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    Ryder Cup: Home Team Gets a Course Advantage

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

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    Ryder Cup: Zach Johnson Tries to End a 30-Year Drought for U.S. Team

    As captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup team, he is attempting to win in Europe for the first time since 1993.Zach Johnson, a five-time Ryder Cup player and a two-time major champion, is at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club in Rome this week as the captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup team. He’s trying to do something no American captain has done in 30 years: beat the European squad on its home turf.It’s an illustrious list of captains who have tried to bring the Cup back to the United States but failed that includes Jim Furyk, Corey Pavin, Tom Kite, Curtis Strange — all major champions. The last time the U.S. squad won in Europe was in 1993 when Tom Watson, in his first stint as captain, led a team that won at the Belfry in England.The interview has been edited and condensed.How did you mature as a player over your five Ryder Cups?The Ryder Cups I participated in without question helped pave the way for many of my wins, especially the major championships, and instilled in me a confidence that is hard to capture anywhere else. If a player can execute in the Cup, he will be able to execute shots under duress in a major or any other event with real confidence. That confidence I gained in 2006 — even though the team lost — carried over to the 2007 Masters and beyond.What were the lessons you learned that you imparted on this year’s squad?First, regardless of what the media says or whatever any of the outside noise may be — it’s still just golf. There is a tee, a fairway, a hole. You know how to play golf, and you’re here because you’re one of the best in the world at it.Second, just because it’s the Ryder Cup and the pressure is immense, it doesn’t mean you, as a player, have to do anything different. Just be yourself, do the things you’ve always done to have success and trust what got you here.Third, what’s happened in the past, either good or bad, doesn’t matter. This is a new team with new members on a new course presenting a new opportunity.How did the selection of players work?It’s a collaborative process involving my vice captains as well as input from the guys making the team. I rely on my vice captains for sure. Many of them have sat in my seat before and bring so much to the table. We also utilized our statistics team that brought us both objective and subjective data to help make the best-informed decisions to put our best team of 12 together.What have you learned from past captains on how to make a team gel?One, the more we can be together as a team, to any capacity, the better. Two, picking a team doesn’t have a perfect formula. There’s current form of play, what the golf course demands, best pairings, experience or lack thereof, and many more aspects. Three, a good team has ownership and investment by its players. That will be a primary goal from the beginning. Having some of these players take on leadership roles — some vocal, some by example — will be paramount.What was the idea behind the scouting week in Rome before the Ryder Cup?This is a course that most, if not all, of our guys have not played. To get their feet on the ground of Marco Simone ahead of the Cup was very important. Having practice time there can only make a very trying, different, sometimes difficult week of the Cup that much more manageable and comfortable. Plus, we were together as a team, hanging out, eating together, seeing Rome together, bonding.You and Luke Donald, the European captain, are contemporaries. Has knowledge from playing against him factored into your decision making?My friendship or past experiences with Luke on or off the course will not dictate any of my decision making. Neither one of us is hitting any shots.What will be the biggest challenge of playing in Rome?The European team is stacked with stars like Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland. We will be playing in front of a hugely partisan crowd in Rome trying to break a 30-year drought by winning away from the United States, playing as an underdog. With this being said, our team sees this as a great test and opportunity to go compete on the grandest stage in golf and bring the Cup back home. More

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    Ancient Earthworks Trodden by Golfers Become a World Heritage Site

