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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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      Rory McIlroy Resigns From PGA Tour Board

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      The decision came about five months after the tour struck an agreement with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to create a joint company.Rory McIlroy, the esteemed golfer who was among the most outspoken opponents of his sport’s swelling ties to Saudi Arabia, has resigned from the PGA Tour’s board.The tour confirmed his departure in a statement on Tuesday night.“Given the extraordinary time and effort that Rory — and all of his fellow player directors — have invested in the tour during this unprecedented, transformational period in our history, we certainly understand and respect his decision to step down in order to focus on his game and his family,” Commissioner Jay Monahan and Edward D. Herlihy, the board’s chairman, said in the statement.Mr. McIlroy, the men said, was “instrumental in helping shape the success of the tour, and his willingness to thoughtfully voice his opinions has been especially impactful.”Mr. McIlroy’s agent did not respond to a message seeking comment.The decision by Mr. McIlroy came about five months after the tour, following secret negotiations, struck an agreement with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to try to create a joint company that would end golf’s money-fueled war for supremacy. Most board members, including Mr. McIlroy, had no knowledge of the agreement or the talks that led to it until shortly before it was announced in June and upended the duel between the tour and LIV Golf, the league Saudi Arabia built with a blend of billions of dollars and marquee defections from the PGA Tour.Mr. McIlroy soon expressed a pragmatic fatalism about the agreement — which calls for the tour and the wealth fund to combine their commercial golf businesses — and the proposed partnership with Saudi Arabia, which has been expanding its investments in sports.“If you’re thinking about one of the biggest sovereign wealth funds in the world, would you rather have them as a partner or an enemy?” Mr. McIlroy asked on June 7, the day after the tour announced the transaction, which has still not closed. “At the end of the day, money talks, and you would rather have them as a partner.”But he also made no secret that the tour’s machinations had blindsided and stung him. Few golfers had been more strident critics of LIV and the players who joined it, and the PGA Tour had benefited from the credibility of a four-time major tournament winner’s serving, in effect, as its leading public champion.“It’s hard for me to not sit up here and feel somewhat like a sacrificial lamb and feeling like I’ve put myself out there and this is what happens,” Mr. McIlroy, who was also among the tour’s leaders during the pandemic, said at the same news conference in Toronto.Although he soldiered on, he signaled this week that he had tired of the role. Asked in the United Arab Emirates whether he was enjoying his board tenure, Mr. McIlroy replied: “Not particularly, no. Not what I signed up for whenever I went on the board. But yeah, the game of professional golf has been in flux for the last two years.”He gave no hint that an exit was in the offing.On Monday, the 12-member board finished a meeting at the tour’s headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., where it heard about a handful of bids for minority stakes that could usurp or come alongside any money from the Saudis. In a memo to players on Tuesday, Mr. Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, said the board had “agreed to continue the negotiation process in order to select the final minority investor(s) in a timely manner.”Mr. Monahan said in his memo that the tour had heard from “dozens” of prospects about potential investments and winnowed the candidates to a smaller group for board review. For the tour, which has faced blowback from Congress and the Justice Department over its evolving approach to working with Saudi Arabia, there are stakes beyond money.Some players and executives believe that a role for influential American investors could diminish Washington’s criticism of — and possible efforts to block — the transaction.