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      The Genesis Scottish Open Rises in Stature

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      The course is considered a solid testing ground for the British Open, a major played just down the road a few days later.The Renaissance Club, the site of the Genesis Scottish Open that begins on Thursday, looks like it’s been there for hundreds of years, like so many other great links courses in Britain.Like all true links courses, it winds along the coast with few trees; wind, rain, heat and cold become issues for players. It has firm fairways that can kick a well-hit drive forward an extra 50 yards or punish an equally well-struck shot with an unlucky bounce.The course has high golden fescue grass that waves in the wind. Brown-tinged greens undulate subtly in the center and strikingly on the edges. And of course, deep bunkers swallow balls careening toward their targets.It’s in the best neighborhood in town for golf. Muirfield, home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers and regular host of the British Open, abuts the course. And down the road is North Berwick Golf Club, where the sport has been played since 1832.But the Renaissance Club, now in its fifth year of hosting the Scottish Open, opened in 2007 after two American brothers developed the club. The tournament course is the product of an extensive renovation in 2014, which opened up some of the holes with views of the water.Yet its architect, Tom Doak, is not known for building courses that host professional golf championships. This was his first.So how did the Renaissance Club come to host a tournament that has been growing in importance? (It offers entry into the British Open for players who place in the top five spots, and it is sanctioned by the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, meaning more money and ranking points.)The change began in 2011 with a broader strategy to play on conditions that would approximate the British Open often held a few days later. The Scottish Open had been around, off and on and under various sponsors, for about 50 years at that point.The organizers partnered with Visit Scotland, the country’s tourist board, to find venues that would also capture a tourist’s imagination. While Scotland has a variety of topography for its golf courses, Scottish golf conjures up images of wind-ripped, bouncy courses.“We kicked off a links strategy in 2011 and decided to move from Loch Lomond to Castle Stuart,” said Rory Colville, the Genesis Scottish Open championship director. “We decided that it was in the players’ best interest to play links golf the week before the Open Championship. The economic benefit of the first Scottish Open at Castle Stuart was said to be in excess of 5 million pounds [about $6.3 million]. That’s a really positive thing.”Loch Lomond, which had hosted the tournament for more than a decade, was a parkland course on an estate with streams and trees that dated back centuries. It’s ranked as one of the best courses in the world. But its trees and streams don’t conjure up the same images of Scottish golf.Castle Stuart, like the Renaissance Club, is a modern course built to look like it has been on the land forever. The difference was in the design team.Opened in 2009, it was designed by Gil Hanse, an American architect who restored courses for the United States Open and the P.G.A. Championship, including Los Angeles Country Club and Southern Hills in Oklahoma. On Castle Stuart, Hanse worked with Mark Parsinen, who found the land, to build a course in the Highlands with wide vistas, firm fairways and deep bunkers.“Although at the time Castle Stuart was a relatively young golf course, it highlighted all you would want from a new links course as a venue,” Colville said. “It was a fair test of golf, but it was also the right type of test in the warm-up to the Open,” in that it was not set up to be overly penalizing.“Players don’t want to get beaten up going into a major championship,” he said. “Castle Stuart was the right type of golf course. Also, it had this fantastic scenic setting to showcase golf to the world. It was a really rewarding experience to take the Scottish Open up to the Highlands.” And it produced solid champions: Luke Donald, Phil Mickelson and Alex Noren.The strategy in those years was to use a rota, or schedule, of courses akin to what the British Open does in moving the championship to a set number of venues. For the Scottish Open, these included Royal Aberdeen, Gullane and Dundonald.“We had an exceptional experience at Royal Aberdeen,” Colville said about the tournament in 2014. “Justin Rose won there in great style. Rory McIlroy played there and went on to win the Open the week after that.”Gullane had the advantage of being close to the capital, Edinburgh, which increased the number of spectators.But top players balked at a rota before the official Open Championship rota. It meant they would potentially have to learn a new course each year. There were also economic reasons to host an event at the same stop with the same infrastructure planned out.The Renaissance Club is a true links course that winds along the coast with few trees to protect players from the elements. The course was extensively renovated in 2014, which opened up some of the holes with views of the water.Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images“At Loch Lomond, we built an event year after year,” Colville said. “We needed to find a home to make it the scale it needs to be. That’s tricky when you’re looking at a member club, with a larger number of members who don’t want the annual interference of golf course closure and interruption of their day to day golfing.”The Renaissance Club had been founded by the brothers Jerry and Paul Sarvadi. Paul is the chief executive of Insperity, a human resources company, and Jerry spent his career in aviation fuel.On the club’s 10th anniversary in 2018, Paul Sarvadi talked about his commitment to continuing to host the Scottish Open. “While proud of our first 10 years, we are even more excited about our next 10 years,” he said.Colville said the brothers had a passion to create a home for the Open.“They’ve built a long-term TV compound and parking facilities,” he said. “They’ve built the infrastructure that makes it feasible to hold the event year after year. They’ve made it a viable event.”They’ve also allowed tinkering to the course. “Our agronomy team has worked very closely with the club to improve the conditions and refine the golf course.”Doak, who declined to comment, is better known for designing destination venues on remarkable plots of land, like Barnbougle in Tasmania, Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand and Pacific Dunes in Oregon. He has largely eschewed commissions or restorations of courses that will host tournaments.“I never really thought I’d do tournament golf courses,” he told the Golf Channel in 2019. When asked what he did to create a course tough enough for the professionals, he added, “It’s a little bit getting inside their heads. You want to do things that make them think and make them play a little safe.”Since the Renaissance Club course was renovated in 2014, Doak has been less involved in year-to-year changes. The ownership group brought in Padraig Harrington, a three-time major champion and past Ryder Cup captain, to consult on the course from a tournament player’s perspective.“You get the perspective of someone with his links credentials to help refine the golf course and improve it,” Colville said. “He’s added some subtle design features to make the rough more penal and changed a lot of the fairway cut lines.”In the five years since the course began hosting the event, the Scottish Open has achieved elevated status with its sanctioning by the PGA and DP World tours. It has secured Genesis, the luxury-car company, as a title sponsor.And the field has grown stronger. Last year’s champion, Xander Schauffele, was the fifth-ranked player in the world after his victory.“We expect to be the best attended Scottish Open this year, with more than 70,000 spectators,” Colville said.“This year we have eight of the top 10 players in the world. That’s a vote of confidence that they like the golf course and like the facilities.” More

