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      Brooks Koepka Wins P.G.A. Championship, Boosting LIV Golf

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      PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Six weeks ago on Sunday, Brooks Koepka did not sleep. He had brooding to do and demons to chase. After everything — the ghastly knee injury, the agony of unfulfilled ambition, the taunts and the splenetic rift in professional golf that he helped personify — he had rallied to a Masters Tournament lead, and then he had fizzled. Collapsed, really.He ultimately vowed, he recalled over the weekend at Oak Hill Country Club, never to “think the way I thought going into the final round.” On Sunday evening, Koepka found his vindication: a two-stroke win at the P.G.A. Championship, earning him his first major tournament trophy since 2019. It was Koepka’s fifth career major victory, tying him with figures like Seve Ballesteros and Byron Nelson.“I think this one is probably the most meaningful of them all with everything that’s gone on, all the crazy stuff over the last few years,” said Koepka, who said that he had received about 600 text messages by the time he held a news conference. “But it feels good to be back and to get No. 5.”The victory made him the first member of LIV Golf, the year-old breakaway league bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, to win a major title since joining the circuit. And while Koepka’s triumph at Oak Hill may do little to stanch some of the criticisms of LIV — its ties to a repressive government, its disputed intentions, its gleeful instigation of a financial arms race in an ancient sport — it definitively ended the wrangling over whether men who play a smattering of 54-hole tournaments can prevail on golf’s grandest, 72-hole stages.“I definitely think it helps LIV,” Koepka said, “but I’m more interested in my own self right now, to be honest with you.”Fair enough, for he silenced the notion, one that seemed a little more off-the-mark after the Masters, that his contending days were done by carding a three-under-par 67 on Sunday, taking him to nine under for the tournament. But this is a 33-year-old player whose results in 2022’s major season looked like this: missed cut, tie for 55th, solo 55th, missed cut. It had been easy to forget that in 2021, the sequence went like this: missed cut, tie for second, tie for fourth, tie for sixth.Koepka rebounded after shooting a two-over-par 72 during Thursday’s first round.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBy the end of last year, he had a mounting hunch that his recovery was nearly done and that he could, finally, be relevant again. Around January, he has said, he was certain of it.“He is back to being healthy,” said Cameron Smith, who won the British Open last summer and then joined LIV later in the year. “I think that brings a little bit of internal confidence as well being out there and just being able to do your stuff.”It did not look that way as recently as Thursday, when the prospect that Koepka would outlast a swarm of stars seemed closer to impossible than even improbable. He had opened this tournament with a two-over-par 72 and, by his own account, was out of sorts and struggling to strike the ball as he wished. He could not remember, he said, the last time he had hit so poorly.But he was not that far behind because the tournament, the first major played at Oak Hill since a sweeping effort to restore some of the daunting tests that characterize Donald J. Ross-designed courses, emerged as one of the most fearsome P.G.A. Championships in recent decades, often evoking the rigors of the 2008 competition at Oakland Hills in Michigan. Of the 156 players who competed this past week, only 11 finished below par — a departure from 2013, when 21 players finished in the red at the P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill.The stinginess came even with the course, with its perilous rough and humbling bunkers, being more accommodating on Sunday than it had been earlier. Smith, Cam Davis, Kurt Kitayama and Sepp Straka all shot 65s on Sunday, running them high up the leaderboard. Patrick Cantlay, who made one of the tournament’s scarce eagles, signed for a 66. Michael Block, whose day job is being the head pro at Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club southeast of Los Angeles, had a hole in one at No. 15, the first P.G.A. Championship ace by a club professional since 1996.But much of the focus on Sunday was on Koepka; Viktor Hovland, the budding Norwegian talent; and Scottie Scheffler, the No. 2 player in the Official World Golf Ranking. Koepka, his standing shriveled because of his lucrative ties to LIV, whose tournaments are not accredited in the ranking system, entered Sunday at No. 44. (The P.G.A. of America, which organized this tournament, is distinct from the PGA Tour, LIV’s rival.)Viktor Hovland came close tying to Koepka during the fourth round but ultimately matched Scottie Scheffler, right, for second place.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesDesiree Rios/The New York TimesKoepka stepped into the first tee box with a one-stroke lead and doubled his margin in short order when he made a birdie at the second hole. He had played the hole to par the first three days, always reaching the green in two shots but leaving himself with long putts. On Sunday, with the pin at the front-right of the green, he needed less than 5 feet.His birdie putt at the third hole required even less, after his longest tee shot of the tournament at the hole known as Vista, moving his advantage to three stokes.The sixth hole, a threat to so many players throughout the tournament, loomed. Koepka had survived the hole, a par-4 challenge that the field finished in an average of 4.52 strokes, well enough on Thursday, Friday and Saturday: par in each of the first three rounds. On Sunday, though, his tee shot rocketed rightward into a thick grass in the so-called native area. He took a drop and then, about 191 yards from the hole, struck it onto the green and eventually escaped with a bogey. Although Koepka followed with another bogey, Hovland also stumbled at No. 7.At the turn, Koepka led Hovland by a lone stroke. Scheffler, a steady-voiced sensation since he won last year’s Masters, and Bryson DeChambeau, the 2020 U.S. Open winner, were three off the lead.Koepka answered with a tantalizing streak: birdie, bogey, birdie. Hovland had a chance for birdie at the 12th hole, but his tap from nearly 15 feet edged just left of the cup. With six holes to play, Koepka’s advantage was back to two strokes. Two holes later, it was down to one.Koepka received rousing applause as he walked the steep incline to the 18th green, where he finished the tournament with a par.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesBut at nearly every major, there comes a moment when one man’s victory appears inevitable. It may not be mathematically buttoned-up yet, but almost everyone knows that the tournament is finished before it actually ends.On Sunday, the scene for that moment was the 16th hole. It had not been the most hellish at Oak Hill, not by far. Hovland will remember it, though.His ball in a bunker after his tee shot, he wielded his 9-iron. With less than 175 yards to the hole, he swung and blasted his ball — not onto the green, but into the bunker’s lip. His fourth shot reached the green. A bogey putt missed, leaving him with a double bogey. Koepka, in the twilight of his pursuit for his third P.G.A. Championship victory, made a birdie to lay claim to a four-stroke lead.“It’s not easy going toe-to-toe with a guy like that,” Hovland, who finished in the top seven for his third consecutive major, said of his duel with Koepka. “He is not going to give you anything, and I didn’t really feel like I gave him anything either until 16.”Scheffler made a birdie putt at the 18th green soon after to narrow Koepka’s path. Koepka himself narrowed it further with a bogey at No. 17.He arrived at the 18th hole, which was playing 497 yards on Sunday, with two shots to spare. He tee shot soared and then thumped into the fairway, stopping at 318 yards. The towering grandstands waited in the distance, filled with spectators, as the fairway-lined galleries were, looking to see whether, after everything, Koepka was indeed back.His next swing lifted the ball onto the green. The applause was rising, seemingly with every step in his march up the steep incline, the kind of incline that would have felt Everest-like to Koepka in the recent past. He knelt — there had been times, he said, when he could not so much as bend his knee — and then approached the ball. He steadied himself and tapped the ball forward.It stopped, according to tournament officials, about 3 inches short.He flashed a tight smile, as if to say that, of course, there would be one last hiccup.He tried again. The ball fell into the cup. He pumped his fist and then embraced his caddie for nearly nine seconds.Indeed, after everything, Koepka was back.Desiree Rios/The New York Times More