“Even if a deal does get done, it’s not a sure thing,” Mr. McIlroy said this week. “So yeah, we are just going to have to wait and see. But in my opinion, the faster something gets done, the better.”Mr. McIlroy is the second person to resign from the tour’s board since the summer. In July, Randall Stephenson, the former AT&T chief executive, quit the seat he had occupied for a dozen years, citing his “serious concerns with how this framework agreement came to fruition without board oversight.” At the time, Mr. Stephenson wrote that he could not “objectively evaluate or in good conscience support” the agreement, especially given the conclusion of U.S. intelligence services that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.Mr. Stephenson’s departure turned heads on Wall Street and in golf’s inner sanctums. But the decision by Mr. McIlroy is a particularly public blow to the tour and its board. Although the group still includes figures like Tiger Woods and Patrick Cantlay, Mr. McIlroy, 34, has long been one of golf’s most amiable stars.When the time came, though, for the tour to engage in negotiations with the wealth fund, he was among the board members left out of the talks.Only two members, Mr. Herlihy, a partner at the Wall Street law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and James J. Dunne III, vice chairman of the investment bank Piper Sandler, were involved. The secrecy infuriated other board members and helped stir a player uprising that led to the summertime installation of Mr. Woods as a director.Hours before the tour acknowledged Mr. McIlroy’s resignation, it announced a replacement for Mr. Stephenson, Joseph W. Gorder, the executive chairman of Valero’s board. More

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      Ivor Robson, Golf’s Celebrated Voice at British Open, Dies at 83

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      For four decades he announced the names of players — Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and more — before they teed off. He rarely took a break.At the British Open, a Scotsman named Ivor Robson became one of the most distinctive and revered voices in golf by saying little. Called a starter, he stood at a lectern near the first tee at each round of that major championship, where his job was simple: to introduce each player.“On the tee, from U.S.A., Jack Nicklaus,” he would say in his slightly high-pitched, singsong brogue.Or, “On the tee, from Northern Ireland, Rory McIlroy.”Once he was at his post, around 6:30 in the morning, he didn’t leave until every golfer had teed off — 156 in all in each of the first two rounds. He did not eat or drink anything before he took his position or for the next nine or 10 hours.Nor would he take a bathroom break, at a “comfort station,” even if he had time between introductions.“No input,” he would say, “no output.”He explained his on-course restraint to Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated in 1999: “I don’t want cups of water spilling over. I don’t want food around. I don’t have time to excuse myself. There’s no time!”When he was done for the day and back at his hotel, he would call room service for his only meal of the day.Mr. Robson, who retired from starter work in 2015, died on Oct. 15. The R&A, which organizes the British Open, announced the death but did not give a cause or say where he died. He was 83 and lived in Moffat, Dumfriesshire, in Scotland.Mr. Robson, who was born in England in 1940, was a golfer himself, having competed on the Scottish pro tour in the 1960s and ’70s and worked as a club professional in Scotland.He began his four-decade run at the Open Championship, as the event is officially known, in 1975, at Carnoustie, Scotland, at the invitation of the golf shaft company that hired the tournament’s starters. He went on to perform the role at the other links courses where the Open is played, like St. Andrews, Turnberry, Royal Birkdale and Muirfield.“Nobody told me how to do it,” he told the golf website Bunkered this year. “I just had to work it out for myself when I started in 1975. ‘What do I do here?’ Just keep it simple, where are they from, the name of the player, and let them go.”Mr. Robson endured heat, chill and rain and said he did not eat, drink or take bathroom breaks while on the job as a starter.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesMr. Robson’s job was similar to that of public address announcers at baseball games. But they work from protected press boxes. Mr. Robson endured heat, chill and rain while always formally dressed in his blazer and tie. (A sought-after announcer for 41 years, he also played the starter role at other golf events, including the DP World Tour in Europe.)“That voice — that smile in his eyes and that lilt in his voice — was unmistakable,” Mike Tirico, an NBC sportscaster who anchored British Open coverage for ESPN and ABC, said in a phone interview. “If you mentioned his name to a player, they’d imitate how he pronounced their names, with his inflections.”Mr. Robson would often chat with players before they took their swings and witnessed them face pressure, especially in starting their final round on a Sunday.“You can see the tension,” he said in a video interview with Golfing World magazine in 2019. “They’re not listening to you. They’re speaking to you, but you know they’re not really sure what to say. The club head is shaking as they’re addressing the ball.”Tiger Woods was among the many famous golfers whose names Mr. Robson announced. “Thank you Ivor for making each one of my Open starts so memorable,” Woods wrote on social media.