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      5 Players to Watch at the BMW PGA Championship

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      One of these golfers could win the tournament at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England.Fresh off his comeback on Aug. 28 at the Tour Championship in Georgia, Rory McIlroy is a top contender at the BMW PGA Championship, which begins Thursday at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England.McIlroy captured his third FedEx Cup title by completing the largest final-round comeback in the history of the Tour Championship. He will be a compelling figure at Wentworth, but here are five other players to watch.Shane Lowry plays a second shot on the tenth hole during the first round of the FedEx St. Jude Championship in August in Memphis.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesShane LowryIreland’s Lowry has proved that the course suits him well. In his last five appearances at Wentworth, he has finished no worse than a tie for 17th. His best showing was finishing second to McIlroy in 2014.Lowry, 35, would have qualified for his first appearance at the Tour Championship if either Adam Scott or Aaron Wise had made a bogey on the 72nd hole at the BMW Championship on Aug. 21 in Delaware, but each made clutch pars to secure the final two spots.Lowry shot a 68 on Sunday at the BMW to finish in a tie for 12th but three-putted from about 65 feet for a bogey at No. 17. Ranked No. 23, Lowry has not won an event since he captured the 2019 British Open at Royal Portrush Golf Club in Northern Ireland.Justin Rose during a practice round at Southern Hills Country Club in May in Tulsa, Okla. He was once ranked at No. 1.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesJustin RoseRose, 42, also hasn’t won since 2019 at the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego. Once as high as No. 1 in the rankings, Rose, the 2013 U.S. Open champion, now stands at No. 58.In 18 PGA Tour events this season, he has recorded only two top-10 finishes, and his best finish was a tie for fourth at the RBC Canadian Open in June when he flirted with becoming the first European to shoot 59 on the PGA Tour. He ended up with a 60.His performance in the majors has been disappointing. He missed the cut in the Masters, tied for 13th in the P.G.A. Championship, tied for 37th in the U.S. Open and was unable to compete in the British Open with a bad back.But Rose has experienced some success at Wentworth. He finished second in 2007 and 2012. Last year, he tied for sixth.Francesco Molinari putts on the tenth green during the first round of the Memorial Tournament in June in Dublin, Ohio.Sam Greenwood/Getty ImagesFrancesco MolinariSimilar to Lowry and Rose, Molinari, 39, has had his moments in this event. In 2018, shooting a final-round 68, he won the BMW PGA Championship by two shots over McIlroy. He has recorded six top-10 finishes at Wentworth since 2012.In July 2018, Molinari captured the Quicken Loans National in Maryland by eight shots, closing with a 62, and three weeks later he won the British Open in Carnoustie, Scotland, by two shots, becoming the first Italian player to win a major.He missed a chance to win another major in 2019, when up by two at the Masters he found the water with his tee shot at No. 12 in the final round, which led to a double bogey. He finished in a tie for fifth.In this past season, he recorded only one top-10 finish in 17 appearances on the PGA Tour, missing the cut at the Masters and the U.S. Open. He tied for 15th in the British Open.Billy Horschel plays a second shot on the tenth hole during the second round of the FedEx St. Jude Championship in August.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesBilly HorschelHorschel, who won the BMW last year, picked up his seventh PGA Tour victory in early June at the Memorial Tournament in Ohio, beating Wise by four strokes. He shot a 65 in the third round that put him up by five, and he finished the final round with an even-par 72.Horschel, 35, became only the second American to win the BMW. The first was Arnold Palmer in 1975, when the tournament was known as the Penfold PGA Championship. Horschel, now ranked No. 15, secured the win with an approach shot on No. 18 that came to a rest less than two feet from the cup. He converted the putt to finish with a 65 and a one-shot victory.England’s Lee Westwood during the first round of the British Masters in May. He was one of the first players to join LIV Golf.Paul Childs/Action Images Via ReutersLee WestwoodWestwood, 49, is one of more than a dozen players in this week’s field from LIV Golf, the new series financed by Saudi Arabia.Ranked No. 100, his best finish on the PGA Tour this season was a tie for 14th at the Masters. He missed the cut in the P.G.A. Championship and tied for 34th at the British Open.Westwood, a former world No. 1, has never won the BMW, although he came close in 2011, losing in a playoff to Luke Donald. Last year, Westwood finished in a tie for 71st. He said he planned to play four DP World Tour events in 2023. More

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      BMW PGA Championship Brings Players From PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV Golf

