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      At the British Open, a Mom’s Influence Looms Large for Many Golfers

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      Golf has long had a tradition of fathers and sons, but when the British Open was last held at Royal Liverpool in 2014, Rory McIlroy put golf’s moms on equal footing.In the beginning, there was Old Tom Morris and his son, Tommy, both of St. Andrews. The father won the British Open — the only championship then — four times and his namesake son won it four times, too. Yes, wet wool, 19th-century golf, in all its paternalistic glory. The men marched off the first tee and into a heavy sea wind and nobody knew when, or if, they would come back.And ever since, fathers have been raising sons in the game, both generations dreaming of hoisted trophies. O.B. Keeler spilled barrels of ink writing about Bobby Jones and his little-boy-blue start in golf at the behest of his golf-loving father, Robert Purmedus Jones (also known as ‘The Colonel’) who was a prosperous Atlanta lawyer.If Arnold Palmer said it once, he said it a thousand times: his father, Deacon, the course superintendent and head pro at Latrobe Country Club in western Pennsylvania, taught young Arnold how to grip a club once and only once. Palmer never changed it.Jack Nicklaus’s pharmacist father, Charlie, a three-sport athlete at Ohio State, started his son, Jackie, in golf as an oversized 10-year-old in Columbus, Ohio, in the summer of 1950, at their club, Scioto Country Club. Mid-country, midcentury — middle class, at its most northern tier. Donald Hall’s “Fathers Playing Catch with Sons” is largely about baseball but Charlie and Jackie on the course in the 1950s could have fit right in.Twelve years later, Jack Nicklaus defeated Arnold Palmer in an 18-hole playoff at Oakmont Country Club and claimed the first of his record 18 major titles, the 1962 U.S. Open. It was Father’s Day. Since then (after a date change) most U.S. Opens have concluded on Father’s Day and most years the father-son relationship is an elemental part of the winner’s life story.This next phrase is known throughout golf: Tiger and Earl. The green-side hug between father and son after Woods won the 1997 Masters Tournament is one of the iconic moments in golf history. It was Tiger’s first major as a pro and he won by 12 shots. Nine years later, Woods fell into his caddie’s arms, after winning the British Open at Royal Liverpool, 10 weeks after Earl Woods died at age 74.Tiger Woods and his father Earl after Woods won the 1997 Masters.Associated Press Photo Dave MartinBut in 2014 Royal Liverpool became the scene of an evolving narrative when Rory McIlroy, 25-years-old and the lone child of working-class parents from outside Belfast, won the British Open. It was his third major title and in a lovely, old-fashioned gesture at the awards presentation, with thousands of fans ringing the 18th green, McIlroy dedicated the win to his mother.“This is the first major I’ve won when my mum has been here,” he said. “Mum, this one’s for you.”Rosie McDonald McIlroy, who helped pay for her son’s overseas junior-golf travel by way of her shift work at a 3M plant, was beaming. Later, she tentatively put several fingers on the winner’s claret jug as her son grasped it tightly.Five years later, Woods won the 2019 Masters. It was kind of a shocker: he hadn’t won a major in 11 years. In victory, his mother, Kultida, born and raised in Thailand, was standing in a grassy knob about 10 yards off the 18th green. She couldn’t see her son’s winning putt, but she could hear the thunderous response to it. Her face was painted in pride. In victory, Woods spoke in a soft voice about how his mother would rise at 5:30 in the morning to drive Tiger in a Plymouth Duster to nine-hole Pee-wee tournaments, 90 minutes there, 90 minutes back.Last year, when Woods was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, ‘Tida,’ known within Woods’s tight circle for being tough and direct, was in the first row, beaming just as Rosie McIlroy was in 2014.Kultida Woods smiled as Tiger Woods made his way toward his family after winning the 2019 Masters.Mike Segar/ReutersWoods talked, without notes, about the many times his mother brought him to a par-3 course near Tiger’s boyhood home in Southern California, giving him 50 cents for a hot dog and 25 cents for the end-of-day call home. Woods staked his early and successful putting contests with those quarters his mother gave him. Tiger, telling personal stories about his mother, and Tida, laughing with cameras on her, was a rare personal moment for both.This year at the Los Angeles Country Club the final round of the U.S. Open fell, as usual, on Father’s Day, but the day belonged to a mother and her son.The winner Wyndham Clark had heard Woods talk about his own mother at Augusta National during the Masters and at the Hall of Fame induction. It stuck with him.Breast cancer had ended his mother Lise Clark’s life 10 years ago, when Wyndham was still a teenager. He nearly quit golf after she died. He said his mother had a nickname for him — ‘Winner’ — and had a two-word mantra for him: “Play big.”The technical aspects of the game were not her forte. They weren’t for Rose McIlroy or Tida Woods, either.When Clark was in high school, his mother came to one of his matches. She watched him make an eight-foot putt and clapped enthusiastically for her son.“Mom,” Clark told mother as he came off the green. “I just made triple bogey.”Mom didn’t know and mom didn’t care. Her son had holed a putt.Minutes after winning the U.S. Open, Clark said, “I just felt like my mom was watching over me today.” Mother’s Day, in a manner of speaking. A wistful one.“I just felt like my mom was watching over me today,” Wyndham Clark said after winning the U.S. Open in June.Matt York/Associated PressAnd now the British Open was once again at Royal Liverpool. After two rounds the English golfer Tommy Fleetwood was alone in second place, five shots behind the leader, Brian Harman. Everywhere Fleetwood goes on the course he is greeted as “Tommy-lad.” Even McIlroy went out his way to find Fleetwood, after an opening-round 66, to give him a “Tommy-lad!” of his own.Fleetwood, one of the most likable players in the game today, grew up in modest circumstances about 30 miles north, in Southport, where his mother was a hairdresser. Fleetwood has a distinct look, an upturned nose that is often sunburned, blue eyes that look almost plugged in, and long, flowing hair. Sue Fleetwood longed to cut her son’s hair but Tommy-lad wouldn’t have it. Sue Fleetwood died last year at 60, two years after a cancer diagnosis.“She took me everywhere,” Fleetwood said Friday night, on the one-year anniversary of her death. Rain was starting to fall and the air was cooling.“She was always the driver. She would always take me to the range. To the golf course. To wherever I wanted to go. She was always a very supporting influence. She was a very tough woman but she never said no to taking me anywhere. She was great to me.”There was nothing maudlin about his tone. Fleetwood was talking about golf and his mother and he was smiling. Another mother’s day, in a manner of speaking, was coming. Win, lose or otherwise, another mother’s day was coming for another golfing son. More