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesHis final British Open, in 2015 at St. Andrews, was also the final one for Tom Watson, who had won the tournament five times. “He gave me an 18th-green flag, which had a message on it,” Mr. Robson told Today’s Golfer magazine in 2022. “‘We have traveled this long road together. All the best in your retirement. Tom Watson.’”After Mr. Robson’s death, Tiger Woods wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, “Thank you Ivor making each one of my Open starts so memorable.” Woods won three British Open titles.Mr. Robson’s survivors include his wife, Lesley; his daughter, Julia; and his son, Philip.When the R&A chose Mr. Robson’s replacement, they picked two men: David Lancaster, to do most of the work, and a backup, Matt Corker, to fill in when Mr. Lancaster takes a break or two.“I believe the vocal cords need to be soothed by drinking water at some point,” Mr. Lancaster told The New York Times in 2016. “Fortunately, the R&A understood.” More

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      Betsy Rawls, Winner of Eight Golf Majors, Dies at 95

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      With a strong short game, she won four Women’s opens and a total of 55 L.P.G.A. Tour events between 1951 and 1972. She also had leadership roles with the tour.Betsy Rawls, who won eight major golf championships, including four United States Women’s Opens, in the first two decades of the L.P.G.A. Tour, and as an executive and tournament director helped propel the arrival of the women’s pro circuit as a big-money attraction, died on Saturday at her home in Lewes, Del. She was 95. Her death was confirmed by the Ladies Professional Golf Association.Rawls was the first four-time Women’s Open champion, winning in 1951, 1953, 1957 and 1960, a record matched only by Mickey Wright, who captured her fourth Open in 1964. From 1951 to 1972, Rawls won a total of 55 events on the L.P.G.A. Tour, which was founded in 1950.Her other major victories came at the Women’s Western Open in 1952 and 1959 and the Women’s P.G.A. Championship in 1959 and 1969. She was a three-time runner-up during the 1950s in the other major tournament of her time, the Titleholders Championship, and was among the six original inductees into the L.P.G.A. Tour Hall of Fame in 1967. She was also inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.Rawls received the 1996 Bob Jones Award, the United States Golf Association’s highest honor, and the L.P.G.A.’s 50th Anniversary Commissioner’s Award in 2000 for her contributions to women’s golf. She was selected in 1980 as the first woman to serve on the rules committee for the men’s United States Open.Elizabeth Earle Rawls was born on May 4, 1928, in Spartanburg, in northern South Carolina, one of two children of Robert and Mary (Earle) Rawls. In the early 1940s, the family moved to Texas, where Betsy’s father worked as an engineer at an aircraft plant in Arlington, a suburb of Dallas, during World War II.Robert Rawls, who had played golf as a young man in Indiana, hired Harvey Penick, one of the game’s most renowned teachers, to give Betsy her first lesson when she was 17. Penick charged $3 for that one-hour session at the Austin Country Club and remained her coach, free of charge, for her entire career.“He always brought me back to the basic mechanics on which a good swing is built,” Rawls recalled in “Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings From a Lifetime in Golf.”Her strong suit was the short game. “I had a reputation of being able to get the ball up and down out of a garbage can,” she told The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., in 2010. “The sand wedge, off the fairway or out of the rough, was my best club. I could get it down in two from almost any place. I was a good putter under pressure.”Rawls graduated from the University of Texas in 1950, earning a bachelor’s degree with concentrations in physics and mathematics. She also finished an astonishing second, behind Babe Zaharias, as an amateur in the Women’s Open in 1950, the L.P.G.A. Tour’s inaugural season.She turned pro in 1951 after Wilson sporting goods recruited her to join its staff of leading players who were giving clinics on its behalf around the country. That year Rawls bested Louise Suggs by five strokes to capture the Open.At the time, Wilson paid her expenses, along with a salary that she recalled was about $3,000 a year (around $35,000 in today’s dollars), since prize money at the time was meager.She led the tour in victories in 1952, 1957 and 1959, when she set single-season records with 10 wins (including two majors), $26,744 in earnings and the lowest scoring average per round, 74.03, bringing her the women’s Vare Trophy.She got a break in winning the 1957 Open, at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, N.Y.Rawls received the winner’s trophy at the 1957 Open. Jackie Pung, who was disqualified from the tournament for an incorrect scorecard, can be seen at left, with her head in her hand.Bettmann ArchiveJackie Pung of Hawaii finished with a four-round total of 298 to Rawls’s 299. But officials quickly noticed that Pung’s playing partner, Betty Jameson, who was keeping score for Pung, had listed a 5 on the fourth hole of the last round, though she had actually scored a 6. Pung had made the same error in keeping score for Jameson, who wasn’t in contention for the victory.Although Pung’s card showed a correct total score, she was disqualified, as was Jameson, the automatic penalty under golf’s rules for a player who hands in a card with an incorrect score on any hole.So the championship, along with $1,800 in prize money, went to Rawls.