegally fished out, while the others vanished after subsequent floods.The sharks, according to a new study, are more than just a fluke along the fairway. In research published last month in the journal Marine and Fisheries Science, Peter Gausmann, a shark scientist and lecturer at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, said that the cartilaginous club members of Carbrook demonstrate that bull sharks can live indefinitely in low-salinity aquatic environments.Bull sharks can be found in warm coastal waters the world over. These stout sharks can reach 11 to 13 feet in length and weigh upward of 500 pounds. They are one of the few shark species that can tolerate a wide range of salinities, a trait that allows them to venture into freshwater and brackish habitats such as rivers, estuaries and lagoons.Unfortunately, this impressive adaptation often puts the sharks in close quarters with humans, one of the many reasons bull sharks are responsible for dozens of documented fatal attacks on humans.In 1996, flooding swept six young bull sharks from a nearby river into a 51-acre lake near the golf course’s 14th hole. When the floodwaters receded, the sharks were stuck and have been there ever since.Scott WagstaffIf most sharks were to enter a freshwater environment, their internal salt levels would become diluted and they would die. But bull sharks have specially adapted kidneys and rectal glands that work together to recycle and retain the salt in their bodies.Freshwater and brackish habitats provide young bull sharks a place to grow up without the threat of predation from larger sharks. Once they’ve reached maturity, however, bull sharks usually head to the sea, where larger prey and breeding opportunities abound. That the Carbrook shark population did not grow during their time in the golf course offered further evidence that the species prefers to breed in saltier environments.While scientists have long known that bull sharks have the means to move between fresh and saltwater environments, no one knows if these sharks could spend their entire lives in freshwater.Research suggests bull sharks can live about 30 years, and the Carbrook group survived in the golf course’s lake for 17 years. That suggests there is “no upper limit” to how long these sharks can spend in low-salinity environments, said Vincent Raoult, a postdoctoral researcher at Deakin University in Australia who was not involved in the new study.“I think a lot of people would be scared to learn there could be bull sharks in their local pond, but the fact is, it’s pretty amazing that there are animals that are able to do this,” Dr. Raoult said.While the idea of sharing a lake with bull sharks may be scary to some, the golfers relished the opportunity, Scott Wagstaff, general manager of Carbrook Golf Club, said.“Every single member here just loves the sharks,” Mr. Wagstaff said.Extreme floods like the ones that washed sharks in and out of Carbrook Golf Club are becoming more common, and more bull sharks could end up marooned in lakes, lagoons and ponds.Carbrook Golf ClubWhen the sharks were still around, he and other staff would toss chunks of meat into the water and marvel at the way the sharks devoured the food with their fearsome maws. “I’ve seen them jump completely out of the water and spin as they land. It was pretty cool,” Mr. Wagstaff said.Extreme floods like the ones that washed sharks in and out of Carbrook Golf Club are becoming more common, and more bull sharks could end up marooned in lakes, lagoons and ponds. Although you are highly unlikely to encounter a bull shark in your local swimming hole, Dr. Gausmann recommends avoiding bodies of water recently affected by flooding.“You should never bathe in stagnant bodies of water that once had a connection to the sea. You never know if sharks are living there,” he said, although people in urban areas may not need to worry, as urban floodwaters are often too toxic to sustain marine life.And there is another lesson to take away, as shark sightings and occasional attacks on human swimmers prompt fearful reactions in some places.“If this paper has shown anything, it is that it is possible to live side by side with sharks,” Leonardo Guida, a shark scientist with the Australian Marine Conservation Society, said. More

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      LIV Golf Has Embraced Trump, but Others Are Keeping Their Distance

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      LIV Golf has embraced the former president. But much of golf’s establishment is keeping its distance, even as LIV and the PGA Tour seek a détente.Walking toward a tee box in Virginia in May, former President Donald J. Trump offered an awfully accurate assessment of the way many golf executives viewed him.“They love the courses,” he said, forever the salesman for his family company’s portfolio of properties, “but I think they probably consider me a little bit controversial right now.”As much as some leaders of men’s golf are trying to patch the rupture created by the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit, a tour Trump has championed, they seem to be in no rush to end the former president’s exile from their sport’s buttoned-up establishment. Even in an era of gaudy wealth and shifting alliances in golf, Trump remains, for now, a measure too much for many.The consequences have been conspicuous for a figure who had expected to host a men’s golf major tournament in 2022. Now, his ties to the sport’s elite ranks often appear limited to LIV events and periodic rounds with past and present professionals. Jack Nicklaus, the 18-time major champion, caused a stir in April when he publicly stopped short of again endorsing a Trump bid for the White House.Nevertheless, on Thursday, when he was playing a LIV pro-am event at his course in Bedminster, N.J., Trump insisted he was in regular conversations with golf executives about top-tier tournaments.