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      Michael Block Gets a Hole In One At PGA Championship

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      Block, a club pro from Arroyo Trabuco, shot par in each of the first three rounds and on Sunday was paired with Rory McIlroy. He thought it couldn’t get better. Then he got a hole in one.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — On Saturday evening, Michael Block, the 46-year-old Everyman golf pro from a public course in California, learned that he would continue his enchanting run at this year’s P.G.A. Championship by playing the final round with Rory McIlroy, the four-time major champion. Block rolled his eyes at the news and spun around.“Are you serious?” he asked.He began to backpedal, as if reeling.Eventually, he walked away, smiling but muttering: “Oh, boy.”Block added: “That should be fun.”And, oh, boy, was it ever.In retrospect, perhaps McIlroy, 34, one of his generation’s greatest golfers, should have been the one grinning and eagerly awaiting the chance to play with Block, who finished the tournament tied for 15th but was treated like a visiting rock star throughout the weekend. And he lived up to the billing.Block proved what’s possible in a game like golf, where the competition is more about the player against the course than it is golfer against golfer.For this one tournament, Block, who had never even made the cut at a major championship, was able to keep up with the best in the game for 72 tense, demanding holes. He proved what’s possible, which may be the central reason people watch sports. And he won $288,333.33.At the end of their pairing Sunday, McIlroy grabbed Block for a long bear hug on the final green. They may be 12 years apart in age and separated by hundreds of millions of dollars in golf earnings, but it was not evident in their heartfelt embrace.In more than four hours of golf on Sunday afternoon, it was just one of the highlights of their pairing — and there were many.It was good golf, and more important, it was good for golf.But no part will likely be more memorable than Block’s shot at the 151-yard, par-3 15th hole on Sunday.First, by way of background, the P.G.A. Championship is the rare major tournament that reserves 20 spots in the field for members of the P.G.A. of America, the organization that conducts the tournament and represents the 28,000 certified club pros in the United States.Block, whose full-time job is to teach golf lessons and serve the recreational players at the Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in Mission Viejo, Calif., southeast of Los Angeles, qualified for one of the 20 spots. It was a shock when he was even par through two rounds and in a tie for 10th, which made him only the second club pro to be in the top 10 after two rounds in the tournament in the last 40 years.Block had never made the cut at a major before the P.G.A.It turns out Block, who spent his time at this year’s P.G.A. Championship signing virtually every autograph request from fans and entertaining reporters with winsome, self-deprecating answers to countless questions, was just getting started.He shot a third even par 70 on Saturday to stay relatively close to the top of the leaderboard.Just before 2 p.m. on Sunday afternoon at Oak Hill Country Club, a Block party erupted alongside the first tee. It was entirely unlike any other celebration at the event since fans began lining the holes of the nearly century-old course for practice rounds early last week.A packed grandstand and a crowd 15 deep that enveloped the arena-like first tee box erupted in rambunctious, clamorous cheering as Block appeared. The greeting for McIlroy was muted by comparison.Chants of “Let’s go, Block,” followed him as he walked up the first fairway, where, apparently free of any jitters, he rifled his opening shot.Block bogeyed the opening hole but he seemed unbothered by it, chatting amiably with McIlroy for two or three minutes as the two sauntered up the fairway. As Block reached the green, a fan shouted: “You’re one of us, Michael; we’re with you!”When he made the second of six steadying pars, Block walked through a narrow corridor of fans. One yelled: “Working man coming through!”Block continued to play with composure, even as some of the crowd’s enthusiasm had begun to wane. But at the 15th hole, Block again showed his sense of drama by knocking his tee shot into the hole on the fly.The ovation for Block’s hole in one could be heard roughly 600 yards away near the clubhouse.By the 18th hole, Block had hooked his second shot well left of the green and nearly 100 feet from the flagstick. His recovery was fitting: a pitch to 7 feet. His par putt slowly crept to the edge of the hole, paused, and then fell out of view.Making par on the closing hole also ensured that Block will be invited to the 2024 P.G.A. Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky.Interviewed minutes later, Block said: “I’m living a dream. It’s not going to get any better than this.”Dedicating his performance to the club pros nationwide, he added, with tears in his eyes: “This is for you.”“I’m living a dream. It’s not going to get any better than this,” Block said after his round. More

