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      With the PGA Championship’s Move to Spring, a Club Scrambled to Get Ready

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      The event, long played in the summer, is being held near Rochester, N.Y., known for its harsh winters. The Oak Hill Country Club had to start early to prepare.Chilly raindrops were falling early this May when Jeff Corcoran walked Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Pittsford, N.Y., near Rochester. Corcoran, Oak Hill’s manager of golf courses and grounds for about the last 20 years, was cautiously confident in its lustrous condition.An unusually warm Western New York winter — only 50 inches of snow fell in the Rochester area instead of what is usually around 100 — was fortuitous for Oak Hill. The course preparations were ahead of schedule to host the 105th P.G.A. Championship, which runs from Thursday to Sunday.Once called “Glory’s Last Shot,” the championship, held in August, went from afterthought, as the fourth and final major of the year, to the second spot when golf moved the tournament to May in 2019.The move was prompted after golf returned to the Olympics in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, creating a conflict with the P.G.A. Championship. That forced the P.G.A. of America to move the tournament to July. Officials didn’t want to have to adjust the schedule every four years for the Olympics, so they decided on a permanent date in May.There were other advantages for the sport, too. By moving the P.G.A. Championship to May, the FedEx Cup Playoffs could end in August to avoid competing against the juggernaut of the N.F.L.The P.G.A. Championship’s move didn’t seem like much of a gamble when the other host sites were in the South. But this year’s northern venue — its signature oak trees have not quite bloomed in full — calls attention to the calendar switch. The extreme preparations Oak Hill and the P.G.A. of America, which oversees the event, took to mitigate the area’s notoriously harsh winters and late springs offer a master class in course management.Whether the weather cooperates is out of their control.Justin Thomas on the eighth tee during practice on Monday at Oak Hill Country Club.Andy Lyons/Getty Images“Mother Nature rules all,” Corcoran said. “She’s undefeated. If she decides there’s going to be five inches of snow, there will be five inches of snow. Or she could decide it’s going to be 70.”This will be the earliest of any of the 13 major men’s golf events held at Oak Hill, including three previous P.G.A. Championships. The club was picked to host the 2023 event eight years ago and learned of the impending May move in 2017. They found a way to make the date work.Golf officials still agree that despite the weather worries, moving to second place in the season has improved the event’s visibility coming after the most-watched golf tournament in the world, the Masters. It also eliminated what had been a two-month gap from the Masters to the United States Open.“It gave a nice progression to have a major event every month,” said Kerry Haigh, chief championships officer of the P.G.A. of America.Consider that playing in the beach days of August prompted officials to invent catchy marketing slogans to make “a problem seem like an opportunity,” Seth Waugh, the chief executive of the P.G.A. of America, said in an interview.“I think we have a better audience,” he said. “I think we have a better story to tell. And I think we’re more front and center.”He can thank the behind-the-scenes work for that. For the major championships, golf organizers usually erect infrastructure at local clubs — stands and corporate tents — three months in advance. In Pittsford, a suburb about eight miles southeast of Rochester, however, the ground is usually frozen in February.According to Bryan Karns, the championship director for the 2023 P.G.A. at Oak Hill, the crews put beams into the ground by November, building the floors and steel walls of the tents six feet high to withstand the worst snowfall.The course closed to members in October. By then, Corcoran had directed the necessary agronomy practices, including aerification, treating the greens with a sand mixture and putting down chemical applications for snowmold.Memories of previously chilly May tournaments at Oak Hill contribute to the anxiety. The Senior P.G.A. Championships there in 2008 and 2019 — held a few days later in May — were marked by rain and gusty winds, which made the thick rough even more snarling. In 2008, there were frost delays in the practice rounds and sleet in the first round, sending some of the seniors packing. Jay Haas won with 7-over-par; there were just a total of 12 rounds of under-par golf that week.“It was definitely a cold week; the weather was challenging, and the scores sort of reflected it,” Haigh said.A lot has changed at Oak Hill since then. Immediately after the Senior P.G.A. Championship in 2019, the course underwent a redesign by the architect Andrew Green. Corcoran called it a “sympathetic restoration” to the original 1926 Donald Ross design.Green removed hundreds of overhanging oak trees, making more shots available for golfers to play from the rough, and improving the sightlines for spectators. Now the club’s giant American flag on the right side of the 13th green will be visible from most of the front nine.Green redesigned three holes that didn’t seem to fit the Ross mold. He removed one altogether — the par-3 sixth that was the scene of four holes in one in the second round of the 1989 U.S. Open. That’s now a par 4, combined with the former fifth hole. Green built a new par-3 fifth. By restoring the greens to their original size, Oak Hill has been able to increase and add hole locations, giving professionals a new golf course.“Our aim is that it’s tough and challenging and fair,” Haigh said. “It puts a premium on driving and hitting the fairway.”Those fairways will be sparkling, even if the trees lining them might not be as lush. “I’m not in control of that,” Corcoran said. “But they don’t play the major championship from the tops of trees, do they?” More

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      PGA Championship: Why Doesn’t Oak Hill Produce Bigger Champions?