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      Players from the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the upstart LIV Golf series will all be competing at this week’s BMW PGA Championship in England.All but a half dozen professional golf tournaments — out of hundreds of events held each year — rely on a marquee sponsor and dozens of other co-sponsors to pay millions of dollars for each event to happen.There are a few notable exceptions: the Masters, the United States Open, the P.G.A. Championship and the British Open.But even an event as prestigious as this week’s BMW PGA Championship at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England — one of the top events on the DP World Tour — relies on the German carmaker plus another dozen sponsors, like Zoom, Rolex and Hilton, to fund the event, pay the players and have something left over for charity.There’s just one problem. The BMW PGA Championship will have more than a dozen players from the rival Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf series in the field, including fan favorites Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood and several players that could win the event like Kevin Na, Patrick Reed and Martin Kaymer.Unlike the PGA Tour, which has suspended members who have joined LIV and barred them from playing in PGA Tour events, the DP World Tour has a slightly different policy. Members who qualify for tournaments, like Wentworth, based on their world rankings or other criteria, are allowed, for now, to play in the event.Given the amount of money sponsors pledge to an event on the DP World Tour, the PGA Tour or any of the other tours around the world, they want something in return. Corporate perks and television coverage for sure, but they also want great players to create compelling drama. That’s what happened in the final round of the Tour Championship on the PGA Tour on Aug. 28, when Rory McIlroy beat his playing partner, Scottie Scheffler, by one stroke to win the FedEx Cup, the PGA Tour’s season-long points competition. (Southern Company, Coca-Cola and Accenture are sponsors of the Tour Championship, not to mention FedEx, who as a season-long sponsor of the PGA Tour contributes a large part of the $18 million first-prize check.)And having a winner from LIV Golf creates a difficult situation for sponsors and the DP World Tour itself, which is a strategic partner of the PGA Tour but has allowed LIV players to compete.Before the tournament even started, the LIV presence at Wentworth was criticized by top tour members like the U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick, who called the LIV presence “disappointing.” Billy Horschel, who won the BMW PGA Championship in 2021, said the LIV golfers shouldn’t be allowed to play on the DP World Tour at all: “They decided to go play on that tour and they should go play there.”Greenskeepers working on the 18th hole at Wentworth Golf Club on Sept. 6.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesIts sponsor has remained neutral. “The focus of the BMW Group is to host a world-class event and provide a premium experience for players, fans and enthusiasts at all our sport engagements,” said Tim Holzmüller, a spokesman for BMW Group Sport Engagement.Great players bring in fans and television viewers at home. And a battle between a LIV golfer and a PGA or DP World Tour member would certainly juice ratings. But what happens afterward for sponsors would be hard to say.The traditional measure of a tournament is its “strength of field,” which is important to ensure sponsorship dollars are well spent. In layman’s terms, the term refers to the quality of the players committed to playing the event. And for sponsors, the bigger the stars the bigger the audience.The DP World Tour says its marquee event has a strong roster of players.“The field for this year’s event is projected to be significantly stronger than last year’s event,” said Steve Todd, deputy media communications director for the DP World Tour, noting that three top-10 players are in the field — McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Fitzpatrick. The last time that happened was in 2019 — the last BMW PGA Championship unaffected by the pandemic.Todd added that there were plenty of fan favorites to draw in viewers and satisfy sponsors.“The field also features defending champion Billy Horschel and a number of Ryder Cup players including Viktor Hovland, Shane Lowry, Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, Justin Rose and Francesco Molinari, all of whom have strong records in the tournament and are particularly popular with the Wentworth crowds,” he said. “Also playing is [Ryder Cup] European captain Luke Donald, who won the event back-to-back in front of his home English fans in 2011 and 2012.”Westwood, a three-time winner of the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai and a winner on the PGA Tour, is now a LIV golfer who is playing at Wentworth this week. He said he didn’t believe it made any difference who won.“Everyone playing at Wentworth has qualified to play by right,” he said in an interview. “It’s the strongest field at the BMW PGA Championship for years.”He added: “If a LIV golfer wins, then he’ll be the person that’s played the best and will fully deserve it. I don’t think the public in general are bothered what tour people play on. They just want to see the best players play great golf.”Andrew “Chubby” Chandler, a longtime agent for players on the DP World Tour, said the competing tours at Wentworth “adds a lot to the event both in star names and intrigue. I don’t see a problem if a LIV golfer wins at Wentworth. I think it possibly shows what might have happened if the [DP World Tour] could have accepted all the LIV golfers as full members when it was suggested four months ago.”The tournament also comes just weeks after the PGA Tour made significant changes on how it operates that may not align with what the DP World Tour is doing.For one, top players on the PGA Tour need to commit to 20 events, which could be challenging for European players. The Tour has also created so-called elevated events with greater prize money. Both are meant to get the top players competing against each other more often.Patrick Reed of the United States plays his second shot on the 1st hole at the Wentworth Golf Club during a practice round before the BMW PGA Championship.Warren Little/Getty ImagesMcIlroy said that sports fans want to see the best in the game when they tune in to watch, drawing a comparison to U.S. football fans wanting to see Tom Brady at quarterback if they’re watching a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game.Yet the up-and-coming players are being given a $500,000 draw against their PGA Tour earnings to help them compete. This goes for both U.S. players who have made it to the PGA Tour and international players who have qualified through the DP World Tour rankings. In other words, it’s helping to end the economic disadvantage that young players have in golf that they don’t in other professional sports.“It’s comparable to how other leagues approach their athlete compensation,” said the PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan at a news conference. “For rookies, coming out here and knowing that that’s payable on day one we think will help put those rookies in a better position to compete because they can invest in the infrastructure they need to succeed.”(Players who miss the cut also get a $5,000 stipend to help cover their expenses.)The PGA Tour’s August announcement also has given LIV players fodder to play both sides of the debate, since what it means for the tour’s partner, the DP World Tour, wasn’t mentioned.“The goal for the DP World Tour is finding a way to get the top Europeans that play on the PGA Tour to come back and play in Europe more often, not just the odd big one or two tournaments where they get appearance money,” Westwood said. “This is all going to be made harder by the new concept that Jay [Monahan] announced that is designed to guarantee 20 strong fields in the U.S. with not much thought given to the DP World Tour and other tours. It’s an odd decision considering the new ‘strategic alliance’ supposedly in place.”But a PGA Tour official who was not authorized to speak because of ongoing litigation involving LIV Golf said the strength of fields on the tour remains strong even without the players who have left.And that, at the end of the day, is what some observers believe companies want. “Sponsors,” Chandler said, “want the best fields at their events so BMW will be pleased.” More