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      Golfers Battered By Rain At The PGA Championship

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      Driving rain on Saturday at the P.G.A. Championship forced some golfers to buck the usual country club sartorial norms in order to keep the water out of their eyes.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — For a while during the third round of the P.G.A. Championship on Saturday, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Scottie Scheffler, Justin Rose, Adam Scott and three or four other golfers were roaming the august grounds of the Oak Hill Country Club with their caps on backward.“It makes me feel cool,” Rose said. “Young. Hip.”The attire at the 105th playing of the P.G.A. Championship on Saturday did not mark a revolution toward relaxed golf mores. Although, it is also true that the back-turned caps — not the norm in professional golf — did not draw penalties, hoots or disqualifications either, so maybe some welcomed informality is brewing in golf after all.The world’s best golfers were experimenting with the best use of their headgear because of a relentless, driving rainstorm that pounded the Oak Hill Country Club throughout the day.Bryson DeChambeau kept a towel to dry his hands hanging from his umbrella.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesSo, Rose, 42, was not trying to remake his image. That was him making a joke. He wore his cap backward because it had become soaked with rain and when he put his head down to hit the golf ball, beads of water drip, drip, dripped past his eyes and onto his ball.“It actually put me off a little bit,” Rose said. “And at the top of my backswing, I had a couple of droplets fall down and it distracted me. I thought, this is annoying me, so let’s flip it.”McIlroy offered the same explanation, although he and Rose both conceded that they had not worn their hat backward at a major golf championship before.It is a known remedy on sloppy, rainy days, one seen regularly during bad weather at municipal golf courses, but the look was a little jarring when exhibited by the world’s best golfers.And in case you were wondering, a spokeswoman for the P.G.A. of America, which conducts the P.G.A. Championship, confirmed that there is a player dress code, but apparently, wearing your cap backward does not violate the code because no golfer was penalized or pulled off the course.Spectators dressed for the elements to take in the rain-soaked third round.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesIn fact, Rose, Scheffler, McIlroy and Justin Suh, who was another backward hat rebel, were each in the top 10 entering Sunday’s final round, so maybe they knew something that most of the other golfers did not.The soaked hats brigade was the most obvious example of the many adjustments that all the golfers in the field had to make because of Saturday’s rainstorm.The rough weather also highlighted the role of the relationship between players and their caddies. Nothing is more complex than the umbrella handoff between players and caddies that happens thousands of times — almost always in the same sequence — during a rainy round. It is either comical or the epitome of efficient, unspoken coordination.Usually in the fairway, in full view of the gallery of fans, it goes like this:The player holds an umbrella over his head and over his bag while the caddie marches around in the pouring rain trying to figure out the distance of the player’s next shot to the green. When the caddie returns, the player hands the umbrella to him and selects a club from the bag. The caddie dries the club’s grip with a towel hanging from the interior spokes of the umbrella. When the player walks toward his ball in the fairway, the caddie holds the umbrella over the player’s head — but not his own head. This protection of the player is offered until just seconds before he begins his swing at the ball. That’s when the caddie steps to the side. At that moment, the caddie makes sure he’s holding the umbrella over the player’s golf bag, because keeping the bag dry is more important than keeping the caddie dry.Once the ball is struck, the player hands his club to the caddie and the caddie hands over the umbrella. The player heads toward his ball, leaving the caddie to walk in the rain behind him, unprotected.Brooks Koepka, right, and his caddie perform the intricate umbrella exchange. Desiree Rios/The New York TimesOr as Jon Rahm, the world’s top ranked golfer, said on Saturday: “I can just take the umbrella and go. He sacrifices.”But Rahm appreciates his caddie, Adam Hayes, and knows what he endures.“The bottom of the bag today had about two inches of water in it,” he said. “And his clothes were soaked through. He must be carrying about 35 pounds of water on him right now. His job is extra important on a rainy day.”Stephan Jaeger, whose golf bag contained seven towels and other gear to get through a nearly five-hour round in the rain, said he thought his bag weighed 70 pounds on Saturday. The entire experience — the ongoing umbrella exchange, wiping the rain off the bill of his cap, trying to determine how many yards the wet grass would impede a shot — had left Jaeger, who was tied for 10th, exhausted.“It’s a lot of effort,” he said minutes after walking off the golf course. “I think I’m going to feel it once I sit down and calm down. I think the adrenaline will wear off a little bit, and I’m going to be pretty tired. It’s a lot of thinking, a lot to consider.”Jaeger was asked if he ever practiced in the rain between tournaments to get used to the experience.Jaeger answered immediately: “No.” More

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      Brooks Koepka Surges to the Lead at P.G.A. Championship