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      Xander Schauffele Returns to Scottish Open Looking to Repeat

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      He won four tournaments, including the Scottish Open, in a strong 2022, but has not won in a year.This time last year, Xander Schauffele was on a tear.He won the Travelers Championship on the PGA Tour. The next week, he won the JP McManus Pro-Am. He beat Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler by five shots and the newly minted United States Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick by 17.When Schauffele showed up at the Renaissance Club for the Genesis Scottish Open, his solid play continued. He won the tournament by a shot, for his fourth victory in 12 months.“It was probably one of the better months I’ve had in my career,” said Schauffele, who went to San Diego State University and exudes a Southern California calm.He returns to Scotland this year a bit cooler, but still ranked sixth in the world. He hasn’t won in a year, but he has continued to play strongly.The following interview has been edited and condensed.You were on a roll last year. What was that like?I played the Travelers, then JP McManus Pro-Am in between, where I played really well, and then I won the Scottish. I was in a really good mind-set. I was hitting a lot of shots I wanted to hit, hitting a lot of putts the way I wanted to. I felt like I was doing my best, and that was good enough to win. It was that calm feeling attached with really good golf.How do you translate winning at River Highlands, one of the PGA Tour’s stadium courses, at which a lot of earth was moved to create the course, to the Renaissance Club, where the architect Tom Doak took a more minimalist approach to the land and the terrain?At River Highlands, you go from greens that are slower and have a lot more break to greens that are faster and more nuanced. With Renaissance, it’s a little bit more relaxed coming in. It’s not as penalizing as River Highlands [home to the Travelers] with all its contours. The only thing that would translate is confidence.Let’s talk scoring conditions. How do you adjust from going from plus 2 at the U.S. Open, (when minus 6 won it), to minus 19 at the Travelers and minus 7 at the Scottish Open?It’s definitely something you take into account before the week starts when you’re coming into different greens. It’s the mentality. At River Highlands, when you make six or seven pars in a row, you have to stay patient because you know other players are reeling off birdies. You have to beat the course each week. That’s something that comes into play. You have to stay patient. It doesn’t always go your way. Overseas you sometimes feel bad making par. But then you realize par is going to win.You shot a record-tying 62 in the opening round of this year’s U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club and a 70 the next day. Every golfer has done the equivalent of that. What was it like for you?A 62 at that club definitely wasn’t something you anticipated. It was a setup thing. Through two rounds there were a lot of low scores. Rickie [Fowler] and I doing it early made people feel it was out there. The most impressive round was Tommy Fleetwood shooting 63 on Sunday. I was off to a heck of a start, but no round was the same. I didn’t adjust accordingly. I got off to a fast start, but then I started leaking oil.What’s your plan to defend at the Scottish Open this year?I’m close to some good form. I’ve been scratching at the surface. When I come to a site where I play well, I really don’t try to think too much about whether I won last year or not. I’m excited to be back here. I typically like to play on hard golf courses. But I’ve worked to make myself a believer that I could play well on any property. More

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      PGA Tour Wanted Greg Norman Ousted as Part of Saudi Deal