“It’s always great to win, I guess, but I sure hate to do it this way,” United Press International quoted Rawls as saying. “I feel sorry for Jackie.”But Pung wound up as the No. 1 money winner: Members of the Winged Foot Club, distressed over her losing the title on a technicality, raised about $3,000 to ease her loss.Rawls was the L.P.G.A.’s president in 1961 and 1962 and its tournament director for six years following her retirement from competition in 1975. After that, she was the executive director of the McDonald’s Championship, which was discontinued in 1994 when it became the longtime sponsor of the L.P.G.A. Championship. Continuing in her post with that major event, she helped raise millions of dollars for charity.Rawls in 2005. She helped raise millions of dollars for charity in her later years.Al Messerschmidt/Getty ImagesRawls was treated for breast cancer in 2000 but continued overseeing the L.P.G.A. event, held at the DuPont Country Club in Wilmington, Del. She retired from her executive director’s post in 2002 but stayed on as the tournament’s vice board chairman.Rawls’s brother, Robert Rawls Jr., died in 1992. She left no immediate survivors. Rawls earned $302,664 in her 25-year career on the pro tour, landing below the top 450 on the L.P.G.A.’s current earnings list.“Today I look at the money they play for with amazement, but not with envy or bitterness,” Rawls told The Philadelphia Inquirer shortly before receiving the Bob Jones Award. “In the beginning, we played for so little that money wasn’t the motivating factor. But when I won, it seemed like it was a lot of money at the time. I enjoyed winning when I did.” More

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      Andy Bean, 11-Time Winner on the PGA Tour, Dies at 70

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      “One of golf’s most appealing players,” he was an imposing and emotional presence on the course. Three times he came in second in major tournaments.Andy Bean, who won 11 times on the PGA Tour winner and three times was a runner-up in major tournament play, died on Saturday in Lakeland, Fla. He was 70.The PGA Tour said the cause was complications of double-lung replacement surgery, which he underwent in September. He was reported to have developed severe respiratory problems after a bout with Covid-19. He was a longtime resident of Lakeland.At 6-foot-4 and about 210 pounds, Bean was an imposing presence on the tour. In 1978, the columnist Dave Anderson of The New York Times called him “one of golf’s most appealing players.”“He’s big and strong and emotional,” Anderson wrote. “Whether it’s a tee shot or his annoyance at a bad shot, he lets it all hang out. The other touring pros call him Li’l Abner for his strength.”He was known to win bets in bars by biting a chunk out of the cover of a golf ball.Bean’s best year was 1978, when he won three times, including back-to-back weeks at Quail Hollow, in Charlotte, N.C., for the Kemper Open and then at the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic in a playoff over Lee Trevino. He finished third on the money list that year.His 11 victories — he also won twice on the Japan Golf Tour — covered 1977 to 1986. In March 1986, Bean became the first golfer on the tour to win the Doral Eastern Open, in South Florida, three times, defeating Hubert Green on the fourth hole of a sudden-death playoff. Bean had come back from five strokes behind with nine holes to go in regulation to force the playoff.His 11th and final tour victory, by one stroke, came that May, at the Byron Nelson Classic, outside Dallas.Bean also played on the Ryder Cup teams in 1979 and 1987.In major tournaments, he made a late charge at Royal Birkdale, in northwest England, in the 1983 British Open, finishing one shot behind Tom Watson. In 1980, he finished second to 40-year-old Jack Nicklaus in the PGA Championship at Oak Hill in Rochester, N.Y. And he was runner-up by one shot to Payne Stewart in the 1989 PGA Championship at Kemper Lakes, outside Chicago.A three-time winner on the PGA Tour Champions, Bean retired from competition in 2014 because of wrist injuries from a car accident.Thomas Andrew Bean was born on March 13, 1953, in Lafayette, Ga., near the Tennessee border, and grew up in Jekyll Island, on the Atlantic coast. His father, Tom Bean, was a club pro. The family moved to Florida, settling in Lakeland when Andy was 15. He played golf for the University of Florida on a team that included Gary Koch, Woody Blackburn and Fred Ridley, the former U.S. Amateur champion and now chairman at Augusta National.He is survived by his wife, Debbie; their three daughters, Ashley, Lindsay and Jordan; and grandchildren.Aside from biting chunks out of golf balls, Bean was known for having once subdued an alligator while trying to qualify for the PGA Tour. The story got out that he had wrestled with the animal and threw it into a pond.But he threw cold water, so to speak, on that story. The incident “was nothing big,” he told Anderson, for his Sports of The Times column. “I just saw a little five‐foot alligator once near a water hole in Florida and flipped it over by its tail. That’s easy. But the guy I was playing with made it sound like I wrestled it.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Ryder Cup Has Decades of Drama Between United States and Europe

