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    At the Hero Dubai Desert Classic, Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed Provide Drama

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    Last year’s event had a classic battle between Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed, players on opposite sides of the LIV Golf debate.Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed have a long history of dueling when it matters most. The rivalry has produced some epic golf matches, the most surprising of which may have been last year’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic, being played again starting on Thursday on the DP World Tour in the United Arab Emirates.At the 2016 Ryder Cup, held at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Minnesota, McIlroy and Reed were also pitted against each other on the final day of singles matches.The pair traded incredible shots on the front nine, but it was the interplay between them — finger wagging, shushing, cupping ears to rile up the crowd — that many remember. But in a sign of sportsmanship, the two fist-bumped walking off one green. Reed won the match on the 18th hole.Two years later at the Masters Tournament, it was Reed and McIlroy battling again. It’s the one major that McIlroy still needs to win to complete the career grand slam. (He has won the United States Open, the British Open and, twice, the P.G.A. Championship.)Reed had led the tournament since the halfway mark, and in the final round McIlroy was three shots back. Reed won by one shot, six ahead of McIlroy.Their rivalry had highly anticipated showdowns that were fierce and competitive.Then came LIV Golf, and the sport splintered into two rival groups: the ones who went to the Saudi Arabia-backed league and those who stayed loyal to the established professional golf tours, the PGA and DP World Tours.McIlroy became a player spokesman for the PGA Tour, while Reed went to LIV and became part of the 4Aces GC, a team captained by Dustin Johnson.Reed also began suing players and commentators on the PGA Tour who were critical of his decision to leave. In McIlroy’s case, he received a subpoena on Christmas Eve 2022 when he was at home with his family.At last year’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic, McIlroy wasn’t interested in chatting with Reed on the practice range. (Reed flicked a tee at McIlroy after Reed said McIlroy refused to acknowledge him on the driving range.)What was surprising was the intensity of the tournament, which came down to a duel between Reed and McIlroy.Reed’s decision to join LIV Golf made for some tense moments during last year’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic.Luke Walker/Getty ImagesLike its counterpart, the Sentry on the PGA Tour, the Hero is usually a collegial entry into the DP World Tour’s season. Dubai has created a family resort around the courses.As the week advanced, McIlroy and Reed were circling each other in the tournament, and it was clear that the competition had taken on a bigger significance for McIlroy than a regular victory.McIlroy had become the leading PGA Tour player voicing his anger against the players who had gone to LIV. In addition to Reed, McIlroy clashed with Greg Norman, the former world No. 1 who is LIV’s chief executive.“I think Greg needs to go,” McIlroy said before the Hero. “I think he just needs to exit stage left.”After the first three rounds of last year’s Hero, it looked like McIlroy was going to coast to victory. In the fourth round, with a four shot deficit, Reed got off to a hot start. At one point on the back nine he was briefly in the lead. McIlroy drew even after a birdie on the 17th hole.Stepping up to the tee of the 18th hole, McIlroy needed a birdie to win. Hitting his third shot close, he watched the ball roll into the hole before letting out a roar. Reed had mounted a final round charge, but finished one behind McIlroy.“Mentally, today was probably one of the toughest rounds I have ever had to play because it would be really easy to let your emotions get in the way,” McIlroy said at a news conference. “I just had to really focus on myself and forget who was up there on the leaderboard.”He added: “This is probably sweeter than it should be.”Rory McIlroy, left, and Patrick Reed established a rivalry during the 2016 Ryder Cup when the two played against each other on the final day of singles matches.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesThe victory had the heightened feel of their Ryder Cup duel. While LIV golfers had been stripped of their PGA Tour membership for joining the rival league, they were allowed to play while a court in England mulled whether the DP World Tour could ban them.A year later, McIlroy is striking a different tone about LIV and its defectors. The shift came after his Ryder Cup teammate Jon Rahm joined LIV Golf at the end of 2023.