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      Golf clubs often gain fame when top players win there. That hasn’t happened much lately at this club, this year’s P.G.A. Championship host. The reason is complicated.The Oak Hill Country Club in northwestern New York, the site of the P.G.A. Championship that begins on Thursday, has hosted a dozen major or national championships, including United States Opens, previous P.G.A. Championships, and a Ryder Cup.It’s a classic course that was designed by Donald Ross, a revered Golden Age architect, and recently restored by Andrew Green, a top architect whose work has revived other championship venues, including Congressional Country Club, the site of last year’s KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship.On paper, Oak Hill looks great. But it’s dogged by a somewhat academic question in golf: Why hasn’t it produced better champions in recent years? The players who have won on the course are not a who’s who of hall-of-fame players.Shaun Micheel won the P.G.A. Championship there in 2003, for his only PGA Tour victory. Jason Dufner, who set the course record in winning the P.G.A. there in 2013, has won five PGA Tour events, but has a reputation for being ultra relaxed during play. The term “Dufnering” was coined to describe his demeanor, during both tournaments and the off-season.The course, in Pittsford, N.Y., near Rochester, has also hosted two Senior P.G.A. Championships, won in 2008 by the journeyman pro Jay Haas and in 2019 by Ken Tanigawa, a former amateur who qualified for the Champions Tour the year before after turning 50.So what gives?It’s complicated.The fourth hole on the course at the Oak Hill Country Club. Like many championship venues, the club added more trees in the 1960s and ’70s, believing that would create a tougher course.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesThe United States hosts three of golf’s major championships, with two of them rotating from course to course every year. (The Masters Tournament is always held at Augusta National Golf Club.) By comparison, only the British Open, the fourth major, rotates around Britain.But the United States Golf Association has laid claim to a series of classic, stout tests of golf to host the U.S. Open. In doing so, it has created a de facto rota of courses, including Winged Foot Golf Club in New York, Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina and Pebble Beach Golf Links in California, along with a mix of other prewar courses, including the Country Club in Massachusetts and Merion Golf Club in Pennsylvania. The governing body has embraced a schedule where some venues are locked in decades in advance, under the guise that where you win your U.S. Open championship matters to players as much as the win itself does.“The U.S.G.A. has said you have to be 100-plus years old to host a U.S. Open, and they’re going to the finest golf courses in the world, and it’s a short rota,” said Ran Morrissett, a founder of Golf Club Atlas, which analyzes course architecture. “Who’s to argue the governing body is making a mistake going to the finest courses in the world?”But the U.S.G.A laying claim to great courses decades in advance — Merion, for instance, is already set to host the 2030 and the 2050 U.S. Opens — has created a division of sorts: A club is either a venue where the U.S.G.A. hosts the U.S. Open, or it’s a P.G.A. of America site, playing host to such events as the men’s and women’s P.G.A. Championships, and, sometimes, the Ryder Cup competition.Has the P.G.A. been left with weaker venues? Some golf historians say that it has, while others argue that the picture is more complicated than that, given that older courses are being revamped, and challenging new courses are being built all the time.“It’s almost impossible for the P.G.A. Championship to compete,” said Connor T. Lewis, chief executive of the Society of Golf Historians. “Oakmont is a U.S.G.A. anchor site now. They’ve had the U.S. Open nine times.”While Oakmont had hosted the P.G.A. Championship three times, he added, now that the course has become a U.S.G.A. anchor, hosting the P.G.A. Championship is “off the table.”Still, he’s optimistic that the changes made to this year’s P.G.A. Championship venue are going to present golfers with different challenges from the last time, when the P.G.A. was played at a very different Oak Hill. “This year we’re going to see Oak Hill at its very best,” he said. “It’s going to be way more a Donald Ross course.”Like many great championship venues, Oak Hill added nonoriginal features in the 1960s and 1970s under the belief that more trees equated to a tougher course. It worked for a while, but as those trees grew, they narrowed the fairways and limited the shotmaking options.Other courses also followed this path, including Baltusrol Golf Club in New Jersey, which will host the P.G.A. Championship in 2029. After Phil Mickelson, who has now won a total of six majors, won the P.G.A. there in 2005, Jimmy Walker won the 2016 P.G.A. there, his only major. The course has since been restored by Gil Hanse to open it up and bring back the original A.W. Tillinghast design.Like other classic courses that have recently hosted major championships, Oak Hill underwent an extensive restoration that undid many modern changes. The restoration of the course by Green, who removed trees and opened up the course, could broaden the number of possible champions this year.Morrissett, the Golf Club Atlas founder, said the changes could make a difference in the quality of the champion this time. “Given that Oak Hill is more a classic Donald Ross course now, it could produce a Ben Hogan-like winner,” he said, referring to one of the best players of the 1950s. “I like the fact that a thoughtful player could win.”Kerry Haigh, the chief championships officer at the P.G.A. of America — whose job it is to set up the courses for a major like this — concedes that recent P.G.A. champions at Oak Hill benefited from the course conditions then.Phil Mickelson on the 18th green of the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Golf Resort, at the 2021 P.G.A. Championship. Mickelson held off Brooks Koepka and Louis Oosthuizen to win.Sam Greenwood/Getty ImagesBefore its restoration, there was “certainly a premium on driving accuracy, as the fairways are fairly narrow and the rough is usually pretty tough,” he said. “With the trees playing an important part of the challenge, the past two winners were not particularly long hitters, but were able to control their game and keep their ball in play.”Haigh said that the course setup is what matters most. The P.G.A. has put its stamp on tough, but fair, setups that allow for some exciting charges on Sunday. (This stands in contrast to the U.S.G.A. It sets up each course to be a stern — some players contend, brutal — test of golf. When Bryson DeChambeau won the U.S. Open in 2020 at Winged Foot, one of the anchor sites, he was the only player to break par for the four days.)Some historians argue that even going to these classic courses is a mistake for the P.G.A. Morrissett said with the U.S.G.A.’s lock on older courses, the P.G.A. should look to great courses built after 1960, to showcase the variety of golf in America. He points to the 2021 P.G.A. Championship at the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island in South Carolina, a Pete and Alice Dye design that opened in 1991, as one of the more exciting and watchable Sunday finishes in recent major history, when Mickelson held off Brooks Koepka and Louis Oosthuizen at the 2021 P.G.A. Championship to become the oldest major champion.“I loved the finish,” Morrissett said. “A par 5 you could eagle or double bogey? That’s exciting.”He ticked off modern courses like Erin Hills in Wisconsin, Chambers Bay in Washington State, and the newly opened P.G.A. Frisco course in Texas, which is set to be a hub for the P.G.A. “I think there’s a nice symmetry to watching these guys play courses that were designed for today’s equipment,” he said.Haigh, the chief championships officer, said that including those newer courses had been part of the P.G.A.’s plan. “That’s been our philosophy to mix classic courses with more modern courses,” he said, ticking off Bellerive in Missouri and Valhalla in Kentucky, in addition to Kiawah. “It’s been our philosophy for the 30 years I’ve been here, and I expect it will continue.”Still, his focus is on this week, and he’s optimistic that Oak Hill will produce a deserving champion. “It seems there may be more options for players who do miss the fairways, but they are still the same width as in previous years,” he said. “We shall see.” More

