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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

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      How the PGA Tour and Liv Golf Merger Could Collapse

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      The tentative agreement has been the talk of golf, but there is no guarantee the pact that aims to bring the tour and LIV Golf under one umbrella will overcome every threat.Golf’s big deal — a planned partnership between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — is not how big deals are ordinarily done.There were almost no outside bankers or lawyers involved in negotiations that led to a five-page framework agreement, and only so much input from the PGA Tour board. The initial pact had few binding clauses and did not assign values to assets. The plan that would, as the PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, put it, “take the competitor off of the board” came as the tour faced a Justice Department investigation over antitrust matters.“In some ways, this looks a little more like a settlement to me than an actual M&A deal,” said Suni Sreepada, a partner in the mergers & acquisitions group at Ropes & Gray who said the lack of definitive arrangements complicated the path to closing.“The fact that they were willing to publicly announce it does mean that the parties are pretty committed to doing something,” Sreepada said. “But I guess that leaves us with a question of who holds the leverage at this point? And how does this end up getting fleshed out?”If the agreement closes, it stands to reshape golf’s economic structure profoundly, bringing the business ventures of the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and the DP World Tour, formerly the European Tour, into a new company. The wealth fund is in line to have significant influence over investments in the company, which Monahan is poised to lead as chief executive.Despite the Saudi sway over the new company’s coffers, as well as the plan for the wealth fund’s governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, to serve as the entity’s chairman, PGA Tour officials have insisted that the tour retains control over the competitions themselves. They also note that the tour, which had previously condemned wealth fund money as tainted and immoral, will control a majority of board seats.“We are confident that once all stakeholders learn more about how the PGA Tour will lead this new venture, they will understand how it benefits our players, fans and sport while protecting the American institution of golf,” the tour said this month.Those assurances have done little to curb outrage over the pact, which could still fall apart.Here are some of the obstacles the tour, whose board is meeting near Detroit on Tuesday, and the wealth fund will have to overcome during a process that could take months. If the deal is not done by Dec. 31, it could potentially collapse, allowing both sides to decide whether they want to “revert to operating their respective businesses.”The PGA Tour’s board could balk.The tour has an 11-member board that includes five players. The board’s chairman, Edward D. Herlihy, and a member, James J. Dunne III, were involved in the talks with the wealth fund, but others had little knowledge of the deal until the day it became public.The board must sign off on the agreement once the outstanding details are negotiated. Although Herlihy and Dunne are expected to vote for the pact they helped create, most other board members have been publicly silent or noncommittal.“I told myself I’m not going to be for it or against it until I know everything, and I still don’t know everything,” Webb Simpson, a board member who won the 2012 U.S. Open, said in a recent interview. And at a news conference on June 13, Patrick Cantlay, another player with a board seat, said “it seems like it’s still too early to have enough information to have a good handle on the situation.”Beyond the anticipated backing from Herlihy and Dunne, Rory McIlroy, who sits on the board, has indicated reluctant support for the deal, saying: “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?”Other directors have not responded to messages or could not be reached for comment.With many of the agreement’s details still being negotiated, the board did not vote on the deal on Tuesday.The Justice Department could try to block the deal.The Justice Department was looking at professional golf before the deal was announced, with antitrust investigators examining the tour’s closeness with other leading golf organizations and its efforts to deter players from joining LIV.The proposed partnership did not extinguish the department’s interest. In fact, it appears to have strengthened it.Although the tour and the wealth fund have refused to characterize the transaction as a merger, antitrust experts say semantics may not matter. Even if the deal is structured as more of a partnership than an acquisition, the Justice Department could seek to block it, as it successfully did with JetBlue’s alliance with American Airlines.Monahan stirred more doubts in Washington with his public observation that a leading rival would no longer be a threat. Antitrust lawyers said the department could interpret his remark as evidence that the elimination of competition is the aim of the deal, not, say, improving the sport.But Monahan also said the agreement would help create “a productive position for the game at large.” The tour is expected to focus on this in the coming months, arguing that by combining resources and repairing the rift in professional golf, the proposed venture would offer fans the best of all worlds, including more competitions between the finest players on the planet.A LIV Golf event at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington, D.C., this year.Chris Trotman/LIV Golf, via Associated PressThe end of the tension could help persuade regulators to approve the deal, reasoning that it is good for consumers.