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      LIV Golf Continues to Try New Ways to Be Noticed

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      Whether it’s the team concept or a decision to allow its golfers to play in shorts, the breakaway Saudi-backed series so far sees itself as the anti-PGA Tour.BOLTON, Mass. — The LIV Golf event outside Boston was minutes from beginning on Friday, and Greg Norman, the frontman for the insurgent Saudi-backed circuit, needed a new, showy way to make an entrance in the rancorous battle for the future of men’s golf.How about jumping from an airplane and parachuting onto the first tee? Surely, Norman’s nemesis, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, had never done that?So it was that the hundreds of fans crowded around the first tee lifted their eyes to the sky to watch as Norman, who was harnessed to a retired military parachutist, dropped across the backdrop of a clear blue sky until he touched down in front of the tee.Separated from his escort, Norman bolted upright and raised both fists triumphantly. As he marched toward the tee, a fan yelled: “Greg, the PGA Tour is done. You did it, baby!”Looking a bit stunned, if delighted, Norman turned in the direction of the voice. He pointed a finger and flashed the widest of smiles.The scene could have been a metaphor for the most turbulent season in modern professional golf history: When LIV Golf suddenly appeared on the horizon this spring, the risk was manifest as the circuit searched for a welcoming place to drop into an occasionally inhospitable sport. In a surprise, LIV Golf has not only landed on its feet, it is defiantly celebrating.Despite the volume of one fan’s shout, the PGA Tour is far from done or even from losing the clash with its rival. Last week, it began a muscular counterattack. But as the fourth LIV Golf event concluded at the International Golf Club on Sunday, the evidence was mounting that the rebel tour was not retreating either. In fact, it continues to find new ways to be noticed.Consider the great dump-the-trousers crusade that unfolded here in Saturday’s second round. In its unceasing effort to be the anti-PGA Tour, which includes not having large tournament crowds or a broadcast TV contract, the LIV Golf leaders decided Saturday to allow players to wear shorts.The PGA Tour does not allow its members to show legs in competition. The LIV Golf decision moved players on the circuit to say they felt freer, an odd choice of words for a group guaranteed at least $120,000 (with expenses paid) for their appearance at the tournament.“This is a long time coming in the game of golf; I think it just takes a disrupter like LIV to get things done,” Phil Mickelson said of wearing shorts.Phil Mickelson wore shorts on Saturday and Sunday after the LIV Golf leaders decided to allow it.Mary Schwalm/Associated PressThere was only one snag in the dress code golfing revolution that LIV Golf was hoping to ignite. The majority of the golfers kept their pants on. Maybe these guys like golf tradition more than anyone suspected.I have now spent six days (two tournaments) inside the LIV Golf bubble since late July, and there are certain evident, noteworthy truths. One is that the rival circuit is clearly attracting a younger, more boisterous crowd than the typical PGA Tour gallery, portions of which can be reserved and sometimes removed, i.e., watching from an air-conditioned corporate box. LIV Golf’s chief motto is “Golf, but louder,” and with a recurring thunderous soundtrack of Beastie Boys, Twisted Sister and AC/DC, the circuit is living (no pun intended) up to its billing.Asked about the thumping music that can be heard on all 18 holes, Sergio García quipped, “I’m trying not to dance too much.”Cameron Smith, who is ranked second in the men’s worldwide rankings and who was the breakaway tour’s splashy new acquisition last week, refuted the suggestion that the music is a diversion or a gimmick. “To me,” Smith said, “it feels like the course has a bit of heartbeat.”The LIV Golf leadership is also convinced that the key to the tour’s success is its team concept, which is new to golf. The goal is to replicate the success of the Formula 1 team model. But the LIV Golf teams had a clunky rollout earlier this year when team members kept changing, which further confused potential fans who already could not identify or remember the 12 team names, let alone their four-man rosters.As an example, I stopped 10 fans on the golf course Sunday and asked them to name just one LIV Golf team. Three could do it, six could not and one grinning guy astonishingly started rattling off the team names one by one until I realized he was looking over my shoulder at a scoreboard with all the team names and scores.But next year, LIV Golf, whose major shareholder is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, will expand the number of tournaments, and the four-player teams will remain unchanged tournament to tournament, barring injury. Players on each team may even wear matching outfits of some sort, like a uniform, to drive home the team concept. The plan is also to make teams have a unifying theme: Four Australians led by Smith, a South African team headed by Louis Oosthuizen, and other teams bound by nationality. LIV Golf has heavily recruited Hideki Matsuyama, the 2021 Masters champion, in hopes of heading a Japanese team.The LIV Golf crowds at events are still sparse despite tickets being exceedingly cheap on the secondary ticket market. The attendance, which LIV Golf does not announce, is roughly one-fourth of what would be expected for a PGA Tour event.The LIV Golf version of a fan village alongside the golf course has considerable energy, with myriad golf skill contest booths and food trucks that might evoke a county fair. There also seems to be a bar, with a line, at every turn.But there is something else noticeable about the fan village. A giant screen was showing the golf taking place over on the course. I checked several times over three days, and while there were hundreds of fans standing and sitting around inside the village, it was rare to see anyone even glance briefly at the screen.The competition, for all its newness, does resemble an elite golf tournament with the kind of booming drives and deft short games that only the world’s best players hit. Dustin Johnson won the 54-hole event on Sunday in a playoff over Joaquin Niemann and Anirban Lahiri.But especially early on, some of the usual tension of a PGA Tour event, where the understanding is that a victory can be career-changing, was missing. On the driving range and the practice putting green before play begins, the atmosphere was unusually light and carefree — as if most of them knew that they had already been paid handsomely with guaranteed, upfront money. Which, of course, is the case.But LIV Golf is in its infancy, and its baby steps have included the successful, stunning recruitment of a sizable number of prominent golfers — a flock that very few thought could be assembled so rapidly. The circuit has now played half of its scheduled tournaments, and it is not going away.Monahan, the PGA Tour chieftain, is highly unlikely to consider Norman’s jumping out of an airplane a challenge that he must respond to in kind. But gaudy gestures aside, the new reality of men’s golf is that neither LIV Golf, which seemed to drop out of nowhere, nor the established PGA Tour is backing down. More