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      The American circuit’s efforts were made public in documents that Congress released on Tuesday.The PGA Tour sought the ouster of Greg Norman, the two-time British Open champion who became the commissioner of the insurgent LIV Golf league, as a condition of its alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, according to records that a Senate subcommittee released on Tuesday.The tour and the wealth fund did not ultimately agree to the proposal — crafted as a so-called side letter to a larger framework agreement — and, for now, Norman remains atop LIV. But the deliberations reflect an enmity forged over decades of hostilities between the tour and Norman, one of the most talented players in professional golf history who often chafed at the sport’s economic structure.And they underscore the tensions that could linger if the deal closes.The glimpse into the negotiations between the tour and the wealth fund came as the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations began its first hearing into the arrangement, which calls for the business ventures of the tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour to be brought into a new, for-profit company.The plan is facing significant scrutiny in Washington, where some lawmakers have castigated the tour, once willing to condemn Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses, for abruptly growing cozy with an arm of a coercive government. Beyond any congressional misgivings about the wealth fund’s ties to the Saudi government, Justice Department officials are also interested in whether the deal violates federal antitrust laws and whether they should try to block it.Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in his opening statement on Tuesday that his subcommittee’s hearing was about “much more than the game of golf.”“It is about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence — indeed even take over — a cherished American institution to cleanse its public image,” Blumenthal, the subcommittee’s chairman, added, citing the kingdom’s record of killing journalists, abusing dissidents and having “supported other terrorist activities, including the 9/11 attack on our nation.”“It is also about hypocrisy, how vast sums of money can induce individuals and institutions to betray their own values and supporters, or perhaps reveal a lack of values from the beginning,” he continued. “It’s about other sports and institutions that could fall prey, if their leaders let it be all about the money.”The proceeding, held in a crowded Capitol Hill room that previously hosted Supreme Court confirmation hearings and meetings of the 9/11 Commission, included two senior PGA Tour leaders: the chief operating officer, Ron Price, and a board member who was intimately involved in the negotiations that led to the tentative deal that was announced on June 6.In an opening statement, Price argued that the tour, faced with the threat of competing with one of the world’s mightiest sovereign wealth funds, had little choice but to seek some measure of coexistence after months of acrimony in court and in jockeying for the allegiances of the world’s best players.“It was very clear to us — and to all who love the PGA Tour and the game of golf as a whole — that the dispute was undermining growth of our sport and was threatening the very survival of the PGA Tour, and it was unsustainable,” Price said. “While we had significant wins in litigation, our players, our fans, our partners, our employees and the charities we support would lose.”Tour leaders have acknowledged that with negotiations for a final agreement still unfolding, board approval is no certainty. Over the weekend, one member of the board, the former AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson, resigned. In a letter about his exit, Stephenson said “the construct currently being negotiated by management is not one that I can objectively evaluate or in good conscience support.”Tour executives have been eager to show how the agreement leaves them positioned to run professional golf’s day-to-day operations. The tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, has been tabbed as the chief executive of the new company, expected to be called PGA Tour Enterprises, and the tour is expected to fill a majority of the company’s board seats.They have been far less keen to discuss how Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, will serve as the chairman of PGA Tour Enterprises and how the framework agreement envisions sweeping investment rights for a Riyadh-based fund whose power and value have swelled in recent years.Neither al-Rumayyan nor Norman agreed to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, citing scheduling conflicts. But documents released by the subcommittee suggest that both will be factors in an inquiry that could last months.The effort to remove Norman was underway by May 24, when the PGA Tour board’s chairman, Edward D. Herlihy, sent a proposed side letter to Michael Klein, a banker working with the wealth fund. The proposal called for Norman, as well as a British outfit central to developing LIV, to “cease” working on LIV within a month of “the management transition to the PGA Tour.”Although Norman’s long-term fate has been uncertain — he was not a part of the negotiations that led to the preliminary deal, stoking questions about his relevance — it was not until Tuesday that it became clear that his future had been a subject of the talks.LIV did not comment on Tuesday, but three people with knowledge of the negotiations, who requested anonymity to discuss private talks, said the wealth fund had rejected the tour’s proposal.The documents that the Senate released also detail the deliberations over when and how to announce the deal; Klein was among the figures who said the tour and the wealth fund should not wait for a final agreement to disclose their newfound peace.And the records show how a British businessman with ties to the wealth fund and its advisers reached out to James J. Dunne III, now a tour board member and one of Tuesday’s witnesses, in December. In an email, the businessman, Roger Devlin, suggested that there could be a pathway to an armistice between the tour and the wealth fund.Dunne, at least at first, declined to engage in a substantive way.Devlin re-emerged in April, warning Dunne that there was “a window of opportunity to unify the game over the next couple of months” before, he thought, “the Saudis will doubledown on their investment and golf will be split asunder in perpetuity.”Although committee investigators told senators in a briefing memorandum that they did not know for certain how Devlin’s April message influenced Dunne, the tour board member contacted al-Rumayyan within days.Dunne, al-Rumayyan and a handful of others met in Britain soon after, starting negotiations that included a number of ideas that did not make it into the five-page text of the framework agreement. Those concepts, outlined in a presentation titled “The Best of Both Worlds,” included Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who had pledged fealty to the tour, owning LIV teams and a “large-scale superstar” team golf event that would feature the world’s top men’s and women’s players.Although the initial deal between the tour and the wealth fund did not include some of those proposals, the final agreement is still being hammered out, a process that could take months.At least as of April, according to documents the Senate released, there was even talk of a deal including memberships for al-Rumayyan at Augusta National Golf Club and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews — two of the most prestigious golf clubs in the world, but ones that are not controlled by the PGA Tour. More

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      Other Sports Faced Congress’s Glare. Now Golf Will Get Its Turn.