“They think as long as you’re running for office or in office, you’re controversial,” he said.Golf has been a regular respite for Democratic and Republican commanders in chief. But no American president has had a more openly combustible history with the sport than Trump, and perhaps no president besides Dwight D. Eisenhower, who is thought to have averaged about 100 rounds annually when he was in the White House, has had so much of his public image linked to golf.In the years before Trump won the presidency, he had at last started to make significant headway into the rarefied realms of golf.Trump watched his shot from the fairway.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn 2012, the U.S. Golf Association picked the Bedminster property for the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open. Two years later, the P.G.A. of America said it planned to take the men’s P.G.A. Championship to the course in 2022. Also in 2014, Trump bought Turnberry, a mesmerizing Scottish property that had hosted four British Opens, and he imagined golf’s oldest major championship being contested there again.Once in the White House, Trump played with a parade of golf figures (though some of them appeared more attracted to the magic of the presidency than to Trump himself): Tiger Woods; Rory McIlroy; Ernie Els; Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour; and Fred S. Ridley, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club.Trump’s 2016 campaign and presidency had given some in golf heartburn. But it was the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol that most clearly chiseled away at his golf dreams. The P.G.A., which is distinct from the PGA Tour, which has dueled with LIV for supremacy over men’s professional golf, immediately moved its 2022 championship from Bedminster. The R&A, which organizes the British Open, made clear that it would not be bound for Turnberry anytime soon.LIV soon emerged as something of a life raft, an insurgent league with a craving for championship-quality courses and plenty of money to spend. It did not hurt that Trump had been strikingly cozy with the government in Riyadh whose wealth fund was ready to pour billions of dollars into LIV — and let some of those dollars, in turn, roll toward the Trump Organization for reasons that have been the subject of widespread speculation.Trump became a fixture at LIV events held at his courses, routinely jawing about the PGA Tour with variable accuracy. (He did, however, predict something like the planned transaction between the wealth fund and the PGA Tour.) This week’s event in New Jersey is his family’s fourth LIV tournament, and a fifth is planned for the Miami area in October.But the budding détente between the Saudis and the PGA Tour does not seem to be leading to an immediate one between Trump and the broader golf industry, which the Saudis could have enormous sway over in the years ahead.The PGA Tour has not publicly committed to maintaining the LIV brand if it reaches a conclusive deal with the wealth fund, and the tentative agreement says nothing about the future of men’s golf’s relationship with Trump. The PGA Tour has a history with Trump but ended its relationship with his company during the 2016 campaign. Tim Finchem, who was the tour’s commissioner then, denied at the time that the decision was “a political exercise” and instead called it “fundamentally a sponsorship issue.”To no one’s surprise, the tour’s 2024 schedule, which the circuit released on Monday, features no events at Trump properties. And although Trump said a few months ago that he thought the Irish Open might be interested in his Doonbeg course, the DP World Tour, which is also a part of the agreement with the Saudi wealth fund, has said the course is not under consideration.Other top golf figures who are not bound by any deal with the Saudis somehow appear even less interested.Trump Turnberry in Scotland won’t be hosting the British Open anytime soon, according to the chief executive of the R&A.Mary Turner for The New York Times“Until we’re confident that any coverage at Turnberry would be about golf, about the golf course and about the championship, until we’re confident about that, we will not return any of our championships there,” Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, said on the same day last month when he signaled that the Open organizer might be willing to accept a Saudi investment.Seth Waugh, the P.G.A. of America’s chief executive, declined to comment this week, but the organization has given no signal that it is reconsidering its thinking about Trump courses. The U.S.G.A. said it did not have a comment.Some players, many of whom at least lean conservative, have suggested they would like to see Trump courses be in the mix for the majors.