“If I were the lifetime czar of antitrust in the United States, I would ban the deal and tell them go back and compete,” said Stephen F. Ross, who teaches sports law at Penn State and worked for the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.But, he said, “the real world is that neither private litigation nor antitrust enforcers have ever been particularly good at policing competition between sporting entities to make sure that consumers’ preferences are respected.”The department could also scrutinize how the arrangement will affect professional golfers, given the Biden administration’s focus on workers. In its successful effort to block Penguin Random House’s takeover bid for Simon & Schuster, the department’s antitrust regulators cited the potential effects on author compensation.Even though professional golfers, who often earn millions of dollars in prize and sponsorship money, may appear to be a less sympathetic group of workers than others affected by corporate transactions, the department could be eager to build case law related to the labor consequences of deals.Congress wants the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to study the pact.The deal has been loudly criticized on Capitol Hill, and a Senate subcommittee has scheduled a July hearing. But a Senate hearing cannot stop the deal, and so some lawmakers have asked a Treasury Department-led panel to intervene.The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, is an interagency panel that has broad latitude to scrutinize any transaction that could result in a foreign entity controlling an American business and threatening national interests. Control is interpreted broadly, and can exist even in an investment for a minority stake.A transaction involving golf tours would not immediately seem to trigger a CFIUS review; it does not involve critical technologies and most likely does not involve much sensitive personal data about U.S. citizens. Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, said earlier this month that it was “not immediately obvious” the deal involved national security concerns.The demands for a review have not detailed specific concerns besides a generalized distaste for a partnership between an American sports titan and an arm of a government “known for chilling dissent, jailing dissidents and enacting draconian punishments,” as Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, and Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, put it.But one possible reason to scrutinize the deal involves real estate since CFIUS can review agreements involving property close to sensitive military sites. One of the PGA Tour’s biggest assets that could be controlled by the new for-profit entity is the Tournament Players Club collection of more than 30 golf courses across the United States that are owned, licensed or operated by the PGA Tour. More

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      PGA Tour Board Meets To Discuss Merger With Saudi-Backed LIV Golf

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      The 11-member board did not vote on the surprise pact, whose most significant details are still being negotiated.The PGA Tour’s board, with its members gathered in the same room for the first time since a fraction of them negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to reshape golf, signaled Tuesday that it intended to move ahead with the agreement and past an outcry that has stretched from clubhouse locker rooms to Capitol Hill.But it also made plain that closing the deal was no certainty.The board, as expected, did not vote on a deal stocked with tentative terms that call for a web of golf businesses — including the tour, the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit and the European Tour, now known as the DP World Tour — to be housed in a new company. The entity is expected to be flush with Saudi cash but, for now, under the day-to-day control of PGA Tour leaders. But executives hoped that the regular meeting of the board, which is expected to weigh the pact formally only once final terms are negotiated, would help stabilize the tour’s course during a turbulent run of internal division and global scrutiny.That period, executives and board members know, could last for months.Tour executives, the board said in a carefully worded statement Tuesday night, have “begun a new phase of negotiations to determine if the tour can reach a definitive agreement that is in the best of interests of our players, fans, sponsors, partners, and the game overall.”The board, wary of further alienating the players who make up the tour’s membership, some of whom were infuriated after being blindsided by news of the pact, said it was “committed to the safeguards in the framework agreement that ensure the PGA Tour would lead and maintain control of this potential new commercial entity.”The board’s meeting came three weeks after the surprise announcement of the deal, and one day after the tour gave a Senate