Los Angeles (Calif)

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares179 Views

    Rickie Fowler Reserves His Flash for the U.S. Open’s First Round

    by

    Fowler no longer wears blinding colors and his shaggy hair is long gone. But after years of struggle at major tournaments, the popular golfer quietly made U.S. Open history on Thursday.No golf fans followed Rickie Fowler on Thursday dressed the same as he was. That used to be a thing in 2010 when Fowler, then 22, rode his relaxed dirt-biking roots and a boy band vibe complete with a top-to-toe orange outfit and a flat-brim hat to enormous popularity.Fowler, now 34 and a husband and father, was still dapper in Thursday’s first round of the U.S. Open at the Los Angeles Country Club but hardly flashy in a soft blue-gray pullover with white trim that matched his white cap, pants and shoes.The crowds were somewhat understated, too. Nine holes into his round, which had started on the 10th hole, a packed grandstand politely applauded when Fowler made a birdie putt to tie for the tournament lead at three under par. A fan called out, “Keep it going, Rickie.” But the reaction was hardly the same as the raucous quasi delirium that the longhaired younger Fowler once elicited.Finally, as he marched toward his final nine holes, the volume began to ratchet up. With five birdies and four pars in the closing nine holes, Fowler shot an eight-under 62. It was the lowest round in the history of the U.S. Open. Not long after, Xander Schauffele would match it.That did not alter the quiet smile on Fowler’s face as he hugged a group of friends and colleagues afterward. They had watched his many recent struggles on the golf course — “dark days,” he once called them — and admired how his countenance had never changed.“He’s always been the same guy,” said Justin Rose, who had played with Fowler on Thursday and shot a disappointing 76. “It was fun to watch Rickie today. That was the highlight of my day. Good for him.”Thursday’s result was something of a surprise for Fowler, but not a shock. He has been predicting some kind of revival for months. Once the fourth-ranked golfer in the world, Fowler had plummeted all the way to No. 173 last year. In 2014, he had finished in the top five at each of the four major tournaments. By 2022, he had played in only one, the P.G.A. Championship, and finished tied for 23rd.People wondered if he would defect to the LIV Golf circuit just to get a final big paycheck while his name still meant something. But Fowler stayed with his PGA Tour pals Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, with whom he once took beach vacations, and persevered. He could regularly be seen alone, grinding on the range or practicing putting by himself late in the afternoon or evening during tournaments.Fowler, left, and Jason Day walk from the eighth green on Thursday.Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockLast month, after several encouraging results, Fowler vaulted back into the top 50 of the rankings, which qualified him for last month’s P.G.A. Championship. Fowler talked as if he had turned a corner.“Getting back to this stage, I mean, it’s never fun,” he said. “But in many ways, I’ve actually enjoyed it. I learned things about myself. Not that I lost faith, but I came to almost embrace the grind.”To that end, Fowler would have been forgiven if he had sauntered around the L.A. Country Club grounds on Thursday with a giant grin that never left his face. But interestingly, Fowler was mostly stoic, flashing a thin smile occasionally. When he sank a three-foot putt for par on his final hole — the uphill, par-3 ninth hole — he barely raised his right hand to acknowledge the cheers roaring from a nearby grandstand.Interviewed afterward, Fowler maintained his laid-back mien. He insisted he was actually uncomfortable with the L.A. Country Club layout for most of his practice rounds.“Then, yesterday, finally a couple things clicked and that gave me confidence,” he said, admitting that it had not hurt to have birdied three of his first five holes (with one bogey mixed in).Having started his round just after 8 a.m. Pacific time, Fowler reached the halfway point of his round before 10:30 a.m. when a late arriving fandom had yet to fill the grandstands or line the fairways. But as Fowler birdied the first, second and third holes (his 10th, 11th and 12th holes played), larger crowds found Fowler on the golf course. They were treated to a show.At the drivable par-4 sixth hole, he hit a long iron to 51 yards and then spun a wedge shot to within eight feet and sank that putt for birdie. On the par-5 eighth hole, his drive found the devilish barranca right of the fairway, but he rescued himself with a gutsy chip back into the fairway. “I tried not to overthink it and take too long with that recovery,” he said. His pitch to the green left a 13-foot left-to-right birdie putt that Fowler sank with aplomb.A record low U.S. Open score was on the table with a closing-hole par, which Fowler also made look easy, despite having to sink a dicey final putt.“This week is off to a good start,” he said moments later — nonchalantly, as if that were all his performance meant to him.Later, he would reveal otherwise. Asked to characterize his journey from 173rd in the world to a record-setting round in the national championship, Fowler said: “It’s definitely been long and tough. A lot longer being in that situation than you’d ever want to. But it makes it so worth it having gone through that and being back where we are now.” More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Golf