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      A Senate hearing on Tuesday is just one part of Washington’s scrutiny of the PGA Tour’s deal with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.Sports executives and players have sometimes defended themselves or patiently absorbed hours of fury. They have occasionally apologized or pleaded for help. They have shifted blame or used celebrity and childhood memory as a charm offensive. In other instances, they have lied or obfuscated or simply said little at all.PGA Tour leaders, who are expected to appear before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday to discuss their circuit’s surprise alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, have a menu of time- and pressure-tested options for facing a sports-curious Congress. The tactics they turn to will likely do much to influence whether Tuesday’s proceeding is a blip that leads to a day’s worth of headlines or a debacle that triggers far greater scrutiny.“The PGA would be smart to understand that they’re not calling them in to play patty-cake,” said J.C. Watts, who played quarterback at Oklahoma before representing a district in the state in Congress and, from 1999 to 2003, serving as a member of the Republican leadership in the House.“The constituents back home, they understand sports and they understand 9/11,” Watts added, referring to longstanding accusations that Saudi government operatives played a role in the 2001 attacks. “This is sports with a much deeper twist than your typical hearing.”That Congress, which has a long history of quizzing, hectoring and looming when it comes to sports, would step into golf’s fray felt like a certainty after the tour and the Saudi wealth fund announced a framework agreement on June 6. So far, that activity has taken the form of two Senate inquiries, a House bill to revoke the tour’s tax-exempt status, demands for the Justice Department and the Treasury Department to consider intervening and Tuesday’s hearing at the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.The proceeding is the latest example of a congressional interest in sports that has led to a mixed record. Lawmakers and their investigators have unearthed information and sometimes provoked changes to the sports landscape, either through legislation or the grinding power of the congressional bully pulpit.“I think you’ve got to articulate your public policy purpose,” said Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia who was instrumental in hearings nearly two decades ago about steroid use in baseball, which lawmakers depicted as a part of a national scourge. “That’s really what you’ve got to do. It can be a health thing, a tax equity thing, but you’ve got to articulate why Congress is involved, and it’s a high threshold.”Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said the “central” role that sports play in American society makes them especially important for Congress to scrutinize.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesA sports hearing, Davis warned, was “high-risk, high-reward, particularly at a time when Congress is not seen as productive.”Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who is the subcommittee’s chairman, said sports’ “central” role in American society makes them especially important for Congress to scrutinize. The proposed Saudi role in golf, he signaled, was too much for Congress to ignore.“There really is a national interest in this cherished, iconic American institution, which is about to be taken over by one of the world’s most repressive governments,” he said in an interview.On Tuesday, the subcommittee will not hear from any of the three witnesses it originally sought. Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, has been on medical leave for almost a month, though the tour said Friday that he would return next week. Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, and Greg Norman, the commissioner of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league, cited scheduling conflicts and declined to appear.“Suffice it to say, this hearing will certainly not be the last,” Blumenthal said. “We will have hearings after there is a final agreement, if appropriate, and there is a national interest in doing it.”After the tour announced Monahan’s planned return, a spokeswoman for Blumenthal, Maria McElwain, said that the subcommittee would be “following up with him regarding any remaining questions after Tuesday’s hearing.”Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, will not appear before the Senate Committee to testify.Rob Carr/Getty ImagesBut the PGA Tour is hoping to avoid testifying after Tuesday, when Ron Price, its chief operating officer, will appear. Although Price did not negotiate the agreement announced last month, the tour board member who initiated the talks, James J. Dunne III, is also expected to testify.Price and Dunne may also be asked about the weekend resignation of Randall Stephenson from the tour’s board after more than a decade. In his resignation letter, Stephenson, the former chief executive of AT&T, cited “serious concerns with how this framework agreement came to fruition without board oversight.” He added that the deal was not one that he could “in good conscience support,” especially because American intelligence officials concluded that Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler authorized the 2018 murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.“If you are not really nervous and anxious to make sure you are prepared, then you are probably not prepared,” said Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, who has repeatedly testified before Congress. “It will, for sure, be the worst night of sleep that any witness is going to have.”Golf has scarcely been a topic of inquiry in congressional hearing rooms. The sport’s leaders have often handled their business in Washington behind closed doors, relying on a fount of good will and gentility. The tour faced a significant threat in the 1990s, when the Federal Trade Commission examined antitrust issues in golf before its inquiry fizzled amid a pressure campaign from Capitol Hill.Public appearances on the Hill have been more cheery. Arnold Palmer, for instance, addressed a joint meeting of Congress to pay tribute to Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Jack Nicklaus spoke to a House committee about character education.Other titans of professional sports have had less pleasant interactions in Washington. Lawmakers have examined everything from college football’s Bowl Championship Series (“It looks like a rigged deal,” President Biden, who was then a senator, said.) to sexual abuse, domestic violence and the N.F.L.’s investigation into the Washington Commanders.But baseball has drawn much of the attention from Congress, like when senators called a 1958 hearing on antitrust exemptions. (“Stengelese Is Baffling to Senators,” read a subsequent headline in The New York Times, which reported that Yankees Manager Casey Stengel had lawmakers “confused but laughing.”)Neither Greg Norman, left, the commissioner of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league, nor Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, will appear at the hearing Tuesday.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressThe more recent proceedings about steroids in baseball featured a series of electrifying hearings, including one in 2005 when sluggers employed all manner of strategies during hostile questioning, and a 2008 spectacle that factored into the indictment of the celebrated pitcher Roger Clemens on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of Congress. He was ultimately acquitted.For all of the commotion and skepticism, though, the cumulative pressure from Congress helped prod baseball into sweeping changes.The Senate subcommittee’s goals for golf are, for now, unclear.“What’s a win on this, outside of getting your mug on the news?” asked Davis, who, after leaving Congress, represented the former Commanders owner Daniel Snyder during a House inquiry. “Is it undoing this deal? Is it exposing some Saudi plot to come in and take over American golf?”The wealth fund has denied that it is using sports to try to repair the kingdom’s reputation as a human rights abuser and has instead asserted that it wants to diversify the Saudi economy and empower the country to play a greater global role. But the Saudi element could still help the Senate inquiry to develop staying power because it gives Congress something to explore beyond a seemingly mundane sports issue.“Usually when you’re taking about sports, you don’t have to talk about 9/11 families, you don’t have to talk about the Pentagon, you don’t have to talk about Flight 93,” Watts said. “In this case, the one opposition that rallies everybody is the Saudi money.”Blumenthal suggested in the interview that he expects Saudi Arabia’s history — in the interview, he accused the kingdom of being “actively complicit in terrorist activities, including 9/11” — to be a central theme of Tuesday’s proceeding and the unfolding inquiry.The panel cannot unilaterally block the deal from advancing, but members are well aware that a crush of revelations or damaging testimony could stir outrage and, perhaps more consequentially, nudge other parts of the federal government that could do more to stop the alliance.Tygart, the antidoping chief, recalled a meeting with a senator before a 2017 hearing, with the lawmaker making plain that he understood exactly how the event could shape public debate, even if it did not yield legislation.“I know,” Tygart remembered the senator telling him, “how much good can come out of witnesses sitting under the bright lights and squirming in their seats.” More

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      Embattled PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan To Return July 17