subcommittee a copy of the five-page framework agreement. The tentative accord, signed in the early-morning hours of May 30 at a Four Seasons hotel in San Francisco, capped seven weeks of secret negotiations, but it was mostly notable for how few binding commitments it included — and how many consequential details remained to be sorted through.Although the tour and the wealth fund are expected to contribute their golf ventures, like LIV, into the new company, the deal’s architects signed the framework agreement so quickly that no valuations were included or, apparently, even completed in advance. The agreement does not quantify the scale of the wealth fund’s expected investment in the new company, though it offers an outline for its leadership structure and protects the Saudi fund’s investment rights.Its few binding clauses include a nondisparagement pledge covering the tour and the wealth fund (but not the players) and a truce that keeps the rival circuits from recruiting golfers from one another. If a final agreement is not in place by the end of the year, barring a mutual extension, the tour and the wealth fund can “revert” to their businesses without any financial penalty, like a breakup fee.Board approval, if it comes, does not guarantee that the deal will last. The Justice Department’s antitrust regulators are among the government officials examining the accord, and they could ultimately try to block it. The pact is also poised to draw scrutiny next month on Capitol Hill, where a Senate subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for July 11.But Tuesday’s meeting was seen as pivotal to the way forward for the tour and an 11-member board that includes five players and luminaries in business, law and finance. Only two members of the board, Edward D. Herlihy and James J. Dunne III, were involved in the negotiations that led to the deal, and it appears many board members did not know they were underway.The board meeting, held at a Detroit-area hotel, began in the early afternoon and stretched into the evening. A person familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private gathering, said it had not focused entirely on the deal; rather, the person said, the board also spent significant time on more technical matters of the sport, such as competition cuts and eligibility.The majority of the meeting focused on the framework agreement, though, with board members receiving a briefing from the tour’s bankers about how they will try to assign values to the circuit’s varied assets. Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, was absent from the meeting in Dearborn; on June 13, the tour announced that he was going on leave as he recuperated from an unspecified “medical situation.”Board members did not comment as they left the meeting, allowing the statement to stand on its own. Only one player who sits on the board, Rory McIlroy, has publicly suggested any measure of support for the deal. In recent weeks, other players have said they wanted to learn more about the accord and what it would mean for the tour.But board members have been told in recent months that the tour could not afford to maintain its duel with LIV, the league founded with billions of dollars from the Saudi wealth fund that enticed some of the game’s biggest stars with guaranteed contracts and enormous prize money. The wealth fund was also facing some pressure as it confronted setbacks in a court battle against the tour, and as LIV struggled to attract audiences and attention in the United States for reasons beyond its financial backer.If the deal collapses, though, both sides have already secured a mutual victory: the dismissal of litigation in California after the tour, the wealth fund and LIV agreed to drop their clashing cases. The dismissals were made with prejudice, meaning that they cannot be refiled, even if the rest of the pact disintegrates.For as guarded as the tour’s statement was on Tuesday night, the dismissal of the litigation was mentioned in its very first sentence. More

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      Details of PGA Tour and Liv Golf Merger Reveal What’s Left to Settle

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      The five-page agreement provoked a furor but included only a handful of binding provisions.The PGA Tour’s tentative deal with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund included only a handful of binding commitments — such as a nondisparagement agreement and a pledge to dismiss acrimonious litigation — leaving many of the most consequential details about the future of men’s professional golf to be negotiated by the end of the year.The five-page framework agreement was obtained Monday by The New York Times. The proposed deal, announced on June 6 by the tour and the wealth fund, the financial force behind the renegade LIV Golf circuit, has caused an uproar throughout the golf industry. But a review of the agreement points to the rushed nature of the secret, seven-week talks that led to the deal and the complex path that remains ahead for the new venture, a potential triumph for Saudi Arabia’s quest to gain power and influence in sports and, its critics say, to distract from its reputation as a human rights abuser.Most crucially, the tour and the wealth fund must still come to terms on the values of the assets that each will contribute to their planned partnership. Bankers and lawyers have spent recent weeks beginning the valuation process, but the framework agreement includes no substantive details of projected figures or even the size of an anticipated cash investment from the wealth fund.Instead, much of the agreement focuses on the basic structure of the new company that is to house what the accord describes as all of the “commercial businesses/rights” of the PGA Tour and the European Tour, now known as the DP World Tour.The wealth fund is expected to contribute its “golf-related investments and assets,” including the LIV circuit that split the sport, and will have the first opportunity to invest in the new company. The tentative agreement says that the PGA Tour is to maintain “at all times a controlling voting interest” in the new company, but that Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, will serve as the chairman of the new joint entity. Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner who recently went on leave because of an unspecified “medical situation,” is in line to become its chief executive.The new company, according to the agreement, could pursue “targeted mergers and acquisitions to globalize the sport” and may look to incorporate “innovations from LIV,” such as the team golf concept that the league has championed since it debuted last year.Those provisions, though, are not binding until the tour and the wealth fund strike a final agreement. Instead, the only ironclad caveats of the agreement involve seeking the dismissal of litigation, a mandate fulfilled on June 16; a ban on recruiting players to rival circuits; a deadline of Dec. 31 to sign final accords, absent a mutual extension; and confidentiality and nondisparagement clauses.The effective gag agreement appears far-reaching and prohibits the tour and the wealth fund from “any defamatory or disparaging remarks, comments or statements” about the other side and any “ultimate beneficial owners” — a phrase that could be interpreted to include the Saudi government, which the tour had previously condemned for its human rights record.“I recognize everything that I’ve said in the past and in my prior positions,” Monahan, a leading architect of the deal, said this month. “I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite. 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.”Saudi officials have denied that their investments in sports, which include efforts in soccer, Formula 1 racing and boxing, are intended to sanitize the kingdom’s reputation. Instead, they have depicted those investments as a glossy component of a sweeping effort to diversify the country’s economy under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader who is also the wealth fund’s chairman.Al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, signed the agreement on behalf of the Saudis, with no evidence of direct involvement by Greg Norman, LIV’s commissioner.Monahan and Keith Pelley, the DP World Tour’s chief executive, effectively represented the golf establishment when they signed the deal behind closed doors in San Francisco on May 30. It was sprung upon almost the entire golf industry, including most of the PGA Tour’s board, a week later.The board, which has been considering the deal that it was largely shut out of negotiating, is expected to discuss the pact’s initial terms during a meeting in Detroit on Tuesday. The 11-member board is not believed to be planning a vote yet because the final nuances of the accord may not be hammered out for months.The deal faces scrutiny well beyond the tour’s board. In Washington, Justice Department officials and congressional investigators are preparing to pore over the details of the accord, which antitrust regulators could ultimately try to block. The tour shared a copy of the agreement with a Senate subcommittee on Monday evening, just more than two weeks before a hearing on Capitol Hill that many expect to become contentious.But tour executives concluded in recent months that the new economic order that LIV’s swift rise provoked — swelling legal bills, larger prize purses, a diluted product with the world’s most marketable players competing against one another only four times a year at golf’s major tournaments — was unsustainable. They sought a détente with the Saudis and found a receptive audience in and around the wealth fund, where some officials were frustrated by a series of legal setbacks connected to LIV and uneven success in gaining traction in the crucial American sports market.The second paragraph of the framework nodded toward the turmoil, with the tour and the wealth fund saying they were interested in “ending divisions.” Some elements of the deal amounted to olive branches. In one section, for instance, the two sides agreed to “cooperate in good faith and use best efforts” to bring secure Official World Golf Ranking accreditation for LIV events.The fate of LIV, which sapped the PGA Tour of some of its star players after offering exorbitant contracts and prize purses, is not included in a binding part of the deal. Instead, the new company, if it comes to pass, is expected to “undertake a full and objective empirical data-driven evaluation of LIV and its prospects and potential.”The framework does not outline any financial penalties if the deal does not ultimately progress, but it says the tour and the wealth fund “can revert to operating their respective businesses” if the agreement collapses. More

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      Rory McIlroy Just Misses a Hollywood Ending at the U.S. Open