      U.S.G.A. Steadfast in Plan to Curb Pro Golfers’ Driving Distances

      by

      Players are objecting to a proposed change from golf’s rulemakers to use new balls, but the U.S. Golf Association said Wednesday it would not abandon the plan.The United States Golf Association acknowledged Wednesday that it had heard ferocious opposition to its proposal for professional players to use balls that travel shorter distances — but it also signaled no interest in abandoning its ambitions to rein in equipment in the next several years.The association and the R&A, a governing body based in Britain, had in March proposed a rule that they estimated could trim top golfers’ tee shots by an average of about 15 yards. Framed as an effort to preserve the sport and the relevance of many of its finest courses, the proposal provoked a backlash among hard-driving professionals, who are routinely hitting tee shots at distances that were all but unimaginable only a few decades ago, and equipment manufacturers, who relish selling weekend duffers the same balls the stars strike at events like this week’s U.S. Open.“Our intent is pure; it’s not malicious,” Fred Perpall, the U.S.G.A.’s president, said at a news conference at the Los Angeles Country Club, where the Open will begin on Thursday. “We’re not trying to do something to damage anyone. We’re thinking about all the good that this good game has given us, and we’re thinking about what is our responsibility to make sure that this game is still strong and healthy 50 years from now for our children’s children.”The debate about distance in golf has played out for years, with executives increasingly irritated with stopgap fixes, like redesigning holes to accommodate the game’s most potent hitters. Some of the sport’s retired greats, including Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, have pressed golf’s rule book writers to take blunt and urgent action.“Not everybody’s got the ability to go buy the golf course next door, like you do at Augusta,” Nicklaus said in an interview with The New York Times at the Masters Tournament in April. “You can’t just keep buying land and adding. We used to have in this country probably a couple of thousand golf courses that could be tournament golf courses. Today, we maybe have 100.”In the 2003 season, PGA Tour players recorded an average driving distance of about 286 yards, with nine golfers, including Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh and John Daly, typically hitting at least 300 yards off the tee. So far this season, the tour’s average driving distance stands at nearly 298 yards. Some 91 players — up nearly 10 percent since the U.S.G.A. and the R&A released their proposal — exceed 300 yards on average.Under the plan, balls that travel more than 317 yards when struck at 127 miles per hour would generally be banned.The U.S.G.A. and the R&A are gathering feedback about their proposal, which would not take effect until at least 2026 and would be classified as a model local rule, empowering individual tours and events to adopt it. The U.S.G.A. and the R&A would almost certainly impose the rule at the events they control, including the U.S. Open and the British Open, two of the four men’s major championships.But other golf power brokers, including the PGA Tour, have not embraced the plan, and many of the game’s biggest stars have openly resisted the thought of deliberately curbing distance.Even those who have been receptive to the prospect of making balls seem a little less like long-distance missiles have urged golf’s leaders to have a consistent standard throughout the game, without differences for top-tier professionals.Under the plan, balls that travel more than 317 yards when struck at 127 miles per hour would generally be banned.Desiree Rios/The New York Times“I just don’t think you should have a ball for the pros that might be used some tournaments, might not be used some tournaments, then amateurs can buy different golf balls,” said Matt Fitzpatrick, who won last year’s U.S. Open. “I don’t think that would work.”Tour players recently met privately in Ohio with U.S.G.A. officials and manufacturers to discuss the proposal, and Patrick Cantlay, who is No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking, said this week that “tensions were high” in those sessions.“Seems like golf is in a good spot, and doing anything that could potentially harm that would be foolish,” Cantlay said.Mike Whan, the U.S.G.A.’s chief executive, said Wednesday that he was sensitive to the concerns bubbling up from players and suggested that the governing bodies could tweak their proposals in the months ahead. But he emphasized that the U.S.G.A. is also concerned about the millions of golfers who are not professionals and neither he nor Perpall indicated plans for a wholesale surrender.“If you’re going to take on significant governance decisions that you think are going to help the game be stronger in 20 and 40 years, you can’t expect everybody to like those decisions, and that’s part of governance,” Whan said. “You have to decide whether or not you can stand up for what you think is the game long-term, knowing that maybe 20 percent or 30 percent or 50 percent like it and the others don’t. But I think the feedback process is important and it makes us better. Even when we don’t like the feedback we get, it makes us better.”Whan and Perpall’s impassioned defense unfolded as one of golf’s most influential figures, Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, was absent from the U.S. Open course. The tour disclosed late Tuesday that he was “recuperating from a medical situation” and that two other executives, Ron Price and Tyler Dennis, had indefinitely assumed day-to-day oversight of the circuit’s operations.The announcement that Monahan had stepped back followed seven days of turmoil in professional golf. Last Tuesday, the tour announced that it planned to partner with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the force behind the LIV Golf league that upended the sport, after months of depicting Saudi money as tainted. Monahan, who helped to negotiate the deal, was criticized as a cash-hungry hypocrite, but he has retained at least some crucial allies inside the tour.“Jay is a human being,” Webb Simpson, the 2012 U.S. Open winner and a member of the tour’s board, said in an interview on Wednesday. “Golf is a game, and oftentimes, we make golf into something so much bigger than it is and we dehumanize people.” Perhaps, he said, Tuesday’s announcement would give “people a little perspective.”But Simpson said he knew nothing about Monahan’s status beyond the tour’s initial statement. The tour has declined to elaborate on it or to give a projected timeline for Monahan’s return.Price and Dennis said in a statement that their priority was “to support our players and continue the work underway to further lead the PGA Tour and golf’s future.”In its own statement on Wednesday, the wealth fund “committed to working closely with the PGA leadership and board to advance our previously announced transaction to invest significantly in the growth of golf for the benefit of players, fans and the expansion of the game around the world.” More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Golf

      ‘Different Than What You Expect From a Los Angeles Golf Course’