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      The Importance of Oak Hill to Curtis Strange

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      He captured the United States Open there in 1989, becoming the first player in decades to win consecutive Opens.In June 1989, Curtis Strange made history at Oak Hill Country Club near Rochester, N. Y., the site of the P.G.A. Championship, which starts on Thursday.Trailing Tom Kite by three strokes with one round to go, Strange shot an even-par 70 to become the first player since Ben Hogan in 1951 to win back-to-back United States Opens. Strange had captured the 1988 Open by four shots over Nick Faldo in an 18-hole playoff.“Move over, Ben,” Strange said after the final round in 1989. It was his 17th and final tour victory.Strange, 68, reflected recently on his week at Oak Hill and what the top players in the world will likely encounter in this second major of the season.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.What was your mind-set going into the final round?I had everything to gain and nothing to lose. To go out and shoot a solid round of golf and hopefully some putts would fall, and I would shoot one or two under par. That was not a big ask for me. The one big memory was when I got word that [Kite] had made a triple at five. That’s when the adrenaline ran through my body.How did you find out about his triple bogey?I was walking to the eighth tee, the seventh tee maybe. I heard rumors. I asked somebody in the crowd, ‘Is it true?’ They said yes. It got me one back or something at the time.The line, ‘Move over, Ben,’ was that totally spontaneous?Totally spontaneous, made with all due respect for Mr. Hogan. Going into the week, I didn’t know who the last back-to-back champion was.You really didn’t know?When I led after two rounds, I read in the paper the last guy was Ben Hogan.Did you hear from Hogan after your win?No, I didn’t. I wasn’t expecting anything, but I think I was maybe just a little bit disappointed because I had such admiration for him. And for all those guys who paved the way for us. I still admire the guy like I did before.Curtis Strange lining up his putt as his caddie looks on at the 1989 U.S. Open. After his win, he said, “Move over, Ben,” referring to the last golfer to capture two consecutive U.S. Open wins.Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesDid you imagine the Open would be your last victory?Not for a long, long time. I had three or four major chances [to win] and got a bit unlucky.Do you place one Open victory over another?The U.S. Open is the U.S. Open. I don’t think you can.What will be the challenges for these guys at Oak Hill?A lot of it is determined by how they decide to set up the golf course, how much rough and how narrow the fairways. There are only two par 5s, and they’re both very long. Par 5s normally are considered catch-up holes where you can make a birdie. Not so much at Oak Hill. They have [two] short par 4s on the back side where you could catch up.They will set it up differently for a P.G.A. than for an Open, right?Last year at Tulsa (the site of the 2022 tournament), it was pretty deep rough. Kerry Haigh, who has done a marvelous job in the P.G.A.; I’m sure he’ll do another one. All depends on how he wants to set it up. He’s always let the players play a little bit.Does the P.G.A., as a major championship, get enough respect?I think they do now with the May date. The August date was late in the year for the viewership and the players. The May date was a home run for them.With your dad having been a club pro, was it especially disappointing that you never won a P.G.A.?It was always at the very top of my list because of that. It’s the P.G.A. of America [an organization of golf professionals].In the 1989 P.G.A., when you tied for second, what do you remember?It’s the one Payne Stewart won, but Mike Reid should have won. I played very, very well on Sunday and didn’t putt as well as I needed to putt to win and had a chance on the last hole. I had a good opportunity. More