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      Despite briefly sharing the lead with the eventual champion, Wyndham Clark, McIlroy settled for second but vowed he would get a fifth major title.It might have been fitting if someone from Holywood won this year’s U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club. But Rory McIlroy, born in the Northern Ireland town of Holywood, is not having that kind of year.On Sunday, McIlroy was chasing his first major championship title in nine years, a drought that continues to shadow a luminous career that began with four major titles from 2011 to 2014. In April, he missed the cut at the Masters Tournament. A month later, he finished tied for seventh at the P.G.A. Championship.Then, on June 6, McIlroy, the most vociferous loyalist supporting the PGA Tour in its feud with the Saudi-back LIV Golf circuit, learned only a few hours before news broke that the two tours had shockingly formed a business partnership.McIlroy, like almost all of the PGA Tour’s players, felt blindsided.But on Sunday, a buoyant, smiling McIlroy, 34, was again enthusiastically chasing another major title, in the final round of the 123rd U.S. Open. He birdied the opening hole and for most of the next four hours seemed poised to reel in the eventual tournament winner, Wyndham Clark, the third-round co-leader with Rickie Fowler.McIlroy, however, never birdied another hole, and in the end, Clark, after some nervous closing moments, outlasted McIlroy by a stroke as both golfers shot even-par 70s. It was McIlroy’s third runner-up finish at a major and his 10th finish in the top five of a major since 2014.“I fought to the very end, and I’m getting closer,” McIlroy said Sunday of his chase for a fifth major title, adding: “I just got to keep putting myself in these positions and, you know, sooner or later it’s going to happen for me.”McIlroy said he felt a link between his performance on Sunday and his second-place finish at last year’s British Open at St. Andrews.“The last two real chances I’ve had at majors have been pretty similar performances,” he said. “Not doing a lot wrong.”McIlroy’s pursuit went down to the final strokes of the event, as Clark, playing in the final group of the day, was forced to execute a two-putt from 60 feet on the 18th green to clinch the championship.“I fought to the very end, and I’m getting closer,” McIlroy said of his chase for a fifth major championship.Michael Madrid/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConMcIlroy conceded that he was hoping for a miscue.“You don’t want to wish bad on anyone, but you’re really hoping for a three-putt,” he said. “You’re hoping to somehow get into a playoff to keep giving yourself a chance. You’re rooting for one guy, and that guy is yourself at that point. A mistake can give you a glimmer of hope.“But Wyndham was pretty much rock solid all day, and that was a great two-putt at the last.”McIlroy’s fourth round began auspiciously as he reached the green on the par-5, 585-yard first hole with his second shot and two-putted for an opening birdie that briefly moved him into a tie for the tournament lead.But he struggled to capitalize on that early momentum even as he registered par after par — a streak of 12 in all. He showed nerve in sinking several tense four-foot par putts but failed to get his approach shots close enough for easier birdie attempts.McIlroy was hanging on but could not convert any putt longer than seven feet throughout the middle of his round. On the eighth green, he pulled an eight-foot birdie putt well left of the hole, a missed opportunity that McIlroy specifically mentioned in his post-round news conference.At the par-3 ninth hole, McIlroy’s towering approach shot with an iron came to rest 14 feet from the flag. As he walked onto the green, fans in two packed grandstands implored him to make a fairly straightforward putt that would have put him in a tie with Clark, but again McIlroy could not seize the moment.McIlroy’s run of consecutive pars ended at the par-5 14th hole after his tee shot bounded into the rough left of the fairway. He was forced to lay up short of the green with a second shot, although he then faced a short wedge shot to the green.McIlroy later said he was choosing between two clubs for the shot, but he felt a wind gust just before he began his swing, and that impeded the shot’s momentum.“I had the right club, but I might have just had to wait an extra 15 or 20 seconds to let that little gust settle,” he said.McIlroy caught a break on No. 14 when his ball embedded in a grassy bank.Richard Heathcote/Getty ImagesMcIlroy’s golf ball landed about a foot short of perfect and failed to clear a large bunker protecting the front of the 14th green. The ball embedded in a grassy bank between the sand and the green.He was granted free relief in the grass to the right of the bunker, but his dicey, downhill chip to the green rolled 26 feet from the hole. That led to bogey, and McIlroy fell to nine under par, which extended Clark’s lead to two strokes.McIlroy closed with four routine pars.He was asked at the conclusion of his Sunday news conference if he was growing weary of answering questions about the nine-year wait for a fifth major championship victory. He conceded that it was exhausting but added: “At the same time, when I do finally win this next major, it’s going to be really, really sweet. I would go through 100 Sundays like this to get my hands on another major championship.” More