“There’s no reason you couldn’t host P.G.A.s, U.S. Opens out here,” said Patrick Reed, who won the Masters Tournament in 2018 and played with Trump on Thursday. “I mean, just look at it out here: The rough is brutal.”Even a sudden rapprochement, which would require executives setting aside the views of players like Reed that politics should not shape sports decisions, would almost certainly not lead to Trump’s strutting around a major tournament in the near future.The next U.S. Open in need of a venue is the one that will be played in 2036; Trump would turn 90 on the Saturday of that tournament. P.G.A. Championships are booked through 2030. Between last month’s announcement that the 2026 British Open will be held at Royal Birkdale and the R&A’s sustained public skepticism of Trump, the last major of the calendar year seems unlikely to head to a Trump property anytime soon. And the Masters, which is always played at Augusta National in Georgia, is not an option.Women’s golf offers a few more theoretical possibilities since its roster of venues is not as set, but Trump would face much of the same reluctance.Trump has mused about the financial wisdom of golf’s keeping its distance from him. A few months ago, he argued that avoiding his courses was “foolish because you make a lot of money with controversy.”He may be right.But it seems golf is reasoning that it is making plenty of money anyway. Its political bent, some figure, might be better managed outside the glare of its major tournaments — and, moreover, beyond the shadow of Trump.Trump has mused about the financial wisdom of golf’s keeping its distance from him. Doug Mills/The New York Times More

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      Tiger Woods Joins PGA Tour Board in Concession to Player Demands

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      With the addition of Woods, players will outnumber independent directors, giving them the final say in the tour’s plan to form a partnership with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.Infuriated after being blindsided by the PGA Tour’s pact with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, a band of leading golfers has won a series of concessions from the beleaguered circuit’s commissioner — including the elevation of Tiger Woods to the tour’s board — in a star-driven rebuke of the tour.The tour announced the changes on Tuesday, one day after dozens of top players wrote to Jay Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, and insisted on significant overhauls.The players, including Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Rickie Fowler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler, said that the secret negotiations toward a tentative deal with the wealth fund had defied the principle that the tour should be committed to players and run by them. In turn, Monday’s letter detailed demands that amounted to a dramatic effort to reclaim power over a circuit that got its modern start after a player rebellion in the late 1960s.Woods, the golfers said, had to be installed on the tour’s board promptly, giving the players a sixth seat, and allowing them to outnumber the independent board members who come from the worlds of business and law. And the players insisted that one of their advisers, Colin Neville of the merchant bank Raine, have sweeping access to the tour’s files while executives try to reach a final deal with the wealth fund.A lasting agreement with the wealth fund, they signaled, would not clear the board unless Neville was able to review the terms with the players.“This is a critical point for the tour, and the players will do their best to make certain that any changes that are made in tour operations are in the best interest of all tour stakeholders, including fans, sponsors and players,” Woods said in a statement.“The players thank Commissioner Monahan for agreeing to address our concerns, and we look forward to being at the table with him to make the right decisions for the future of the game that we all love,” Woods added. “He has my confidence moving forward with these changes.”Sustained support for Monahan was no certainty entering the week. In a striking show of force, more than 40 players, including Woods, the five sitting members of the board and the 16 members of an important advisory council, signed the letter to Monahan.Player outrage over the deal with the wealth fund began about as soon as it was announced in June. The tour hailed the agreement, which seeks to create a new for-profit entity combining the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league with the commercial operations of the tour and the DP World Tour, formerly the European Tour, as a step forward for a divided sport.But players had, at most, hours of warning about the deal.Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, at the Presidents Cup golf tournament in Charlotte, N.C., last September.Peter Casey/USA Today Sports, via ReutersInstead, Monahan and two independent board members, James J. Dunne III and Edward D. Herlihy, handled the talks with the wealth fund on the tour’s behalf without informing other board members. A handful of players, including board members like McIlroy, were told of the agreement shortly before it was announced. Most of the rest of the tour’s players found out about it when it became public.Time did not diminish their misgivings.