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      After his second consecutive four-under-par 66, the LIV golfer Koepka will be in the final pairing on Sunday at Oak Hill Country Club.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Four years ago, less than a week before he won his second consecutive P.G.A. Championship, Brooks Koepka allowed the world inside his swaggering mind.“One hundred fifty-six in the field, so you figure at least 80 of them I’m just going to beat,” he said at Bethpage in 2019. “You figure about half of them won’t play well from there, so you’re down to about maybe 35,” he added. “And then from 35, some of them just — pressure is going to get to them. It only leaves you with a few more, and you’ve just got to beat those guys.”Keep in contention long enough, he reasoned, and “good things are going to happen.”He returned to the mix last month at the Masters Tournament, where he surrendered his lead to Jon Rahm during the final round. And now he is in the mix this weekend at the P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, where he fired a field-best four-under-par 66 on a rain-soaked Saturday, giving him a one-stroke lead over Corey Conners and Viktor Hovland with a round to play. He had also scored a tournament-leading 66 on Friday, after a 72 on Thursday.All of that is rumbling forth from a man with a wrenching medical history, a man who last year was trying (and failing) to shatter car windows at Augusta National Golf Club after a missed Masters cut, a man who just on Thursday played a round that he said was “the worst I’ve hit it in a really long time.” He finished that day tied for 38th, a day after he declared the try-and-beat-me algorithm he detailed in 2019 still worked just fine.Maybe he was right, though.Sunday, of course, will have pitfalls. With its often firm and narrow fairways and a rough whose verdant hue makes it appear more appealing than it actually is, Oak Hill has been a devilish test since the first tee shot on Thursday. After two rounds, only nine players were below par. After three, that figure had shriveled to seven.Conners held a lead that crawled as high as two strokes for much of Saturday, helped along by a front nine that passed without a bogey and made the possibility of his first major championship victory all the more real. Born in Ontario, not all that far from Oak Hill, he has been a favorite of the galleries, energized by an April victory at the Texas Open and confident in his putting, a welcome status for a player with a reputation for expert ball striking. But a double-bogey on the 16th hole sent him tumbling out of the top spot.And Hovland again lurked at and around the top of the leaderboard throughout Saturday. He has been there before: Since the start of last year’s British Open, he has been in the top-10 at the end of every major tournament round. His afternoon darkened quickly, with bogeys on two of his first five holes, before a spree of three birdies left him poised to take the lead on the 14th hole. A sand wedge from about 75 yards brought him just inside the green’s edge, but he missed a birdie putt, settling for par. He missed another birdie try at No. 16.Viktor Hovland on the 18th green waiting to putt. He lurked at and around the top of the leaderboard throughout Saturday.Six pairings ahead, Hovland’s playing partner in last year’s final round at St. Andrews, Rory McIlroy, rediscovered some of the form that eluded him at the Masters and beyond. (Neither Hovland nor McIlroy won that Open, which Cameron Smith left with the claret jug.) McIlroy, often drenched, shot a 69 for the second consecutive day, taking him to one under and putting his ambition to win his first major since 2014 not fully out of reach.“I probably hit it a little better off the tee today than I did the first couple of days, but I think this tournament and especially in these conditions and on this golf course, the nonphysical parts of the game, I think, are way more important this week than the physical parts of the game,” McIlroy said Saturday. “And I think I’ve done those well, and that’s the reason that I’m in a decent position.”Koepka has not gone as long as McIlroy without a major victory, though he has been more battered with injuries these last few years. He began to gain ground early on Saturday, with birdies on the fourth and fifth holes. At No. 5, christened Little Poison, his 179-yard tee shot landed neatly on the green, setting up a putt for birdie. Unlike plenty of other past major champions, including McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau, on Saturday, he avoided a bogey at No. 6, a havoc-inducing par-4 that has been playing closer to a 5.A second shot at No. 13 landed in the rough, leaving Koepka 96 yards from the hole. His next stroke put him on the green, setting up a birdie putt from roughly 18 and a half feet. That putt, though, seemed puny at the 17th hole, when Koepka rolled one in from about 47 feet.One of the central questions entering the tournament at Oak Hill was whether Koepka would much resemble the player who punished almost the entire field at Augusta. Playing in the LIV Golf league afterward, he had assembled a middling performance in Australia, a third-place finish in Singapore and a sixth-place outing last weekend in Oklahoma.Before that tournament near Tulsa, he had mused over how he enjoyed the rigors of the majors: “the discipline, the mental grind that comes with it all, the focus.” In the hours after his letdown at Augusta, he said this past week, he did not sleep, that swaggering mind suddenly left looking for answers. The answers took shape within days.He said on Saturday that he had learned that he should “never think the way I thought going into the final round.”Koepka on the fourth fairway. A victory on Sunday would give him his fifth major tournament championship.“I won’t do it again the rest of my career,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that you can’t go play bad — you can play good, you’ll play bad, but I’ll never have that mind-set or that won’t ever be the reason.”A victory on Sunday would give him his fifth major tournament championship, and his first since that heady week at Bethpage in 2019.Others are not so well positioned. Rahm, the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking, shot two over on Saturday to bring his tournament score to six over. Justin Thomas, the winner of last year’s P.G.A. Championship, and Phil Mickelson, who has won the event twice, were five over on Saturday, moving their scores to 10 over.“This golf course, with how difficult it is, it all starts by putting the ball in the fairway,” Rahm said. “It’s not an easy task. It’s very, very difficult. If you can do that, then you can maybe give yourself some chances and it all starts with that. A little bit of it is trying to keep the club head dry and manage it but again, there’s an element — there’s only so much you can control — so a bit of an element of luck.”With the wet conditions forecast to clear, players expected the tees to be moved back for Sunday’s final round. The P.G.A. of America, the three-time major winner Padraig Harrington noted, is deeply skilled at setups.“If they want us to go out there and shoot a good score, being 68, they’ll set it up that way,” he said. “They could if they want set it up for a low one for sure, but that wouldn’t suit the leader. The leaders always want a tough challenge on Sunday so they can play safe and the chasers get caught out.”But the universe of chasers is a small one. Again, its members are pursuing Koepka.The field will chase Koepka in the final round on Sunday. More