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      Wyndham Clark Captures the U.S. Open

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      Clark, with only one PGA Tour victory to his name, seemed to come out of nowhere to dominate the field at Los Angeles Country Club.Two Tuesdays ago, as the golf world erupted into chaos and fury, Wyndham Clark did not rush to write a shock-and-awe Twitter post. He did not fume in a meeting with the PGA Tour commissioner about the surprise pact with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. He did not moralize or criticize or, really, do much of anything other than play golf.His chosen course that Tuesday was the Los Angeles Country Club, which would host the U.S. Open, its debut major tournament, nine days later. A member of the club was Clark’s caddie, a friend turned tutor who knew some of the secrets of a North Course that only a handful of the game’s biggest stars had ever seen: how a putt might break here, how the speed might vary there, how firm the fairways might become.The payoff came Sunday evening, when Clark, 29, outlasted Rory McIlroy at the U.S. Open by one stroke and lurched into the hallowed fraternity of major championship winners.”I’ve dreamed about this moment for so long.”Soak it all in, @Wyndham_Clark! #USOpen pic.twitter.com/0LO1hgyocV— U.S. Open (USGA) (@usopengolf) June 19, 2023
      Until Sunday, Clark’s best finish in a major had been a tie for 75th at a P.G.A. Championship. His two previous Open appearances were even worse, ending with missed cuts.But his mother, his “always there supporter” who died nearly a decade ago, used to offer an ambitious admonition: “Play big.”This tour season, he has, emerging as a perilous foe and suggesting that he, despite his major record, could soon be a power on the game’s greatest stages. With his irons adjusted a few degrees and his swing monitored and finessed not by a platoon of advisers but only by Clark and his caddie, he arrived in Los Angeles having won the Wells Fargo Championship and having earned four other top-10 finishes since early February.That Wells Fargo win, in May at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, N.C., had come against a foreboding list of rivals whose surnames — McIlroy and Spieth, Scott and Day — were bywords for golfing brilliance even before Clark finished college.The victory at Quail Hollow, a past and future P.G.A. Championship site, emboldened Clark. He had, he reasoned, beaten major champions on a major-tournament-caliber course.“I just feel like I can compete with the best players in the world,” he said last week, “and I think of myself as one of them.”Now he most certainly is.“There’s been so many times I’ve visualized being here in front of you guys and winning this championship, and I just feel like it was my time,” Clark said during the trophy presentation near the stately clubhouse.By the time Clark waited on Sunday afternoon in the first tee box with Rickie Fowler, the other half of the Open’s final pairing and a prince of golf’s close-but-not-quite club, he had been adhering to his mother’s creed all week. He had fired a six-under-par 64 on Thursday, better than many major champions in the 156-man field, and followed it with a 67 and a 69.It was good enough for a share of the lead heading into the final round, with Fowler and Clark both at 10 under. McIlroy, a four-time major victor mired in a nine-year drought, trailed by a shot at sunrise on Sunday. Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player, was three back from Clark and Fowler.Clark after sinking his final putt on No. 18.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockClark required only four strokes to assume the lead. The first hole, with its wide fairway and a view toward the Beverly Hilton, had been one of his favored spots all through the tournament, ever since he started his Open with a putt of nearly 33 feet for eagle. He did not achieve the same feat on Sunday, but his birdie was enough to take lone control of first place after a McIlroy birdie had allowed him to snatch briefly a share of the lead.Clark’s time on top ended swiftly, when he bogeyed the second hole for the second time this week. Fowler also slipped with a bogey, the beginning of a flameout for a player who on Thursday shot a 62, a single-round record for an Open.Clark made a birdie on the fourth hole, the first of five par-3 tests on the course along Wilshire Boulevard, to take him to 11 under. McIlroy was at 10 under, and Fowler at 9. Scheffler, steady but not spectacular, had not changed his score in either direction.The sixth hole had unnerved players for days, a par-4 concoction with a blind tee shot and demanding terrain. Clark had managed a birdie there on Thursday, before making par on Friday and Saturday.On Sunday afternoon, seeking a slightly larger gap between himself and everyone else, Clark stood at the tee and sent his shot soaring 266 yards. It came to rest in grass that was thick but, by the standards of some other locales on the course, not prohibitive. He cocked his head to the left, peered toward the pin about 54 feet away, looked down and swung. The ball crashed onto the green, rolling past the cup but setting up a short putt for birdie and a two-stroke lead.It took Clark two attempts to get his ball out of a tangle of foliage on No. 8.