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      Phil Mickelson Interviewed in Antitrust Inquiry Into Pro Golf

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      The Justice Department met with PGA Tour lawyers this week, but a timeline for the completion of its review is unclear.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — The Justice Department’s antitrust inquiry into men’s professional golf has included interviews with players, including the major tournament winners Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Sergio García, as the authorities examine whether the PGA Tour sought to manipulate the sport’s labor market.The department, which has been conducting its investigation since at least last summer, has also explored the specter of collusion in the Official World Golf Ranking and the tight-knit relationships between the leaders of the PGA Tour and the distinct organizations that stage the Masters, the P.G.A. Championship and the U.S. Open.Although lawyers for the PGA Tour met with Justice Department officials in Washington this week, a timeline for the review’s completion — much less whether the government will try to force any changes in golf — is not clear. But the inquiry’s scope and persistence has deepened the turbulence in the sport, which has been grappling with the recent rise of LIV Golf, a league that used money from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to lure top players away from the PGA Tour.Eight people with knowledge of the Justice Department’s inquiry described its breadth on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was pending. The department declined to comment.Unlike Major League Baseball, no golf organization has a blanket exemption from federal antitrust laws. A handful of organizations that have close ties to one another have run golf’s top echelon for generations but have withstood some scrutiny in the past.The PGA Tour, the dominant professional circuit in the United States and LIV’s opponent in a pending antitrust lawsuit that the rebel league brought last year, stages tournaments that have often made up the majority of golfers’ competition schedules. But the tour does not run the four so-called major tournaments, which are the sport’s most cherished events and important ways for players to earn prize money and sponsorship-sparking clout.This week’s P.G.A. Championship, for instance, is being overseen by the P.G.A. of America at Oak Hill Country Club, just outside Rochester, N.Y. The U.S. Open is organized by the United States Golf Association, and Augusta National Golf Club administers the Masters Tournament. (The R&A, which organizes the British Open, is based in Britain.)The groups have not moved in lock step since LIV debuted last year — the circuit’s players, for example, have not faced bans from the majors — but professional golf’s establishment has remained a focus of antitrust investigators. Lawyers for LIV have cheered the government’s scrutiny and have regularly communicated with Justice Department officials, who have taken no stance on the league’s lawsuit against the PGA Tour and have not intervened in the case.“If the system is rigged, then consumers are not getting the best product, and if that is the result of an agreement between two or more parties, then that becomes a violation,” said Stephen F. Ross, who teaches sports law at Penn State University and previously worked for the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.The PGA Tour, which declined to comment on Wednesday but has aggressively denied wrongdoing and predicted that the department’s inquiry would fizzle, adopted a hard line last year when LIV emerged. It threatened, and then imposed, suspensions to discourage players from defecting to the Saudi-backed league, which has offered guaranteed contracts sometimes worth $100 million or more and provided some of the richest prizes in golf history.Tour executives have insisted that their strategy was rooted in membership rules designed to protect the collective market power of elite players in matters like television-rights negotiations and tournament sponsorships, and that golfers who breach rules they agreed to can be disciplined. But investigators have shown interest in the possibility that the tour’s punitive approach threatened the integrity of golf’s labor market, which now includes a LIV faction that vocally argues that players are independent contractors who should be free to compete on tours as they choose.The department’s inquiry swiftly moved beyond a superficial glance at LIV’s public complaints and came to include interviews with some of golf’s most recognizable figures.Mickelson, who has won six majors, including the 2021 P.G.A. Championship that at 50 made him the oldest