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      It began in 1927 and has had many nail-biters over its almost 100 years. Here are some of them.Nothing is at stake — no prize money, individual titles or world ranking points — for the 24 players who will participate in the 2023 Ryder Cup, which begins on Friday at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club in Rome.Nothing and everything.The members of Team Europe and the United States will play for something bigger and as we’ve seen, in recent decades especially, the biennial three-day match-play competition, which began in 1927, is bound to generate memories.Here, in chronological order, are 10 Ryder Cups that stand out.1933, Southport and Ainsdale Golf Club, EnglandThe course in Southport was packed with about 15,000 spectators, and they weren’t cheated.The outcome came down to the final hole of the singles match between Syd Easterbrook of England and Denny Shute of the United States. With their match even, both players faced par putts of roughly 30 feet.Easterbook, who went first, missed his attempt. All Shute had to do was two-putt, and the United States would retain the Cup.Shute knocked his putt four feet by the hole and missed the next one, too, handing the victory to the British team. The rest of Europe wouldn’t be included in the Ryder Cup until 1979.The American golfer Sam Snead in 1949 at Ganton Golf Club in England.S&G/PA Images, via Getty Images1949, Ganton Golf Club, EnglandThe Americans had the great Ben Hogan on their side, but as the captain, not as a player.Hogan was still recovering from a car accident that would keep him on the sidelines until 1950. Also unable to play was Cary Middlecoff, the United States Open champion who wasn’t a member of the P.G.A. of America.Even so, the United States, because it captured six of the eight singles matches, rallied from two points down to win the Ryder Cup for the fourth time in a row at the course in northeast England. The major champions Sam Snead, Jimmy Demaret and Lloyd Mangrum were among the winners.1969, Royal Birkdale Golf Club, EnglandThere wasn’t any one shot that makes this year so memorable.It was, rather, a gesture of sportsmanship.It came from Jack Nicklaus on the final hole of his singles match versus Tony Jacklin at the course near Manchester. Nicklaus picked up Jacklin’s ball mark to concede a two-foot putt that left their match, and the overall competition, all square. The United States, because it was the defending champion, retained the Cup.“Here he was, the [British] Open champion, the new hero, and all of a sudden it felt like if he missed this putt he would be criticized forever,” Nicklaus later said. “This all went through my mind in a very, very quick period of time, and I said, ‘I’m not going to give Tony Jacklin the opportunity to miss it.’”Jack Nicklaus, left, and Tony Jacklin after a singles match at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in 1969.PA Images, via Getty Images1983, PGA National, United StatesOne sensational shot was hit by the young Spaniard Seve Ballesteros; the other by an American, Lanny Wadkins at the course in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.From a fairway bunker 240 yards away on the par-5 18th hole, Ballesteros sent the ball to the fringe of the green, and from there he was able to get a par and halve his match with Fuzzy Zoeller.Wadkins knocked the ball from 60 yards away to within a foot on the 18th hole to then halve his match with José María Cañizares and clinch a one-point victory for the United States.1985, the Belfry, EnglandWith Jacklin as the captain, Team Europe captured the Ryder Cup on this course near Birmingham for the first time since 1957. The period of American dominance was over.Two players from Spain, Ballesteros and Manuel Piñero, were outstanding. Piñero won four points for the Europeans, while Ballesteros, one of the game’s brightest stars then, collected three and a half points.Craig Stadler, a former Masters champion, also played well, though he missed a short putt on Saturday morning that cost the United States an important half point. Team Europe went on to win three of the four afternoon foursome matches to take a 9-7 lead into Sunday.The Spaniards Manuel Piñero, Seve Ballesteros, José María Cañizares and José Rivero after Team