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      Rory McIlroy Seeks a Sharper Swing and a Clearer Mind At PGA Championship

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      Rory McIlroy has had a stretch to forget. At this week’s P.G.A. Championship, he is looking to fix small troubles in his swing.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — About six weeks ago — that is, a missed Masters Tournament cut, a self-imposed hiatus and a tie for 47th at the Wells Fargo Championship ago — Rory McIlroy talked about pies. Back then, he appeared ready to win big again and exuded as much as confidence as you did before your Thanksgiving dessert became a fire hazard.“I’ve got all the ingredients to make the pie,” McIlroy said at Augusta National Golf Club, where his quest to complete the career Grand Slam would stall again. “It’s just putting all those ingredients in and setting the oven to the right temperature and letting it all sort of come to fruition.”This week’s P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, the second major tournament of the year, cannot elevate him into the Grand Slam fraternity since he has won the event twice. But a victory or a strong showing would quiet the doubts that have arisen around McIlroy, who is No. 3 in the Official World Golf Ranking but perpetually shadowed by his failure to capture a major championship since 2014. The skepticism has only sharpened in 2023, which began with a win in Dubai but has subsequently toggled between admirable outings and head-spinning letdowns.Despite his membership at Oak Hill, McIlroy has been reluctant to declare some sort of home-course advantage since he, after all, lives in Florida. He understands well that his prospects hinge not on a throng of well-wishers but, in part, on whether he can adequately stamp out the harsh distractions: the critics, the history, the noise surrounding his place as arguably the PGA Tour’s leading spokesman in an era of tumult in professional golf.On Tuesday, he seemingly wanted nothing to do with the uncertainty in the sport (“I don’t have a crystal ball” was his six-word response to a 34-word question). Nor did he want to dwell on whether his break after the Masters had worked. (“I don’t know,” he replied. “I needed it at the time. Whether it works this week or not remains to be seen.”)But, perhaps more revealing, he was also a top-tier athlete openly copping to the sense that he needed to play with fewer expectations instead of more. The bravado was measured, the confidence present without being stifling or sanctimonious.“It wasn’t really the performance of Augusta that’s hard to get over, it’s just more the — it’s the mental aspect and the deflation of it and sort of trying to get your mind in the right place to start going forward again, I guess,” he said. Later, he added that he was simply “trying to go out there, play a good first hole of the tournament, and then once I do that, try to play a second good hole and just sort of go from there.”McIlroy missed the cut at the Masters Tournament and will have to wait until next year for an opportunity to complete the career Grand Slam.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHe may be able to ascertain his prospects quickly since his swing has been a subject of heightened concern in his circle in recent weeks. His troubles — “club face was getting a bit too open on the way back, really struggling to square it on the way down, and then sort of re-closure was getting a little too fast,” as he summarized them Tuesday — are the kind of pinpoint problems that would go unnoticed, or at least unfixed, on most driving ranges.At a forum like the P.G.A. Championship, those travails separate the elite from the crowd of also-rans that will be thick since the field includes 156 players. McIlroy, who noted that the precise timing of a swing can be the difference between a ball rocketing 20 yards to the left or 20 yards to the right, has hardly dawdled on his pursuit of a fix. A four-time major tournament winner, McIlroy spent last week with his coach in Florida, eschewing the FaceTime analyses that undergird plenty of modern professional careers.McIlroy is finessing, not overhauling, insistent that there is “nothing drastic that I need to change.” Perhaps he is right, because golf delights and betrays with only so much warning: Jon Rahm’s March included a tie for 39th, a withdrawal from a tournament and then a tie for 31st. Then came April and a Masters green jacket.“It’s ups and downs,” Rahm said on Tuesday as he broadly contemplated the challenge of sustaining success in sports, especially one as fickle as golf.“Even Tiger had downs,” he said later, referring to Tiger Woods, the 15-time major tournament winner. “Maybe his downs were shorter, maybe his downs were different in his mind, but everybody had them. It is part of sports. I’m hoping — I guess as a player you’ve got to hope that your low is not as low as others’.”McIlroy has not missed two major cuts in a calendar year since 2016, and he has not missed consecutive major cuts since 2010. His recipe this week to avoid a return to that dark era, beyond an adjusted swing and a clearer mind, will rely on discipline and patience and detours around the course’s 78 bunkers.He is sure, more humbly this time, that he is close to a breakthrough.“If I can execute the way that I feel like I can, then I still believe that I’m one of the best players in the world and I can produce good golf to have a chance of winning this week,” he said.But he is past, he suggested, being defined by one scorecard or another, past the need for the ferocious mind-set that propelled him to his last P.G.A. Championship victory, in 2014.“If I don’t win another tournament for the rest of my career, I still see my career as a success,” McIlroy said. “I still stand up here as a successful person in my eyes. That’s what defines that.”He would not, however, mind finishing up that pie. More