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockIt was on the eighth hole where Clark’s advantage could have fully unraveled, when his second shot landed in green-vicinity foliage that looked more receptive to a scythe than a club. Clark’s first escape attempt went all of eight inches, according to tournament officials — a sum that seemed about eight inches too high. He escaped by lifting a shot over the green into the right rough and ultimately saved bogey, his lead shaved to a stroke.Clark and McIlroy both played the front nine to 34, one under. For both, though, the back nine had typically been more bruising. Their positions on the leaderboard were static until the 14th hole, when McIlroy’s wedge shot sent his ball thumping into the side of a bunker. Granted free relief, he dropped into the fescue near the hole but could do no better than departing the green with a bogey.Clark’s experience was far more comfortable, his second shot leaving him less than two dozen feet from the par-5 hole’s pin, setting up an eagle opportunity. Clark’s putt went just to the right of the cup, but a subsequent birdie attempt dropped, building his margin to three strokes.It was brief. Clark missed a par chance on the 15th hole when his putt did not sufficiently break, and then his tee shot on No. 16 wound up in a bunker. Despite dazzling wedge play with his third shot, a short putt soon enough lipped out for Clark’s second consecutive bogey.Down by a stroke, McIlroy, who struggled on the greens for much of the day, barely missed a birdie putt on the 17th hole, his familiar anguish reappearing.“I’m right there,” he would say in a television interview afterward. “It’s such fine margins at this level, and I just got to keep putting myself in these positions and, you know, sooner or later it’s going to happen for me.”Finishing at nine under, McIlroy recorded a par on the final hole, where Clark had made par or birdie during each of the first three rounds. If Clark could stick to that history, the galleries knew, he would be a major champion — just as he concluded last month he was all but ready to be.Par, to stay at 10 under, to finish at 10 under. His eyes glistened.“Your mom was with you,” Fowler soon told him. “She’d be very proud.”He had played big.Clark said his mother, who died 10 years ago, always told him to “play big.”Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images More

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      It’s Sunday at the U.S. Open, and the Leaders Are Tied

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      Los Angeles Country Club has sometimes seemed forgiving. But the final round could pose a formidable test for the contenders.The LatestThe U.S. Open, one of golf’s most fearsome tests, is headed into its final round at Los Angeles Country Club. Although the course has sometimes seemed more forgiving than past Open venues, any championship round has the potential to become excruciating — especially when the final round starts with a tie atop the leaderboard.Rickie Fowler, who shot an even-par 70 in the third round, left the course Saturday evening knotted with Wyndham Clark, who birdied the 18th hole to go to one under on the day. Both men are at 10 under for the week, leaving them with one-stroke advantages over Rory McIlroy.Golf is expecting its third major tournament champion of 2023, with Jon Rahm, who won the Masters Tournament, and Brooks Koepka, who won the P.G.A. Championship, far down the leaderboard.Wyndham Clark ended the third round of the U.S. Open tied for the lead.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockWhy It Matters: Someone will earn a(nother) place in sports history by sundown.Of the players in the top five, only McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler have won majors.McIlroy’s last major victory was in 2014, and a win on Sunday would be his fifth major title. Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player, won the Masters in 2022; he rocketed up the Los Angeles leaderboard when he holed out from 196 yards for an eagle on No. 17. He ended Saturday at seven under, putting him three strokes off the lead.But Fowler is a perpetually popular talent with a long history of close-but-not-quite major finishes. On Thursday, he, along with Xander Schauffele, shot a 62, an Open record. Fowler elicited gasps on Saturday when he sank a 69-foot birdie putt on the 13th hole. He provoked groans later when, at No. 18, he missed a par putt of less than five feet.Clark is playing his third U.S. Open, and this is the first time he has made the cut. His best showing in a major before this one? A tie for 75th at the 2021 P.G.A. Championship.Harris English, who trails Fowler and Clark by four strokes, came close in that year’s U.S. Open, finishing third.Rickie Fowler missed a putt for par of less than five feet on the 18th hole on Saturday.George Walker Iv/Associated PressBackground: The U.S. Open is taking place during a period of turmoil in golf.With the major tournaments offering some of the biggest prizes in golf and the surest paths to greatness — Koepka noted this past week that a golfer’s tally of major victories is what his career is “judged on” — players ordinarily like to focus on golf, and golf alone.That has not been so easy at this Open. On June 6, the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the force behind the LIV Golf circuit that divided the sport, announced a plan to form a partnership. The deal, if it closes, could end golf’s most bruising clash in generations, but it has already led to widespread uncertainty about the future of the game.In public and in private, players have spent much of the past two