“We still don’t really have a lot of clarity as to what’s going on, and that’s a bit worrisome,” Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player and a golfer normally eager to stay out of the tour’s internal politics, said last month. “They keep saying it’s a player-run organization, and we don’t really have the information that we need.”In recent weeks, according to a person with knowledge of the deliberations, players have spoken privately about the changes they would want to see from the tour to which they had remained loyal. Monday’s letter to Monahan reflected those conversations, and Monahan swiftly agreed.The commissioner and his tour have been the targets of ferocious criticism, in part because an agreement with the Saudis had seemed so improbable after a year marked by acrimony.In 2022, LIV began poaching top tour players, including Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, starting an all-out war for the future of golf. Players sued the PGA Tour, saying it had illegally discouraged players from joining LIV, and the tour countersued. The tour also highlighted Saudi Arabia’s human rights record at every turn, with Monahan memorably asking on national television, “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”The tentative agreement ended the litigation between the parties, but otherwise lacked many substantive binding commitments. That hasn’t halted the intense questioning about how the tour’s campaign against the Saudis so quickly morphed into an embrace that leaves the wealth fund poised to hold enormous sway over golf.Lawmakers in both the House and Senate are targeting the tour’s tax-exempt status, and tour leaders went before a congressional subcommittee last month to answer questions about the agreement. The Department of Justice is scrutinizing whether the tour violated antitrust law, scrutiny that has already scuttled one part of the deal.But the players have always been among the biggest roadblocks to a final agreement. When LIV offered exorbitant sums to players to defect — LIV’s chief executive Greg Norman has said that Woods turned down north of $700 million — many decided to stick with the tour. They spoke with disdain for LIV’s team golf concept, its weaker fields and even the length of its events, and joined the chorus accusing Saudi Arabia of using golf to burnish its image.Then came the agreement and, soon, the uprising.The tour said last week that Neville, the banker, would advise the players on a potential deal and that they would have a say in choosing a new independent board member to replace Randall Stephenson, the former AT&T chairman who resigned after being left out of the loop on negotiations with the Saudis. The tour also said it was devising a “financially significant” plan to compensate players who did not take LIV’s money, and it signaled again that LIV players who want to return to the tour were likely to face penalties.Monday brought a new set of demands and swift acquiescence from tour leaders.A board seat for Woods is no guarantee of player unanimity, however. What the richest and best known players in the world want out of a final agreement could differ from what the fringe tour professionals, who are far more numerous, desire.Woods, who won his 15th major championship in 2019 but has rarely played since because of major injuries, has declined to join LIV and bitterly criticized its style of play, but his views on a potential agreement with the investment fund are unknown. He has not said anything publicly about the tentative agreement, and his agent, Mark Steinberg, has not responded to multiple requests for comment.No current player, though, commands as much public influence as Woods — just as no current player has as much private power as he does. Even during his convalescence, Woods has remained in close touch with some tour golfers, many of whom attribute the circuit’s financial success and contemporary popularity almost entirely to Woods.“When Tiger speaks, his voice is very loud,” Gary Woodland, a U.S. Open winner who turned professional in 2007, said in an interview in June.The players believe that Woods’s arrival on the board, which also includes the P.G.A. of America’s president, will do much to reassure the particularly restive ones in their ranks, some of whom have lately considered potential paths to challenge the tentative agreement with the wealth fund.Players are expected to meet with Monahan next week, when the tour will hold an event in Memphis. More

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      5 Players to Watch at the Evian Championship

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      Any one of these talented women could win the golf tournament in France.It’s not easy to pick the winner of a major championship in women’s golf.Over the last 21 majors there have been 20 different champions. The most recent: Allisen Corpuz, who captured the United States Women’s Open at Pebble Beach earlier this month for her first tour victory.Will the trend continue at the Amundi Evian Championship, which begins on Thursday at the Evian Resort Golf Club in France? The chances are pretty good given the many talented players who could get on a roll.Here are five golfers to keep an eye on.Rose Zhang hitting from the ninth tee during the first round of the U.S. Women’s Open golf tournament in early July.Darron Cummings/Associated PressRose ZhangNo one in women’s golf has generated more buzz recently than Zhang.While a student at Stanford, she claimed her second straight N.C.A.A. individual championship, which no woman had done. Then, after turning professional, she defeated Jennifer Kupcho on the second hole of a playoff in the Mizuho Americas Open to become the first woman since Beverly Hanson, in 1951, to win her pro debut.Zhang, 20, played well in her first two attempts at winning a major this year: a tie for eighth at the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship in June, where she was in contention until finding the water with her tee shot on the 18th hole, and a tie for ninth at the U.S. Women’s Open.Zhang has a chance to be a member of the U.S. squad at this year’s Solheim Cup matches in Spain.Corpuz hitting a tee shot on the third hole during the final round of the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship in June.