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      An Eye on the Sky Fine-Tunes the Golf Tournament Below

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      Few professional sports scrutinize weather forecasts like golf. The P.G.A. Championship, played in meteorologically challenging western New York, has been a test.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Well before daybreak on Thursday, Stewart Williams joined an urgent discussion in a small second-floor room at Oak Hill Country Club, near the nation’s northern border. The night had brought cool temperatures, clear skies and gentle winds — and that was a problem.Frost was thickening on the golf course and, less than two hours before the P.G.A. Championship’s scheduled start, the tournament’s top official needed to know when it would melt. For the moment, one of the world’s most prestigious golf tournaments would be shaped not by the athletic genius of a Rahm or a Koepka or a McIlroy, but by the instincts and data of a meteorologist from High Point, N.C., who barely plays the game.By midmorning, with competition underway at last, Williams was thinking about the next hazard: a front that threatened to drench the course during Saturday’s third round.“Nobody,” he mused in the sunlight, “was focused on the rain until the frost moved on.”But there are few sports that focus on the weather like golf, and few that rely as much on meteorologists who travel to venues to assemble pinpoint forecasts. Local television stations and weather apps may offer forecasts for vast regions; specialists like Williams, who has spent the better part of three decades around golf courses, are building outlooks for areas of just a few square miles.Lee Kyoung-hoon, left, and Kim Si-woo bundled up against temperatures in the 30s during a practice round at Oak Hill Country Club near Rochester, N.Y., on Wednesday.At a popular event like the P.G.A. Championship, his predictions may not affect the tournament as much as the rule book, but they will influence course agronomy and pin placements, television broadcast preparations and emergency planning. A 350-acre property with relatively few shelters, organizers often note, takes much longer to evacuate than most places.“When you see a red line that spans about 400 miles north to south, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that it’s coming,” said Sellers Shy, the lead golf producer for CBS, which will air weekend rounds and keeps a weather map in its bank of production monitors. “But their technology and their expertise literally gets it down to how far away it is, as well as when it will arrive and when the horn will blow to within five minutes, probably.”Shy uses the forecasts to plan for interruptions in play — there is still airtime to fill, whether or not someone is trying to escape Oak Hill’s rough — but Kerry Haigh, P.G.A. of America’s chief championships officer and the man who so desperately needed to know the timing of the frost melt, relies on them for course setup, shifting his thinking about tee and hole locations to accommodate conditions over a 72-hole tournament.“You almost can’t do without them in running any spectator championship, or really any golf event,” said Haigh, whose desk at Oak Hill is essentially a putt away from Williams’s, where the forecaster toggled his laptop screen among maps, models and charts.Outside, next to a wading pool, a battery-powered tower Williams had erected was aloft, detecting electrical charges that could give just a bit more warning before lightning, the greatest concern at a sprawling golf tournament, strikes. An anemometer spun at the top.A map showing temperatures around Rochester.Williams uses an anemometer to monitor wind.Golf executives have yet to find a convenient locale with a guarantee of perpetually sublime conditions, and tournament histories are thick with disruptions that some experts believe will become more common as the climate changes. Last year’s Players Championship concluded a day late because of miserable weather in Florida, much like this year’s Pebble Beach Pro-Am in California. In Augusta, Ga., in April, the Masters Tournament dodged its first Monday finish since 1983 — but it had to squeeze the end of the third round and the entire fourth round into Sunday. And the 2018 P.G.A. Championship had Friday play upended when electrical storms pounded the St. Louis area. The next year, six people were injured after lightning strikes at a tournament in Atlanta, where fast-developing thunderstorms are a summertime trademark.Oak Hill Country Club, in a suburb of Rochester, is no place for an entirely predictable forecast, especially in May, when the region’s weather patterns are in transition. The nearby Great Lakes add to the puzzle since they can inject moisture and unusual winds. Williams covered the 2013 P.G.A. Championship at the club, an experience that was only so valuable this time around since that tournament unfolded in August.For this year’s event, he began closely studying the region’s weather tendencies about a month ago, noting which forecasting models seemed more accurate than others in the area. He also examined historical trends.“You’re always trying to stay in tune with how do the data sources behave at the site you’re at, so you can understand tendencies and bias that helps alter how you forecast,” said Renny Vandewege, a vice president at DTN, the weather company that employs Williams and works with the PGA Tour, the L.P.G.A. and the P.G.A. of America. (It is not always a private sector endeavor; Britain’s national meteorological service, which is under contract with the R&A, sends forecasters to the British Open.)The influx of data, Williams and Vandewege said, helps, especially with technology that has rapidly improved in recent decades and models that now yield projections every hour. The human element, they insist, matters, perhaps more than ever in an era of easily accessible weather data.Patrons on the 18th green at the 2023 Masters. Rain forced tournament organizers to squeeze the end of the third round and the entire fourth round into Sunday. “For us as meteorologists, I look at this model, and then maybe I look at a different one — it may have this further east, having everything arrive faster,” Williams said as he sat next to Vandewege and weighed the approaching storm system. “That’s when you start using your instincts.”Tournaments vary in the number of official forecasts they issue on a daily basis, but players and caddies pore over them once they hit inboxes and are posted at the first and 10th tees. Some routinely approach Williams seeking even more specific details for the days ahead, and the course superintendent is always looking for projected evapotranspiration rates, or how much moisture leaves the grass and soil. Davis Love III, Williams said, also liked to ask what to expect for his fishing trips.“You’re not going to not look at information that they’re giving you,” said Collin Morikawa, a two-time major champion, who figured nearly every player also had two or three weather apps close at hand.“We look at everything,” he said. “I think you have to take everything into account.”Others, like Haigh, try to avoid a torrent of forecasts. Whatever Williams predicts, they say, is what will principally guide their thinking.“They are the professionals — that’s what they do week in and week out, and they’re very good at it,” Haigh said. “They have better and more high-tech equipment than I certainly have on any apps.”The frost melt forecast was right on time.Williams checks on a battery-powered tower that detects electrical charges before lightning, the greatest concern at a golf tournament, strikes. More