“Ultimately, you can say what you want and do what you want, but at the end of the day you’re not going to be able to change peoples’ minds,” McIlroy said on the “Stick to Football” podcast earlier this month. He continued, “I wouldn’t say I’ve lost the fight against LIV, but I’ve just accepted the fact that this is part of our sport now.”He said that he was concerned about what the continued division in professional golf would mean for the sport and that he hoped Rahm would still be able to compete in the Ryder Cup. He added that he had been too judgmental of the men leaving to go to LIV.“At the end of the day, we’re professional golfers and we play to make a living and make money, so I understand it,” he said. “But I think it’s just created this division that will hopefully stop soon.”McIlroy’s manager, Sean O’Flaherty, said McIlroy was preparing for the Hero and did not have anything additional to add beyond what he said on the podcast. Reed declined to comment through his LIV representatives.Reed won the Masters Tournament in 2018.David Cannon/Getty ImagesWhile one tournament does not dictate the tenor of a season, what made last year’s Hero interesting to watch was the battle between McIlroy and Reed coming down to the final hole. McIlroy is worried that such competitive battles will become rarer — confined to the majors — and hurt interest in the regular tour stops that rely on big names to draw fans.With many stars and fan favorites gone to LIV, there is less opportunity outside of the four majors for top players to compete. LIV, on the other hand, guarantees that its 48 players will be at every event.“I think what LIV and the Saudis have exposed is that you’re asking for millions of dollars to sponsor these events, and you’re not able to guarantee to the sponsors that the players are going to show up,” McIlroy said on the podcast. “I can’t believe the PGA Tour has done so well for so long.”Others agree. “I think if golf isn’t careful you get to the point where people say, I’m not that fired up to watch the Phoenix Open because Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Rahm are not there,” said Hughes Norton, the agent who negotiated Tiger Wood’s first deal with Nike and the author of the coming book, “Rainmaker: Superagent Hughes Norton and the Money-Grab Explosion of Golf From Tiger to LIV and Beyond.”Already, longtime sponsors, including Honda and Wells Fargo, have pulled out of PGA Tour tournaments. And other sponsors are questioning the increased costs if their tournament is one of the eight signature events, which offer higher purses and guarantee that more elite players attend, but at a cost of an additional $7 million on top of the $13 million sponsor fee, Norton said.“Maybe Wells Fargo said there are six big names who used to come to our events and now they’re not there,” he said. “Sponsors are restless now.”If that’s the case, the sport needs more battles like last year’s Hero showdown. More

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      Mark O’Meara Recalls His One-Stroke Win in Dubai in 2004

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      In 2004, he edged out Paul McGinley for the win, with his putt on the final hole in Dubai.In 2004, Mark O’Meara, a two-time major champion, closed with a three-under 69 to capture the Dubai Desert Classic by one stroke over Paul McGinley. After McGinley missed an eagle attempt on No. 18 from over 70 feet, O’Meara two-putted from 12 feet for the victory.It was his first win since capturing the 1998 British Open at Royal Birkdale in England.It would also be his last.With the Hero Dubai Desert Classic beginning on Thursday at the Emirates Golf Club and his 67th birthday around the corner, O’Meara recently reflected on his memorable week at the club two decades ago, and on a career that resulted in 16 PGA Tour wins. In 2015, he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.Can you believe it’s been 20 years?I do remember distinctly that week in 2004, going over there with Tiger [Woods]. I think I started going to Dubai in 1998 or 1999. At 47 years of age, to win a tournament of that magnitude was a blessing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      DP World Tour Winner May Have Barely Played the Tour at All

