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      Short Courses Are Gaining Favor With Golfing Families

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      Many golf communities are adding pint-size courses, which appeal to children as well as to parents who lack the time to play 18 holes.Even in Cabot Cape Breton, a golf community perched across sandy cliffs in remote Nova Scotia, the waves pounding against the dunes can’t erase the pandemic pressures of video calls and remote-work deadlines.They also can’t extend the stamina of a child or novice golfer, so last summer, Cabot Cape Breton opened the Nest: a 10-hole short course that can be completed in just over an hour.The Nest’s opening came as hundreds of other short courses have been designed or unveiled across the globe in golf communities, which have seen record-breaking sales to families with young children.At Haig Point, a golf community on Daufuskie Island, S.C., where prices are up 14 percent since before the pandemic, families have comprised nearly 25 percent of new buyers and the average age of residents is now 51. Before Covid, it was 63.As parents increasingly convert a quick turn on the golf course into a family activity squeezed between virtual meetings, golf communities are boosting their amenities with pint-size courses that can shift a round of golf into a true family affair.“Short courses are all the vogue now,” said Ben Cowan-Dewar, chief executive of Cabot Cape Breton. “We’ve seen them everywhere.”Short courses are not new — courses with nine or 10 holes have been gaining steam since the 1950s as fast and fun alternatives to the full 18-hole experience.But as social mores have shifted over the decades, so has the demand for a different type of golf experience. Women worked their way not just into the boardroom but also onto the back nine; men began to take more active roles in their children’s lives; smartphones, and all their buzzing alerts, began accompanying people everywhere they went.Then came Covid-19, and its trifecta of remote work, virtual school, and the need for activities in the open air.As sales of golf homes rose among families with children, “short courses really took flight because they allowed families to recreate together safely, outside and socially distanced,” said John Kirk, a partner at the architecture firm Cooper Robertson. “Younger golfers don’t necessarily have the stamina or patience for a more prolonged golf outing, and have other things going on in their lives, so this works.”Short courses, where a round of play can cost half as much as on a full-size course, also are part of a bigger cultural shift, said Rob Duckett, vice president of South Street Partners, which has developed several master-planned golf communities in the Southeast including Kiawah Island Club and Kiawah Island Real Estate, the Cliffs and Palmetto Bluff.With the arrival of younger residents, there’s been a push for more casual, relaxed programming, thinking beyond the traditional parameters of retirees playing golf.“At our properties, we have added fun programming such as night golf, music on the range, and comfort stations to the golf courses with signature dishes and cocktails that make golf more of a social event that is still enjoyable for experienced golfers while less intimidating for new ones,” Mr. Duckett said in an email. “The addition of nongolf amenities that appeal to a broader age range, such as pickleball and shooting, is also a shift I’ve seen. Basically, thinking about programming and activities that appeal to the whole family, rather than just traditionally catering to dads.”Karen and Brad Cook, avid golfers who live in Maui and are building a 3,400-square-foot, four-bedroom home at Cape Breton, are hoping that the community’s new short course will help them pass on their love of golf to their two boys, 11 and 13.“There’s a lot less pressure playing a par-3 course than there is playing the big course,” said Mr. Cook, who owns an engineering company. “And the attention span for golfing for younger kids just isn’t the same.”Cabot Cape Breton has two top-ranked full-length courses: Cabot Links, designed by Rod Whitman, and Cabot Cliffs, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. Mr. Whitman, along with Dave Axland, was tapped to design the new short course.Cabot Cape Breton’s real estate offerings, which range from two-bedroom golf villas to four-bedroom homes, run about $825,000 to $2.5 million.Mr. Cowan-Dewar said they were often occupied by families with children. That mirrors trends seen across North America among families, who continue to seek new homes outside of cities.Across the United States, relocation from major urban centers to smaller metro areas rose 23 percent in 2021, according to the National Association of Realtors.Mike Williams, managing director of Innisbrook, a golf resort in Palm Harbor, Fla., said that it was not just families who had been drawn to short courses during the pandemic. With business travel shut down and conventions on hold, he has seen a sharp spike in business colleagues gathering on one of the four courses at Innisbrook in clusters of three or four, where they combine networking and novice golf practice into one or two-hour segments.Innisbrook has taken note and is now converting their full-size North Course into a short course. The project will leave them with some unused land, so they plan to convert those additional acres into spots for new residences. They don’t yet have an estimated completion date.“We have seen a very robust golf group segment grow as conventions and conferences evaporated,” Mr. Williams said. He notes that competitors including Pebble Beach and Pinehurst have recently added their own short courses. “In order for Innisbrook to remain competitive and be mentioned in the same breath as some of those resorts, we feel compelled to put in a short course as well,” he said.At Suncadia Resort in Elum, Wash., nearly 300 new homes have been built in the last two years. Mike Jones, Suncadia’s golf director, said that he had seen the number of children on both the Arnold Palmer-designed Prospector golf course, as well as the Jacobsen Hardy-designed Rope Rider short course, increase by 50 percent.“I used to view this as a second home for a lot of people, and the residents that did live here full time, the majority were retired,” Mr. Jones said. “And since the pandemic, all these young kids started moving here and what I started noticing was I’d be at Prospector and I’d see three young kids on the putting green, and they didn’t know the other kids, and there just wasn’t a community feel.”To cater to the new arrivals, Mr. Jones started a PGA Jr. League, and also launched a meet and mingle program on the green, where members could gather to get to know each other and cocktails were served for the adults.Charles Nay, who purchased a 3,000-square foot, four-bedroom cabin at Tumble Creek, a private neighborhood within the Suncadia community, in September 2020 for his family, prefers to play at Prospector. But he believes the short course is ideally suited for his 13-year-old daughter.“When she and her friends want to golf, they get bored and don’t necessarily want to play 18 holes,” said Mr. Nay, who lives in Seattle.In Big Sky, Mont., the Spanish Peaks Mountain Club community will be putting in a new short course this spring in addition to its existing 18-hole Tom Weiskopf-designed course. It will be a 10-hole par-3 course, something that Mr. Weiskopf said the community had been considering for years.“Covid really gave golf a shot in the arm,” he said. “Spanish Peaks has so many members with big families with grandkids, and they want to do what grandpa and grandma do, or with their dad and mom. It’s a great way to get people started in the game.” More