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesAllisen CorpuzWhat can Corpuz possibly do for an encore? Win her second major.Corpuz, 25 — who almost backed up her Open triumph with another win a week later at the Dana Open, finishing second by three — was unflappable during the final round of the Open, as she became the first American woman to win it since Brittany Lang, in 2016. Corpuz played the last 11 holes in one under par and was the only one to break par in each of the four rounds.“It was something I had dreamed of,” she said, “but at the same time kind of just never really expected it to happen.”The victory wasn’t a total surprise. In late April, she was tied for the lead after three rounds of the Chevron Championship, the first major of the year, before shooting a 74 to finish in a tie for fourth. She tied for 15th at the KPMG Women’s P.G.A.Corpuz became the second player from Hawaii to win the U.S. Women’s Open. The first was Michelle Wie West in 2014.Lydia Ko of New Zealand hitting off the 18th tee during the first round of the Mizuho Americas Open golf tournament in June.John Minchillo/Associated PressLydia KoPoor Ko. It has been that kind of year.Can she recover from what took place two weeks ago in the final round of the Dana Open, when she was assessed six penalty strokes for playing preferred lies, and another for picking up her ball?Preferred lies come into play when a golfer is allowed to move the ball because of the course becoming too wet. It had rained heavily on Saturday, so the players were allowed to play preferred lies on holes No. 1 and 10, but Ko also adjusted her ball position on three other holes. As a result, her score was a 78, dropping her into a tie for 65th.It was fair to expect a stellar 2023 from Ko, 26, after what she accomplished last season when she was the Player of the Year and won the Vare Trophy for the lowest scoring average (68.9).Early in the season, however, Ko of New Zealand missed the cut at the Chevron Championship, tied for 57th at the KPMG and tied for 33rd at the Open.Nelly Korda playing a shot during a practice round before the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship in June.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesNelly KordaThe year was going very well for the No. 2-ranked Korda, with six top-six finishes in her first seven starts — until an ailing back forced her to miss tournaments in May and June. Still in pursuit of her first tour victory this year, she has an opportunity to make up for lost time.And it looks like she might do just that.Two weeks ago, Korda won the individual title in the Ladies European Tour’s Aramco Team Series.She hopes to “take that momentum into the next two big events.”In the majors, she finished third at the Chevron Championship, missed the cut at the KPMG and closed with an 80 at the U.S. Women’s Open to finish in a tie for 64th.Korda, who turns 25 on Friday, won her lone major at the 2021 KPMG Women’s P.G.A.Jin Young Ko of South Korea hitting a tee shot on the eighth hole during the third round of the Cognizant Founders Cup in May.Mike Stobe/Getty ImagesJin Young KoKo of South Korea is due to break out of her small slump. She hasn’t posted a top-10 result since a victory at the Cognizant Founders Cup in May.She certainly knows how to come up big in big events. In 2019, she won the ANA Inspiration and the Evian Championship.With 13 top-10 finishes in 2018, Ko, 28, was the L.P.G.A.’s Rookie of the Year, and in 2019 she was the Player of the Year, an honor she received again in 2021. In late June, she passed the former star Lorena Ochoa of Mexico to set a record for the most weeks (159) at No. 1.“It’s an honor people saying with Lorena and me in the same sentence,” she said. “It makes me happy, but also it makes me humble.” More

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      Preparing for the Evian Championship

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      Golfers say this major’s longtime course is unique, some say it’s quirky, but players still must go over it again and again to get ready.Brooke Henderson, who has won 20 times since turning professional in 2014, rolled in a putt on the final hole of last year’s Amundi Evian Championship to win the women’s major by one shot over the rookie Sophia Schubert.It was Henderson’s seventh time playing the championship, which starts on Thursday and is the only major played in continental Europe. It is also the only women’s major played on the same course every year, the Evian Resort Golf Club in France, which has hosted the tournament for nearly 30 years.That presents an opportunity and a challenge for players trying to prepare to play on a course that was significantly redesigned a decade ago. It would seem to make it easier to get ready year after year. But the course itself is not universally liked. It’s been called quirky and unfair, and