      by

      For much of Collin Morikawa’s life, the Los Angeles Country Club was a mystery.The course, designed in 1921 by George C. Thomas Jr. with its North Course restored by the architect Gil Hanse in 2010, was off-limits to most — even Morikawa, a son of Southern California and one of its most promising golfers.But entering this week’s U.S. Open, he is one of a handful of professionals with meaningful experience at the club, which has not hosted a PGA Tour event since 1940 and has never been in the spotlight of a major tournament. Its most recent high-profile competition was the 2017 Walker Cup, an amateur team event played every two years. The United States won that year with a team that included Scottie Scheffler and Morikawa, who first got to play the course when he was a student at the University of California, Berkeley.“It’s demanding — it’s very different than what you expect from a Los Angeles golf course,” Morikawa said in an interview. “The grasses are very different. The West Coast is known for Kikuyu grass and very sticky poa annua greens, bumpy greens in the afternoon. That’s not what Los Angeles Country Club is.”Instead, players will confront a course of Bermuda grass, with bentgrass on greens that Morikawa sees as PGA Tour-like because of their slopes and designs. This year’s Open will include five par-3 holes for the first time since 1947, when Lew Worsham beat Sam Snead in an 18-hole playoff at St. Louis Country Club.Morikawa does not see that as a problem.“Just because there is a heavy focus on par-3s at L.A.C.C. doesn’t mean it’s not going to be a great championship golf course,” he said.No. 6Par 4, 330 yardsThe club’s first five holes pose challenges, but in Morikawa’s mind, it is not until No. 6 that the course offers a fearsome proposition of risk and reward. For the field, it will appear to be an eminently drivable par-4, even with a blind tee shot.But if the greens are as ferocious as the United States Golf Association hopes, good luck. The depth of the green demands perfect distance control, Morikawa said. The ideal landing zone is perhaps five yards in diameter and a bad bounce sends the ball toward the long rough.“Let’s just say it’s 295, 300 yards,” he said. “From that distance, no one is that accurate to hit every drive within a five-yard diameter.” Instead, he said he expects players to layup, often from somewhere between 215 and 240 yards, leaving enough space to the green to test their wedge games. (Morikawa said this week that his caddie had persuaded him to consider going for it instead of laying up.)“When you show up on six, you’re going to be thinking birdie,” he said. “But you’re going to see a lot of bogeys because of how difficult the strategy is going to be.”Nos. 6 and 8 — a par-5 hole measuring 547 yards — at Los Angeles, he said, can be like the second and third holes at Augusta National Golf Club, where players eagerly seek the low scores that are there for the taking.“You want to walk out under par, you have to play smart and you can’t be too aggressive,” he said.No. 9Par 3, 171 yardsFairly few ninth holes are par-3s — the last U.S. Open to have a par-3 on No. 9 was the 2017 edition at Erin Hills in Wisconsin — but the trek back toward the clubhouse includes one Morikawa has judged “deceiving.”A back pin might be merely 200 yards away, but Morikawa warned that the challenge comes from the slope of the green.“With fast greens, if you’re behind the hole, you’re going to be hoping for a two-putt par,” he said. Excessive aggression could very well land a player and his ball in the bunker and poised for a bogey.“For the most part, you’re going to be putting from the middle of the green,” Morikawa said. “You’re going to take four pars and walk out of there very, very happy.”No. 11Par 3, 290 yardsGet over the distraction, on a clear day at least, of the Los Angeles skyline, and face the downhill hole that is the course’s longest par-3. Thanks to its length, Morikawa figures it will be playing somewhere between 200 and 270 yards.“It’s going to be tricky because you have to land it in the right spot,” said Morikawa, who predicted that some in the field would see their tee shots land perhaps 15 yards short of the green and end up dealing with a 30- or 40-yard pitch shot.“If you miss it left, it’s going to run off,” he said of the hole, where the front of the green includes a slope that can fuel headaches if a player is too aggressive toward a back pin. “If you miss it right, it’s going to run off.”Even though the hole is formally a par-3, Morikawa predicted at least some high scores because of its length.No. 13Par 4, 507 yardsWhen Morikawa imagines a quintessential par-4 hole at a U.S. Open, he pictures No. 13: “Long, demanding. You’re going to have a long iron in, the tee box is miles away from the 12th green.”OK, maybe not miles, but it might feel like it after 12 holes of championship golf.And just about everyone — long hitters, short hitters, guys in between — is going to need to keep his tee shot to the left.“Long hitters who hit it right, it’s going to kick down the slope, right into the right rough,” said Morikawa, describing the perils for much of the modern Open field. In Los Angeles, the challenge with the right rough is that it all but forces the player to take a second shot with little visibility.A poor drive, Morikawa said, might require a 5-wood.He is expecting plenty of up-and-downs, and lag putt after lag putt, on a test that has plenty of angles along the way.“It’s a very long hole, but the green in regulation percentage is not going to be there,” he said.No. 14Par 5, 623 yardsThe lone par-5 hole on the back nine, No. 14 first demands that players decide whether they want to try to carry its right bunker. Even with the distances pros are logging off the tee, there will be only a handful who can carry the bunker and will also dare to try it, knowing that they need a drive of 310 yards or so.Edging toward the left, Morikawa said, will leave a player farther from the hole — and “it’s not the easiest layup because the fairways are going to be so narrow.” Being stuck in the rough for a third shot, he said, can be especially troublesome if a right pin is in play for the day because of how the green slopes.“No. 14 is going to require a lot of precision,” Morikawa said. “With 14, if you are a long hitter, you can go for it, push it up there, have a nice little wedge shot and make birdie.”There will be what Morikawa classifies as “stupid bogeys” since the hole is a par-5, ending a four-hole stretch where he senses the Open will not be won, but can be lost.“I think I’ll be pretty happy if I walk out of those holes even par throughout the week,” he said. More