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      Scheffler, Hovland and Conners Share the Lead at P.G.A. Championship

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      Jordan Spieth, who needs a victory at Oak Hill to complete the career Grand Slam, and Justin Thomas, who won last year’s tournament, just made the cut at five over.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Justin Rose, the golfer you remember but maybe have not thought all that much about lately in major tournaments, had hit two fairways all day. He had birdied as often as he had bogeyed.And when he walked off the course on Friday, his tournament score at one under par, he was positioned to contend at the P.G.A. Championship this weekend. He had figured, he said, that four under could win the tournament at an Oak Hill Country Club where the fairways seem to be awfully hard to find.“There are chances,” said Rose, the 2013 U.S. Open winner who only in February ended a four-year drought of PGA Tour victories. “If you do drive the ball in play, there’s a few fun pins. Those are the moments in your round you have to pick up three, four birdies and then ride some of the tougher holes and tough breaks that you’re going to get out there.”So it went during the second round at Oak Hill, which had been hardly prone to compromise on Thursday and stayed fearsome on Friday. By nightfall, only nine men in the 156-player field were under par; the 2008 P.G.A. Championship was the last with fewer than 10 players below par after two rounds.Corey Conners, Viktor Hovland and Scottie Scheffler shared the lead at five under, while Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Suh trailed by two strokes and were tied for fourth.The par-70 course has never yielded a major champion who was not in the top three after the opening two rounds.“It’s nice to be back to have a chance, but at the same time, we’ve got a lot of golf left,” Hovland said. “We’re only halfway, and a lot of things can happen.”The cut, the top 70 golfers plus ties, claimed the rising stars Tom Kim and Sungjae Im and the reigning U.S. Open winner Matt Fitzpatrick. Jordan Spieth, who needs a P.G.A. Championship victory to complete the career Grand Slam, and Justin Thomas, who won last year’s tournament, just made the cut at five over, along with Phil Mickelson and Zach Johnson, the captain of this year’s American Ryder Cup team.Rose, left, on his way to the fifth green, where he would make par.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesThrough his first two rounds in suburban Rochester, Rose was never in much danger of joining them. But it has been an up-and-down decade since his Open victory at Merion. There were two runner-up finishes at Augusta National Golf Club, but never one of the green jackets that Masters Tournament champions don. He finished the 2018 British Open at Carnoustie two strokes behind Francesco Molinari, who missed this week’s cut. There were a few top 10 showings at P.G.A. Championships, a third-place performance at a U.S. Open and the sustained aggravation of going winless for so long on tour.A renewal of confidence came at Pebble Beach, the site of that third-place Open finish, in February, when he finally found a victory.“Just the fact of knowing I can do it again is important,” said Rose, who is seeking to become the first British player to win a P.G.A. Championship in 104 years.So far at Oak Hill, he has found his iron play pleasing and his putting encouraging, but his game still in need of some tightening. A dose of hard-won realism probably did not hurt, either.“When I did catch a bad lie in the rough, took my medicine and pitched out and tried to avoid the big number,” he said. “I felt like making a bogey or two around here is no big deal.”He was probably right, since even the leaderboard’s highest reaches were speckled with green, bogey-signaling squares on Friday. Dustin Johnson, who shot a 67 in the opening round, raced downward on Friday, when he stumbled to a 74. Less than a week after a victory in an LIV Golf tournament in Oklahoma, Johnson had four bogeys and a double bogey, his frustrations eased only by a pair of birdies.Dustin Johnson, who shot 74 on Friday and is one over for the tournament, putts on the 10th green.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesMin Woo Lee, on the other hand, used a day of exceptional putting to make five birdies on Friday’s front nine to reach even par. Brooks Koepka played the first half of Friday’s round to par but had five birdies on the back nine to move to two under, a four-stroke swing from Thursday. Patrick Cantlay, the highest-ranked player in the world (No. 4) without a major tournament victory in his career, gained three strokes to stand at one over.“If you hit great shots all day, you can play a good round, and if you just get a little off all day, you can play a round like I did yesterday where I shot four over par,” Cantlay said on Friday. “It’s just the line is that small. You’d better be on the right side of it.”Michael Block, the head pro at Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club, southeast of Los Angeles, was just above Cantlay on the leaderboard, at even par, a score more than sufficient for him to make the P.G.A. Championship cut for the first time.“People out there, they understand: They’ve hit that ball out into the bushes on the right side and they don’t know what’s happening, but the lucky thing about me is I figured it out pretty quick where I was going wrong,” Block, who is appearing in his fifth P.G.A. Championship, said. “Club pros, I always heard, figure it out within a couple shots. Tour pros figure it out within one shot, and I was lucky enough to figure it out within one shot this time.”Michael Block, a club pro, shot consecutive rounds of 70 and was even par for the tournament,Desiree Rios/The New York TimesOak Hill has narrow fairways — No. 18’s is as skinny as 20 yards — and surging winds made them even trickier to stick on Friday than they had been on Thursday, when Rory McIlroy, the No. 3 player in the Official World Golf Ranking, landed in only two. On Friday, shots that rocketed off the tee and appeared promising frequently tumbled into a rough almost inevitably described as penal.“I had a couple back-to-back drives on 16 and 17 where I thought it was dead in the middle, landed in the perfect spot, and just the fairways are so firm, it just rolled right in the rough,” said Sepp Straka, whose 71 on Friday brought him even for the tournament. “There’s not much stopping the ball out there right now other than the rough, and when you get in the rough, it’s really tough to score.”Weather conditions are expected to worsen Saturday, when rain and wind could batter the course.“I think that’s going to throw off the comfort level again,” Rose said. “This is just going to be four days of kind of getting the most out of each day.” More