Europe won in 1985 at the Belfry in England.David Cannon/Allsport, via Getty Images1987, Muirfield Village Golf Club, United StatesFor the first time, the United States lost on its own soil. The final: 15 to 13.The Americans had been 13-0 at home before coming up short on the course near Columbus, Ohio, that was designed by Jack Nicklaus, the U.S. captain. Down by five points, the U.S. team rallied in the singles, but the deficit was too large.Ballesteros was in top form again for the Europeans, earning four points in five matches. Contributing with three and a half points apiece were Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer and Ian Woosnam; Sandy Lyle and José María Olazábal won three points.On the other side, Ben Crenshaw was 0-3, while Tom Kite and Hal Sutton were the only Americans with three points.1991, Kiawah Island Golf Resort, United StatesIn the end, it came down to one putt at the Ocean Course in South Carolina.The putt was from six feet away, and if Langer were to knock it in, he would win his match over the three-time U.S. Open champion Hale Irwin, and Team Europe would keep the Cup.If he were to miss, the United States would take possession for the first time since 1983. It is difficult to imagine a player feeling more pressure. Even in a major tournament.Langer missed, and the Europeans returned the Cup to the Americans, not winning it back until 1995.Bernhard Langer of Germany after he missed a putt on the 18th hole in the final singles match in 1991 at Kiawah Island Golf Resort in the United States.David Cannon/Getty Images1999, the Country Club,United StatesTrailing by four points entering the singles matches on the final day, the United States captain, Crenshaw, still believed in his team.With good reason.The Americans picked up eight and a half points on Sunday to edge Team Europe by one. Among those who came through with big victories were Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III and David Duval.The event, held just outside Boston, also provided its share of controversy with the U.S. players rushing onto the 17th green after Justin Leonard made a birdie putt from 45 feet. The match, and the competition itself, however, wasn’t over just yet. Olazábal faced a birdie putt of his own that would have kept the players all square heading to 18. He missed.2010, Celtic Manor Resort, WalesAs it did in 1991, the Ryder Cup, staged for the first time in Wales, came down to the final singles match, with Europe’s Graeme McDowell squaring off against Hunter Mahan of the United States.After knocking in a 15-foot birdie at the 16th hole to go two up, McDowell prevailed when Mahan struggled on 17.The Europeans had a three-point lead heading into the final day, but had to hang on as Woods, Mickelson, Steve Stricker, Dustin Johnson, Jeff Overton and Zach Johnson put full points on the board for the United States. Another key contributor was Rickie Fowler, who rallied to secure a half point against Edoardo Molinari.A view of the 18th green at Medinah Country Club in 2012.Jamie Squire/Getty Images2012, Medinah Country Club, United StatesIt felt a lot like 1999.Only this time, it was Team Europe’s turn to come back from a four-point deficit heading into the 12 singles matches on Sunday, and on its opponent’s territory, no less.With clutch victories on the course just outside Chicago by Justin Rose over Mickelson, Sergio Garcia over Jim Furyk, and Martin Kaymer over Steve Stricker, Europe outscored the United States eight and a half to three and a half on the final day. Only Dustin Johnson, Zach Johnson and Jason Dufner won their matches for the United States.Kaymer of Germany clinched the victory with a six-foot putt on the 18th green. More

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      Ryder Cup: Home Team Gets a Course Advantage

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      This year the competition is in Rome, which means the European team controls the course setup and can adjust it to its players’ strengths.Max Homa returned from a scouting trip to the site of this week’s Ryder Cup in Rome incredulous with how the course had been set up.Not only were the fairways reduced in width where a tee shot might land, but the rough was grown so thick, high and gnarly that slightly errant shots could disappear.“One day someone hit it over a bunker, and we just lost it in the regular rough,” Homa said. “The whole first day I didn’t see a single ball from the rough hit the green.”The one exception: Justin Thomas hit a ball in the rough onto the green from 100 yards away, a distance where touring pros are thinking about getting the ball to within a few feet from the hole, not just on the putting surface.“The rough is borderline unplayable,” Homa said. “There’s going to be the highest, highest premium placed on being in the fairway, but they’re narrow.”In other words, this sounds like a typical setup for a Ryder Cup played in Europe, where the home team hasn’t lost the biennial competition in 30 years.Luke Donald playing his way out of a bunker at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club during the Italian Open in May.