    • 200 Shares199 Views

      in Golf

      At the U.S. Open, the Los Angeles Country Club Has a Rare Collection of Par 3s

      by

      There will be five of them at Los Angeles Country Club, including one with a stunning view of the city.If there were ever a postcard of the Los Angeles Country Club, it would show the breathtaking view from the tee box on the par-3 11th hole. Downhill and in the distance, the towers of the city skyline frame an elevated, sloping green that’s protected by three bear claw-shaped bunkers.The hole, however, is symbolic for more than its vista. It is one of five par 3s on the North Course, site of the 123rd United States Open that begins on Thursday. Together, these assorted holes are a rare sight, because the typical U.S. Open course features only four par-3 holes.In an era where massive drives are routine, this distinctive feature will test the accuracy of players trying to gauge par-3 flagsticks from as close as about 100 yards or from as far away as nearly 300. The holes form a prized collection of gems as the club hosts its first major tournament.“I think the membership looks at each of them individually because they are so different,” said Richard Shortz, past president of the club and co-chairman of the U.S. Open Committee, of the way club members see the holes. “They’re proud of them all, but they’re not clustered in a way that you can classify all five.”Justin Thomas playing a shot from a bunker on the 15th hole, one of the five par-3 holes at the L.A.C.C.Ross Kinnaird/Getty ImagesOne, though, deserves special classification: the 15th. That’s the hole for aces.Last October, Shortz was playing the course. The 15th hole played at just 78 yards during the 2017 Walker Cup, but on the day that Shortz played, it was playing at 120, because the flag was farther back in the green. Shortz struck a clean hit with his 9-iron and felt like the ball might be close to the hole. But with the pin hidden behind the front bunker, Shortz still took out his putter.When he approached the green, he didn’t see the ball until he peered into the cup, and grinned. It was Shortz’s first hole in one on the 15th.Looking ahead to the Open, he made a bold prediction for a hole that’s listed on the tournament’s scorecard at 124 yards.“I think on 15 we’ll see some holes in one,” said Shortz, who is an older brother of Will, The New York Times crossword creator. “It’s not as though it will be easy. If someone hits the right shot, well, these guys are good.”There have been noteworthy holes in one in the past month: from the Southern California club professional Michael Block at the P.G.A. Championship and from Scottie Scheffler at the Charles Schwab Challenge the following week.Scheffler, ranked No. 1 in the world, may have an advantage because he competed six years ago at the Los Angeles Country Club as an amateur in the Walker Cup, along with Collin Morikawa, who is scheduled to play in the Open.Judging by statistics, the leaders in par 3s on the PGA Tour could also be favorites: The world No. 2 Jon Rahm is ranked first in this category (averaging 2.92 strokes), followed by Max Homa (2.94). Scheffler ranks fifth.In 2013, Homa, then a senior at the University of California at Berkeley, shot a first-round 61 at the Los Angeles Country Club, en route to winning the PAC-12 tournament. Rahm, then a freshman at Arizona State, finished 10th.Still, that limited experience may not guarantee success, said the architect Gil Hanse, who in 2010 restored the George C. Thomas Jr. design from 1928.“The par 3s are not going to favor one particular type of player,” Hanse said. “Here, because you’re talking about accuracy with the wedge versus accuracy with a 3-wood, that’s a big gap to have, to have one player be able to accomplish all of those things.”Jeff Hall, the U.S.G.A.’s championship director who set up the 7,421-yard, par-70 course for the Open, marveled at the “dramatic variety” of these so-called short holes. The two longest par 3s are the 228-yard fourth and the 290-yard 11th.“Just week in and week out on tour there are just not a lot of par-3 holes that play to these kind of numbers,” he said.Each of the par 3s is problematic in its own way, marked by natural hazards and firm, tricky greens.The first par 3 — the 228-yard fourth hole — features a barranca, a dry, sandy ravine typical of Southern California, which slithers like an anaconda through the front nine. At the fourth hole, it lurks in front and then curls back behind the green. There are also two bunkers sloped off the sides of the green.“It’s a smallish target for a long hole with a lot of trouble around it,” Hanse said.In 1927 and 1928, when Thomas worked with Billy Bell to improve the original 1921 design of W. Herbert Fowler, he created some par 3s with flexibility to play as par 4s. The 284-yard seventh hole is one of those. It’s a par 3 for the Open, and it could also play at 264 yards, depending on where the tee is, Hall said.Dustin Johnson, center, lining up a putt on the seventh green at the L.A.C.C. Many have found the green especially hard to read, because of the hole’s topography.Harry How/Getty ImagesThe seventh green, though, will be particularly difficult to read because of the topography. “You feel like the putts aren’t as uphill as they actually are, because your eyes fall to the barranca, thinking it’s more downhill,” Hanse said.Following the par-5 547-yard eighth hole — one of three par 5s on the course, which is also one more than usual for a U.S. Open — players come to the final par 3 on the front nine. The ninth hole measures 171 yards on the scorecard.“It feels like it’s a level hole, but it’s really uphill and deceptive,” Hanse said. “There are four distinct quadrants in the green to move the pin around.”During a tournament, officials change the location of the pin not only to reduce wear on the greens, but also to challenge the players. Hall, who oversees the course setup in his role as the golf association’s championship director, explained that tee boxes at the Los Angeles club also have some room for the tees to move up or back. So, depending on the tee and the pin locations for a certain day, golfers could be dealing with a 30-yard variance on the eighth hole, he said.Doc Redman, Collin Morikawa, and Scottie Scheffler, left to right, played the course during the 2017 Walker Cup. Morikawa and Scheffler are scheduled to return to the course at the Open this week. Harry How/Getty ImagesThe next par 3, the 11th, will test players’ adaptability. From afar, “it’s such an amazing view, sometimes you want to stand there and not hit the tee shot,” said Shortz, the past president of the club.Up close, the 11th offers a history lesson. The green is modeled after Scotland’s 15th hole on the West Links Course at the North Berwick Golf Club. In the 19th century, when a veteran of the Crimean War was playing that famous hole, he noticed that the green protruded in front and then sloped downward right to left; the shape reminded him of a fortress from Sevastopol.The triangle jutting out beside the fortress’s entry point was called a redan. The redan has since become a feature that golf course architects love working into their course designs.For his part, Thomas turned the Los Angeles Country Club’s 11th hole into a reverse redan because the green, 39 yards deep, slopes down left to right. But the downhill carries only halfway through the green because it turns slightly uphill again, Hanse said.“It was actually quite a monumental achievement when you look at how much dirt they moved to create that,” he said. “If you look down the valley, all of a sudden there’s this protrusion of a green that sticks out into it, and that didn’t happen naturally.”The final par 3, the 15th, comes after the course’s longest hole, the par-5 623-yard 14th. Considering the 15th is followed by three stout par 4s, the first two averaging 531 yards and then the 18th at 492 yards, players might be tempted to be too aggressive on the 15th to birdie the hole before facing the rigors of the next three.Beware: Hanse put in a slight hump dividing the front sliver of the green and the main back portion of the 15th.“It’s not OK just to hit the green,” Hanse said. “You have to hit the green within the green in order to not have to worry about three-putting.”Or, like Shortz, you could just bury it in the hole and not worry at all. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in Golf