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      Bryson DeChambeau Rediscovers His Groove at the P.G.A. Championship

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      It’s only one round, but DeChambeau, the once hard-swinging golfer who has struggled of late, shot a four-under-par 66 at Oak Hill Country Club.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Bryson DeChambeau walked onto his final green in the first round of the 2023 P.G.A. Championship on Thursday and the modest gallery awaiting him remained hushed. DeChambeau was leading the event and on his way to a sterling 18-hole score, his best at an American major championship in three years. And yet, the roughly 200 silent fans near the green stared at him as they would an exhibit in a museum.This is the place DeChambeau has come to inhabit in golf. Even at the conclusion of a sparkling performance, fans were curious but nonetheless wary about awarding him too much affection.Three years ago, he was feted and cheered as the game’s next revolutionary, one who would inspire a new generation to swing as hard as possible on every shot. It was the way to his record-setting 2020 U.S. Open victory. He promoted an intense workout regimen and a radical diet. His following was young and raucous.Then came a long series of uninspiring results, a defection from the PGA Tour to LIV Golf and more ineffective play that made him a relative afterthought. Once ranked fourth in the world, DeChambeau began Thursday ranked 214th.But the DeChambeau who attacked the demanding East Course at Oak Hill Country Club in the first round was wholly different, for a day at least. He was still powerful off the tee, often out-driving his playing companions Jason Day and Keegan Bradley by 40 yards. Stepping onto his last green, he was leading the tournament on a day when most players were floundering and cursing under their breath.In pursuit of long-distance drives, DeChambeau bulked up, once eating about 5,000 calories per day before abandoning that strategy.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFacing a 50-foot uphill birdie putt, DeChambeau knocked his golf ball to within a few inches of the hole. The fans watching finally relented and applauded politely.One spectator who appeared to be in his 50s — not the usual demographic for a Bryson die-hard — shouted, “Come on, Bryson! Come on buddy!”With a four-under-par 66, DeChambeau was second by the time play was suspended because of darkness with many players, including the leader Eric Cole, not having finished their rounds. He left the grounds smiling and with a hop in his step that seemed more than a reflection of the roughly 35 pounds he has shed from his once bulky frame.He stopped to sign a child’s golf ball, fist bumped a handful of fans and jogged off to the scoring tent and then lengthy meetings with reporters and television interviewers.All the while, DeChambeau grinned, even as he said repeatedly: “It’s been a tough last four or five years.”It is a quizzical statement for a golfer who since 2018 has had a runaway victory at the U.S. Open, six wins on the PGA Tour and 31 top-10 finishes. In that stretch, he earned more than $23 million on the PGA Tour.But DeChambeau would explain his view of what has transpired since 2018.For starters, he had been consuming about 5,000 calories per day and “eating lots of stuff that inflames your body.” He is now eating about 2,900 calories per day.He also had a hand injury, which he said has healed.“Obviously having the hand injury was no fun and then learning to play golf again with a new hand,” DeChambeau said.DeChambeau was once viewed as a potential revolutionary in the game by fans.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThere were dark days as his slump and ailments continued.“The emotions have definitely fluctuated pretty high and pretty low — thinking I have something and it fails and going back and forth,” he said. “It’s humbling.”He continued: “I will say that there have been times where it’s like, man, I don’t know whether this is worth all of it.”DeChambeau was notorious for hitting balls on practice ranges at PGA Tour events well past sunset, swatting away under lights that illuminated only him. He now seems ambivalent about putting in those long hours.“You see me out there on the range,” he said. “That’s something I don’t want to do. I don’t want to be out there all night.”But DeChambeau feels like he’s now discovered something, or in his words Thursday: “Trending in the right direction.”Asked if he was closer to the end of his journey to find, or regain, his swing, he answered: “The end of it, for sure. I want to be just stable now. I’m tired of changing, of trying different things.”But what of the predictions of him maybe being able to blast 400-yard drives? DeChambeau shook his head.“Yeah, I could I hit it a little further,” he said. “Could I try and get a little stronger? Sure. But I’m not going to go full force. It was a fun experiment, but I definitely want to play some good golf now.”“Golf is a weird animal,” DeChambeau said on Thursday. “But I feel like I’m trending in the right direction.”Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnd, as he said, he is still plenty long enough.One good round at Oak Hill does not reverse many months of ineffectual play, but what next for DeChambeau?“Golf is a weird animal,” he replied. “But I feel like I’m trending in the right direction. Of course, playing like I did today makes it easier to feel that way.”DeChambeau was still smiling. He smiled easily and often two and three years ago, too.“Maybe it could all change tomorrow; it’s golf,” he said. “But I don’t think it will.” More

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      Ferocious Oak Hill Daunts P.G.A. Championship Field, With More to Come