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      Jay Monahan went on medical leave in June, days after he announced plans for the tour’s alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, who went on medical leave last month as he and his organization faced outrage over a planned alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, is expected to return to his position on July 17.Although Monahan, the commissioner since 2017, did not detail his condition in a brief memo to the tour’s board on Friday, he noted that recent years had been “grueling for us all” and that he had “experienced that toll personally in the days following the announcement of our framework agreement and encountered adverse impacts on my health.”He said that his health had “improved dramatically” since he went on leave on June 13. But Monahan’s timeline for his return means that he will miss, by six days, a Senate hearing in Washington to discuss the tentative deal with the wealth fund.When Monahan’s future was publicly uncertain, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had agreed to allow two other witnesses to represent the tour: its chief operating officer, Ron Price, and a board member, James J. Dunne III, who was involved in the negotiations that led to the agreement.According to two people familiar with the discussions, who requested anonymity to discuss the private negotiations, the tour suggested to the committee in recent days that Monahan would consider testifying if the Senate agreed to postpone the hearing. The committee declined and chose to move ahead with its plans for Tuesday.Monahan is not the only leading golf figure who will be absent on Tuesday. Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor and one of the pre-eminent forces behind the LIV Golf circuit, which fractured the PGA Tour, declined to appear at the hearing, citing scheduling conflicts. Greg Norman, LIV’s commissioner, also said he was unavailable on Tuesday.Senators have said they might question al-Rumayyan and Norman later, a possibility the subcommittee left open for Monahan after Friday evening’s announcement.“We are glad to hear that Mr. Monahan is recovered and look forward to following up with him regarding any remaining questions after Tuesday’s hearing,” said Maria McElwain, a spokeswoman for Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and the subcommittee’s chairman.”We are excited and eager to speak with Mr. Price and Mr. Dunne on Tuesday,” McElwain added. “They are both positioned to have significant information to share, and we’re looking forward to a robust and revealing discussion.”Price and another senior tour executive, Tyler Dennis, have overseen day-to-day operations for the tour since June 13, when Monahan and the board issued a short statement saying that the commissioner was “recuperating from a medical situation.” In the weeks afterward, tour officials repeatedly declined to describe Monahan’s condition or the circumstances that had led to his ceding of power at one of professional golf’s most turbulent moments.By the time Monahan stepped away, though, he had absorbed days of harsh criticism over the pact with the wealth fund, whose money his tour had previously denigrated as tainted, an about-face that he acknowledged would prompt charges of hypocrisy.The final details of the alliance have not been negotiated, but the tentative deal’s outlines call for the PGA Tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour, previously known as the European Tour, to bring their golf businesses into a new, for-profit company. Tour executives have argued that the deal, if it closes, will allow the Florida-based circuit to keep control of the sport because Monahan will be the new company’s chief executive and the tour will control the majority of board seats.But al-Rumayyan will be the new company’s chairman. Moreover, the wealth fund is expected to have extensive investment rights in the new company, promising the Saudis significant influence.Before June 6, when the deal involving the tour and the wealth fund was announced, Monahan was among the most unsparing critics of Saudi Arabia’s foray into professional golf.“The PGA Tour, an American institution, can’t compete with a foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf,” Monahan said in June 2022. “We welcome good, healthy competition. The LIV Saudi golf league is not that. It’s an irrational threat; one not concerned with the return on investment or true growth of the game.”Last month, hours after he had sat alongside al-Rumayyan for a television interview, he adopted a decidedly different tone, in part because tour leaders had effectively concluded that their battle with the wealth fund was unsustainable.“I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” Monahan said last month. “Anytime I said anything, I said it with the information that I had at that moment, and I said it based on someone that’s trying to compete for the PGA Tour and our players. I accept those criticisms. But circumstances do change.”And the deal, he insisted, would allow the tour to work with the wealth fund in “a constructive and productive way.”Criticism rained down anyway. More

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      Michelle Wie West Wants to Win the U.S. Women’s Open One More Time

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      You could see the head tilts and darting glances when people peered around Pebble Beach’s Gallery Cafe, or as visitors sat on the patio that looks toward the cypress-guarded 18th green by Stillwater Cove. They surfaced at a luncheon with Brandi Chastain and Kristi Yamaguchi, and during a climb up a flight of stairs, and a stroll through a lobby.That’s Michelle Wie West, that 6-foot fixture of collective memory and modern golf history.She did not win as much as she wanted to, and certainly not as much as many people thought she would or should have. But after close to a quarter of a century in the spotlight, she is still one of the savviest stars women’s golf has ever had, a player plenty of people outside of golf know as a star even if they do not know golf.The competitive golf part of Wie’s life will most likely be done by dusk on Sunday, when the U.S. Women’s Open is scheduled to finish at Pebble Beach. If things don’t go well, and they might not since Wie West’s husband will be her caddie for the first time and she has barely played lately, it could be over by dusk on Friday. After the Open, she has no plans to return to elite competition, though she dodges the word “retirement” in public (and confesses to sometimes using it in private).She is 33.That went fast, didn’t it?Wie West on No. 18 at Lake Merced Golf Course during the Mediheal Championship last year.