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesThe Ryder Cup, which alternates between Europe and the United States, is the rare event in elite golf where the home team has an advantage, given that it gets to determine how the course will be played. At regular professional events, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour work with local tournament directors to bring consistency from week to week. For the major championships, the governing bodies dictate how the courses will be set up, and typically lay them out in predictably difficult ways.But the Ryder Cup is different: What the captain of the home team says goes, right up until Sunday night of tournament week. And it’s codified in the Captains’ Agreement, which starts: “It is recognized that the home side has the opportunity to influence and direct the setup and preparation of the course for the Ryder Cup. It is hereby agreed that any such influence, direction and/or preparation will be limited to course architecture/course design, fairway widths, rough heights, green speed and firmness.”This year, there’s an added bit of home team advantage at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club, because very few of the U.S. players are familiar with the course under any conditions. Several players on the European squad have at least played the course when it hosted the Italian Open on the DP World Tour.In the hope of getting an understanding of how the course would be set up for the Ryder Cup, Zach Johnson, the U.S. captain, took the team on a scouting trip earlier this month.“This is a course that most if not all of our guys have not played,” Johnson said in an interview. “To get their feet on the ground of Marco Simone ahead of the Cup is very important. Having some practice time there can only make a very trying, different, sometimes difficult week of the Cup that much more manageable and comfortable.”Johnson, a five-time Ryder Cup player, knows the setup gambits both sides play. “Because it’s in Europe, there are tendencies their team seems to employ, with regard to course setup among other things,” he said. “We will utilize past experiences and data to make decisions.”The setup shenanigans ultimately equal out. One of the most famous setup tweaks came when Paul Azinger, captain of the 2008 U.S. squad, set up the course at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., to take advantage of his players’ ability to drive the ball farther off the tee than their European opponents.All the hazards — bunkers, much thicker rough — were in the areas where the shorter-hitting Europeans were likely to land the ball, while the rough past the bunkers was cut shorter to make it easier for the American side to escape from wayward drives.A view of the first tee grandstand for the 2023 Ryder Cup. After visiting Marco Simone, Max Homa noted that the rough on the course was so thick and high, errant shots could disappear. Naomi Baker/Getty ImagesIn 2016, at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn., Davis Love III, the U.S. captain, put many pins in the middle of the greens, making it easy for the player, but less exciting to watch.The European side has historically gone with a setup that features narrow fairways and higher rough, under the premise that American golfers are less accurate, along with greens that are much slower than those typically found on the PGA Tour. This year was no different, Homa said.That leaves an obvious question: Why do the officials allow this?The Ryder Cup is jointly sanctioned by the P.G.A. of America and Ryder Cup Europe, which is a blend of three organizations in Britain and Europe. Officials at the P.G.A. of America and Ryder Cup Europe said the setup was fair and it could reward or penalize players on either team.Zach Johnson, the United States team captain, talking with reporters in Rome earlier this month. Johnson took his team on a scouting trip to the course to increase their familiarity with it. Andrew Medichini/Associated Press“You are looking for it to be tough, but fair, and provide an exciting challenge,” said David Garland, director of tour operations for Ryder Cup Europe.Kerry Haigh, chief championships officer at the P.G.A. of America, said: “The Ryder Cup is unlike our other championships in that the home captain has a lot of influence as to how the golf course is set up. Our aim is to make any Ryder Cup golf course setup fair for both teams.”Once play starts, it’s up to the officials to maintain the course as it was at the outset. “If you want six-inch rough, four-inch rough or two-inch rough, that’s what we’re trying to do,” Haigh said.Setup aside, both officials emphasized that this year’s course has some shorter holes that are meant to increase the excitement of the matches.“There are a couple of drivable par 4s, the fifth and the 16th, which are both over water,” Garland said. “The course was completely rebuilt a few years ago for the Ryder Cup with the drama of match play in mind.” More