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      This will happen this year at the DP World Tour Championship and the Race to Dubai.The DP World Tour will end its season at the championship in Dubai, which starts on Thursday, as it has done for more than a decade. But like the past several seasons, the winner of the Race to Dubai championship will be someone who has played sparingly on the tour itself. In fact, this may be its most anti-climactic finale yet.This stands in stark contrast to the PGA Tour, where its FedEx Cup series funnels golfers into playing as many events on that tour as possible to accumulate points.It wasn’t always this way. The Race to Dubai is an honor that dates well-before the FedEx Cup. It began in 1937 as the Order of Merit. Charles Whitcombe won the inaugural one. Subsequent winners are a who’s who of European golfers, including multiple winners like the Ryder Cup stalwarts Colin Montgomerie with eight and Seve Ballesteros with six.But this year is another in which the closing event feels like a showcase for stars who have been largely absent from the tour. Rory McIlroy, a four-time winner of the Race to Dubai, and Jon Rahm, who won it in 2019, are in first and second place, but after last weekend’s Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa, no one can catch McIlroy.Of the 43 events on the tour, Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland, right, has played nine; Jon Rahm of Spain, left, has played seven.Gregory Shamus/Getty ImagesAnd that makes the disconnect with the season-ending race even starker. The two players are ranked second and third in the world golf rankings. And they’re stalwarts of the European Ryder Cup team. But McIlroy of Northern Ireland and Rahm of Spain have hardly played this season on the DP World Tour. And while McIlroy is set to play in the event, he could skip it and still be crowned the winner for the fifth time.Of the 43 events on the tour, McIlroy has played nine and is in first place in the Race To Dubai; Rahm has played seven to sit in second and the drama has turned to whether they will repeat as champion of the tournament itself. In third place is Adrian Meronk of Poland, who has played 23 tournaments on the DP World Tour.Meronk is a lock to win another prize: full membership on the PGA Tour. This goes to the top 10 finishers in the Race to Dubai who are not already on the PGA Tour, which has higher purses and earns more points for the world golf rankings; it also means Meronk will probably, like McIlroy and Rahm, play more on the PGA Tour than on the DP World Tour next season.Welcome to the new abnormal of golf, in which European Tour champions barely play on the tour. How did we get here? It’s complicated.In the scrambled world of professional golf, with the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour working together to stave off the threat from LIV Golf, the new Saudi Arabia-backed league, new incentives abound. And they’re upending the existing order.While there is a tentative agreement with LIV to pause litigation between it and the tours, one of their big concerns is players being lured away with more lucrative LIV contracts. But at the heart of the current agreement between the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour is a system for the highest-ranked players in Europe to play in the United States on the PGA Tour.The leaderboard for the Race to Dubai is the result of two factors: how certain events, like the four majors, are sanctioned by the two tours and thus earn more points; and the higher number of points awarded to other elevated events. Because dominant players like McIlroy and Rahm compete in events with stronger fields, they end up earning more points by playing well in fewer events.In McIlroy’s case, only four of his nine events that got credited toward the Race to Dubai were DP World Tour events; the others were on or sanctioned by the PGA Tour. With Rahm, it was fewer: only two of his seven tournaments.It’s not the first time this has happened. Last year, McIlroy won the Race to Dubai (and Rahm won the DP World Tour Championship) with a similar amount of play on the DP World Tour.In 2021, Collin Morikawa, a full member of the PGA Tour, became the first American to win the Race to Dubai. He also won the British Open, but only played in two other events outside the United States: the Scottish Open (which is also sanctioned by the PGA Tour) and the Omega Dubai Desert Classic. In neither event did he finish inside the top 50.By contrast, this year Meronk played the four majors and the other 19 events on the DP World. While he is third in the Race to Dubai, he is ranked only 46th in the world because he earned fewer points from the European events.Victor Hovland of Norway is ranked 14th in the Race to Dubai, but is the fourth-best player in the world rankings. Again, it’s the value of the points. He is credited with seven DP World Tour events, but all but one, the BMW PGA Championship, are also sanctioned by the PGA Tour.At its core, the list of contenders for the Race to Dubai is a mix of players who did well in DP World Tour events and