weeks mulling what that future might look like.For what it’s worth, the PGA Tour and LIV are knotted at one major victory each this season: Rahm plays for the tour, while Koepka is a headliner for LIV.What’s Next: 18 holes for everyone — and, perhaps, the first playoff since 2008.NBC will air final-round coverage beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern time. The tournament’s presence on the West Coast means the Open will not be settled until well into the evening in much of the United States, with the championship expected to be decided by about 10 p.m. Eastern time.All bets are off, though, if there is a tie at the top after everyone has finished 72 holes.The Open has not reached a playoff since 2008, when Tiger Woods won at Torrey Pines. The format has since changed: If the leaders are tied after regulation play, there will be a two-hole aggregate playoff, contested on the first and 18th holes. If the leaders are still knotted after those two holes, a sudden-death competition will commence. The idea is to have a winner on Sunday evening, not Monday, as has happened in past Opens. More

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      Few Birdies, but One Double Bogey, on the Shortest-Ever U.S. Open Hole

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      The 15th hole at Los Angeles Country Club on Saturday was only 81 yards long, but the field struggled mightily.At 81 yards, the par-3 15th hole at Los Angeles Country Club on Saturday was the shortest hole in the history of the U.S. Open.Only a golfer can fully grasp the mental torment that such a bite-size challenge poses, but here is one way to understand the situation: No one likes a hole where it’s easier to throw the ball onto the green than it is to hit it there with a golf club.Add to the third-round setting a severely sloped 15th green; three massive, menacing bunkers surrounding the target area; and knotty, knee-high grass all around. And — oh, yes — the approach shot is uphill, and there is a gusty wind at the players’ backs.Step right up, who wants to go first? How about you, Brooks Koepka, five-time major champion?Didn’t Koepka suggest earlier this week that L.A. Country Club might be too easy? He said he worried about a “birdiefest.” Maybe he had a hole less than 100 yards in mind. (The old record for shortest U.S. Open hole was 92 yards, at the 2010 event.)Koepka was three under par for his Saturday round and firmly in the top 10 when he stepped to the 15th. But his tee shot had none of the touch required and soared to the back of the green. His first putt was way short. His next putt was way long. The third putt just plain missed the hole. Koepka tapped in for a double bogey and is now extremely unlikely to win a sixth major at this year’s Open.Brooks Koepka needed four putts to finish the 15th hole on Saturday.Warren Little/Getty ImagesWho’s next? Don’t be shy.Next came Tom Kim, the hottest golfer in the early wave of players on Saturday, to the 15th tee. Kim made seven birdies as he tamed 5,637 yards of L.A.C.C. terrain in his first 14 holes. He had just made par at the fearsome 627-yard, par-5 14th hole.So, really, how hard could an 81-yard hole be?Trying to play with finesse, Kim deftly flipped a tidy little wedge. One problem: It was about two yards short of the green and trundled backward in a yawning bunker. His blast from the sand bounded to the back of the green, 22 feet from the hole. Two putts and one bogey later, Kim walked away shaking his head as he glared over his shoulder at the 15th green.After his round, Kim summed up the diabolical, tiny test presented on Saturday by the historic 15th hole.“If you’re long, you’re dead,” he said. “If you’re short, you’re dead. You don’t want to bail out left because then you have a 40-footer down the hill. A bogey from 80 yards isn’t great stats-wise, but, you know, a double bogey is definitely in play there.”Kim finished the day at three under par for the tournament and is still in contention.Bryson DeChambeau, golf’s mad scientist, looked very determined during his time on the 15th tee. He did not even flinch when he was almost beaned by an errant shot from the 14th fairway by a fellow competitor, Keith Mitchell. DeChambeau pitched a wedge to 10 feet and made par.“I’m the happiest man alive that I hit that green,” he said. “Super happy.”“If you’re long, you’re dead,” Tom Kim said of the 15th hole. “If you’re short, you’re dead.”Matt York/Associated PressDeChambeau said he chose a 60-degree wedge and teed his golf ball extra high to create more spin and loft.“Very difficult, demanding shot,” he added. “Par is a great score.”Even if it’s only 81 yards?“I’d rather it be longer tomorrow,” said DeChambeau, who finished at three under par.The 15th hole did not play as one of the most difficult holes on the golf course on Saturday. But it seems a surprise that the scoring average on the hole was 2.92 with 11 birdies, four bogeys and one conspicuous double bogey in the field of 65.Forty-nine of the best golfers in the world made par, and no better, on an 81-yard hole. Then again, as is often said, golf is a game of opposites. For example, you must hit down on the ball to make it go up. So in that way, the 15th hole in the third round of the 2023 national golf championship was, perhaps, perfect.Shane Lowry, the 2019 British Open champion, may have said it best.“It was different, and that’s interesting,” he said with a smile. “Different is OK. But I had a plan. The plan was par.” More