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      Prize Money and Sponsorships Are Growing in Women’s Golf, but Is It Enough?

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      Golfers will compete for a $5 million purse when the L.P.G.A.’s first major of the season begins on Thursday. But women continue to lag far behind men.Brittany Lincicome started playing on the L.P.G.A. Tour in 2005, when it was a struggling endeavor with few events. Now, in her 18th season, the tour is thriving and she has no plans to retire any time soon.“My parents had said, ‘Play 10 years and you can retire,’” Lincicome said. “Now there’s no end in sight. The prize money is out there. The purses are going up every year. It would be hard to leave. Plus, I would love to get a win and have my daughter there with me.”Lincicome, who is pregnant with her second child, said the difference between her rookie season and today is the sponsors, who have elevated the quality of the courses the golfers play. “It’s cool to see where we came from and what direction we’re going,” she said.Her first major victory came in 2009 at the Chevron Championship, formerly known as the ANA Inspiration and an L.P.G.A. major since 1983. This year’s tournament, which begins on Thursday and has long been associated with Dinah Shore, an actress, talk show host and early supporter of the women’s tour, will be the last to be held at the Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif.A central part of the event has been Poppie’s Pond, where the champion, her caddie and any number of friends and family take a victory plunge adjacent to the 18th green.Whether the pond will move to Houston, where Chevron is headquartered next year, as part of the company assuming the title sponsorship, is unclear. But, pond or not, one of the five women’s majors has a corporate sponsor to keep it going, with a purse that has increased nearly $2 million this year, to $5 million from $3.1 million.“It’s bittersweet,” said Stacy Lewis, whose first professional victory came at the event in 2011, when Kraft Nabisco was the sponsor. “It will always have a special place for me. But as a tournament it was time. When we lost Kraft, the tour needed a lot of time bringing ANA on board. And the fan base has shrunk over the past 10 years.”While the L.P.G.A. Tour lags behind the PGA Tour in prize money, sponsors for the best female golfers in the world have been stepping up — new deals for tournaments, money for the developmental tour and increased support for athletes who want to have families.Purses have also risen to $90 million this year, up from $67 million in 2019.“The purses are super important so we can have the best tournament schedule that we can put together and allow the best women in the world to reach their goals,” said Mollie Marcoux Samaan, who became the L.P.G.A. commissioner last year.Such increases have come slowly. A decade ago, Marcoux’s predecessor, Mike Whan, now the chief executive of the U.S.G.A., encouraged players to talk about their golf, but to make sure they thanked sponsors for getting behind the tour.In his new role, Whan has brought in ProMedica, a health care company, as the first presenting sponsor of the U.S. Women’s Open. The purse has nearly doubled, to $10 million from $5.5 million. But it wasn’t easy.“I saw how much money the U.S.G.A. lost on the U.S. Women’s Open,” Whan said. “I could see they were doing the right thing. But they weren’t reaching out to companies that also wanted to do the right thing.”The companies that are coming in as sponsors of the L.P.G.A. Tour are aligning their financial backing with broader diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. KPMG was among the first to do so with its sponsorship of the Women’s P.G.A. Championship in 2014.“We’ve more than doubled the purse since then,” said Shawn Quill, managing director and national sports industry leader at KPMG. “We’ve been able to put the L.P.G.A. players on the best courses in the world, the same ones that the men play.”This year’s event is at Congressional Country Club, where Rory McIlroy won the men’s U.S. Open in 2011.As a title sponsor, KPMG has not only increased the prize money, but has also added a women’s leadership summit, which focuses on C-suite executives and future leaders. “As sponsors, we saw this could be more than a hospitality event,” Quill said.Hannah Green won $1 million from sponsor Aon in 2021 for recording the best score on the toughest hole. Aon paid the same amount to the PGA Tour winner.Donald Miralle/Getty ImagesAon, the professional services company, sponsors a season-long competition that collects the best scores on the toughest hole each week on both the PGA and L.P.G.A. tours. It made a commitment in 2019 to pay the same $1 million prize to the male and female golfers who won the challenge.“It ties into our inclusion and diversity strategy,” said Jennifer Bell, chief executive of North America for Aon. “We also want to influence other sponsors since we’ve taken on this challenge.”At the end of last season, Bell awarded checks to Matthew Wolff, who turned pro in 2019, is ranked 45th in the world, and has won over $7 million; and Hannah Green, who turned pro in 2018, is ranked 31st in the world, but has won just over $2 million.“When I handed the $1 million check to Hannah Green last year, she had a smile on her face from ear to ear,” said Bell. “I said, ‘What are you going to do with it?’ She said, ‘I think I’m going to buy a home’. She still lived with her mom.”The disparity in earnings between players on the men’s and women’s tours is enormous. Total prize money on the PGA Tour jumped to $427 million in 2022 from $367 million, a figure nearly five times that of the L.P.G.A. Tour. That has meant many top female golfers are living more modestly.Epson America, the United States subsidiary of the Japanese printer and imaging company, has created three additional benefits for players on the Epson Tour, guaranteeing minimum tournament purses of $200,000 and awarding a $10,000 stipend to the 10 players who graduate to the L.P.G.A. each year. It has also lowered entry fees.“They’re one of the biggest barriers,” said Meghan MacLaren, a winner on the Ladies European Tour who is now playing on the Epson Tour. “Before I add all the other stuff on, like flights, hotels, and travel, you’re looking at $10,000 for 20 events.”Increased prize money at the top of the L.P.G.A. or Epson Tour invariably trickles down to players who finish out of contention.“What we really liked about the sponsorship is we’re investing in the future of women’s golf,” said Keith Kratzberg, chief executive of Epson America.Patty Tavatanakit took home $465,000 when she won at Mission Hills as a rookie in 2021.Yong Teck Lim/Getty ImagesCorporate sponsors have also begun promoting the values they espouse in their companies with their athletes.When Lewis was pregnant in 2018, she worried about telling her sponsors. In the past, some sponsors hadn’t paid golfers who didn’t play a certain number of events, usually between 18 and 20 tournaments. Two of the most dominant players of their eras, Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa, both of whom were ranked No. 1 in the world, retired from golf in their primes to have children.For Lewis, it was different. “KPMG said, ‘We’re going to pay you whether you play your 20 events or not,’” she said. “We’re going to treat you like any employee at KPMG.”When she went public with the company’s promise, all but one of her sponsors also agreed to pay her in full.“That set the bar for other companies,” said Gerina Piller, a 15-year tour player who often travels with her son. “It paved another way to make it possible to chase our dream and be a mom and not get stuck with the decision of, do we play or do we stay home?” More

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      Older Players on the PGA Tour Are Looking Over Their Shoulders