    The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has recognized the Octagon Earthworks in central Ohio as a cultural marvel.Nine months after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a country club must sell its lease to the state historical society that owns the land containing Native American earthworks, golfers are still pushing carts over the mounds and whacking at them with 3-irons.But now those Octagon Earthworks, which Native Americans constructed about 2,000 years ago as a means of tracking the movement of the sun and the moon through the heavens, have officially been named a UNESCO World Heritage site.“Inscription on the World Heritage List will call international attention to these treasures long known to Ohioans,” said Megan Wood, the executive director and chief executive of the Ohio History Connection, which worked with the National Park Service and the Interior Department to have a combination of eight earthworks sites in central Ohio recognized.Those sites, collectively known as the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, include the Octagon Earthworks in Newark, which were created one basketful of earth at a time with pointed sticks and clamshell hoes.The designation, announced on Tuesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, puts the earthworks among just over 1,000 World Heritage sites. There are only 25 in the United States, among them the Grand Canyon, Independence Hall and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.“The historical, archaeological and astronomical significance of the Octagon Earthworks is arguably equivalent to Stonehenge or Machu Picchu,” Justice Michael P. Donnelly wrote in the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision in favor of the state historical society, which upheld two rulings by lower courts.The recognition comes after a yearslong battle between the Moundbuilders Country Club, which had leased the land since 1910 and operated a private golf course atop the earthworks, and the Ohio History Connection, which owns the site and intends to open it as a public park.The History Connection sued the country club in 2018 in an attempt to acquire the lease, which runs through 2078. Federal officials had told the historical society that securing World Heritage recognition, which brings international acclaim and legal protection, would be impossible without full public access to the site.The club had argued that ending the lease was not necessary to establish public use and had contended that it had preserved and cared for the mounds. Its members, the president of the club’s board of trustees, David Kratoville, told The New York Times in 2021, “come out for a day and clean up sand traps and plant flowers.”After the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruling last year, the country club filed a motion for reconsideration that was quickly denied.Kratoville wrote in an email on Tuesday that the country club had been good stewards of the Octagon Earthworks and welcomed their World Heritage recognition.“All we have ever asked for through this long-drawn-out situation was to be compensated fairly, thus allowing our business to continue somewhere else for our members, our community and the 100 or so people we employ,” Kratoville said.The club had said it was willing to move before the lease was up, but the parties are millions of dollars apart in their negotiations. The value of the lease will now be determined in a jury trial that is set to begin Oct. 17. More

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    Five Players to Watch at the BMW PGA Championship