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      With the PGA Tour Season Over, LIV Golf Looks to Strengthen Its Foothold

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      Cameron Smith, the No. 2 player in the world, is among six veteran players who will make their debuts for the breakaway series at an event outside Boston this weekend.BOLTON, Mass. — Roughly 11 weeks ago in the Boston suburbs, men’s professional golf welcomed the game’s best players to the 122nd U.S. Open. Five days before that event began, the inaugural LIV Golf tournament in England was ending; it was largely treated as an anomalous curiosity.When Phil Mickelson, the well-compensated headliner of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour, played his first holes at the U.S. Open, he was greeted politely, but the gallery also loudly snickered when one fan yelled: “Sellout!” At the conclusion of the championship, many in the tradition-bound golf community found amusement in noting the dreadful play of the small gaggle of LIV-aligned golfers, most especially Mickelson, who missed the cut with a score of 11 over par.On Friday, another Boston suburb will host the fourth LIV Golf tournament. But no one is laughing at the upstart circuit anymore.Since the June midpoint of this year’s golf season, the breakaway circuit, financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, has lured away a deep collection of top golfers from the PGA Tour and coerced the rattled Tour into hurriedly adopting fundamental systemic changes to remain competitive.Even after the more-established PGA Tour ended its 2021-22 season on Sunday, LIV Golf continued to seize the spotlight by announcing its biggest talent acquisition, the signing of Cameron Smith, the world’s second-ranked male golfer and the reigning British Open champion. Smith, 29, was joined by five other PGA Tour veterans, including Joaquin Niemann of Chile, who is 23 years old and ranked 19th, and Harold Varner III, a 32-year-old American who is ranked 46th.Unlike nearly every one of his predecessors who have abandoned the PGA Tour for the rival series, Smith, who was reportedly paid $100 million to join LIV Golf, did not try to shamelessly deny that money played a factor in his decision. But he spent considerable time describing how the shorter LIV Golf schedule would allow him to spend more time in his native Australia, adding that he had not been home in three years. And he harped on a familiar theme — a feeling that LIV Golf offered a refreshing, youthful vibe — that has been preached by other defectors, each of whom did so fully aware that they would be suspended from participating on the PGA Tour.“I think this is the future of golf — I think it’s been the same for a very, very long time, and it needs to be stirred up a little bit,” Smith said. “I think it needs to change. I kind of see this as a new chapter in my life.”Harold Varner III said he was stunned by the negative comments on social media his decision to join LIV Golf engendered.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesOn Friday, Smith, Niemann and Varner will play in the first of three rounds of the 54-hole LIV Golf event at the International Golf Club in Bolton, Mass., a small town about 40 miles west of Boston.Protests and controversy about LIV Golf’s financial backing have dogged each of the series’ three previous events, which were held outside London, near Portland, Ore., and at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. A similar reaction may occur in Bolton, a town of about 5,600, which has made a designated area near a golf spectators’ parking lot available to protesters.Varner conceded that when his decision to commit to LIV Golf was announced on Tuesday, he was stunned by the negative comments on social media it engendered. Varner, a popular PGA Tour player and one of the few Black golfers in tour or major championship fields, said he took the time to read each of the derogatory remarks, even though he was cautioned not to.“I’m not ashamed of being Harold,” Varner said, then added: “But it was terrible. Who likes to be hated? I hate being hated. I’d rather not even be known than be hated.”But Varner, who earned $10.4 million in prize money on the PGA Tour, said he took LIV Golf’s upfront signing bonus — his payment has not been disclosed — to protect his family financially. Noting his modest upbringing in Gastonia, N.C., Varner said: “For a kid that grew up where I grew up, it was an opportunity for me to just make sure my kid never would be in that situation — ever — and that means the world to me.”Amid all the buzz and tumult the LIV Golf venture has created, one unequivocal reality has emerged about this summer’s disruption