will move up to the PGA Tour, and players who have played well at the majors and other co-sanctioned events. The result is a season-ending tournament and season-long prize that could be more confusing than climactic.Joost Luiten of the Netherlands is close to winning the opportunity to play more on the PGA Tour and thus play less on the DP World tour.Lorraine Osullivan/ReutersIn fact, the real drama may lie with the final player on the P.G.A. promotion list, Rasmus Hojgaard of Denmark, who jumped five spots into 16th place.That spot had been held until the last tournament by Joost Luiten of the Netherlands, who dropped five spots after last week and is now in 22nd place. Both Hojgaard and Luiten have played over 20 events each on the DP World Tour to get an opportunity to play more on the PGA Tour and thus less on the DP tour next season.On the flip side, current PGA Tour players who finish outside the top 125 on the money list get full membership on the DP World Tour, for numbers 126 to 200.When this was announced last month, David Howell, chairman of the DP World Tour’s Tournament Committee, categorized the demotion to that tour as a positive for players. “When we announced our strategic alliance with the PGA Tour in November 2021, one of the prime objectives was to give as many opportunities as possible to members of both tours,” he said. “This is another perfect example of how this is working.”An agent who represents players on the DP World Tour and LIV Golf said that elevating one group to the PGA Tour and demoting another group onto the DP World Tour was further dividing professional golf ranks. It has made it more difficult, the agent said, for many players to gain the world golf ranking points to get them into the majors and other marquee tournaments.“All these PGA Tour events sit way above the European Tour in world golf ranking points,” said the agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid the ramifications of speaking publicly about the Tour. “They had an argument that the depth on the PGA Tour was better than anywhere else, so how could you be top 100 on PGA Tour and 300th in the world. I get it. But that pushed the European Tour into a corner. It made it into this feeder tour.”Next year the format will change and be more like the FedEx Cup, where players qualify for an event and then the field shrinks with each tournament. So it will be 70 players at the Abu Dhabi Championship and 50 players at the final DP World Tour Championship in 2024.What it comes down to is getting the sport’s stars to play in those final European Tour events, regardless of how much they have played on the tour during the season.“The season-long narrative is for the die-hard golf geeks,” the agent said. “The average sports enthusiast just wants to see superstars. The commercial product lives and dies by it.” More

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      DP World Tour Championship Players to Watch

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      Here are five golfers to keep an eye on at the year-end tournament.Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Matt Fitzpatrick will no doubt be among the favorites for the season-ending DP World Tour Championship, which starts on Thursday at the Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.Rahm has won the event three times, including in 2022 when he defeated Tyrrell Hatton and Alex Noren by two strokes, while McIlroy and Fitzpatrick have two victories apiece.There are plenty of other top contenders in the 50-man field. Here are five players to keep an eye on.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesAdrian MeronkMeronk was clearly out to prove something after he wasn’t chosen by captain Luke Donald to represent Team Europe in the recent Ryder Cup matches in Rome.Meronk, 30, of Poland, closed with a 66 last month at the Real Club de Golf Sotogrande to capture the Andalucía Masters, his third victory on the DP World Tour this season. After bogeying two of his first three holes, he went eight under par the rest of the way to beat Matti Schmid of Germany by a stroke.