one player, Stacy Lewis, who is a major champion, skipped it for two years.It also stands in contrast to courses for the other majors, which have moved to be hosted at the same venues where the men have won.The United States Women’s Open was held at Pebble Beach Golf Links for the first time this year. And it’s set to be played at Oakmont, Pinehurst, Merion, and the Los Angeles Country Club, which hosted this year’s men’s United States Open.It’s the same with the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship, which was played this year at Baltusrol, and the A.I.G. Women’s Open that was played last year at Muirfield, one of the most historic golf courses in Scotland.Yet few players are going to skip a major. So, does their preparation for the Evian differ from preparing for the other majors? And with a schedule that calls on players to travel farther and more widely in the season than the men do on the PGA Tour, is their preparation for the Evian different from their training for majors on courses they have seen before? (Add to that the fact that many players were in the United States last week, playing the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational in Michigan.)“Given that it is a course we come back to each year, we adjust our strategy slightly based on prior experience and course conditions,” Henderson said.Stuart Franklin/Getty ImagesHenderson, who is two-time major champion, was circumspect in her response about preparing.“My team and I focus on peaking at the majors and work particularly hard to prepare for those weeks both mentally and physically,” she said. “The venue at the Amundi Evian Championship, like all major courses, is unique and really tests all aspects of your game in different ways. Given that it is a course we come back to each year, we adjust our strategy slightly based on prior experience and course conditions.”Other players, particularly those who aren’t major champions, think about these weeks differently.“We always circle the majors to try to peak during those certain tournaments,” said Ally Ewing, a three-time winner on the L.P.G.A. Tour. “I’m a process person. I want to be ready in the spring to play solid golf at the Evian. There are a lot of things that go into competing in a golf tournament there. I circle those dates.”Ewing, who tied for 30th at the Evian her rookie season in 2016, said her focus this week had always been on controlling what she could put into preparing.“All three of my wins have been brand-new golf courses for me,” Ally Ewing said. “Getting to a golf course where I have no past recollection of, I feel like rookies get to an event and they have this cram mind-set.”Stuart Franklin/Getty Images“It goes back to the hours I put in at age 14 to make sure the ball position was always the same place and that my putting stroke was repetitive,” she said. “It’s about a solid base. My prep should be focused on my tempo and knowing my way around the course. I need to dial in the speed on the greens and learn where to place on our approach shots.”In that sense, the memory of returning to the Evian each year helps with some of the variables.“All three of my wins have been brand-new golf courses for me,” she said. “Getting to a golf course where I have no past recollection of — I feel like rookies get to an event and they have this cram mind-set.”“When I get to the Evian and there are a ton of side-hill lies, I’m working on creating comfort where I am. Every golf course is going to play differently, but I’m the same.”For Ewing, it comes down to strategy, whether she’s played a major course a half dozen times, like at the Evian, or if it’s her first time at a venue.“Sometimes, it’s simply looking and asking, do the greens have a lot of pitch back to front,” she said. “Do we want to be below the hole to score? Or on a course with a lot of runoff areas, we need to pay attention to the spots where we can miss. Let’s leave ourselves a chance to make birdie or, worst case, a par.”She added: “As a professional, we miss shots. I miss some shots left and some shots right.”“I have yet to figure that course out,” Lizette Salas, who is in her 13th season on tour, said. “It’s definitely a challenging golf course, as far as the layout. You’re hardly ever going to get a flat lie at the Evian Championship.”Stuart Franklin/Getty ImagesLizette Salas, who is in her 13th season on tour, hasn’t always liked playing at the Evian.“I have yet to figure that course out,” she said. “It’s definitely a challenging golf course, as far as the layout. You’re hardly ever going to get a flat lie at the Evian Championship. Also, the weather is a very big factor to determine how low we can go for that week. I feel there’s only so much you can do to that golf course, other than tear it completely down.”She admits that some courses just don’t suit a player’s eye, or they’re places that they’ve not always played well at. “But as the purses continue to rise, that just encourages us not to suck it up, but to take it as a new challenge and try to make it work.”In eight appearances at the Evian, her best finish was her first time, tied for 11th in 2013.For Salas, playing well in a major is about the prep work.“I definitely prepare differently today,” she said. “In my earlier years, my goal was to play the course as many times as possible. But I realized it’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon. Today I like to play the course no more than twice ahead of time and focus on the main trends of the course.