      Matt Fitzpatrick and Cameron Smith Don’t Know What’s Next After The LIV-PGA Tour Merger

      by

      “I just don’t know what’s going on,” Fitzpatrick, the reigning U.S. Open champion, said Monday of the PGA Tour’s merger with LIV Golf. “I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on.”A year ago at the U.S. Open, the field was distracted by an entirely new phenomenon in men’s professional golf: Several players who had turned their backs on the PGA Tour to defect to the insurgent LIV Golf circuit would, for the first time, be competing against their former brethren.Golfers had chosen sides in a sport known for individualism, fueling an unfamiliar team-against-team tension.Twelve months later, and days after the seismic news of the American and European tours forming a partnership with LIV Golf, the disruption at the 2022 U.S. Open now seems like an almost inconsequential diversion. Just ask Matt Fitzpatrick, who won that tournament in Brookline, Mass., for his first victory at a major tournament win and also on the PGA Tour.“I seem to remember last year just thinking about the tournament, just the U.S. Open,” Fitzpatrick said on Monday. “It was easier for me to mentally focus on that and be in a better place than obviously all this confusion that’s going on this week.“The whole thing is confusing.”Asked to elaborate on what he found most confusing, Fitzpatrick could not help but chuckle.“Well, I think I just don’t know what’s going on,” he answered. “I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on.”Fitzpatrick mentioned the Saudi Public Investment Fund, known as PIF, whose staggering riches have backed LIV.“Are we signing with the PIF, are we not signing with the PIF? I have no idea,” he said, adding: “It’s pretty clear that nobody knows what’s going on apart from about four people in the world.”To prove that disorientation was universal across golf, Cameron Smith, who joined LIV not long after winning last year’s British Open, followed Fitzpatrick into the interview room at the Los Angeles Country Club and essentially admitted he was clueless as to what was coming next in his chosen occupation.Smith might rate as something of an insider since he at least received a phone call from Yasir al-Rumayyan, who oversees the PIF and would be the chairman of the new company formed by combining the tours, about the blockbuster deal announced last week.It was a good thing al-Ruymayyan called because Smith said his first reaction to the news was that, “it was kind of a joke.” But al-Rumayyan informed Smith otherwise — without much detail.“He didn’t really explain too much,” Smith said. “I think there’s still a lot of stuff to be worked out, and as time goes on, we’ll get to know more and more. I think he was calling a few different players, so the call was kind of short and sweet.”Despite a lack of clarity about the future of professional golf, both Fitzpatrick and Smith were nonetheless asked about two hot topics since the PGA Tour-LIV deal was announced.For Fitzpatrick, there was the question of whether he thought players, like himself, who were loyal to the PGA Tour should be compensated for turning down the gobs of money LIV was offering.At first, Fitzpatrick appeared ready to address the issue, which is perhaps the most charged and dicey detail to be hammered out in the coming weeks or months. But then Fitzpatrick paused. And paused. He smiled and then exhaled. His eyes roamed the room. Finally, he said with a thin smile: “Yeah, pass.”Fitzpatrick last Friday at the Canadian Open, where he finished eight under for the tournament in a tie for 20th.Minas Panagiotakis/Getty ImagesSmith was asked if he had been given any indication that the LIV tour would continue to exist after this year. He replied: “I really know as much as you guys know, to be honest. I haven’t been told much at all. I guess if anything comes up, I’ll let you guys know.”He refused to answer a question about whether he would want to return to the PGA Tour if LIV was dissolved after this season, calling it “hypothetical.”But he added: “I think I’ve made the right decision anyway. I’m very happy with where I’m at. I obviously made that decision for a few different reasons. Like I said, I know as much as everyone else, and it’s going to be interesting to see how the next few months, maybe even year, kind of plays out.”Smith’s attitude was jovial, which matched the mood of several LIV players who slapped hands with each other and smiled on the practice range on Monday.“I haven’t been told much at all, but I’m just taking it as it goes along,” Smith said. “But there’s definitely a lot of curious players, I think, on both sides as to what the future is going to look like.”Fitzpatrick had an eye on the future and also the past, recalling last year’s U.S. Open fondly.“An amazing week,” he said, hoping to rekindle the magic he discovered.But then, so much has changed in a year. On Monday, there remained one question above all the others. What next for golf?Fitzpatrick shook his head.“I’ll be completely honest, I literally know as much as you,” he said. “I’m sure everyone has gotten questions about it. I found out when everyone else found out. Yeah, honestly, I know literally nothing.” More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Soccer

      L.A. Galaxy Fire Chris Klein, a Target of Fans’ Anger

      by

      Last in the standings and facing a boycott from fans, the Los Angeles Galaxy ousted Chris Klein.When the world’s most famous soccer player, David Beckham, came to Major League Soccer in 2007, his arrival put the league on the map and affirmed the Los Angeles Galaxy’s status as the young league’s superteam. During his tenure, the Galaxy played in three M.L.S. Cups, won two of them and exuded a Hollywood glamour that resonated around the world.So it is startling to see that the Galaxy has the worst record in the league this season, with only two wins from 14 games. In response, and after missing the playoffs in four of the past five seasons, the team on Tuesday fired its longtime president, Chris Klein, who had also played with Beckham at the Galaxy.Klein’s dismissal came after months of clamor from hard-core fans upset at the club’s direction. Several supporters groups had called for Klein’s dismissal and threatened to boycott games; some already have done so. The Galaxy’s attendance is down about 10 percent from last season, a reflection of both the team’s cratering on-field results and simmering anger among its fans.“I hope that there’s a resolution, and the supporters’ groups — who are really important to all of us, and to the players — find the right way, whatever the resolution is for them to show up,” Galaxy Coach Greg Vanney told ESPN in February. “Because it’s probably not going to be ‘Chris out.’”Now Chris is out. “We believe it is in the best interest of the club to make a change and begin a comprehensive process to seek new leadership that will return the club to the level that our fans and partners expect,” Dan Beckerman, the president of A.E.G., the team’s parent company, said in announcing Klein’s departure. Vanney will remain in his job as coach, the team said.The Galaxy’s last M.L.S. championship came in 2014, its third in four years, but it has not won anything significant since then. Last year’s playoff appearance, its first in three seasons, ended in the conference semifinals.The team that knocked out the Galaxy at that stage particularly rankles: It was Los Angeles F.C., the new club in town, which has only been a member of the league since 2018 but already has more honors in its trophy case (three) than the Galaxy have in the past decade.L.A.F.C. has twice won the Supporters Shield, awarded to the team with the best regular-season record, and last season it won its first M.L.S. Cup championship. It also has advanced to the final of this year’s Concacaf Champions League, where it will meet Club León of Mexico in a home-and-home series this week for the regional club championship.The Galaxy, meanwhile, are staggering. The team is a league-worst 2-9-3 with a minus-14 goal difference this season. Going into Wednesday night, the Galaxy have lost three straight league games without scoring a goal. After the last of those defeats, by 1-0 at home to Charlotte on Saturday, fans chanted, “We want better!”While L.A.F.C.’s Dénis Bouanga leads M.L.S. with 10 goals, the Galaxy’s scoring leader, Dejan Joveljic, has two. Among the underachieving big-name Galaxy players are the Mexico striker Javier Hernández, known as Chicharito, and Douglas Costa of Brazil, who scoreless in four appearance Costa also faces arrest in Brazil on charges of nonpayment of child support, it was revealed this week.In the aftermath of Klein’s firing, supporters groups congratulated each other on the news and vowed to return to games.Klein had his own problems late last year: He was suspended in the off-season after M.L.S. found violations in a deal to sign the Argentine wing Cristian Pavón. The sanctions also limit the moves the Galaxy can make in the international transfer market this summer. That means rebuilding the Galaxy will be a tall order. Even with their fans back on board, a return to glory may take a while. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Basket