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn 2000, when she was 10 and Bill Clinton was president, she played the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship. She won the event when she was 13, the same age she made an L.P.G.A. tournament cut and had a turn in third place on a major tournament’s weekend leaderboard. She played a PGA Tour event at 14, turned professional at 15, rattled off three top-five finishes in her first three majors as a pro, battled wrist trouble, won the Open at 24 and then spent years with more injuries, cuts and withdrawals than strong showings.So it was not that fast, after all. Soon, though, it will apparently be finished. Barring a victory this weekend or a surprise in the years ahead, Wie West will finish with five L.P.G.A. Tour wins, including the 2014 Open at Pinehurst, tied for 69th on the career victory list. It adds up to a far better career than most players, though short of the mighty expectations that followed Wie West from the start and flowed from a blend of internet-age youth, talent, celebrity and marketability. (By way of comparison, Inbee Park, a 34-year-old player from South Korea, has won seven majors but has long drawn a fraction of the public attention that Wie West commanded.)“What’s the right word for this?” Wie West said in an interview in a sun-splashed lounge, well out of earshot of any aides.“I feel very — confident that I had the career that I wanted to,” she continued eventually. “Obviously, I wish I could have done more as well. I think anyone and everyone thinks that.”But, she said, “the what-ifs and the regrets and the ‘I wish I could have done this better’ can drive you truly insane.”Even last year’s announcement of a transition, to use her publicly preferred term, got derailed when her husband came down with Covid-19 and Wie West’s parents stayed back to help with child care. Ready to detail the wind-down she had rolled out on Instagram the previous week, Wie West wound up nearly alone at the 2022 Open in North Carolina.Wie West during the second round of last year’s U.S. Open.Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via ReutersShe had been mulling for years whether it was time to stop playing, frustrated by injuries and, more recently, torn by the notion of her family of three having only so much time together. In 2021, vulgar comments about Wie West by Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, jolted her into a fresh sense of purpose.But there eventually came a point, she said, when she realized the game’s toll was ultimately too high, when she feared her body would be so broken down she would not even be able to play a round for pleasure with her daughter. Her clubs have been in her bag almost exclusively ever since.“It’s hard,” she said, “it’s hard to know when the right time is to walk away.”That is assuredly in part because, for an athlete in any sport, stepping back from competition means the statistics are done and that the résumé is, with few exceptions, frozen. For Wie West, retiring or transitioning or whatever you want to call it meant firing up the inevitable debate about whether she had been a squandered or overhyped talent.She hears it, of course. She also gets it.“People love to chirp and have their own feeling and whatnot, and they totally have the right to it: They have been invested in my career,” she said. “I know I haven’t won as many as I, quote-unquote, should have.”At the same time, she seems to wonder how fair it is. She earned a degree from Stanford and won a U.S. Open, and those two feats, she figures, are what she wanted to do anyway.And yet she can still run through all of the ways her career could have been different: if she had held onto a share of the lead at the 2005 Open at Cherry Hills, if her quest that year to earn a spot in the Masters had worked out, if she had made the cut at her first PGA Tour event instead of missing it by a stroke.She is entering this week’s 156-woman Open with measured expectations against a deep field.The reigning champion, Minjee Lee, has won two majors since 2021 and is not ranked in the top-five in the world. And there is Rose Zhang, the 20-year-old Stanford student who last month won her debut tournament as a professional. Wie West’s group, which will tee off at 8:28 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday, includes the three-time major winner In Gee Chun and Annika Sorenstam, who logged 10 major victories in her career and received a special exemption into this week’s field.Wie West celebrated after winning the U.S. Open in 2014.Streeter Lecka/Getty ImagesThis spring, Wie West was musing about how she needed to get her stamina up for the rigors of a major, how she needed to hone her iron and wedge play before returning to one of golf’s biggest stages, especially since it will be played this year on one of the sport’s most beloved courses.“Just have to believe in myself, just get to a point where I feel confident that I can execute the shots and make the putts,” she said. “And I’m hoping that it all comes very quickly.”She plans to remain closely connected to the sport — she recently hosted the L.P.G.A. tournament that Zhang won — but insisted that she does not think much about how she transformed perceptions of the game that she said still enchants her.Even now, she said, she will play with her husband and become persuaded that, like every other golfer who has won, lost or never actually contested a major, she has unlocked the sport’s mysteries.“You get that one feeling and it feels really good, and you’re like, ‘I think I’ve figured out the game. I’ve figured it out!” she said. “I still catch myself saying that almost every time I play, so I know there’s an itch to want to get better.”Soon enough, after all of this time, it will be happening away from the spotlight. More