“It’s a course we’ve seen over and over again, but we don’t have the luxury of getting there early because of our schedules. If you like a course more than others, it dictates your practice schedule.”At this month’s U.S. Women’s Open, she went to Pebble Beach a month early. “I got to play an afternoon and a morning round to see the wind tendencies,” she said.As the defending champion at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational, Salas played that tournament in Michigan and then flew to France to get ready for the Evian.But one thing that doesn’t change is her emphasis on what she calls “boring golf.” “You’re not trying to hit a ton of balls” to prepare, she said. “You’re just trying to understand the golf course. Is there any insight on how to play this course the best way?”For others, though, they try to block out the magnitude of the event and play the week like any other tournament.“You just have to go into it thinking it’s just another event,” said Jessica Korda, who has missed the cut three times at the Evian, “because that’s exactly what it is at the end of the day.” More

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      For Natalie Gulbis, the Thrill of Winning the Evian in 2007

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      It was her lone tournament win, and she remembers the relief of getting that first one.Like two other long-ago visitors to France, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, who always had Paris in the 1942 movie “Casablanca,” Natalie Gulbis of the United States, a longtime member of the L.P.G.A. Tour, can say she will always have Evian.Gulbis, who three times played in the Solheim Cup, a biennial tournament in which a European team plays an American team, registered her lone tour victory at the Evian Masters in 2007, beating Jang Jeong of South Korea by two-putting from 25 feet for a birdie on the first playoff hole. Trailing Juli Inkster by four shots heading into the final round, she closed with a two-under 70.Gulbis, 40, who plays very few tournaments these days and has undergone multiple back surgeries, reflected recently on her victory in France.The conversation has been edited and condensed.What stands out about that week in 2007?The relief that I could win a tournament. I had worked so hard to become a tour professional, and I had finished second one too many times before. And that event is so incredibly special. I was paired with Annika [Sorenstam], who was one of my best friends on tour.What do you recall about the playoff hole?I remember trying to focus on hitting it [her second shot] solid and making sure that I carried the water and gave myself a chance. My caddie gave me less club. He knew that players who get in contention always have extra adrenaline.What’s so special about the Evian event?It’s in this most beautiful place up in the hills overlooking Lake Geneva, the golf course is incredible, and just the way they treat you from start to finish. It’s really the closest thing we have to the Masters.Any explanation for why it was your only tour victory?No. And I don’t even think about it unless somebody asks. I really don’t. When I look back at my career, the most fun and memorable events have been team events. It would be interesting to see how I would feel if I had won 10 [individual] events. I don’t know if I’d sit here feeling significantly different.“The opportunity to be a professional athlete is so special, and I just don’t take that for granted. To compete all over the world and play for an organization like the L.P.G.A. has far exceeded any expectation I could have ever imagined,” Gulbis said.Harry How/Getty ImagesSo you’re not disappointed?I think I’d feel guilty if I felt disappointed. The opportunity to be a professional athlete is so special, and I just don’t take that for granted. To compete all over the world and play for an organization like the L.P.G.A. has far exceeded any expectation I could have ever imagined.What’s the state of the tour these days?In 2023, we’re playing for $101 million, 33 events. Absolutely crazy if I would have thought 10 years ago that the L.P.G.A. would be playing for over $100 million in a season.What’s the most nervous you ever were in a Solheim Cup?In Sweden in 2007, I was the anchor match [in the final group]. And then, that morning, I thought, ‘What did I commit to?’ That means it could come down to my match. It didn’t, and I ended up winning my match anyway.Are you excited about being an assistant to captain Stacy Lewis at this fall’s Solheim Cup in Spain?I am excited. It is a very different experience being a captain than it is being a player, and I think I’m going be even more nervous as a captain. Stacy has worked so hard, and she is so committed to try to get that cup back, and I just want to help her in any way I can.Would you want to be a captain yourself some day?I’m not sure. I don’t like to say until I have completely seen what it’s like to be an assistant captain all the way through.What was the biggest impact your instructor, Butch Harmon, made on you?Everything. How much time do you have? I started working with him when I was 18, and what he has done for me, on and off the golf course, it’s amazing. He’s helped me in every aspect of being a professional golfer, and it’s so much more than competing. He is such a huge fan of women’s golf, and I’m so grateful I’ve had the opportunity to work with him for 20 years. More