      The Lakers, Clippers and Kings, and an L.A. Court in Constant Motion

      by

      LOS ANGELES — Jorge Mendez waited impatiently as the Los Angeles Kings’ fate hung in the balance late Friday night.Their N.H.L. first-round playoff game against the Edmonton Oilers had already gone into overtime, robbing Mendez’s crew of several precious minutes they would need to get Crypto.com Arena ready for the Clippers’ N.B.A. playoff game on Saturday afternoon. And now there was another delay. Officials were trying to determine whether a would-be game-winning goal by Kings forward Trevor Moore should count.Mendez, the venue’s assistant conversion manager, had a crew of about 20 people waiting to transform the chilly arena. They would be working all night and had to finish by 7 a.m. Saturday. They had never missed a deadline, and weren’t about to start now.“With the referees we don’t know,” Mendez said. “They could say they deny that one and it goes longer. And the more longer they go, they’re going to take more time from me.”The Kings had a playoff game Friday night, and the Clippers and Lakers hosted postseason games Saturday, creating an eventful weekend for arena workers.The goal stood and the Kings won. Fans celebrated and left the building, then Mendez’s crew got to work: The nets and glass surrounding the ice rink came down; the penalty boxes and benches were disassembled and moved; the ice was cleaned and covered by insulation so it wouldn’t melt during the next day’s basketball games; and the modules containing seats were shifted into new configurations.They finished well before 7 a.m. and Mendez drove home at 6:30 a.m. At that time of day there is little traffic, so it took him just 10 minutes. When he works overnight, he sleeps during the day, and his wife tries to stop his 9-year-old daughter from bursting into his room to ask if he wants to bike with her. But Mendez’s weekend was long from over.Like dozens of others, Mendez worked tirelessly to make sure the arena could handle its frenetic week. The busiest time came in the 36 hours after the Kings game Friday, when the building turned over from the Kings to the Clippers to the Lakers and back to the Kings. All three teams have called the arena home since 1999, when it opened as Staples Center.“My favorite part of this is when they’re done,” said Lee Zeidman, the president of Crypto.com Arena; the nearby Microsoft Theater; and the surrounding entertainment district, L.A. Live. “It’s like a puzzle. These men and women they’re the best in the business.”Mendez was back at 1 p.m., ready to flip the arena from the Clippers’ array of red, blue, black and silver to the Lakers’ purple and gold.Joe Keeler usually drives the Zamboni that maintains the ice during Kings games, but he sometimes helps transition the arena to basketball.The ice gets cleaned and covered with insulation so it does not melt during basketball games. Then the court and basketball hoops get changed in accordance with which team is playing.‘Organized chaos’Between Thursday and Monday night, Crypto.com Arena will have hosted four basketball playoff games and two hockey playoff games.“It’s chaos,” said Darryl Jackson, an event operations assistant manager for the arena. “But it’s organized. Organized chaos.” He began his career working on conversions, but now helps to make sure the baskets during basketball games and the glass during hockey games stay in good condition.Minutes after Game 4 of the first-round series between the Clippers and the Phoenix Suns finished Saturday, Loreto Verdugo backed a forklift down an aisle between the court and the first row of grandstand seats. He had just a couple of inches of space on either side of him. After years of doing this task, he wasn’t nearly as nervous as he was the first time he did it.“You don’t want to hit the floor because the floor’s the most important thing out there,” Verdugo said. “But you don’t want to hit anybody else either.”He had quietly left his home in North Hollywood at 4 a.m. (“I’m like a mouse,” he said) to be at the arena in time to begin supervising maintenance work.As soon as the Clippers’ game ended, just before 3 p.m., and all of the people had been cleared from the court, a bustle of expertly choreographed activity began. By the time the Clippers’ players began their postgame interviews, workers had bagged fans’ trash, and the player and logo banners the Clippers hang in the rafters had been rolled up to reveal the gold-colored championship banners for the Lakers and the W.N.B.A.’s Los Angeles Sparks, who have also shared the arena for much of the past two decades.The Kings won in overtime Friday against the Edmonton Oilers before the Clippers lost to the Phoenix Suns and the Lakers beat the Memphis Grizzlies.The Clippers’ court was already being uprooted from the floor, piece by interlocking piece, and loaded onto pallets that Verdugo and two other forklift drivers would pick up and deposit in a storage area that doubles as a news conference room.It was the 251st midday conversion in the history of Crypto.com Arena.About an hour after the Clippers’ game ended, their court had been replaced by the Lakers’ floor.Joe Keeler, who normally drives the Zamboni that cleans and builds the ice during hockey games, joined a group of people folding the baskets with white stanchions that the Clippers use and rolling them out to the storage area. They replaced them with the yellow-stanchioned baskets the Lakers use.“Everybody helps where they can,” said Keeler, who also helped pick up the Clippers’ floor and lay down the Lakers’.Red Clippers drapery was replaced by purple, and a purple carpet had been rolled out in the tunnel the Lakers use to go onto the court.It is a little easier when the conversion is from one basketball court to another. Doubleheaders involving the Kings are more challenging. When the building first opened, Zeidman gathered the vendors for the basketball courts, the seats and the plexiglass for hockey games and asked them how long they thought it would take to convert the hockey arena into a basketball arena. They told him at least four hours.“Unacceptable,” Zeidman said.Robbin Dedeaux, a seasoned usher, worked his section during the Clippers’ game before the changeover. The court and banners, like the Lakers and Sparks’ championship banners, are adjusted accordingly.‘How can I work here?’The first conversion for a doubleheader was an event in itself. Fans were allowed to watch from a designated area. Arena workers watched from a break room upstairs.“It was amazing,” said Juanita Williams, 57, an usher who has worked right behind the home benches during basketball games since the building opened. “To see it for the first time, we were like there’s no way they’re going to change this over in two and a half hours. It happened.”Williams started as an usher 25 years ago at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., where the Lakers and the Kings played from 1967 to 1999. She called to find out how much Lakers season tickets cost.“I said: ‘OK, I cannot afford those tickets. So how can I work here then?’” she said.In the daytime she works from home as a buyer for a washer and dryer company that she has been with for 34 years. Her daughter briefly took a job as an usher, too, while going to cosmetology school.By Monday night, Williams will have worked in all six playoff games since Thursday.The merchandise available on arena concourses must be refreshed, too.Robbin Dedeaux, 65, will have too. He works at the top of the lower bowl in aisle 14, checking tickets and greeting customers. He is stationed right next to where the Lakers’ radio broadcasters sit.Dedeaux also started this work as a second job to get out of the list of chores his wife, Ricca Dedeaux, was always asking him to do. He started with ticket-taking in 1999 and then became an usher. He has been asked if he’d like to work down on the floor, but he thinks he might get sleepy if he got to sit down.“The fans are the best part of the job,” Dedeaux said. “You get to see them from all over the world. They come in from Italy, they come in from France, they come in from Germany. You have fun with them.”He added: “When the fans that come here from different arenas, I have fun with them. I tell them to get out.”He laughed.Dedeaux and his wife have been married for 40 years. He said she misses him during basketball and hockey season when he is working so many hours.“That’s just marriage,” Dedeaux said. “She knows I love her, she knows I love what I do. She tolerates it.”He added, “Then I make up for it.”After the Lakers game, Darryl Jackson and his crew convert the arena back into an NHL venue.‘It has to be done’Ignacio Guerra’s first job in the events world came in the early 1990s. He was a high school chemistry and biology teacher and coach, and he would park cars at the Hollywood Bowl in the summers. When Staples Center opened, Guerra worked for the contractor parking cars there, before finding a job working for the arena. Saturday was his 21st anniversary with the arena.In 2019, he took over as the head of the arena’s operations department. He is now the senior vice president of operations and engineering. He has worked hundreds of events and has two large frames in his office displaying credentials for everything from Taylor Swift concerts to N.B.A. All-Star Games.He shepherded the building through coronavirus shutdowns and the return of fans. During the shutdown, many of his workers took other jobs and didn’t come back, which meant starting over with new people at some positions.Kings and Lakers fans celebrated victories while the Clippers fell further behind in their playoff series.At least a handful of the remaining people have worked at the arena since the beginning, including the man who builds the penalty boxes for hockey games. Guerra often stands in the middle of the floor supervising all of the activity.“They’re the heart and soul of this,” Guerra said of the operations staff.He said the crew has never missed a conversion.“You can’t wait up at 7 in the morning and say, ‘Hey, sorry we couldn’t get the Laker floor down.’” Guerra said. “It has to be down, and there’s a no-fail mentality.”The Lakers played at 7 p.m. Saturday. By 10 p.m. another conversion had begun. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Basket