to golf’s status quo: There will be a lot more prize money distributed to virtually every top professional player. Late last month, the PGA Tour suddenly revealed that beginning next season the average purse for 12 of its existing events, plus an additional four tournaments yet to be named, would be $20 million. That’s a sizable jump in player earnings, and, not coincidentally, closely mimics the prize money available at the eight LIV Golf events this year.The PGA Tour also announced it was augmenting the Player Impact Program it began last year that paid 10 top players from a $40 million pool based on their popularity as measured by internet searches, general golf fan awareness, mentions in the media and broadcast exposure. The new program will now reward twice as many players from a bonus pool that has ballooned to $100 million.And finally, the tour plans to guarantee lower-level players $500,000 in annual earnings and a travel stipend for missed cuts at tournaments.Joaquin Niemann of Chile, who is ranked 19th in the world, also left the PGA Tour.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesIt is entirely conceivable, even probable, that had the PGA Tour implemented these changes a month before this year’s U.S. Open, the LIV Golf series might have largely remained the afterthought that most in golf expected it to be three months ago. Although, upfront payouts of $100 million, or even $200 million, which Mickelson reportedly received, may have changed the golf landscape regardless.As another LIV Golf event dawns, and the PGA Tour goes into what is typically its off-season, much is undecided, and there is intrigue about what will happen next. How could there not be? The sport is in the midst of an unprecedented showdown with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.But waiting on the sidelines are golf’s most influential power brokers, and they are the leaders of the four separate governing bodies overseeing the men’s major championships: the Masters Tournament, the P.G.A. Championship (which is not run by the PGA Tour), the U.S. Open and the British Open.The leaders of each of these entities have conspicuously avoided praising LIV Golf this year. Some have been downright dismissive and contemptuous of golf’s new tour. These groups may hold golf’s future in their hands, with the reserved, assiduously circumspect officials of the Augusta National Golf Club getting the first opportunity to make a profound statement for 2023.One thing is certain. The severe splintering of men’s golf may have been unforeseen back at the U.S. Open in June, but the brightly colored LIV Golf banners sprouting in another Boston suburb this week — they read, “Golf, but louder” — prove how much has changed in such a short time. More

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      Cameron Smith, Winner of This Year’s British Open, Joins LIV Golf

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      Smith’s defection had been expected, but Rory McIlroy tried to stave it off back in July.Cameron Smith, the world’s second-ranked golfer and a player whose exceptional final-round putting carried him to this year’s British Open title, will join LIV Golf, the breakaway series financed with money from Saudi Arabia.Smith is expected to play in LIV’s next 54-hole, no-cut tournament, which will begin Friday in Bolton, Mass., west of Boston. Five other players — Anirban Lahiri, Marc Leishman, Joaquin Niemann, Cameron Tringale and Harold Varner III — will also join a LIV field for the first time, the series announced on Tuesday.The moves by the players were widely expected but still bruised the PGA Tour, which has spent months trying to devise ways to keep players in its establishment fold. Last week, Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, announced changes, including purses averaging $20 million at a dozen events next season, that executives hoped would better position the tour to compete with the allure of LIV, which has enticed players with more relaxed schedules and, in some instances, contracts reportedly worth at least $100 million.Smith, a 29-year-old from Australia who also won this year’s Players Championship, was a leading target for the series, which is underwritten by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The possibility of a Smith defection was such an open secret that a reporter asked Smith about it soon after he won the Open, where he shot an eight-under-par 64 on a Sunday to rally from a four-stroke deficit.“I just won the British Open, and you’re asking about that?” Smith said at a news conference then. “I think that’s pretty not that good.”A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesA new series. More