    The golf world is looking toward the Ryder Cup later this month, but the field in this week’s BMW PGA Championship is packed with top contenders.In two weeks, all of golf’s attention will be on the Ryder Cup matches in Rome.In the meantime, though, there’s a big tournament that begins Thursday: the BMW PGA Championship at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England.As usual, the field is packed with top contenders. Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tyrrell Hatton, Tommy Fleetwood and the defending champion, Shane Lowry, are all set to play before they join Team Europe, which will try to capture the Cup for the fifth time in the last seven competitions.Here are five other players to keep an eye on.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesAdam ScottIn 2014, the future could not have looked brighter for Scott. The year before, he became the first golfer from Australia to win the Masters Tournament, and he had now ascended to No. 1 in the world. In his early 30s, Scott, possessing one of the best swings in the game, was still in his prime.Those days are gone.Scott, 43, who has 14 victories on the PGA Tour, hasn’t won since the Genesis Invitational in early 2020. At the majors, he hasn’t finished in the Top 10 since tying for seventh in the 2019 United States Open at Pebble Beach. His best showing in the majors this year was a tie for 29th in the P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill near Rochester, N.Y.Still, there is reason to believe that he’s not done just yet. From May through August, Scott, ranked No. 43, finished in the Top 10 in four of his nine starts, coming up just short of qualifying for the FedEx Cup playoffs.He tied for 14th at Wentworth in 2021 and tied for 42nd in 2022.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesLudvig AbergA bright future may also await Ludvig Aberg of Sweden.Aberg, 23, who turned professional three months ago, won the Omega European Masters in Switzerland earlier this month. The next day, he was one of the Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald’s six picks to be a member of Team Europe.Formerly the world’s top-ranked amateur, he caught Donald’s attention in January during a tournament in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.“He was drawn alongside [the vice captain] Edoardo Molinari that week, and he let me know how impressed he was with this young guy from Sweden,” Donald told Golf Digest.“And it was my job as captain to keep my options open for anyone to make the team,” he added.Aberg, who played golf at Texas Tech, became the first player to secure his tour card in the United States by finishing first on the 2023 PGA Tour University Ranking. He has made the cut in six of his seven tour starts since turning pro, his best performance a tie for fourth at the John Deere Classic.Jared C. Tilton/Getty ImagesTom KimFor Tom Kim of South Korea, 21, who is making his debut in this tournament, the future may be here already. Kim, ranked No. 18, qualified for the Tour Championship at East Lake, the final event of the playoffs, and finished in a tie for 20th.He had an impressive 2022-23 season, recording nine Top 10 finishes in 26 starts, including a victory at the Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas, a tie for second at the British Open at Royal Liverpool and a tie for eighth in the U.S. Open at the Los Angeles Country Club. At the Shriners event, Kim became the first player since Tiger Woods in 1996 to win twice on the PGA Tour before turning 21.Kim, who has been a professional since he was 15, is an entertaining player and provided one of the most amusing moments of the year when he fell in the mud at Oak Hill and washed his clothes off in the creek.Harry How/Getty ImagesJon RahmRahm, ranked No. 3, needs to get back in form and fast — for his own sake and for the sake of Team Europe.The No. 1 seed heading into the playoffs, he tied for 37th and 31st in the first two events and closed at East Lake with another disappointing showing to tie for 18th in the final standings. Rahm, who is from Spain, didn’t win once in 10 appearances after his comeback victory over Brooks Koepka in the Masters. In fact, from May through August, he compiled only two Top 10 results, one of those being a tie for second at Royal Liverpool.Rahm, 28, who had held the top spot for 30 consecutive weeks, is not a fan of the current playoff format.“You can win every single tournament up until this one,” he told reporters at East Lake. “You have a bad week, you finish 30th, and now you’ll forever be known as 30th in the FedEx Cup this season. I don’t think that’s very fair.”Rahm tied for second with McIlroy at last year’s event at Wentworth, a stroke behind Lowry.Jared C. Tilton/Getty ImagesBilly HorschelWhile he won’t be on the U.S. squad heading to Rome, it’s still a big week for Horschel, 36, who won this event in 2021. He finished in the Top 10 only three times in 22 starts this past season on the PGA Tour.One of those Top 10 results came in his final tournament, the Wyndham Championship, when he finished fourth. Horschel, ranked No. 50, turned in a career-low 62 in the second round and followed with a 63 to enjoy a share of the lead after 54 holes. A victory would have put him in the playoffs, but he faltered with a 72.His season’s low point was an 84 in the first round at the Memorial Tournament in early June. He rebounded the next day with a 72 but did not make the cut.“Listen, we all struggle at this game, and I’m not the first PGA Tour pro to play bad for an extended stretch,” Horschel told Golf Digest in June. “There are some people that think we should play well every week right. But golf’s a tough game. Life’s a tough game.” More

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    When Professional Golfers Are Also Course Designers