      Vanessa Bryant Settles Helicopter Crash Photos Lawsuit for $28.85 Million

      by

      Bryant, the widow of the basketball star Kobe Bryant, sued Los Angeles County after some of its employees shared graphic photos of the crash that killed her husband and one of their daughters.Los Angeles County agreed to pay Vanessa Bryant and three of her daughters nearly $30 million to settle a lawsuit and potential claims over the sharing of graphic photos of the January 2020 helicopter crash that killed Bryant’s husband, the basketball star Kobe Bryant, and one of their daughters, according to a court filing on Tuesday. The settlement includes $15 million a jury awarded Vanessa Bryant in August, with additional funds to settle potential claims from her daughters.“Today marks the successful culmination of Mrs. Bryant’s courageous battle to hold accountable those who engaged in this grotesque conduct,” Luis Li, Bryant’s lawyer, said in a statement. “She fought for her husband, her daughter, and all those in the community whose deceased family were treated with similar disrespect. We hope her victory at trial and this settlement will put an end to this practice.”On Jan. 26, 2020, Kobe Bryant, 41, and his daughter Gianna Bryant, 13, were in a helicopter with seven other people when it crashed in foggy conditions outside Los Angeles, killing all on board. Soon after, Vanessa Bryant learned that some employees of the county’s fire and sheriff’s departments had shared graphic photos of human remains from the crash. She sued for negligence and invasion of privacy in September 2020 and won at trial in August, providing a rare and expensive public admonition of some of Los Angeles’ most powerful institutions.The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay Bryant’s family $28.85 million to settle Bryant’s lawsuit and potential future claims by Bryant and her daughters: Natalia, 20, Bianka, 6, and Capri, 3. The jury in August awarded Bryant $16 million, which was later reduced by $1 million because of a clerical error.In a statement, Mira Hashmall, the lead trial counsel for Los Angeles County in Bryant’s case, called the settlement “fair and reasonable” and said all county-related litigation from the crash had been resolved.“We hope Ms. Bryant and her children continue to heal from their loss,” Hashmall said.Kobe Bryant, who starred for the Los Angeles Lakers for 20 years before retiring in 2016, was on his way to coach Gianna’s basketball team at his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif., when they boarded the helicopter on the day of the crash. The pilot, Ara Zobayan, became disoriented in the clouds and crashed into a hill near Calabasas, Calif., killing all nine people on board.In a deposition for her lawsuit, Vanessa Bryant said Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ general manager and Kobe Bryant’s former agent, drove her later that morning to a sheriff’s station in Malibu, near the crash scene.Alex Villanueva, who was the Los Angeles County sheriff at the time, confirmed the deaths and asked Bryant if he could do anything for her, she said.“And I said: ‘If you can’t bring my husband and baby back, please make sure that no one takes photographs of them. Please secure the area,’” Bryant said during the deposition. “And he said: ‘I will.’ And I said: ‘No, I need you to get on the phone right now and I need you to make sure you secure the area.’”Bryant testified at trial that she learned from a Los Angeles Times report that a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy had showed photos of the crash at a bar. The existence of the photos, Bryant said, compounded the tragedy.“I live in fear of my daughters being on social media and these popping up,” Bryant testified.The pictures were primarily shared between employees of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s and fire departments.Lawyers for the county acknowledged that the photos were taken and shared, but argued that an immediate order to delete them kept them from being publicly disseminated.At the trial, the jury also awarded $15 million to Chris Chester, who joined the suit because his wife Sarah, 45, and daughter, Payton, 13, were killed in the crash. Los Angeles County agreed to pay the Chester family an additional $4.95 million to resolve any future claims.Two other families separately settled with the county over the photos for $1.25 million each in October 2021.Li previously said that Bryant would donate the proceeds from the lawsuit to her Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation, which honors Kobe and Gianna Bryant. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Golf