“I’m just glad the Ryder Cup and all the talks about it are over,” Meronk told the media after the tournament. “I can just focus on my game and keep going forward, and whoever doubted me, I hope I can prove them wrong.”Earlier this year, Meronk, who went to East Tennessee State University, became the first player from Poland to make the cut in a PGA Tour event in the United States, tying for 45th at the Genesis Invitational in California. A week later, he tied for 14th at the Honda Classic in Florida.Richard Heathcote/Getty ImagesMin Woo LeeMany fans may not be familiar with Min Woo Lee of Australia.That, however, might be changing. He has been playing well lately, and there’s no reason he can’t keep it up.Over his last five starts, Lee, 25 and ranked No. 43 in the world, has recorded three top 10s, including a win in the SJM Macao Open on the Asian Tour in mid-October. He tied for sixth a week later in the Zozo Championship in Japan.In June, Lee closed with a 67 to finish in a tie for fifth in the U.S. Open. A few months before, he tied for sixth at the Players Championship in Florida.In 2016, he won the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship. His biggest professional victory has been the 2021 Scottish Open when he hit about a 10-footer on the first playoff hole to beat Fitzpatrick and Thomas Detry.Lee’s sister, Minjee, is also a professional golfer and took the U.S. Girls’ Junior Golf Championship in 2012. When Min Woo won his title four years later, the two became the first brother and sister to win the junior titles. Minjee has won 10 times on the L.P.G.A. Tour, including the 2021 Evian Championship and the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open.Ross Kinnaird/Getty ImagesRyan FoxLike Lee, Fox of New Zealand isn’t exactly a marquee name, but he has had some excellent tournaments lately.In September, Fox, ranked No. 28, rebounded from an early triple bogey to capture the BMW PGA Championship by a stroke. A few weeks later, he tied for second at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, which he won in 2022. Fox, 36, has won four times on the DP World Tour.“I certainly didn’t think I’d be talking to you [as the champion] after the third hole today,” he told Sky Sports after clinching the BMW PGA Championship win. “I’ve always struggled a little bit around here.”He has also struggled in the major championships; he has not recorded a single Top 15 in 18 appearances.Fox, fourth in the Race to Dubai standings, made 13 starts on the PGA Tour this past season. His best finish overall was a tie for 12th at the Genesis Scottish Open.Kelvin Kuo/USA Today Sports, via ReutersTyrrell HattonA member of Team Europe in the Ryder Cup in Rome, Hatton, ranked No. 12, is due. He hasn’t won on the DP World Tour since the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in 2021.Not that he hasn’t had his moments.In July, he tied for sixth at the Genesis Scottish Open. A month later, he tied for 16th at the Tour Championship in Atlanta, and in September he finished a stroke behind Fox at the BMW PGA Championship.He went 3-0-1 at the Ryder Cup, including a victory over the 2023 British Open champion Brian Harman.Hatton, 32, from England, isn’t one to keep his emotions to himself.“I think he’s very quiet in general,” Donald said in a news conference. “He does have a strong personality when he wants to, so there’s always a wisecrack and there’s always a joke. He beats himself up now and again on the course, but you don’t really see that off the course.”Hatton has won six times on the DP World Tour. His lone victory on the PGA Tour came in the 2020 Arnold Palmer Invitational.Octavio Passos/Getty ImagesRobert MacIntyreOf all the tough losses in 2023, none was tougher than MacIntyre’s loss to McIlroy in the Genesis Scottish Open.MacIntyre of Scotland birdied No. 18 on Sunday to cap off a 64 and assume a one-stroke advantage.McIlroy needed to birdie one of the last two holes to force a playoff.He birdied both, knocking in about a 10-footer on 18.“It’s a sore one to take just now because it is a dream as a Scotsman to win a Scottish Open,” said MacIntyre, who would have been the first Scot to win the tournament since Colin Montgomerie in 1999.MacIntyre, ranked No. 57, finished with a 2-0-1 record at the Ryder Cup. In his singles match on Sunday, he defeated Wyndham Clark, the reigning United States Open champion.MacIntyre has won twice on the DP World Tour. More

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      A the DP World Tour Championship, Years of Suspense

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      Here are five tournaments where the margin of victory was one.The DP World Tour Championship, which gets underway on Thursday at the Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, has provided its share of suspense since its inaugural event in 2009.It’s no surprise given the caliber of the 50-player field. This year will feature seven of the top 15 in the world rankings, including No. 2 Rory McIlroy, who clinched his fifth Race to Dubai title on Sunday, and No. 3 Jon Rahm.Below, in chronological order, are five tournaments that came down to the last hole.Ian Poulter was assessed a one-stroke penalty in the 2010 playoff for dropping his ball on his marker, causing it to move.Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images2010Robert Karlsson of Sweden was the winner, but what happened to Ian Poulter of England also stood out.On the second playoff hole, Poulter was assessed a one-stroke penalty for dropping his ball on his marker, causing it to move. He finished with a bogey on the hole, while Karlsson, who picked up his 11th DP World Tour victory, made a birdie.Poulter had missed a birdie putt to win it in regulation.“Six inches short of the hole, I would have probably put my house on it,” he said afterward, “but it slows down and takes a little bit of grain and misses. Obviously a little disappointed, and it was a shame it’s just ended the way it has.”McIlroy had a two-stroke lead going into the last two holes.Andrew Redington/Getty Images2015Leading by two strokes with two holes to go, the tournament, in all likelihood, belonged to McIlroy.Until he found the water with his tee shot on 17 and soon faced a 35-foot putt for a bogey. Still, he knocked it in and parred 18 for a one-shot victory over Andy Sullivan.“The tee shot was 40 yards off line,” McIlroy said at the time. “It was just a horrendous golf shot. I didn’t like the shot, and I wasn’t very happy with myself, but I was able to get over it quick enough to hole that putt. It seems like the more pressure I’m under or the more it means, the better I putt, which is a nice thing to have.”When he had arrived on the final tee, Matt Fitzpatrick trailed Tyrrell Hatton by a shot.Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images2016Four feet must have seemed as long as 40 feet for Matt Fitzpatrick, who needed to make the birdie putt for the win.No problem.“The 18th green was the most nervous I’ve been over a four-foot putt,” he told reporters. “You need to pull it off, and fortunately, so far so good. It won’t always work out that way.”Late in the final round, Fitzpatrick trailed Tyrrell Hatton by a shot. Hatton, however, found the water with his drive on 18, leading to a bogey that paved the way for Fitzpatrick, who hit his second shot on the par 5 into a bunker and chipped up close to set up the winning putt.Jon Rahm needed a birdie on the last hole to win in 2019.Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images2019At one stage in the final round, Tommy Fleetwood was eight strokes behind Rahm.It looked over, but it wasn’t.Fleetwood made six birdies from then on to shoot a seven-under 65 while Rahm was, all of a sudden, off his game. He needed a birdie at 18 to put Fleetwood away.After a huge drive, he hit his four-iron approach into the bunker. He chipped it to within four feet and made the putt.“Those first seven holes, I felt like I couldn’t miss a shot. My putting was unbelievable. Then just one errant tee shot and a three-putt kind of took everything in the wrong direction,” Rahm said afterward. “It made me show some determination and grit and heart just to win,” he added.Fitzpatrick prevailed for a second time, by a shot over Lee Westwood, in 2020.Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images2020Fitzpatrick prevailed for a second time, by a shot over Lee Westwood, knocking in a three-footer for par on the 72nd hole. After hitting his drive into the rough, Fitzpatrick chipped back onto the fairway and found the putting surface with his third.Westwood, who was 47 years old at the time, also had reason to celebrate, securing the Race to Dubai. He won the European money title in 2000 — it was known then as the Order of Merit — and again in 2009.“It was a great finish,” Westwood told reporters. “I sat there watching it — it’s always exciting this tournament, coming down the stretch and there’s always thrills and spills.” More

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      Once the Prince of Tennis and a Prison Inmate, Boris Becker Starts Again

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      Becker, who is featured in a new documentary, is beginning a third act after serving eight months in prison. “I’m sort of in late summer, fall of my life,” he said.There is something about athletes achieving a level of greatness as teenagers that makes watching them progress into middle age especially jarring.The toll of life replaces the exuberance of youth. Paunch overtakes once-chiseled physiques. In the most unfortunate cases, bad decisions from the triumphant years, the years after, or both, lead to an existence that seemed unimaginable back when life brought the glory of championship after championship and the attendant glamour.This is what comes to mind when Boris Becker — a Wimbledon singles champion at 17, an inmate in a British prison at 54 and now a free man at 55 — appears on a laptop screen in his first interview with The New York Times since he was released from prison late last year. Becker served eight months of a two-and-a-half year sentence for hiding and transferring money and assets during a bankruptcy proceeding. He was previously convicted of tax evasion in Germany in 2002.Now, he hopes, all that is behind him, and he can begin to reclaim the better parts of his pre-incarceration life, doing what retired tennis greats of a certain age generally do — commentating on television and picking up work as an occasional coach and adviser for younger players. Becker, a six-time Grand Slam champion, has a sadly unique but valuable perspective on the perils and pitfalls of life as a modern tennis star.