    Golf course design is now in an era of star architects, but professional golfers are still bringing their name and vast playing knowledge to projects.Ernie Els, a four-time major champion, won the 2007 HSBC World Match Play Championship at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England, host of this week’s BMW PGA Championship.The club, a sprawling complex of three 18-hole golf courses and a plenitude of amenities, was working to refresh the West Course, which hosted championship golf. Els was the architect in charge of the work.Wentworth is the home of the European Tour, which runs the DP World Tour, and has hosted this week’s flagship event since the 1980s. (Three times, Els finished as runner-up in the event.)The West Course was originally designed by Harry Colt nearly 100 years earlier. Colt was one of the early 20th century’s great golf course architects. He worked on some 300 courses, including the original routing of Pine Valley, often the top-ranked course in the world.Under Els’s direction, the bunkering at the par 3, second hole at West Course Wentworth was redesigned.David Cannon/Getty ImagesBut the game had changed, and Els, who was known for his smooth swing, was brought in to restore some of the original challenges that Colt had created — but that longer-hitting pros had rendered obsolete. One of the key fixes was rebuilding all the greens so they would have the firm bounce and fast speed that pros are used to.Ten years after that victory at Wentworth, Els finished the renovation. “There’s certainly no other golf course in the world that I know as well as Wentworth’s West Course, so you could say we were the logical choice,” Els said. “Obviously to have that opportunity was an honor, not just professionally but personally, too. I’d say I fell in love with the West Course before I’d even played it, seeing the World Matchplay on television, watching some of my heroes.”What Els had been asked to do, though, was something that has faded from popularity: be a tour pro who renovated a course.With the help of Brooks Koepka, shown at the Houston Open in 2021, Tom Doak was able to redesign Memorial Park and bring his vision for the course to life.Carmen Mandato/Getty ImagesPros once lent their vast playing knowledge to golf course design projects — often with an enormous real estate development attached — but when the economy cooled in 2008 and new golf course construction dried up, so, too, did pros’ involvement.Golf course design is now in an era of star architects, such as Tom Doak and Gil Hanse, whose vision for the game focuses more on purity and enjoyment than on creating overly penal courses that will frustrate amateurs and most likely never host a professional tournament. The original golf course boom in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, however, was fueled by great golfers like Willie Park Jr., who won the British Open twice, and Donald Ross, a pro from Scotland.Despite the recent trend, pros still maintain a role in course design, even if it is a very different one from decades past. It’s more in the collaborative mode of Els at Wentworth than the splashy one that saw golf stars of the 1970s and 1980s like Lee Trevino, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Don January and Billy Casper lend their names to developments.Geoff Ogilvy, the 2006 U.S. Open champion, shown during the third round of that competition, is now a director at the design firm OCM Golf. He said it helps him to be able to talk about his experiences at various courses.Stuart Franklin/Getty Images“If someone’s been a good golfer, people believe they probably know everything about golf,” said Geoff Ogilvy, the 2006 U.S. Open champion and a director at the design firm OCM Golf. “Some do; some don’t. But when I’m meeting members, I think it helps when I can wax on the virtues of the 13th hole at Augusta National because I’ve played there. It makes it easier.”His firm has worked on major restorations of courses in Australia and is currently working on Medinah Country Club’s Course 3, which will host the 2026 Presidents Cup, a series of matches between the United States and an international squad. (Ogilvy played three times on Presidents Cup teams.)But he has two partners in the design firm who know the intricacies of building a course. “It’s better to have three minds in there,” said Ogilvy, who won 12 times on the PGA and European Tours. “They’re routing and designing it. I’m working on a lot of the playability stuff. What would tour guys hit from here? Will guys go for that shot or get scared?”That intuition, particularly on the psychological part of the game, is valuable to designers, said Bobby Weed, an architect who worked with 17 PGA Tour player consultants when he build out the Tournament Players Club Network, a group of courses designed to host professional tournaments.