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      Jack Nicklaus on the PGA Championship

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      In 1950, when the P.G.A. Championship came to Scioto Golf Club, a 10-year-old boy wandered the grounds near Columbus, Ohio, searching for autographs. He had just started playing golf that year, and the likes of Sam Snead and Lloyd Mangrum were populating his home course.The boy was Jack Nicklaus.The spectacle, he recalled this spring, was among the earliest inspirations for a golfing career whose brilliance became abundantly clear 60 years ago. Nicklaus had won his first major title by then, but 1963 brought the 23-year-old player his first Masters Tournament victory and his inaugural triumph at a P.G.A. Championship.Nicklaus’s fifth and final P.G.A. Championship win came in 1980 at Oak Hill Country Club in Pittsford, N.Y., where the tournament will be played beginning on Thursday.Over two interviews last month — one at Augusta National Golf Club and another by telephone — Nicklaus considered Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm, the new LIV Golf league backed by Saudi Arabia, the future of the golf ball and whether anyone might win at Oak Hill by seven strokes, as he did in 1980.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.In 2013, when the P.G.A. Championship was last at Oak Hill, there were 21 players below par. There had only been four across the previous two P.G.A. Championships there, in 1980 and 2003. Had Oak Hill gotten too easy?I won there in 1980, and I think 280 was par. Oak Hill played pretty darn tough. I didn’t really play all that well that week, hit it all over the place, but every time I got it on the green, I holed it. I remember in the last round, I was in the lead and I was nervous because I wasn’t hitting it that great. I hit in the rough and got it on the green, so I shot 35 feet on the first hole. I said, “Well, here we go,” and started feeling a little more comfortable.With the P.G.A. Championship trophy after his seven-stroke victory in 1980 at Oak Hill Country Club in Pittsford, N.Y.PGA of America, via Getty ImagesIf a designer is looking to challenge today’s players, how much of a challenge can he create by, as Andrew Green has now done at Oak Hill, rolling back the clock and looking back at the original Donald Ross designs?You can’t. The only thing you’re going to roll back and add to is distance. Oak Hill, I thought was very different: Most Ross golf courses are relatively small greens, and Oak Hill had very large greens. And then, of course, Fazio came in there and did three or four holes in the middle part of the front nine, as I recall, and they didn’t really look a lot like the other holes on the golf course that I saw in ’68. I like Oak Hill; I think it’s a great golf course. But you can tweak something right out of its tradition.What should happen to the golf ball?They say the golf ball has “only” increased 0.82 yards a year, which means in the last 10 years, it’s increased 8.2 yards. You’ve got to put a line in the sand somewhere.And I don’t think that the U.S. Golf Association and R&A have really rolled the ball back much. What they’ve done is say, “We really don’t want it to go any farther than this.” And that’s really only for the elite players. They left the golf ball alone for the average golfer. It was a really good move to try to put a line in the sand. I mean, not everybody’s got the ability to go buy the golf course next door, like you do at Augusta. You can’t just keep buying land and adding. We used to have in this country probably a couple of thousand golf courses that could be tournament golf courses. Today, we maybe have 100.A lot of the players say: “Why would you want to change something that’s really good?”Well, it’s not because it’s really good; it’s because it’s really good for a small percentage of people, and it needs to be better for a larger percentage of people. It’s a game we hope that can be enjoyed by a lot of people.Part of that enjoyment comes from the pros being able to play with the amateurs. I used to be able to play an exhibition with a club champion. We’d play the back tees, and I’d maybe hit it 15, 20 yards by him, but we had a game because he knew the golf course.Today, could you imagine Tiger Woods or Jon Rahm going to play an exhibition with a club champion? They’d hit it 100 yards by him. I mean, that’s not a game.“Oak Hill played pretty darn tough,” Nicklaus said of his win in 1980. “I didn’t really play all that well that week, hit it all over the place, but every time I got it on the green, I holed it.”Phil Sandlin/Associated PressThere’s also debate about the world ranking system. Who is the best player in the world right now?It’s very debatable. I think Rory McIlroy is the one who I would have said probably is the best player in the world, but then Rory doesn’t even make the cut at the first major. How does the best player in the world miss the cut at the first major?Jon Rahm is pretty darn good. And you’ve got Brooks Koepka, who has come back and he’s leading the tournament.I guess that’s the beauty of golf. It’s not like tennis, where you knew you were going to get Nadal and Djokovic.Gary Player doesn’t think golf has an era-defining figure at this moment — that there’s not a Tiger, there’s not someone like you.No, there’s not.Is there a player who could become that person?Rahm would be the closest.Is it better for golf to have one megawatt superstar everyone knows, or is it better to have a bunch of guys with big followings but who don’t command all of the attention?I think most sports are probably more healthy with more stars — more diversity in what’s going on and more people to look at. When Arnold Palmer and Gary and I played, if one of the three of us didn’t play in a tournament, they felt the tournament was a failure.But if you’ve got 10 or 12 guys who are really at the top, you don’t have to get more than two or three of them to create a tournament and you’ve got a really good field. If