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      A week ago, the top five players in the men’s world golf rankings were under 30 years old for the first time since the rankings began in 1986.PALM HARBOR, Fla. — On the eve of the PGA Tour’s Florida swing, a four-tournament series in March that sets the stage for four months featuring major golf championships, Rory McIlroy, 32, made a revealing observation.McIlroy, a one-time child prodigy turned four-time major winner, said the results of recent tour events were making him feel especially old.McIlroy was only half joking.But with Sunday’s conclusion of the Valspar Championship, the last chapter of the tour’s trip through the Sunshine State, McIlroy sentiments reflect an unmistakable reality: Men’s professional golf is being transformed by a sweeping youth movement.Even being a creaky 32 is enough to keep you out of the upper echelon. Sort of.A week ago, the top five players in the men’s world golf rankings — in order, Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, Patrick Cantlay and Scottie Scheffler — were under 30 years old, which was the first time that had happened since the rankings were instituted in 1986. While Cantlay turned 30 on Thursday, that does not diminish the headway the game’s youngest players are making.It is particularly noticeable because many of the most dominant names in men’s golf during this century are now farther from the top of the rankings than ever: Phil Mickelson is 45th, Justin Rose is 51st, Jason Day is 99th and Tiger Woods, who has not played a tour event in 16 months, is 895th.Moreover, no one expects the 20-something brigade to retreat.“I’ve been saying it since Day 1, the young guys, we all believed in ourselves when we got to the tour,” Morikawa, 25, said. “That’s not going to change. The recent play just shows how good the young guys who are coming out can be — how good this young pile is.”Collin Morikawa, 25, will attempt to defend his British Open title, his second major tournament victory, in July.Julio Aguilar/Getty ImagesThe remaking of the rankings has been most dramatic over the last several weeks.It began a week before the first PGA Tour Florida event this month when Joaquin Niemann, 23, won the Genesis Invitational near Los Angeles. It continued when Sepp Straka, 28, was atop the final leaderboard at the Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.Next, Scheffler, 25, claimed the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando. The following week, on the east coast of Florida, Cameron Smith, 28, won a Players Championship that was battered by bad weather over five days. Finally, on Sunday, near Tampa, Sam Burns, 25, won the Valspar Championship, a tournament he also won last year. Burns, who moved to 10th in the world with Sunday’s victory, defeated Davis Riley, 25, in a playoff. Justin Thomas, 28, and Matthew NeSmith, also 28, tied for third. Matt Fitzpatrick, 27, was fifth.Thomas, a former world No. 1, praised the growing accomplishments of this younger set even though the competition has helped push his current world ranking to seventh.“I’ve played some pretty damn good golf, but if you’re not winning tournaments now, you’re getting lapped,” Thomas said. “That’s just the way it is, which just goes to show the level of golf being played.“But the jealous side of me wants that to be me.”It is a reasonable expectation that youth will continue to have an impact heading into the four golf majors contested from April through July. While the truism is that experience matters greatly at the Masters, it is also worth remembering that Will Zalatoris, 25, finished second at last year’s Masters. Xander Schauffele, 28 and ranked ninth (one behind McIlroy), played in the final group on the last day of that Masters with eventual winner Hideki Matsuyama.At this year’s U.S. Open, Rahm, 27, is the defending champion. Scheffler, Schauffele and Morikawa were all in the top 10 last year, as were Daniel Berger, 28, and Guido Migliozzi of Italy, who is, of course, just 25. At last year’s P.G.A. Championship, Scheffler, Zalatoris and Morikawa were among the top 10 finishers; Morikawa is the reigning British Open champion. Oh, yes, at that event a year ago, Spieth was second and Rahm was third.There are a handful of theories to explain this youthful surge, and most center on the heightened professionalism that has become commonplace even in competitions for top golfers in their late teens or early 20s. That has in turn raised the caliber of golf at the American collegiate level, where rosters are also now frequently dotted with elite players from around the world.And since every conversation about modern golf must have a tie to Woods, there is also a belief that more agile and finely honed athletes have been flocking to golf for more than 20 years — a tribute to Woods’s effect on sports worldwide.Put it all together and those graduating from pro golf’s chief minor league, the Korn Ferry Tour, seem less intimidated by the big leagues and more ready to win, or at least contend, right away.“It’s a reflection of the system at work,” said Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner. “The athleticism, the youth, the preparedness, the system is working. You can talk about the top five, but you can extend it past the top five and into the top 30.”Jon Rahm, 27, won his first major tournament title at the 2021 U.S. Open.Jared C. Tilton/Getty ImagesSixteen of the top 30 golfers are 30 years old or younger.Scheffler gave credit to Jordan Spieth, who won his first PGA Tour event when he was 19 and nearly won the Masters when he was 20 (he finished second). Scheffler, like Spieth, attended the University of Texas.“It was one of those deals where I had a personal connection with him,” Scheffler said of Spieth, who is 28. “He gave a lot of the guys from Texas the belief that we can come out here and play well at a young age. You don’t have to wait until you’re 25 or 30 to get some experience under your belt.”The one aspect so far missing from golf’s youth movement is the kind of prominent rivalries that fuel any sport’s popularity. While television ratings for golf broadcasts have been surging since 2020, which could be because of the new faces at the top of leaderboards, pitched competition between familiar foes always helps.But if the cohort of 20-something golf champions has anything in common, it is their congeniality. Morikawa and Hovland were born 12 days apart, turned pro at the same time in 2019 and roomed together during their early days on the PGA Tour. Cantlay and Schauffele have vacationed together. Thomas and Spieth have been close friends since they were preteens.In that case, maybe the rivalries will have to be between the new guard and their elders — you know, those old guys in their early 30s. More