“What I liked was their input into what scared them on a shot,” said Weed, who was mentored by the designer Pete Dye. “I liked to understand how they’re thinking, what their process was. It’s so different from the amateur golfer.”He said not every pro was as involved or knowledgeable and that some got more credit after the course opened than they deserved. But many of the pros who have helped design enduring courses relied on a solid team under their brand name. Jack Nicklaus had Bob Cupp and Jay Morrish. Greg Norman had Jason McCoy. Ben Crenshaw had Bill Coore. Jack Nicklaus, left, helped design the Sebonack golf course with Tom Doak. Michael E. Ach/Newsday Rm, via Getty Images“The first thing the pros bring is their name. They’re much more famous than any of us who never played professional golf ever will be,” said Doak, an architect who worked with Nicklaus to build Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, N.Y.“What they bring is much more focus on the individual golf holes and the strategy of the individual golf holes. What they don’t bring is the perspective that everyone who plays golf isn’t out there trying to shoot their career best.”Large destination courses are still being built, but many course designs these days are renovations — and they often lack the budget of a large, tournament-focused club like Wentworth.“The pendulum has swung toward architects because most of the market is being driven by remodeling,” Michael Hurdzan, whose course designs include Erin Hills in Wisconsin, which hosted the U.S. Open in 2017, said. “That means you’re going into an existing facility and fixing someone else’s mistakes with a limited amount of time, a limited amount of money and 300 critics who are members. It takes a lot of time, a lot of hand holding.”One such example is the Medalist Golf Club, in Hobe Sound, Fla. It’s a tough, popular course among pros. When it was built, Norman was given top billing as the architect, with Pete Dye second. But when the club underwent a renovation, Weed, who has worked closely with Dye, was called in to do the work.Some pros understand that their skills lie elsewhere in a project.Mathew Goggin, who played in 279 events on the PGA Tour, is developing Seven Mile Beach, a golf course in his hometown, Hobart, Australia. But he is clear that being a professional golfer does not make him a great architect.“I’m smart enough to know that I’m not smart enough to design a course,” he said. “You let the design team do what they do. I think you’re doing a disservice to golf-course architecture unless you really do it. I have no expertise in it whatsoever. What am I going to say? ‘Move that bunker over there?’”And good architects know what to listen to. Goggin said he complimented the architect, Mike DeVries, for creating what even Goggin thought was a really hard hole at Seven Mile Beach. DeVries listened and redesigned it. He wasn’t building it for a PGA Tour pro.Goggin said he used his reputation as a great golfer from the area to push the project along. “I used my profile to get a meeting with the government ministers,” he said. “I showed them the success of Barnbougle Dunes [a course in Tasmania], and we talked about how destination golf has an economic impact.”There are advantages architects get from working with pros that they can’t get elsewhere. Doak designed Memorial Park with Brooks Koepka, and the course hosts the Houston Open on the PGA Tour. With the help of Koepka, a great ball striker, it was much easier for Doak to see his vision come to life.“On the resort courses or the member course, you visualize the shot you expect to see — and you sometimes wait months to see it,” he said. “At a course for a tour event, you really only have to wait two or three groups to see it.” More