      Tiger Woods at the Genesis Invitational: How to Watch

      by

      Woods, who is expected to play alongside Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas on Thursday and Friday, will be competing in a traditional event for the first time since July.Tiger Woods will return to competition on Thursday for the first time since July in another test for a body that has repeatedly been rebuilt but is, at least in Woods’s judgment, still hard-wired to contend.Woods, 47, will enter the Genesis Invitational, at the Riviera Country Club west of downtown Los Angeles, not having played a traditional golf event since the British Open last summer at St. Andrews in Scotland, where he missed the cut. Earlier in 2022, he withdrew from the P.G.A. Championship after three rounds and finished 47th at the Masters Tournament.But Woods, who is expected to play alongside Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas on Thursday and Friday, insists that he is prepared for the Genesis, which he hosts but has never won, nearly two years after the Los Angeles-area car wreck that nearly cost him a leg. More recently, he has confronted a bout of plantar fasciitis, but he has suggested that the car crash’s consequences still loom far larger.“It’s more my ankle, whether I can recover from day to day,” Woods said on Tuesday. “The leg is better than it was last year, but it’s my ankle.”He would like to win the Genesis, of course, where he made his PGA Tour debut in 1992, when he was a 16-year-old amateur. (It was then known as the Los Angeles Open.) Much of this week’s appearance, though, seems to be about fine-tuning his plan to prepare for the Masters, a major tournament that will begin on April 6 at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.“I’m not going to be playing a full schedule so I’ve got to be able to pick and choose my events and how many events I’m going to play,” Woods said. “I alluded to last year it’s going to be probably the majors and maybe a couple more. Would I like to play more? Yes. Will it allow me to? I don’t know. I have to be realistic about that.”The Genesis field is a sturdy one, in part because it is one of the PGA Tour’s new “designated events,” leaving many of the tour’s top players unable to skip it.Besides McIlroy and Thomas, participants will include Scottie Scheffler, who reclaimed the world No. 1 ranking from McIlroy over the weekend after his victory at the Phoenix Open; and Jon Rahm, a former world No. 1 who has already won two tournaments this year. Max Homa, who won the Genesis in 2021, will be seeking his third victory since September.But last year’s Genesis victor, Joaquin Niemann, will be absent: He has since defected to LIV Golf, the circuit financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.How to Watch the Genesis InvitationalThe first two rounds will be broadcast on Golf Channel on Thursday and Friday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time. Woods is scheduled to tee off at 3:04 p.m. on Thursday and 10:24 a.m. on Friday.For the final two rounds, on Saturday and Sunday, the Golf Channel will broadcast from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and then CBS will have coverage from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday and then 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Sunday.ESPN+ will stream coverage of all four rounds.Woods’s scheduled appearance at the Genesis Invitational seemed to be about fine-tuning his plan to prepare for the Masters Tournament.Cliff Hawkins/Getty ImagesTee times for top groups on ThursdayAll times are Eastern.10:24 a.m. — Jon Rahm, Patrick Cantlay, Viktor Hovland (No. 10)10:35 a.m. — Tony Finau, Billy Horschel, Adam Scott (No. 10)10:46 a.m. — Max Homa, Tom Kim, Xander Schauffele (No. 10)10:57 a.m. — Will Zalatoris, Cameron Champ, J.B. Holmes (No. 10)3:04 p.m. — Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Tiger Woods (No. 1)3:15 p.m. — Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa (No. 1)3:26 p.m. — Justin Rose, Hideki Matsuyama, Shane Lowry (No. 1)3:37 p.m. — Sam Burns, K.H. Lee, Cameron Young (No. 1)Tee times for top groups on Friday10:24 a.m. — Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Tiger Woods (No. 10)10:35 a.m. — Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa (No. 10)10:46 a.m. — Justin Rose, Hideki Matsuyama, Shane Lowry (No. 10)10:57 a.m. — Sam Burns, K.H. Lee, Cameron Young (No. 10)3:04 p.m. — Jon Rahm, Patrick Cantlay, Viktor Hovland (No. 1)3:15 p.m. — Tony Finau, Billy Horschel, Adam Scott (No. 1)3:26 p.m. — Max Homa, Tom Kim, Xander Schauffele (No. 1)3:37 p.m. — Will Zalatoris, Cameron Champ, J.B. Holmes (No. 1) More