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      13-Year-Old Boy Drove Truck That Hit Van in Texas, Killing 9, Officials Say

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      The fiery crash killed a golf coach and six of his players, along with the boy and a man who was traveling with him.A 13-year-old boy was behind the wheel of a pickup truck that struck a van in Texas on Tuesday night in a collision that killed nine people, including a college golf coach and six of his players, along with the boy and a man traveling with him, officials said on Thursday.Bruce Landsberg, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference that the truck’s left front tire was a spare that had blown out before the truck veered into the lane the golf team’s van was traveling in and struck the van head-on. It was unclear at what speeds the vehicles were traveling, but Mr. Landsberg noted that the speed limit in the area is 75 miles per hour.“It was very clearly a high-speed, head-on collision between two heavy vehicles,” he said. “There is no question about the force of impact.” Both vehicles went up in flames in the collision near Andrews, Texas, about 50 miles east of the state line with New Mexico.It was unclear why the 13-year-old boy, whose name was not released by the authorities on Thursday, was driving the truck. Henrich Siemens, 38, of Seminole County, Texas, who was also in the truck, was killed in the collision, the authorities said.The University of the Southwest identified the victims from that institution as Tyler James, 26, the coach, and the student-athletes Travis Garcia, Karisa Raines, Mauricio Sanchez, Tiago Sousa, Laci Stone and Jackson Zinn. Most of the golfers were freshmen at the university, a private, Christian institution in Hobbs, N.M., near the state line with Texas.Two golfers who were in the van, Dayton Price and Hayden Underhill, were critically injured but survived the crash, and they were undergoing medical treatment in Lubbock, Texas, on Thursday, a spokesman for the university said at a news conference.Ryan Tipton, provost of University of the Southwest, said on Thursday that both players were “making steady progress.”“One of the students is eating chicken soup,” Mr. Tipton said. “Every day it’s a game of inches. There is no indication of how long it’s going to take, but they are both stable and recovering and every day making more progress.”In Texas, 14-year-olds can begin a classroom phase of a driver’s education course, but they cannot apply for a learner’s license until they are 15, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.In a statement on Wednesday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said state officials were helping to investigate the collision.“We grieve with the loved ones of the individuals whose lives were horrifically taken too soon in this fatal vehicle crash near Andrews last night,” Mr. Abbott said.Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico said on Wednesday that she was “deeply saddened” by the news.“This is a terrible, tragic accident,” she said. More

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      Coach and Six College Golfers Die in Texas Bus Wreck