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    Nick Faldo Talks About Retirement and More

    The six-time major champion has retired after 16 years as a CBS analyst. It’s given him time to consider playing one last tournament.For the first time since 2006, England’s Nick Faldo wasn’t in the booth this past season as the lead golf analyst for CBS.He was on the range — and not just the driving range. A six-time major champion from 1987 through 1996, he was at his home in Montana.Faldo, 66, the only four-time winner of the BMW PGA Championship, which begins Thursday at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England, discussed recently those victories and the game that has meant so much to him.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.Do you miss your job at CBS?Yes and no. I loved being with the guys, but I had enough of being out there every week. They’ve just done 23 tournaments this season, and I couldn’t do that anymore. I’ve been flying since I was 19, when I went on tour. I’ve got plenty to do. [Golf course] design work is going very well. It’s just nice to be chilling and doing your own thing each day.Are you paying attention to the tour?Not as much. I’ve rarely watched it on TV. I’ve watched it maybe through highlights on social media. I’m more interested in the Ryder Cup because I’m going. I think it’s going to be really big, a great atmosphere.Nick Faldo and Fanny Sunesson, his former caddie, at the 2022 British Open.David Cannon/Getty ImagesWho do you think will win it?I think our backbone looks more impressive than America’s backbone at the moment, to be really honest.What do you mean by the backbone?The top six. Back in my day, [former Europe captain] Tony Jacklin said, “You six, you’re playing five matches. You’re doing the heavy lifting.” We said, “Fine.”So, are you going as far as to say that Europe is going to win?Yeah, I would. We should.Has Team Europe’s captain, Luke Donald, picked your brain at all?Yeah. I bumped into him at the [British] Open. A couple of little ideas I had, mainly for practice. I won’t say what.Of your four victories at Wentworth, do any one of them stand out?Well, I really enjoyed the one at Royal St. George’s [in 1980] because we played that in May. And that golf course in May, if you get just a little bit of rain on the links, is perfect. That week, all I practiced were one, two, and three irons. It paid off. I remember hitting one iron into 15, that tiny little green. It was one of the key shots on the way to winning. That turf was so gorgeous to hit off.What kind of player does the Wentworth course suit?A pretty accurate one. There are trees literally left and right. That’s its main character.Nick Faldo after his win at Royal Birkdale in 1978.Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesThe victory over Ken Brown, in 1978 at Royal Birkdale was a big one, wasn’t it?That was the very first 72-hole [tournament] I won, which was amazing because I had already played a Ryder Cup. On the putting green, I was holing like 40-footers, thinking, “Oh, this is good.” I won about 10,000 pounds. How about that? It was the PGA. It was big. I loved it.Are you playing any golf these days?Yeah, I’ve got a nice club here and a really nice range, a [Tom] Weiskopf course. I still like to pop up there and belt balls.What do you get out of it?Well, that’s the great thing about our game. I go up there, and I’ve got different spots on downslopes and sideslopes and I whack away. I wear myself out for an hour and a half, and I still learn something. And I think I’ve still got it. Isn’t that great? That’s 50 plus years later. I’d love to play one more [tournament]. I want to get myself fit and strong.Where?I don’t know yet. I want to get Fanny [Sunesson, his former caddie] on the bag.Are you serious about this?Yeah. I want to play something. And the big word is, Can I enjoy it? That’s the only goal. Somewhere [on the senior tour] where I have time to gear up. I’ll try to do something next year. I got to. I’ll be 67 next summer. More