“I have now a little bit of wisdom of what to do and certainly what not to do,” he said.The prison uniform is gone, replaced with a neatly tailored blue suit. Sitting in front of a camera in Dubai, where he had traveled for business meetings and interviews, Becker was noticeably thinner than before his incarceration, though his blue eyes were once again bright and hopeful, compared with his sagging, heavy-lidded demeanor of a year ago.Becker at Wimbledon in 1990.Dave Caulkin/Associated PressBecker’s rise and crash are portrayed in a new two-part documentary, “Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker,” by the filmmakers Alex Gibney and John Battsek. Becker participated in and is promoting the film, which premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday, but unlike many celebrity documentaries these days, “Boom Boom” is not a vanity project in which the subjects or members of their management teams serve as executive producers, craft the narrative and gain from the film’s financial success.That is not how Gibney (“Enron,” “The Armstrong Lie,” “Going Clear”) and Battsek (“Searching for Sugar Man,” “One Day In September”) work. It’s also not what Becker, who has always gone his own way, both on and off the tennis court, with occasionally calamitous results, was interested in.“If you are a co-producer, you’re going to cut the corners, you’re not going to show yourself the way that maybe the outside world sees you,” Becker said. “It shows a you in a much better light than you truly are. And for me, you know, honesty was always important.”The result is a bare-knuckles portrait of a player who as a teenager rose to the pinnacle of his sport and peak celebrity in Germany, his home country. His seemingly perfect marriage to Barbara Feltus, a Black woman, served as an inflection point for race relations in Germany (after eight years, the marriage ended in divorce).But in retirement, Becker’s life degenerated into a sordid story of philandering, failed business ventures, bankruptcies, tabloid scandals and prison time. Along the way, there was also a nearly three-year stint coaching the world No. 1 Novak Djokovic through one of the most successful periods of his career.Gibney, the writer and director who is a self-described “tennis freak,” said he had been drawn to footage from a 1991 documentary in which Becker said he enjoyed falling behind by a set or two in matches. That would focus his mind, Becker said, and then he would roar back.“Not such a good plan in real life, and not a really great plan for tennis, either,” Gibney said.Battsek, the producer, said he initially approached Becker about making a documentary in 2018, before Becker’s bankruptcy cascaded into a criminal conviction. Gibney interviewed him extensively in 2019, and again last year after his conviction and just days before his sentencing, when an overweight and scared Becker tried to have his say for what he anticipated could be the last time for several years.Becker and his partner, Lilian de Carvalho, in London before Becker’s sentencing in 2022.Andy Rain/EPA, via Shutterstock“His biggest mistake was to mistakenly think the swagger that carried him through everything would carry him through tricky ground when it came to his financials,” Battsek said of Becker. “You’ve got to be smart enough to know, ‘I can’t swagger through this.’”Becker was released from prison early under a fast-track deportation program for foreign nationals, but not before what he described as eight challenging months in two prisons.“Very difficult, especially from the life that I came from,” he said.During his first weeks of incarceration, the man who once had ruled hallowed Center Court at Wimbledon was locked inside his cell for 22 hours a day, let out only for lunch and dinner, a shower and a brief period outdoors.In Becker’s early 20s, when he nearly retired from tennis on multiple occasions, he would spend hours at night in his hotel room writing in his journals. Similarly, the isolation in prison gave him plenty of time to reflect on where his life had gone wrong, he said. He remembered plenty of poor choices — putting too much trust in managers and advisers, impregnating a woman in the back room at a Nobu restaurant in London, making a series of poor investments. He also thought about the good times, though, the great moments of his career and all the high-flying luxuries his success afforded him.He said he feared for his safety in prison, but that he checked his ego and fell in with a group that protected him. He declined to provide details.