there’s only one guy, it’s all on his back, and I don’t think that’s real good.Since you mentioned Rory, what’s holding him back?I’m a big Rory fan, and he’s a good friend of mine, and I talk a lot with him. But I really don’t know.His usual is to go par, par, birdie, birdie, birdie, eight, and that’s what he’s not been doing. He and I have talked about it. I said, “Rory, it’s got to be 100 percent concentration, and you can’t let yourself get into a position where you can make a quad or whatever.” I think he understands that very well. He’s certainly very smart.Justin Thomas just missed the cut, and I root for Justin a lot, too. I spend a lot of time with him. Great kid. He’s struggling, and he’s missing just a little something right now.And Rahm looks like he’s just loaded with confidence. He sort of beams with it.When you size up Rahm, what kind of scouting report do you come away with?I’ve known him since he received a college award, the Nicklaus Award. I liked him then, and I followed his play from when he first started. I’ve always thought that he plays very smart golf. He played much the way I did: left to right, and played much for the power game. I like what he does. I like the way he goes about it. He’s got a little bit of fire in him. He can get mad, which is OK because it usually helps him. Some guys get mad and it destroys them, but it seems to help him.“Oak Hill is a golf course that fits right down his alley,” Nicklaus said of Jon Rahm, the world’s No. 1 ranked golfer.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHow do you see Rahm’s approach to the game working at Oak Hill?Oak Hill is a golf course that fits right down his alley. I was a left to right player, hit the ball long. When I won in 1980, I was the only person to break par. He’s a good putter. I putted very well at Oak Hill. I didn’t particularly play that great, but my putter was a deciding factor. Because my game was a strong game, I stayed in the tournament, and my putter won it for me, and I would think he’d fall into much the same category: If he was playing well or semi-well, he’ll be there. If he doesn’t putt well, he won’t win.But he’s a pretty darn good putter.Some of your colleagues have said they think there is a universe in which LIV, the new Saudi-backed league, could be good for golf. Do you buy that?Competition is good anywhere. My own view is that I was a part of the start of the PGA Tour. [LIV Golf officials] talked to me about wanting me to do it, and I just told them, “I can’t do it guys. I started my legacy on the PGA Tour, and I have to stay there.”I don’t have a big problem with it. I think there’s a big place for a lot of those guys who are near the end of their career. I think it’s all right from that standpoint.But for me, it was not. And for any of the young guys who really love playing the game of golf and love competition, I don’t think that 48 players and three rounds of golf and shotgun starts are what you really make a living of. They’ll set their families up for a long time, and I have no problem with any of the guys who have left. But it was not my cup of tea. And is there a universe for both of them? Probably so. I don’t know.You host the Memorial Tournament in June. What do you make of this no-cut plan that is going to take effect sometimes on the PGA Tour next year?I’m not fond of it. Some of it is coming from trying to not make the tournaments that aren’t elevated too secondary. If you’ve got 120 guys playing in a cut and they’re suddenly getting into the elevated tournaments, what kind of field are you going to have in the other tournaments? And if you have 70 players playing in one, the 71st player is a pretty darn good player on the PGA Tour.I think what they’re trying — and what it will do — is to get some guys you have not heard a lot of, and they’re going to be your stars who come along. They’re trying to build more names within the PGA Tour, and we’ll have to see it and see how it works out.At the Memorial Tournament, I’m not fond of a 70-player field for a couple of reasons. One is that we’ve got a lot of people who come out and see golf, and I want to see them golf all day, particularly on Thursday and Friday.Nicklaus with Rahm after he won the Memorial Tournament in 2020.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIf Oak Hill doesn’t play tougher this time around, should it stay in the mix for the majors?Oak Hill will play plenty tough. Oak Hill is not going to bend; it’s too good of a golf course to yield. I would imagine the P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill in May will have a pretty tough crop of rough. Now, the tour, on a weekly basis, has been cutting the rough down shorter, and driving distance has been emphasized and accuracy has not.I don’t think golf should be played that way, personally. The Memorial Tournament rough will not be short.I think that the game of golf is a combination of power, accuracy, intelligence and skill in how you play your shots. You try to make the golf course so that it doesn’t favor a 320-yard hitter, and you don’t want it to favor a 270-yard hitter, either. You want to give some diversity in there — some holes will favor some, and others will favor another — and their skill will allow that to happen.I feel like the fellow who is playing the best golf in the full round is the guy who should win. The tour has been more on the entertainment factor and the guy shooting low scores. Well, during most of my career, I avoided the courses that everybody shot low scores on. I felt like they didn’t really bring my talent out, I suppose. When I got a good, tough golf course, that’s where the better players shined, and Oak Hill will shine.What are the chances anyone could win, as you did, by seven strokes?If you get some rough and you get a bit of a dry period — you’re going to have probably some wind and some odd weather — then your scores could be up. But one guy may catch lightning in a bottle, a little bit like I did, and win by several. You just don’t know. More