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      The University of the Southwest said its golf coach, Tyler James, was among the dead and that two people were in critical condition.Seven people from the University of the Southwest died after its men’s and women’s golf teams were involved in a fatal wreck in Texas on Tuesday night, officials from the Christian university in New Mexico said Wednesday.“The U.S.W. campus community is shocked and saddened today as we mourn the loss of members of our university family,” the university said in a statement that also said that two passengers were in critical condition and being treated in Lubbock, Texas.Although the university did not identify any of the victims by name, it said its golf coach was among the people who had died in the wreck, which it said happened when its bus was “struck by oncoming traffic.” A spokeswoman for the university in Hobbs, N.M., said the only people aboard the bus were the golf coach, Tyler James, and students.The Texas Department of Public Safety, which is investigating the wreck, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. But a spokesman, Sgt. Steven Blanco, told local news outlets that the other vehicle involved in the crash had been a pickup and that at least one person in the truck died.“It’s a very tragic scene,” the sergeant told KWES-TV near the crash site on Tuesday night. “It’s very, very tragic.”The golf teams had traveled to Texas, where many of their players had gone to high school, to compete in a collegiate tournament in Midland. The crash happened in nearby Andrews County.James was new to the nondenominational religious university, hired just last summer as coach after he had worked at other Christian universities and at a high school about 120 miles southwest of Fort Worth.The U.S.W. sports program, which competes in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, is a part of the undergraduate experience for most students, according to federal records. Between July 2019 and June 2020, it earned revenues of about $3.5 million and recorded just more than that in expenses. More

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      Rain, Wind, Cold, Tornado Warnings and After Five Days, a Champion

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      The Players Championship was battered by some of the worst weather PGA Tour pros had ever seen. Eventually, Cameron Smith of Australia prevailed.PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — There was an early omen that this year’s Players Championship, a signature event of the PGA Tour, would radically defy golf tournament convention. It arrived before the sun rose for Thursday’s first round in the form of an ominous-sounding weather delay, delivered as the golfers slept.In the end, most of them probably felt like they never woke up, as the ensuing five days of golf unfolded like a vengeful nightmare.“It was brutal out there,” Rory McIlroy, the four-time major winner, said of conditions that included 40 mile-an-hour winds, more than four inches of dousing rain, tornado warnings and temperatures that occasionally dipped to the mid-30s. As he spoke, McIlroy’s eyes almost appeared glassy. His face was wind burned, and his trousers were sullied by mud.Not long after McIlroy retreated to the clubhouse, the agreeable tour veteran Kevin Kisner described his tournament journey in spiritual terms: “It was just hit and pray.”As it turned out, the first weather delay Thursday was the literal calm before the storm and perhaps the last moment when the environment would be even remotely close to typical at the 2022 Players, an event that is meant to serve as a pre-spring celebration of warm-weather golf. Early Thursday it was not yet raining sideways on the T.P.C. Sawgrass golf course; it was just inevitable.Doug Ghim with his caddie Micah Fugitt on No. 10 during the final round on Monday.Patrick Smith/Getty ImagesWhat followed was something rarely seen on the PGA Tour — golf that made the pros curse like sailors and fling clubs into ponds while the everyday golfer watched at home and