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      Birdies were at a premium for many of the 156 golfers vying for the Wanamaker Trophy at Oak Hill Country Club during the first round of the major tournament on Thursday.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Scottie Scheffler had, at least in the moment, a share of the P.G.A. Championship lead when he offered a foreboding prediction Thursday afternoon: Oak Hill Country Club, already playing to the point of menace in the first round, would only become more terrorizing.The winds are expected to bluster. Rain is coming. And, for good measure, the East Course has been recently restored to bring back the diabolical, century-old wizardry of the architect Donald J. Ross.“It’s just one of those places where you hit one shot maybe barely offline, and sometimes can you hit a good shot and end up in a place where it’s pretty penalizing,” said Scheffler, the 2022 Masters Tournament winner, who nevertheless had his first bogey-free round in a major championship Thursday. “There’s lots of tough holes out there.”The rough is showing itself to be ferociously retributive, the fairways so firm that balls are only so often staying in them — even after the frost that delayed Thursday’s start by nearly two hours had softened the turf. Rory McIlroy, the four-time major champion, hit two fairways all day as he dueled with crosswinds off the tees.But there was no parade of aggrieved players publicly fuming over the setup just outside Rochester, N.Y. Instead, as the tight leaderboard took shape before play was suspended because of darkness, a brand of begrudging, knowing admiration took hold, even as the likelihood of a runaway winner seemed distant.Sahith Theegala of the U.S. slammed his putter after missing a shot on the 18th hole.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesKeegan Bradley bogeyed on No. 7 but finished at two under par.Doug Mills/The New York Times“Very difficult golf course,” said Bryson DeChambeau, whose four-under-par 66 put him in second place, one shot behind the solo leader Eric Cole, who did not complete his round on Thursday night. “As I was looking at it throughout the week, I’m like, man, I don’t know how shooting under par is even possible out here on some of the golf holes.”“It’s playing tough,” said Kurt Kitayama, who was at even par. “I don’t think anyone’s really comfortable.”“It stacks up with some of the toughest major championship venues that I have ever played,” said Corey Conners, who has had three top-10 finishes at the Masters, after his three-under-par round.The sterling performance by DeChambeau, who has routinely sputtered since his 2020 U.S. Open victory in New York at Winged Foot, often seen as similar to the recharged Oak Hill, came after an early bogey on the 12th hole. (With a 156-man field, tournament organizers opted for a two-tee start. Because of the frost delay, the last group’s tee time was pushed back to 4:32 p.m., less than four hours before sunset.)He moved to under par for the first time on his seventh hole — No. 16 — and finished his front nine at one under. Three birdies on his back nine, including one at No. 6, the hole that the course restorer Andrew Green has judged as Oak Hill’s most threatening, brought him to four under. Afterward, having become “so used to hitting it everywhere,” he reveled in a day of straight drives that, he conceded, could be little more than a memory by Friday evening.“You always think you have it one day and then it just leaves the next,” DeChambeau said. “Just got to be careful.”Bryson DeChambeau overtook Scheffler for the lead but stood one shot behind Eric Cole once play was suspended due to darkness.Doug Mills/The New York TimesScheffler, only a week removed from a round near Dallas in which he made birdie or eagle on five of his first six holes, found something approximating a groove on the par-5 No. 4. His tee shot rocketed wayward and landed miserably near a tree. He ultimately saved par anyway.“We got a wind switch and had a really good up-and-down to keep the round going,” said Scheffler, who ended the day tied for third with Conners and Dustin Johnson, another Masters winner. “You would hate to bogey a par-5, especially when there’s only two of them around this place. That was good momentum.”Cole, 34, charged up the leaderboard late in the day, when three consecutive birdies brought his score to five under. He had played in one other major in his career, the 2021 U.S. Open, where he missed the cut.“When I did have an opportunity, I kind of felt like I happened to read it right and hit a good putt, and they went in today, so that was good,” Cole said Thursday night.The first round, with 11 groups scheduled to resume play Friday morning, was more boggling for others.There was Kazuki Higa, a Japanese golfer who missed the cut at the two other majors of his career, opening his day with birdies on four of his first five holes, only to end it with four consecutive bogeys or double bogeys. Jon Rahm, the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking and the winner of last month’s Masters Tournament, later finished at six over, the worst single-round showing at a P.G.A. Championship by a world No. 1 since 1987. And Brooks Koepka, who dueled with Rahm in the final round at the Masters but found himself with a two-over-par 72 on Thursday, said the first round “was the worst I’ve hit it in a long time.”Jordan Spieth, who withdrew from a tournament last week because of a wrist injury, played Thursday and signed for three over, tying him with the past major champions Shane Lowry and Gary Woodland. McIlroy, who has lately struggled and missed the Masters cut, ended his day at one over. But his outing included an uphill putt from nearly 37 feet to save par at No. 2, delivering the kind of jolt that he suggested could perhaps keep him a contender.“Depending on what happens over the next three days and what I go on to do, you know, I may look back at that shot as being the sort of turning point of the week,” he said.Corey Conners of Canada on the 18th hole.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesRory McIlroy after a chip shot on No. 2.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesThe rigors of an event like this week’s helped shape Green’s thinking when he began work on the course, which hosted P.G.A. Championships in 2003 and 2013, as well as a Ryder Cup and three U.S. Opens.“Knowing that the golf course has a wonderful major championship legacy, and knowing that was something the club wanted to continue to do, we had to blend the Donald Ross design elements with modern championship golf,” Green said in an interview this year.The greens took on unorthodox shapes again, bunkers assumed greater brutality and more so-called chocolate drops — the turf-shrouded mounds that were a Ross signature — appeared.“You play really well and hit fairways and greens, you can make some putts, you can shoot a few under par,” said Viktor Hovland, who finished at two under on Thursday. “But if you’re a little bit off, the rough is just so penal. If you are short or you make a couple bogeys, you want to attack the pin, and you hit it more in a bad spot and it’s just a never-ending cycle.”The cut is scheduled for Friday evening, daylight permitting, with the top 70 and ties advancing to the weekend. Then the rain will start. More