“There’s a code of honor that you don’t speak about prison on the outside,” he said. “I have too much respect for the inmates.”He knows his life did not have to go the way it did and that he should have spent more time during his playing days locked in an office, familiarizing himself with all those documents he signed, instead of on a beach or a tennis court.He also was not mentally prepared when he retired, he said, for the shock of being called old at 35 and of having to start a second career from scratch.But now he is starting over once more. Eurosport hired him to commentate on the Australian Open. He is hopeful that some of his other partners and employers will return as wellFor the first time, he is keeping his goals small.“I’m sort of in late summer, fall of my life, so I want to really work on the next 25 years,” he said. “You look back on your life incarcerated, you look back on your professional life as a player, as a coach, as a commentator. You want to learn from the experience, you want to improve on some of the things that you started. And so that’s my goal.” More

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      Rory McIlroy Looks for the Magic He Conjured Last Year

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      Rory McIlroy’s ranking survived a weekend scare. With Scottie Scheffler close behind and Jon Rahm surging, his outing in Dubai might suggest a lot about how long it will last.DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Since Rory McIlroy arrived in the United Arab Emirates over the weekend, he has seen his No. 1 world ranking preserved by virtue of another man’s missed putt in California, been drawn into a driving-range drama over whether he ignored a defector to LIV Golf and had a tee thrown his way in retaliation, and mentioned how he was served a subpoena on Christmas Eve.But on Thursday, after one of the more bizarre tournament preludes in recent memory, McIlroy is expected to play a competitive round for the first time in 2023 and give his sport a glimpse at whether he has the form that last year rekindled some of the fever that followed him earlier in his career.“I’ve been obviously practicing at home and practicing well, but it’s always first tournament of the year, getting back on to the golf course, just trying to get comfortable again with shots on the course and visuals and all that sort of stuff,” McIlroy said Wednesday in Dubai, where he had a debacle last January but a good-enough showing in November to win the season points crown for the DP World Tour, as the European Tour is currently marketed.“I’m sure it will be a little bit of rust to start the week, but hopefully I can shake that off,” he continued.In some respects, the scrutiny has never been greater. When McIlroy last won a major championship, he was 25 years old and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund was not underwriting a splashy rival to the world’s top men’s golf tours. He is now 33, with a frustrating record of close calls but newfound stature as arguably the golf establishment’s pre-eminent spokesman against LIV.He has spent much of the past year publicly answering questions about the Saudi-backed circuit — in response to one on Wednesday, for instance, he effectively called Greg Norman, LIV’s chief executive, weak — and privately crafting a response to it. He played exceptional golf, nevertheless, winning the European Tour points title, capturing the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup and finishing no worse than eighth place in 2022’s majors. The price, he suggested Wednesday, was exhaustion and a decision to “sort of distance myself from the game of golf” for a spell.After he played an exhibition event with Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Tiger Woods on Dec. 10, he stashed his clubs and only picked them up again this year. Holding to his preference to start a calendar year’s competitions in the Middle East, he exercised his right to skip the PGA Tour’s Tournament of Champions in Hawaii. He has held the No. 1 ranking, which he reclaimed in October, anyway, but Scottie Scheffler nearly took it back on Sunday, and Jon Rahm is threatening, having won two tournaments this year, both of them at 27 under par. (Rahm could essentially seize the top ranking on Saturday, when the PGA Tour’s event at Torrey Pines, where he won the 2021 U.S. Open, will conclude.)A Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More