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      A Triple-Bogey Start Vanquished, Rory McIlroy Captures the FedEx Cup

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      McIlroy edged out Scottie Scheffler, who had held the lead in Atlanta for almost the entire Tour Championship. Sungjae Im and Scheffler finished tied for second, a stroke behind.ATLANTA — On Thursday, his scorecard a shambles after only two holes at the Tour Championship, Rory McIlroy did not find himself thinking about golf’s comeback magicians or his fellow major champions.Instead, he considered the example of a 20-year-old player, Joohyung Kim, also known as Tom Kim, who won the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C., this month.“He started with a quad and ended up going on to win the golf tournament,” McIlroy, who had opened his Tour Championship with a triple-bogey and a bogey, said then. “It is possible.”So McIlroy proved it himself. Three days after he produced an instant debacle at East Lake Golf Club and six weeks after he faltered at the British Open, McIlroy orchestrated the largest final-round comeback in the history of the Tour Championship and defeated Scottie Scheffler by a stroke on Sunday. Although McIlroy’s win did not end his eight-year drought in major tournaments, he earned $18 million, claimed his third FedEx Cup, a record, and allowed the PGA Tour to close a turbulent season by crowning a beloved stalwart as its champion.“I just felt so close all year,” McIlroy said after his victory in Atlanta, where Scheffler started with the tournament lead Thursday and held it until Sunday evening. “I had a couple wins, but I was just waiting for something. Maybe this was it. I got a little lucky with Scottie not playing his best golf today, and I took advantage of that with my good play.”But, McIlroy added, “I went up against the best player in the world today and I took him down, and that’s got to mean something.”Even though McIlroy trailed Scheffler by six strokes at the beginning of the fourth round, the final two holes of his third round — played on Sunday morning because of Saturday’s weather in Atlanta — suggested he was in fighting form: He birdied both.McIlroy started the final round with a bogey, but he made birdie on No. 3 to bring his score even. Starting with the fifth hole, he stitched together three consecutive birdies that would undergird a 32 on the front nine. Scheffler, McIlroy’s partner in the final pairing, had three bogeys in the first half of the fourth round, which he finished with a three-over-par 73.For as sure-footed as McIlroy so often seemed Sunday, and for as wobbly as Scheffler sometimes was, McIlroy did not assume sole command of the leaderboard until the final putts at No. 16.He might as well have on No. 15, though.Thirty-one feet from the pin, McIlroy tapped the ball and then stood like a statue, his putter barely aloft as the ball broke to the left. Then it swung toward the hole, McIlroy stepping back — and willing, praying, something — a few steps before it rolled into the cup. McIlroy raised his right fist in jubilation as the crowd thundered its approval.Scheffler made a bogey on the next hole and, at last, surrendered the solo lead.“I really fought hard today; Rory just played a really good round of golf,” Scheffler said. “He made some key putts there at the end, and he definitely deserved to win.”Scheffler finished in a tie for second with Sungjae Im. Xander Schauffele was two strokes behind them, and Max Homa and Justin Thomas finished tied for fifth, trailing McIlroy by four strokes.In McIlroy, 33, the PGA Tour got a FedEx Cup winner who has been one of its fiercest loyalists during the year’s upheaval over LIV Golf, the new series that has lured top players with hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.The dramatics over LIV were hardly absent from Atlanta — McIlroy was paired Thursday and Friday with Cameron Smith, the British Open winner who has not publicly denied a British news media report that he intends to defect as soon as this week. But McIlroy’s win was a boon for an entrenched order that has lately been besieged.“Everyone on tour has had to deal with a lot; even the guys that have went to LIV have had to deal with a lot,” McIlroy said before adding, a few moments later: “This is the best place in the world to play golf. It’s the most competitive. It’s got the best players. It’s got the deepest fields. I don’t know why you’d want to play anywhere else.”He could have been forgiven, of course, for thinking otherwise Thursday in the rain in Atlanta. But Sunday, he said his mind had “automatically” wandered to Kim’s resurrection in Greensboro.“I could have easily thought the other way and thought: ‘I’ve got no chance now. What am I doing here?’” McIlroy said Sunday, when he shot a 66. “But I just sort of, I guess, proved that I was in a really good mind-set for the week, and I didn’t let it get to me too much and just stuck my head down and got to work.”By a lone stroke, it was enough. More

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      At Chaotic Season’s Close, PGA Tour Banks on Patience and Its Stars