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    Sharks on an Australian Golf Course Made a Watery Grave Like no Other

    A group of bull sharks ended up spending 17 years in a lake by a golf course’s 14th hole, suggesting that the predators can live in low-saltwater environments indefinitely.For nearly two decades, the Carbrook Golf Club near Brisbane, Australia, had the ultimate water hazard: a lake teeming with bull sharks.It all started in 1996 when raging floods swept six young bull sharks from a nearby river into a 51-acre lake near the golf course’s 14th hole. When the floodwaters receded, the sharks found themselves stuck, surrounded by grassy hills and curious golfers.The sharks spent 17 years in the lake, sustaining themselves on its large stock of fish and on the occasional meat treat provided by the club’s staff. One shark was illegally fished out, while the others vanished after subsequent floods.The sharks, according to a new study, are more than just a fluke along the fairway. In research published last month in the journal Marine and Fisheries Science, Peter Gausmann, a shark scientist and lecturer at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, said that the cartilaginous club members of Carbrook demonstrate that bull sharks can live indefinitely in low-salinity aquatic environments.Bull sharks can be found in warm coastal waters the world over. These stout sharks can reach 11 to 13 feet in length and weigh upward of 500 pounds. They are one of the few shark species that can tolerate a wide range of salinities, a trait that allows them to venture into freshwater and brackish habitats such as rivers, estuaries and lagoons.Unfortunately, this impressive adaptation often puts the sharks in close quarters with humans, one of the many reasons bull sharks are responsible for dozens of documented fatal attacks on humans.In 1996, flooding swept six young bull sharks from a nearby river into a 51-acre lake near the golf course’s 14th hole. When the floodwaters receded, the sharks were stuck and have been there ever since.Scott WagstaffIf most sharks were to enter a freshwater environment, their internal salt levels would become diluted and they would die. But bull sharks have specially adapted kidneys and rectal glands that work together to recycle and retain the salt in their bodies.Freshwater and brackish habitats provide young bull sharks a place to grow up without the threat of predation from larger sharks. Once they’ve reached maturity, however, bull sharks usually head to the sea, where larger prey and breeding opportunities abound. That the Carbrook shark population did not grow during their time in the golf course offered further evidence that the species prefers to breed in saltier environments.While scientists have long known that bull sharks have the means to move between fresh and saltwater environments, no one knows if these sharks could spend their entire lives in freshwater.Research suggests bull sharks can live about 30 years, and the Carbrook group survived in the golf course’s lake for 17 years. That suggests there is “no upper limit” to how long these sharks can spend in low-salinity environments, said Vincent Raoult, a postdoctoral researcher at Deakin University in Australia who was not involved in the new study.“I think a lot of people would be scared to learn there could be bull sharks in their local pond, but the fact is, it’s pretty amazing that there are animals that are able to do this,” Dr. Raoult said.While the idea of sharing a lake with bull sharks may be scary to some, the golfers relished the opportunity, Scott Wagstaff, general manager of Carbrook Golf Club, said.“Every single member here just loves the sharks,” Mr. Wagstaff said.Extreme floods like the ones that washed sharks in and out of Carbrook Golf Club are becoming more common, and more bull sharks could end up marooned in lakes, lagoons and ponds.Carbrook Golf ClubWhen the sharks were still around, he and other staff would toss chunks of meat into the water and marvel at the way the sharks devoured the food with their fearsome maws. “I’ve seen them jump completely out of the water and spin as they land. It was pretty cool,” Mr. Wagstaff said.Extreme floods like the ones that washed sharks in and out of Carbrook Golf Club are becoming more common, and more bull sharks could end up marooned in lakes, lagoons and ponds. Although you are highly unlikely to encounter a bull shark in your local swimming hole, Dr. Gausmann recommends avoiding bodies of water recently affected by flooding.“You should never bathe in stagnant bodies of water that once had a connection to the sea. You never know if sharks are living there,” he said, although people in urban areas may not need to worry, as urban floodwaters are often too toxic to sustain marine life.And there is another lesson to take away, as shark sightings and occasional attacks on human swimmers prompt fearful reactions in some places.“If this paper has shown anything, it is that it is possible to live side by side with sharks,” Leonardo Guida, a shark scientist with the Australian Marine Conservation Society, said. More