snickered: “Welcome to our world, Mr. Fancy Pants.”The pros, who generally did not complain about the conditions, understood. Max Homa wrote on Twitter: “Today was basically the worst day ever to play a golf tourney at Sawgrass but seemed like the best day ever to watch one. I was very jealous of the spectators.”Postponed to Monday, the event was won by a rising star on the tour, Cameron Smith, 28, of Australia. Smith pulled away from a handful of rivals with five birdies on the final nine to win by one stroke over Anirban Lahiri of India. It was the second PGA Tour victory this season for Smith, who has 10 finishes in the top 10 in the past year.Afterward, Smith even smiled.Others left the golf course shuddering, and not just because of their soggy clothing and freezing fingers. At times, the battered field — from Thursday to Monday there were more than 82 rounds with a score of 75 or higher — appeared to be in a half-numb daze.Sam Burns, who was in contention for much of the event, could be heard asking his caddie after one shot: “What day is today?”On Friday, after Matthew Wolff yanked an ugly shot way left and into the pond alongside the 18th fairway, he gently flipped his club, one-handed, into the pond. Apparently, he didn’t want anything to remind him of his nine-over-par 81.Workers squeeged water from the fairway after rain delayed the start of the first round.Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Saturday, when the wind was blowing the strongest, 29 tee shots aimed at the famed 17th hole par-3 island green splashed into the enveloping water hazard. On Thursday and Friday, only four tee shots had been deposited in the water.Brooks Koepka, ranked 18th in the world men’s golf rankings, was forced to play the devilish 17th hole twice on Saturday because his first round was postponed. He made a double bogey the first time on the 17th tee and then had a triple bogey on his next try.Then Koepka knocked his cap off his head to reveal hair dyed blond and walked away laughing.“I don’t laugh too often in competition,” Koepka said later. “But you know, this was different.” Koepka shot 81 and tied his career high for a tour round.Russell Henley had a different kind of daily double. He made a dispiriting double bogey on the 10th hole, then made a rare albatross — a 2 on a par 5 — on the 11th hole.Ian Poulter was so determined to finish his round on Thursday, he ran onto the 17th green and sprinted over to the 18th tee so he could be sure to get off the T.P.C. Sawgrass layout before the sun set.The wind and frigid temperatures over the weekend also had the golfers making some peculiar wardrobe choices.Joel Dahmen wore sweatpants beneath his form-fitting golf pants. Most players went with the more traditional thermal underwear. Paul Casey kept a hand warmer in each pants pocket. Viktor Hovland shoved his hands inside what looked like a pair of oversized oven mitts after each shot — and Hovland is from Norway.The wind was fierce and swirling in unpredictable patterns. Keegan Bradley, faced with a 95-yard shot downwind on Saturday, hit a short 9-iron. Later, in the same round, Keegan had 208 yards to the flagstick with the wind at his back. He hit 9-iron again. Bradley shot a fairly pedestrian score for a tour player, one-under-par 71, and yet, he proclaimed it “one of the best rounds of my life.”Collin Morikawa bundled up to stay warm during the second round.David Cannon/Getty ImagesSome of golf’s biggest stars, including Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele did not make the cut. Schauffele arrived at T.P.C. Sawgrass for Sunday’s second round tied for ninth in the tournament and left tied for 90th.But not everyone in the field will recall the 2022 Players Championship with consternation and a chill in their bones and down their spine.Shane Lowry of Ireland made a hole in one at the 17th hole on Sunday and zealously celebrated for almost five minutes with fans behind the tee. For a while, it looked as if Lowry might joyously leap into the water surrounding the hole.He thought better of it. Some parts might have been frozen. More