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      At the Tour Championship in Atlanta, the PGA Tour has rolled out a more muscular rebuttal to LIV Golf. The exodus may continue anyway.ATLANTA — The conversation happened two days after Cameron Smith charged into Rory McIlroy’s lengthening catalog of letdowns.First, McIlroy recounted this week, he wanted to congratulate Smith for capturing the claret jug at July’s British Open, ruining McIlroy’s own Sunday on the Old Course at St. Andrews. But with rumors rife that Smith would defect to LIV Golf, the breakaway series financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, McIlroy also wanted to make a case for the PGA Tour to Smith, the world’s second-ranked golfer.“Guys that are thinking one way or another, honestly, I don’t care if they leave or not,” McIlroy said at the Tour Championship in Atlanta. “It’s not going to make a difference to me. But I would at least like people to make a decision that is completely informed and basically know: ‘This is what’s coming down the pipeline. This is what you may be leaving behind.’”Smith may indeed leave the PGA Tour behind: He has not denied a report in The Telegraph, the London newspaper, that he will start playing with LIV as soon as next week in exchange for at least $100 million. The last stretch of the PGA Tour season, though, has shown how, with the sport splitting into bitter camps, certain players have assumed starring roles in the effort to stabilize the establishment ranks.The campaign’s anchors have plainly been Tiger Woods, who went to Delaware last week to meet with players, and McIlroy, who wound up paired with Smith for the first two Tour Championship rounds. But others have lent support; this week in Atlanta, for instance, Jordan Spieth said he intended to be “as useful as I’m wanted and as behind the scenes as I’m wanted.”The top players who are among the tour’s remaining stalwarts — other leading figures like Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson have aligned themselves with LIV — are almost assuredly acting for a complex mix of reasons.There are financial explanations, of course, because a PGA Tour stocked with a greater share of the world’s finest players makes its product far more appealing and far more lucrative, for its organizers and its athletes alike. Some players harbor a measure of disdain for LIV Golf’s patron. And, even by the brooding standards of 2022, it is too cynical to discount players when they complain that LIV’s 54-hole, no-cut events, with shotgun starts, are putting a modern blemish on the ancient game they have spent decades trying to conquer.Whatever the players’ motives, their response is coming into greater focus as the tour moves beyond finger-wagging and suspensions. The blended strategy is unlikely to end the exodus, but it could curb it.The plans emerged alongside the Tour Championship, the finale of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, at Atlanta’s stately East Lake Golf Club, where a 29-man field is driving, chipping and putting in pursuit of the $18 million prize that will go to the winner. (Although the nuances and rigors of the competitions make for an inexact comparisons, Scottie Scheffler, who finished his round on Friday with a two-stroke lead over Xander Schauffele, earned $2.7 million for his April victory in Georgia’s other golf mainstay, the Masters Tournament.)But at the end of a season marked more than any other by such open flashes of betrayal and power, appeals to tradition and the allure of money, the ritual talk of the tour’s future is not automatically a plaudit-laden sideshow. Instead, it has become a showcase for the flotilla of life rafts that the PGA Tour and its allies are deploying.Beyond any peer pressure, there will be an avalanche of cash, with a dozen tour competitions next season designated as “elevated events” that will offer purses averaging $20 million each. Moreover, the tour’s Player Impact Program, which debuted last year and relies on metrics like mentions of a player in the news media and internet searches, will play a far larger role in determining compensation and fortifying tournament fields.McIlroy, left, and Tiger Woods are backing a new “tech-infused” team competition that will feature PGA Tour players beginning in 2024.Paul Childs/ReutersMcIlroy, who was nine shots off the lead and in seventh place on Friday, suggested this week that the new model, which is expected to more or less promise the presence of elite, popular players at a wider range of tournaments, would strengthen the tour by offering clearer assurances of who fans — and sponsors — could expect to see in tee boxes everywhere from Hawaii to Orlando, Fla.“I think if you’re trying to sell a product to TV and to sponsors and to try to get as many eyeballs on professional golf as possible, you need to at least let people know what they’re tuning in for,” said McIlroy, seeming as much a corporate pitchman as a player at some points this week. “When I tune into a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game, I expect to see Tom Brady throw a football. When I tune into a Formula 1 race, I expect to see Lewis Hamilton in a car.”Tour executives are also dangling other rewards, like guaranteed payments to players of $500,000 for a season and a pool of $100 million — up from $50 million — that will be divvied up based on the impact program rankings.And McIlroy and Woods are also backing what Mike McCarley, the chief executive of their shared venture, described as “a tech-infused team competition” that they expect will feature televised Monday night matches, beginning in 2024. McIlroy and Woods both intend to compete in some of the events, which the company said will be played in a custom arena and “combine a data-rich virtual course with a state-of-the-art short game complex.” (Setting aside decorum or any PGA Tour dynamics, it is not hard to imagine why the men did not announce this particular endeavor at the Old Course last month.)The events, McCarley and McIlroy said, will be “complementary” to the PGA Tour and have been in development for about two years. Now they amount to another lifeline.Perhaps it is unsurprising that golf, of all sports, is reinforcing the notion that patience is a virtue, and the possibility of swift forgiveness does not appear to be available for now. Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, pointedly said that he would not be instantly willing to welcome defectors back into the fold.“They’ve joined the LIV Golf Series and they’ve made that commitment,” Monahan said. “For most of them, they’ve made multiyear commitments. As I’ve been clear throughout, every player has a choice, and I respect their choice, but they’ve made it. We’ve made ours. We’re going to continue to focus on the things that we control and get stronger and stronger.”Whether that will bear out remains to be seen, and those ambitions could take a quick hit with another wave of defections from players like Smith, who is 13 shots behind Scheffler and tied for 15th in Atlanta.But at least for the moment, some players and some newfound nimbleness have an old order looking a little less bedraggled and besieged. More