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    LIV Golf Has Embraced Trump, but Others Are Keeping Their Distance

    LIV Golf has embraced the former president. But much of golf’s establishment is keeping its distance, even as LIV and the PGA Tour seek a détente.Walking toward a tee box in Virginia in May, former President Donald J. Trump offered an awfully accurate assessment of the way many golf executives viewed him.“They love the courses,” he said, forever the salesman for his family company’s portfolio of properties, “but I think they probably consider me a little bit controversial right now.”As much as some leaders of men’s golf are trying to patch the rupture created by the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit, a tour Trump has championed, they seem to be in no rush to end the former president’s exile from their sport’s buttoned-up establishment. Even in an era of gaudy wealth and shifting alliances in golf, Trump remains, for now, a measure too much for many.The consequences have been conspicuous for a figure who had expected to host a men’s golf major tournament in 2022. Now, his ties to the sport’s elite ranks often appear limited to LIV events and periodic rounds with past and present professionals. Jack Nicklaus, the 18-time major champion, caused a stir in April when he publicly stopped short of again endorsing a Trump bid for the White House.Nevertheless, on Thursday, when he was playing a LIV pro-am event at his course in Bedminster, N.J., Trump insisted he was in regular conversations with golf executives about top-tier tournaments.“They think as long as you’re running for office or in office, you’re controversial,” he said.Golf has been a regular respite for Democratic and Republican commanders in chief. But no American president has had a more openly combustible history with the sport than Trump, and perhaps no president besides Dwight D. Eisenhower, who is thought to have averaged about 100 rounds annually when he was in the White House, has had so much of his public image linked to golf.In the years before Trump won the presidency, he had at last started to make significant headway into the rarefied realms of golf.Trump watched his shot from the fairway.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn 2012, the U.S. Golf Association picked the Bedminster property for the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open. Two years later, the P.G.A. of America said it planned to take the men’s P.G.A. Championship to the course in 2022. Also in 2014, Trump bought Turnberry, a mesmerizing Scottish property that had hosted four British Opens, and he imagined golf’s oldest major championship being contested there again.Once in the White House, Trump played with a parade of golf figures (though some of them appeared more attracted to the magic of the presidency than to Trump himself): Tiger Woods; Rory McIlroy; Ernie Els; Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour; and Fred S. Ridley, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club.Trump’s 2016 campaign and presidency had given some in golf heartburn. But it was the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol that most clearly chiseled away at his golf dreams. The P.G.A., which is distinct from the PGA Tour, which has dueled with LIV for supremacy over men’s professional golf, immediately moved its 2022 championship from Bedminster. The R&A, which organizes the British Open, made clear that it would not be bound for Turnberry anytime soon.LIV soon emerged as something of a life raft, an insurgent league with a craving for championship-quality courses and plenty of money to spend. It did not hurt that Trump had been strikingly cozy with the government in Riyadh whose wealth fund was ready to pour billions of dollars into LIV — and let some of those dollars, in turn, roll toward the Trump Organization for reasons that have been the subject of widespread speculation.Trump became a fixture at LIV events held at his courses, routinely jawing about the PGA Tour with variable accuracy. (He did, however, predict something like the planned transaction between the wealth fund and the PGA Tour.) This week’s event in New Jersey is his family’s fourth LIV tournament, and a fifth is planned for the Miami area in October.But the budding détente between the Saudis and the PGA Tour does not seem to be leading to an immediate one between Trump and the broader golf industry, which the Saudis could have enormous sway over in the years ahead.The PGA Tour has not publicly committed to maintaining the LIV brand if it reaches a conclusive deal with the wealth fund, and the tentative agreement says nothing about the future of men’s golf’s relationship with Trump. The PGA Tour has a history with Trump but ended its relationship with his company during the 2016 campaign. Tim Finchem, who was the tour’s commissioner then, denied at the time that the decision was “a political exercise” and instead called it “fundamentally a sponsorship issue.”To no one’s surprise, the tour’s 2024 schedule, which the circuit released on Monday, features no events at Trump properties. And although Trump said a few months ago that he thought the Irish Open might be interested in his Doonbeg course, the DP World Tour, which is also a part of the agreement with the Saudi wealth fund, has said the course is not under consideration.Other top golf figures who are not bound by any deal with the Saudis somehow appear even less interested.Trump Turnberry in Scotland won’t be hosting the British Open anytime soon, according to the chief executive of the R&A.Mary Turner for The New York Times“Until we’re confident that any coverage at Turnberry would be about golf, about the golf course and about the championship, until we’re confident about that, we will not return any of our championships there,” Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, said on the same day last month when he signaled that the Open organizer might be willing to accept a Saudi investment.Seth Waugh, the P.G.A. of America’s chief executive, declined to comment this week, but the organization has given no signal that it is reconsidering its thinking about Trump courses. The U.S.G.A. said it did not have a comment.Some players, many of whom at least lean conservative, have suggested they would like to see Trump courses be in the mix for the majors.“There’s no reason you couldn’t host P.G.A.s, U.S. Opens out here,” said Patrick Reed, who won the Masters Tournament in 2018 and played with Trump on Thursday. “I mean, just look at it out here: The rough is brutal.”Even a sudden rapprochement, which would require executives setting aside the views of players like Reed that politics should not shape sports decisions, would almost certainly not lead to Trump’s strutting around a major tournament in the near future.The next U.S. Open in need of a venue is the one that will be played in 2036; Trump would turn 90 on the Saturday of that tournament. P.G.A. Championships are booked through 2030. Between last month’s announcement that the 2026 British Open will be held at Royal Birkdale and the R&A’s sustained public skepticism of Trump, the last major of the calendar year seems unlikely to head to a Trump property anytime soon. And the Masters, which is always played at Augusta National in Georgia, is not an option.Women’s golf offers a few more theoretical possibilities since its roster of venues is not as set, but Trump would face much of the same reluctance.Trump has mused about the financial wisdom of golf’s keeping its distance from him. A few months ago, he argued that avoiding his courses was “foolish because you make a lot of money with controversy.”He may be right.But it seems golf is reasoning that it is making plenty of money anyway. Its political bent, some figure, might be better managed outside the glare of its major tournaments — and, moreover, beyond the shadow of Trump.Trump has mused about the financial wisdom of golf’s keeping its distance from him. Doug Mills/The New York Times More