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      A Rare Rainout Suspends Players Championship With Three Tied for Lead

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      Torrential rains flooded the fairways at T.C.P. Sawgrass, a course that already features multiple water hazards. The tournament won’t end before Monday.PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — This year’s Players Championship, a signature event of the PGA Tour, will take an extra day to complete after torrential rains on Friday in northern Florida suspended play for a second consecutive day. Golfers endured Friday’s foul weather for only a few soggy hours at the T.P.C. Sawgrass golf course, one day after the first round was twice interrupted by rain delays and never completed.The back-to-back postponements will ensure that the 72-hole, four-round tournament, scheduled to end on Sunday afternoon, will not finish before Monday for the first time since 2005.Large puddles had become common on most greens by 10 a.m. on Friday, and maintenance crews used squeegees to remove water after each group finished a hole. But in time, with fairways all but flooded, officials ordered players off the course. The first round is still not complete.“The golf course has just reached a point of saturation, and unfortunately the weather conditions are not providing us any relief,” Gary Young, the chief referee of the event, said late Friday afternoon.Young added that the golf course had received almost three inches of rain in the previous 36 to 48 hours and that the tournament will restart no sooner than 11 a.m. on Saturday. The third round will not be completed Sunday, and severe weather was expected in the area Friday night into Saturday morning, including wind gusts that could reach 60 miles an hour. But the tour is anticipating clearer weather by midday Saturday even though the T.P.C. Sawgrass layout will most likely still be subject to considerable wind.The conditions, coupled with a challenging Pete Dye-designed course that features multiple daunting shots over water hazards, could make for unpredictable results. Moreover, the final-round leaders will be forced to complete more than 18 holes on Monday.On Friday morning, Young said the tour was potentially considering a Tuesday finish to the event, but hours later he said, “We feel very confident that we’re going to be able to accomplish the conclusion of this championship on Monday evening.” A last round on Tuesday was “not really in our thought process,” Young said.It is the eighth time that the Players Championship, which was first contested in 1974, will not finish on Sunday. While Monday finishes are infrequent on the PGA Tour and at major championships — the last Monday finish at the Masters tournament was 1983 — they are not unheard-of, and players have generally learned to adapt.“You just know that you’re here hopefully until the very end of the tournament, and you just get on with it,” said Tommy Fleetwood, who was one of a few dozen golfers to complete 18 holes on Thursday and is tied for the lead at six under par. “Everybody’s in the same circumstances. When it’s your turn to play, you play.“It’s easy to get caught off guard when you’re hanging around for a long time and then all of a sudden you have to try to switch it back on. But you almost have to relax as much as you can and save your energy but always kind of stay ready and in that mind-set that you might be going out at any time,” Fleetwood said. More