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      Tom Weiskopf, British Open Winner and Golf Course Designer, Dies at 79

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      A four-time runner-up at the Masters, he won 16 PGA Tour events starting in the late 1960s and later became a television commentator.Tom Weiskopf, who won 16 PGA Tour events, most notably the British Open, and became a prominent golf course architect and broadcaster, died on Saturday at his home in Big Sky, Mont. Weiskopf, who was found to have pancreatic cancer in 2020, was 79.His death was announced by the PGA Tour.Hailed for what was considered a perfect and powerful swing, Weiskopf won five times on the PGA Tour in 1973, his shining moment coming at the British Open, played at the Royal Troon Golf Club in Scotland. He led wire to wire, defeating Johnny Miller and Neil Coles by three shots with Jack Nicklaus four strokes back.Weiskopf was the runner-up four times at the Masters and tied for second at the 1976 United States Open. He also won the Canadian Open in 1973 and again in 1975, when he captured a one-hole playoff over Nicklaus, his fellow Ohio State University alumnus. Weiskopf was a member of the United States Ryder Cup teams in 1973 and 1975.Weiskopf turned pro in 1964 and played on the PGA Tour from 1968 to 1982.He later joined the Senior PGA Tour, now known as the Champions Tour, and defeated Nicklaus by four strokes in the 1995 United States Senior Open.Weiskopf in 1975 at the Masters golf tournament. He and Johnny Miller tied for second, one stroke behind Jack Nicklaus.Bob Daugherty/Associated PressThomas Daniel Weiskopf was born on Nov. 9, 1942, in Massillon, Ohio, the oldest of three children of Thomas Weiskopf, a railroad worker, and his wife, Eva Shorb, both of whom had enjoyed success playing in Ohio tournaments.His passion for golf was kindled when his father brought him to the United States Open at Inverness in Toledo, Ohio, in 1957.“He took me straight to the practice range and pointed out Sam Snead,” Weiskopf recalled in the book “Chasing Greatness,” the story of the 1973 Open, by Adam Lazarus and Steve Schlossman. “The sound of Sam’s iron shots, the flight of the ball, thrilled me. I was hooked even before I started playing.”Weiskopf helped take Benedictine High School to the Cleveland city golf championship as a junior and senior, and then was recruited to Ohio State by golf coach Bob Kepler. Nicklaus was a senior on the Buckeyes’ golf team when Weiskopf arrived in Columbus. But they were never teammates, since N.C.A.A. rules prohibited freshmen from competing.Weiskopf embarked on his second golf career, as a course designer, and teamed with the golf architect Jay Morrish to create Troon North in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 1984. “I knew I had to get away from the game for at least a year so I thought I’d see if I liked architecture,” he told Golf Digest in 2009. “I could still go back on tour if I wanted but I never did.”His achievements as a golf course designer included Loch Lomond in Scotland and TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course, the site of the PGA Tour’s WM Phoenix Open since 1987.Weiskopf was part of the CBS team that covered Nicklaus’s victory in the 1986 Masters.When asked to provide viewers insight into Nicklaus’s thought processes in the final holes, he replied, “If I knew the way he thought, I would have won this tournament.”He also worked as a golf analyst for CBS Sports, covering the Masters, and contributed to ABC Sports and ESPN’s coverage of the British Open.Weiskopf defeated Nicklaus by four strokes in the 1995 United States Senior Open.John Ruthroff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWeiskopf’s survivors include his wife, Laurie, and his children Heidi and Eric from his marriage to his first wife, Jeanne.When Weiskopf won the British Open, he paid tribute to his father.“Even now, I wish my father was alive to see this,” he said. “I didn’t put my best in front of him and doggone it, as long as I’m playing this game I’m going to do my best. I really wanted to win this tournament more than any other major tournament I ever played in.”When he redesigned the municipal North Course at Torrey Pines at San Diego in 2016, Weiskopf reflected on his career as a golf architect.“You create aesthetic value by having big mature trees, beautiful vista water features and bunker styles,” he said. “That creates the beauty of the golf course, I think. How could you find a better piece of property than this piece of property, for 36 holes of golf?” More