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      Minjee Lee Looks to Defend Her U.S. Women’s Open Title at Pebble Beach

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      Minjee Lee has spent these past few years feeling golf’s glories and agonies more than most.She won her first major tournament at the 2021 Evian Championship, a come-from-behind playoff victory, and followed it less than a year later with a record-setting win at the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open. Then came a tie for 43rd when she tried to defend her Evian title, worries about exhaustion and a pair of frustrating finishes in the first two majors of this year.Now ranked sixth in the world after reaching No. 2 last summer, Lee, a 27-year-old Australian, will have to conquer Pebble Beach Golf Links — the renowned course on the California coast — if she is to defend her Open title. The tournament begins Thursday.In a springtime interview at T.P.C. Harding Park in San Francisco, Lee discussed her masterful iron play, the hazards of Pebble Beach, the evolution of the women’s game and why winning a major once, never mind twice, is so difficult.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.You haven’t missed a cut at a major since 2019.I didn’t even know.How much of that represents a progression of your athletic talent versus your mind-set?You’re always trying to get a little bit better each day. So for me, for my progression and not having missed a cut over that period of time, I feel like I’ve put in a lot of hours and effort into my game and improving each day. It just shows my consistency over X amount of time.How did winning the Evian Championship in 2021 shape the subsequent years?It was a bit of a relief because there was a lot of talk: “When is she going to win her first major?” I heard a lot of things, but they were never to my face. They were always in passing or social media or a lot of things here and there. So it was kind of a relief, a monkey off my back. I knew I had it in me, but it finally happened — like, to actually get a win in a major is really, really hard.You always work toward winning majors, and your goals are very specific, so for that to be my first one, it led into my next year, as well.And as you learned last year at Evian, defending a championship is hard to do.Oh, yeah. It’s really hard.Going into Pebble Beach, how do you approach trying to defend a major?The hardest thing is to do your normal thing. Usually when you’re defending, you’re pulled in a lot of different directions: media, your practice rounds, you put in a lot of work because it’s a new venue and you have to do all of your prep starting from scratch.It’s not like Evian, where I already knew the golf course and had played it for years. [This year], it will be a little bit different. The U.S. Open has always meant a lot to me and to be able to win it was a dream come true for me. I don’t know how it will feel driving in there as a defending champion.The wind will be a factor at Pebble Beach. You grew up in Australia and dealt with the wind. You live in Texas and deal with the wind. Does it feel like an advantage this year?I like playing in the wind — I like a tough test of golf. I just feel like you can really use your creativity when it’s windy. Low shots are key, but it’s not always just the low shots. Are you going to use the wind? Are you going to fight the wind? It’s just a lot of different ways that you can play in the wind. I find it more fun when it’s harder, and because it really separates who is a good ball-striker and who isn’t as good, it really separates the field. I’ve always played in wind, so it doesn’t really feel that different for me.“I just feel like you can really use your creativity when it’s windy,” said Lee, using grass to gauge the gusts at the Mizuho Americas Open last month.Elsa/Getty ImagesThere are not many better iron players on the planet. Do you find yourself still emphasizing irons when you practice and prepare, or can you afford to spend more time on other things?I never really felt like I was better in that aspect until I saw the stat. Yeah, sure, my stats were better than the men, but I never really specifically worked on my irons — like, I always worked on my technique or how I move a certain way for a certain shot. But last year, it just happened to be better than any other year, and I’m not sure what really changed. It just kind of happened. You just work on something for so long, and then at one point, it just clicks. I probably don’t work on my swing as much right now; I’m working on other parts of my game, but only because those other areas are where I’d benefit the most.You’ve said you don’t pay attention to stats, but you set the Open scoring record last year, earning the highest payout in history ($1.8 million) for women’s golf. Do you think about those kinds of superlatives?I feel like I don’t — not as much as I should. I probably should look at it and think, “Oh, you did really well,” and then compliment myself. I just do my work, and when I’m away from the golf course, I don’t think about golf.There’s a moment in the Netflix documentary series “Full Swing” when Brooks Koepka talks about how golf is a game where, when things are going well, you think you’re never going to lose it, and when it’s not going well, you think you’ll never find your way back. This year hasn’t been a glide path for you. Where are you on that continuum?I had an off-season, like I always would in that period of time, and then played Asia and didn’t have that good of results. I was like, I’m just going to take a few weeks more at home, and I missed three events and that happened to be six weeks.Time went so quickly, and I was like, I’ve spent eight years going full-throttle, I’m allowed to take that time for myself. So I did, and I feel good. I feel quite refreshed. First week was Chevron — a major coming back for the first week — and I’m slowly working back into playing rhythms.You changed caddies recently. How has it affected you on the course?I’ve actually learned a lot about myself. When you’re younger, you rely a lot on your caddie, and I think I did that for quite a long time, just because I was young and didn’t know what I wanted as much. Now I know myself a bit better and I’ve matured a lot more.It just feels like I know what I want in a caddie and all that I need from my caddie. I don’t need the reassurance; I know what I’m doing. I just need somebody who knows me well, who is going to be a good companion out on the golf course. We spend so much time with them on the golf course, it’s like if you don’t like that person, it’s just not going to work.This is the first U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach, somewhere that looms large in golf’s imagination. What’s the bigger milestone for women’s golf: that the Open is being played at Pebble Beach, or that last year’s British Open was at Muirfield, where women couldn’t even be members until 2017?I’m a little bit mixed in that aspect. I’m really happy and grateful that we were able to play at Muirfield and have access to the golf course, and being at Pebble for the first time. I know that a lot of work goes into having those championships there. It’s not easy — nothing is easy, right? — but I am a little bit bittersweet that it took this much time to get the women on these golf courses. I’m very appreciative of the tours and the U.S. Golf Association and all of our sponsors for really pushing the women’s game and the L.P.G.A. to go to all of these great venues now, and I know it’s only going to get better.But I feel like it was a long time coming.“I just need somebody who knows me well, who is going to be a good companion out on the golf course,” Lee said of her caddie Rance De Grussa, a fellow Australian who began working with her earlier this year.John Minchillo/Associated PressIn February, you said one of your goals was not to be totally exhausted by the end of 2023. We’ve seen more and more elite athletes talk about burnout, mental illness, depression and exhaustion. How much of that weighs on your mind as you’re trying to sort out when to play?I’ve always had quite a full year. I’ve played a lot of events, and that’s what I really wanted to do. I wanted to play. But now I want to play less — like, I don’t want to be as tired coming down to some really important events at the end of the year.Now my priorities are different. I don’t need to spend all of my time playing every single event, trying to keep my card as a rookie. I’m getting older, so I want to look after my body, look after my mind. That’s what’s going to help me perform my best, so I think that’s why a lot of athletes are now talking about taking care of your well-being, taking care of your mind, where you are in your life. Just to be healthy inside and out I think is really important, and if nobody talks about it, nobody will really know about it either, so you can’t get the proper help if you need it.Does having won two majors help you feel liberated that you can take the breaks and take the pauses — that there’s maybe a little less to prove?Not really. I’ve never really thought about it in that way. Obviously, I am hungry for more: I want to win the other majors, and I don’t think that will ever change. And I’ve been close to world No. 1 a couple of times but not quite got over the line. So I still have a lot to show. I have a lot of fight left in me. I still have a lot of drive.You played for the first time when you were about 10. Looking back, do you wish you had started earlier? Started later?It was a good age for me. I swam and I played golf. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I just tried a bunch of things: different sports, dance, music, everything. I was fortunate that my parents let me try everything. I just found it in golf, and I really enjoyed practicing and going and seeing my friends at the golf course. I used to hit these squishy golf balls around on the chipping green, and it was just fun. The way I got into it, I think it was the right way.Was golf your best sport?Well, I have pretty good hand-eye coordination, but I think because we were really a golfy family — my parents and my brother and my grandparents, they all loved playing golf, so we were just always around it.As a two-time Olympian, do you want to play in Paris next year?That’s pretty high on my list. I think Paris will be a pretty amazing turnout. The Olympics are probably the greatest honor you can have of representing your country, so I think that is going to be one of my bigger goals for next year.But Pebble Beach comes first. When do you start playing it in your head?I’m not really a look-up-the-golf-course-beforehand kind of girl. I’ve seen some holes on TV but nothing too much in detail.I like seeing the course and really visualizing it when I get there. I wouldn’t be able to tell if I did it on the map. I just like to internalize it when I get there.“You just work on something for so long, and then at one point, it just clicks, and that’s kind of what it did for me,” Lee said of how she hits her irons.Matt Rourke/Associated Press More

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      LIV Golf Resists Senate Request for Greg Norman’s Testimony on Saudi Deal