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      in Soccer

      Former Man Utd and England star looks unrecognisable as he hangs out with James Milner at golf event

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      LEEDS UNITED fans were left stunned last summer as James Milner shared a snap of himself alongside another former Elland Road favourite.The Liverpool star, 37, was taking part in the Icons Golf Series at Liberty National Golf Club in New Jersey, USA in June when he got reacquainted with the now unrecognisable ex-Premier League ace.
      A Leeds legend looked unrecognisable as he posed alongside James Milner last yearCredit: Twitter: @OneLeedsFC
      And after posing together for a selfie on the golf course in their attire, it took some supporters quite a while to realise who the now tanned and bearded ace was alongside Milner.
      One wrote: “Took a while for me to even recognise them. Think it’s the hats, they just look like a couple of American ‘park rangers’ in those get ups.”
      It was, of course, Alan Smith, the former striker who burst onto the scene for Leeds with a debut goal at Liverpool and went on to help them reach the Champions League semi-final.
      “Looking great Smudge ! The other lad don’t look too bad either,” commented one fan.
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      Another wrote: “Smith… wow. He looks better than ever!”
      As another said: “Looking healthy Smithy.”
      Smith, who won 19 England caps and scored one goal, started his career at Leeds and scored three minutes after coming off the bench for his debut aged 18 at Anfield to help seal a 3-1 victory.
      He continued to thrive alongside young stars such as Lee Bowyer, Jonathan Woodgate and Rio Ferdinand and played a huge role in their run to the last-four of the Champions League in 2001.
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      Alan Smith was a huge favourite with the Elland Road faithfulCredit: News Group Newspapers Ltd
      But as money issues began to engulf the club, a host of big names were sold off and he was part of the last Leeds side that was relegated from the Premier League back in 2004.
      He famously burst into tears and kissed the badge on his shirt after the drop was confirmed against Bolton, but he infuriated fans weeks later when he controversially signed for rivals Manchester United for £7million.
      Smith spent three years at Old Trafford during an injury-hit spell and collected a Premier League title there. 
      He suffered a broken leg and a dislocated ankle when blocking the Liverpool defender John Arne Riise’s shot during a FA Cup fifth-round clash against Liverpool at Anfield in 2006.
      Sir Alex Ferguson described the incident – which left Smith with “about ten pins” in his ankle – as one of the worst injuries he had seen.
      Smith, now 42, made his comeback for United seven months after the horrific injury and then went on to enjoy a five-year stint at Newcastle, making 84 top-flight appearances.
      In 2012, after transforming into a midfielder, he started to drop down the divisions with MK Dons and then Notts County.
      After retiring following his release from the then League Two Notts County, where he also had a spell as caretaker manager, he applied for a US visa so that he could move to Florida in his quest to coach youngsters.
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      Smith’s dream of coaching in America eventually came true with XL Soccer Academy in Orlando – where he serves as Academy Director.
      Meanwhile Milner, who grew up a Leeds fan, also came through the club’s academy and made his breakthrough into the first-team in 2002, spending two years playing with Smith.
      Alan Smith kissed the Leeds badge after the club were relegated in 2004Credit: Getty
      Just weeks later he joined bitter rivals Man Utd as he signed for Sir Alex FergusonCredit: Getty More