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      Tommy Fleetwood Tied For First With Tom Hoge At The Players Championship

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      “It was break some golf clubs or shave my beard,” Fleetwood, the English golfer, said of his recent struggles on the PGA Tour. “I went for the beard.”PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Tommy Fleetwood, a golfer once ranked in the men’s top 10, has been missing from a PGA Tour leaderboard for so long, fans may not have recognized him when he vaulted into first place during the first round at the Players Championship here on Thursday.Fleetwood has also shaved his trademark — and popular — frowzy beard. And it turns out the facial hair is missing, in part, because of his recent two years of jagged play, which resulted in Fleetwood losing his PGA Tour playing privileges.“I was in a really bad mood,” Fleetwood, 31, said. “It was break some golf clubs or shave my beard. I went for the beard.”Fleetwood, a winsome Englishman best known for his shoulder-length hair and second-place finish at the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, played like his old self for 18 holes on Thursday. His six-under-par 66 was one of the lowest scores among the several dozen golfers who finished a first round that was twice delayed by heavy rain and thunderstorms.When play was suspended because of darkness on Thursday night, Fleetwood was tied atop the leaderboard with Tom Hoge. Roughly half the field did not complete their rounds and will hope to tee off early Friday morning, though there is more rain in the forecast.But Fleetwood’s usual sunny disposition broke through, and his golf backstory would be relatable to anyone who has played the game recreationally or professionally. While he spent more than 15 minutes trying to explain how one of the world’s best golfers had sunk into an on-course funk that at one point dropped him to 137th in the FedEx Cup rankings, he also smiled and simplified.“It’s just a strange game that you never seem to be able to understand or that makes no sense,” Fleetwood said with a laugh.While he admitted to being somewhat lost in a golfing abyss, he refused to be downtrodden.“I still have one of the best jobs in the world,” Fleetwood said. “I’ve just not been performing to the level that I want to perform at. Again, I’m not going to sit here and moan or complain about playing poorly for a couple of years.”Fleetwood, who plays on both the PGA and European tours, offered some explanations for his drop from the world’s ninth-ranked player in 2018 to 49th entering this week’s Players Championship.“There’s been certain things in my swing that I haven’t quite understood,” he said. “So then your confidence takes a hit because you’re not quite comfortable out on the golf course. It adds up.”He added: “My results haven’t been terrible, but I’ve lacked obviously very good results. And then I think especially from a world ranking standpoint, that makes it very, very difficult. So I’ve just sort of been gradually declining.”Fleetwood playing an approach shot on the 14th hole.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesTraveling the world to play on two tours has not helped.“You’re playing minimal events on both tours,” Fleetwood said. “Even in my best years, I was always starting way behind the 8-ball just to play consistently throughout those years. Again, it’s hard to make headway. And when you’re not seeing good scores and the shots aren’t quite there, it just becomes harder and harder for it to change that momentum.”For Fleetwood, like most golfers, the game mystifies. And that goes for even the best of the best. He did not, for example, come to Florida expecting to be leading the Players Championship at any point. Late Thursday afternoon after his round, he talked about playing “dreadful” lately — but then birdied his first two holes.That may have brought some good karma, but it was halted when inclement weather forced a delay of more than three hours. Fleetwood, however, was undeterred.“I was quite happy when the delay came,” he said. “You knew a delay was coming anyway, so I took the break and later I got to practice. Then I started the day by holing a putt and got going again.”The rain-soaked fairways and greens made conditions challenging, but Fleetwood remained unfazed, clocking three more birdies in his next nine holes. He finished with a birdie on the par-5 16th hole and another on the treacherous 18th. The close left him grinning, but he would not predict future results, not after the last two years. Looking ahead to his next round, he said: “I might play terrible, I might play great. We’ll see.”Fleetwood was much more certain about the eventual fate of his once-famous beard.Asked if his wife, Clare, likes him clean shaven or with facial hair, he answered: “She definitely has a preference, and it’s not this one.”Fleetwood does think he looks younger without the beard. He was playing in a tournament with his fellow tour players Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa on his 31st birthday in January, he said, when the duo looked at him and told him: “We had to Google your age. I thought you were 37, 38.”He added: “Everyone kind of noticed that I look a lot younger without the beard.”But then Fleetwood had a final thought.“Clare definitely prefers me with a beard, so I’ll definitely grow it back,” he said. “As long as I can keep my temper and keep smiling, then I won’t have to shave it off again.” More