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      Less than two weeks before a planned hearing about a transaction that could reshape golf, lawmakers are struggling to assemble a witness list.The Capitol Hill meeting room has been booked, the senators’ calendars cleared. But less than two weeks before a Senate subcommittee wants to hold a hearing about the PGA Tour’s planned venture with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the panel’s ambitions for high-profile witnesses are encountering significant resistance.There is almost no prospect that the wealth fund’s governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, will voluntarily go before Congress, on July 11 or ever. The PGA Tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, is on medical leave. And LIV Golf, a Saudi-financed league, is balking at sending Greg Norman, who won two British Opens in the decades before he became the circuit’s commissioner and lightning rod, to speak to the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.The dispute over witnesses, only weeks into the panel’s examination of the deal, suggests that the inquiry could be turbulent. Lawmakers are especially frustrated by LIV’s offer to send Gary Davidson, its acting chief operating officer, to the hearing instead of Norman.“We have requested testimony from Greg Norman, and unless there is a reasonable explanation for his absence — which we have not yet been provided — Greg Norman is who we expect to appear,” Maria McElwain, the communications director for Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the subcommittee, said in a statement.LIV declined to comment on Friday, but a person familiar with the circuit’s thinking, who requested anonymity to discuss private negotiations with Congress, said the league believed that Davidson was more steeped in its day-to-day operations and the potential ramifications of the deal that has rocked golf since it was announced on June 6. Norman and Davidson were not involved in the secret talks that led to the deal.Under the structure envisioned in a five-page framework agreement signed behind closed doors on May 30, the business operations of the PGA Tour, LIV and the European Tour, known as the DP World Tour — such as television rights and sponsorships — would be brought into a new for-profit company. The plan calls for the PGA Tour to control a majority of the board’s seats, for Monahan to be the company’s chief executive, and for the tour to maintain authority over many professional golf tournaments.But Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund would have extensive investment rights, and al-Rumayyan is positioned to become the company’s chairman, assuring the Saudis of significant sway over men’s professional golf if the deal closes.The planned venture has drawn weeks of scorn and skepticism from Washington, where lawmakers have fumed over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, much as the tour did before it looked to go into business with the wealth fund. Some lawmakers have threatened to strip the tour of its tax-exempt status, and the Justice Department’s antitrust regulators could spend months scrutinizing the deal before deciding whether they will try to block it.And, hewing to the congressional pastime of publicly haranguing sports executives over issues such as steroids and the rights of college athletes, the Senate quickly scheduled a hearing to examine the deal, even though the most substantial details, like the valuations of assets, may not be resolved for months.In letters last week, though, Blumenthal and Ron Johnson, a senator from Wisconsin who is the senior Republican on the subcommittee, invited Norman, Monahan and al-Rumayyan to appear and be prepared to “discuss the circumstances and terms” of the agreement, as well as “the anticipated role” of the wealth fund in professional golf in the United States.LIV Golf chief operating officer Gary Davidson, right, talks with the Australian golfer Wade Ormsby at a LIV event earlier this year.Scott Taetsch/LIV Golf/LIVGO, via Associated PressThe senators, who have not subpoenaed any executives, had hoped to firm up the witness list by the middle of this week, but on Friday their panel was still bargaining with the tour, the wealth fund and LIV.The hearing, if it happens, will be among the most significant opportunities to date for golf executives to ease concerns about the planned transaction. But the proceeding, like any appearance before Congress, carries risks. A single misstep could intensify the public firestorm or, perhaps more troublingly for the deal’s supporters, encourage government officials to take an even more exacting look at the pact. (Antitrust experts, for instance, have predicted that Monahan’s assertion on June 6 that the deal will “take the competitor off of the board” will intensify the Justice Department’s scrutiny.)Norman, in particular, has a history of drawing criticism. Last year, for instance, he played down Saudi responsibility for the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, saying, “Look, we’ve all made mistakes.” In recent months, he has made relatively few public comments, and he and his representatives have declined interview requests from The New York Times.But when Blumenthal and Johnson wrote to him on June 21, they said the subcommittee “respectfully requests that you appear in-person to testify.” LIV executives said Norman would be traveling abroad at the time, and they privately objected to the commissioner being subjected to congressional inquiry without his PGA Tour counterpart enduring the same scrutiny, which seems likely given Monahan’s medical leave.Monahan’s indefinite absence has complicated the tour’s representation at the hearing. The two executives named to lead the tour on an interim basis, Tyler Dennis and Ron Price, were not involved in the deal talks.Al-Rumayyan, however, was. But his appearance on Capitol Hill was never considered probable. One of Saudi Arabia’s most influential figures, he rarely gives interviews outside of tightly controlled settings, and lawyers representing him and the Saudi government waged an aggressive fight to keep him from being deposed in golf-related litigation in the United States. (The litigation was dropped as a part of the tentative deal — one of the few binding components of the framework agreement — and al-Rumayyan never gave sworn testimony.)The wealth fund declined to comment on Friday. The tour, in a statement, said it was “cooperating with the subcommittee’s requests for information and having productive conversations with them about who will represent the PGA Tour on July 11th.”It added, “We look forward to answering their questions about the framework agreement that keeps the PGA Tour as the leader of professional golf’s future and benefits our players, our fans and our sport.”The wealth fund and the tour are deploying armies of lobbyists, lawyers and political fixers to try to smooth the deal’s path. Before going on leave to recuperate from a “medical situation” that the tour has declined to describe, Monahan wrote to lawmakers to defend the agreement. He also complained that Congress had not given the tour enough support to withstand a Saudi “attempt to take over the game of golf in the United States,” as he put it.“We were largely left on our own to fend off the attacks, ostensibly due to the United States’ complex geopolitical alliance with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Monahan wrote.It is not clear whether the Senate panel will escalate its efforts to secure testimony from Norman, or any of the other witnesses they requested, especially before the July 11 hearing. Most lawmakers are away from Washington for the Senate’s Independence Day break, and few are expected to return to Capitol Hill until the week of the hearing.The hearing’s current timing, though, could be fortuitous for golf leaders. Public attention will turn the following week to the British Open, which will be played at Royal Liverpool. Cameron Smith, who joined LIV not long after his victory last July on the Old Course at St. Andrews, will try to defend his title at golf’s last major tournament of the year. More