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      in Golf

      Don January, Who Won the 1967 P.G.A. Title, Is Dead at 93

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      He won 10 tournaments in 10 different years on the PGA Tour and was an early star on the senior Champions Tour.Don January, who won the 1967 P.G.A. Championship and became one of the early stars on golf’s Senior Tour, winning 22 events in its first decade, died on Sunday at his home in Dallas. He was 93. His death was announced by the PGA Tour.“I’m just a damned old pro from Dallas, Texas, who was lucky enough to have a swing that lasted for a while,” January told Sports Illustrated in 1998, the year before he retired.January, who turned pro in 1955, won 10 PGA Tour events in 10 different years, most notably the 1967 P.G.A. Championship, when he defeated his fellow Texan Don Massengale by two strokes in a playoff at the Columbine Country Club near Denver. Six years earlier, he was beaten by Jerry Barber in a P.G.A. Championship playoff.January, at 46, won the Vardon Trophy for the PGA Tour’s lowest scoring average, 70.56, in 1976, the same year he captured the Tournament of Champions. He played on victorious Ryder Cup teams in 1965 and 1977.The idea for a Senior Tour received a boost in 1979 when Roberto De Vicenzo teamed with Julius Boros to defeat Tommy Bolt and Art Wall Jr. on the sixth hole of a playoff in the Legends of Golf, a made-for-television competition in its second year, showcasing two-man teams of older players.January in 2015 at the Greats of Golf Scramble at the Woodlands Country Club in Texas. He was an early star on golf’s Senior Tour, winning 22 events in its first decade.Ken Murray/Icon Sportswire/Corbis, via Getty Images“I was playing on the regular tour at New Orleans and didn’t see the show,” January recalled in a 1985 interview with The Los Angeles Times. “But all we heard the rest of 1979 on the tour was what a sensation it was.”In January 1980, January met with his fellow pros Gardner Dickinson, Sam Snead, Bob Goalby, Dan Sikes and Boros to help lay the groundwork for the PGA Tour to create a Senior Tour.As January remembered it, his small group of pros “decided there might be a market for a modest tour,” though “we had no idea it would grow the way it did.”January won the Senior Tour’s first event, the Atlantic City Seniors, which attracted 50 pro golfers and 12 amateurs age 50 or older. He earned only $20,000 (the equivalent of about $73,000 today) for capturing the June 1980 tournament, but senior events, now part of the Champions Tour, have proved a lucrative showcase for many of the game’s leading players 50 and over.January won the tour’s P.G.A. Seniors’ Championship in 1982, and three years later he became the first player with $1 million in winnings as a senior (about $2.8 million in today’s money). He gained his 22nd and final senior victory in 1987.Donald Ray January was born on Nov. 29, 1929, in Plainview, Texas, the son of a roofing contractor. The family moved to Dallas when he was a child, and he began hitting golf balls at age 8 on a municipal course.January played on N.C.A.A. championship teams at North Texas State College in Denton (now the University of North Texas), then served in the Air Force before turning pro. His first PGA Tour victory came in 1956, when he won the Dallas Centennial Open. He lost four times in playoffs before besting Massengale in an 18-hole playoff at the 1967 P.G.A. Championship.January quit the PGA Tour in 1972 to design golf courses, but the venture proved unsuccessful financially, and he returned two years later. His last regular tour victory came in 1976, in the MONY Tournament of Champions (now the Sentry Tournament of Champions, held in early January on the island of Maui in Hawaii), though he continued to play on the regular tour until 1984 while competing as a senior player.He is survived by a daughter, Cherie Depuy; two sons, Tim and Richard; six grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.He was elected to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1979.For many years, January sponsored the Don January Golf Classic in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to fund scholarships at the University of North Texas.A lanky 6-foot-1 and 165 pounds, January was an unflappable figure as he walked the courses, his shirt collar tucked up. As he told The Dallas Morning News in 1999: “People thought I was a cool cat from east Dallas. All I was trying to do was to keep the back of my neck from sunburn so I could sleep on it.”His dry wit was in evidence after he won the P.G.A. Championship, when he was asked about his approach to golf. “Just tee up and hit it,” he said, “and when you find it, hit it again.” More

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      in Boxing

      Canelo Alvarez hints at shock career change as he eyes ‘impossible dream’ once he retires from boxing

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      CANELO ALVAREZ has hinted at a shock career change as he eyes achieving an “impossible dream” once he retires from boxing.The Mexican, a four-weight world champion who has unified belts in three divisions, is currently preparing for a huge homecoming this weekend.
      Canelo Alvarez will go down as one of the greatest boxers to ever step in the ringCredit: AP
      He will defend the WBA (Super), WBC, IBF, WBO, and The Ring super middleweight titles against John Ryder on Saturday in front of 60,000 of his fans.
      However, as well as boxing, the superstar also has another sporting “obsession” – golf.
      We have seen him in action on the course in the past and he has shown that he possesses just as much magic in his swing as he does in his fists.
      The 32-year-old won a celebrity tournament sponsored by BMW in South Carolina previously and also came within inches of a hole-in-one on the 17th at Pebble Beach.
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      Ahead of his showdown with Ryder, Canelo told the Daily Mail: “My handicap was down to six, now it’s up to ten.
      “I’ve hardly played any golf in the last few weeks. I still love boxing – the doing not so much the watching – but golf is an addiction I have to break before fights.
      “I got my handicap down during the covid lockdown and while building my recovery from hand injury.”
      Despite his love of the game, Canelo, who revealed he studies Tiger Woods’ swing, bans himself from playing it during the pre-fight camps.
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      He said: “I can’t take those risks before a fight. Can’t afford even a small accident.”
      And he says the game is even more difficult than being punched by a rival in the ring.
      He added: “This is the hardest game ever. Well, golf is harder for me. I’ve boxed since I was a kid. Comes easy to me. It is harder to be consistent at golf.
      “One shot can be great but the next terrible. One round great, next day horrible. One tiny alteration in making the shot can mean a big difference.”
      His former promoter Oscar De La Hoya claimed that Canelo’s loss to Dmitry Bivol a year ago, only the second of his career, was due to the champ “spending all his time on the golf course.”
      But Canelo hit back with: “I don’t care one bit about Oscar. I don’t listen to a word from him.
      “I don’t care about anything he says about me. He’s a whoosh.
      “He lives inside some strange bubble of his own. Away from the real world.”
      He has already shown off his skills on the golf course on several occasionsCredit: Getty More