major tournament winner in history, has been a fearsome public critic of the PGA Tour. He accepted a reported $200 million in guaranteed money to join LIV last year, provoked a firestorm when he played down Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses and, last month, all but silenced people who doubted his remaining playing potential when he tied for second at the Masters.DeChambeau was a sensation when he captured the 2020 U.S. Open title, and García, a Masters winner, first starred at a major in the 1990s and has been among the most distinguished European golfers of his generation.LIV golfer Bryson DeChambeau signed autographs for spectators on Wednesday during a practice round ahead of the P.G.A. Championship.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesRepresentatives for Mickelson and DeChambeau declined to comment. A representative for Garcia did not respond to messages requesting comment.LIV declined to comment. But the league’s commissioner, Greg Norman, publicly hinted in March at the circuit’s cooperation with the Justice Department investigation.“The D.O.J. came, trying to understand the antitrust side of things,” Norman said during an appearance in Miami Beach. “So the PGA Tour created this other legal front that they have to fight.”The review of the tour’s labor practices could prove the most consequential element of the investigation, antitrust experts said, if the Justice Department finds fault with the circuit’s approach.“That one goes more to the sort of core of what the PGA is,” said Paul Denis, a retired Justice Department official who later worked on antitrust matters in private practice. “If that’s where they’re headed, that’s much more significant because that really does affect their business model in terms of their relationship with the players.”But American regulators have also become increasingly mindful of the close ties among golf’s most powerful organizations and their executives and administrators.That prong of the investigation is not unique to the golf inquiry. During the Biden administration, the Justice Department’s antitrust division has shown particular concern about people serving in multiple top roles for potential competitors, and its misgivings have sometimes led directors of public companies to surrender board seats.In October, Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, said that the prohibition on overlapping service was “an important, but under-enforced, part” of federal law.Whether the Justice Department seeks to compel changes in executive or board leadership in golf may hinge on whether Kanter and his lieutenants believe they can prove that the PGA Tour is a competitor to a major tournament organizer, a notion that tour executives have privately scoffed at and used to cast doubt on the strength of the department’s potential case. The tour and the major tournaments jockey for television-rights fees and sponsorships, but they are far from head-to-head rivals in many senses.They do, however, cooperate.The tour has a stake in the world ranking system, which major tournaments use, in part, to determine their fields. Along with the tour, Augusta National, the P.G.A. of America and the U.S.G.A. also have seats on the ranking system’s governing board, and all of them supply personnel for its technical committee.Player rankings are based on a complex formula that considers performances in accredited tournaments, from PGA Tour events to competitions on circuits that draw little notice. Since administrators have not yet acted on LIV’s application to participate in the system — LIV executives have acknowledged that the league would require special dispensations to be accepted immediately — its golfers have slid downward in the ranking, threatening their future participation in the majors. (Jay Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, has recused himself from deliberations about LIV’s bid to join the system.)Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s antitrust division.Carolyn Kaster/Associated PressThe Justice Department’s inquiry is of substantial importance to LIV Golf, which has faced setbacks in its lawsuit against the PGA Tour. But the league has spent months stoking chatter about the federal investigation, its potential implications for the PGA Tour — and the potential benefits for LIV.The tour has countered that effort by citing its record: an F.T.C. inquiry that lasted years and ended in 1995 without any action against the tour.Shortly beforehand, Norman’s first quest to start a global circuit to rival the PGA Tour collapsed.David McCabe More

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

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

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      Jon Rahm Wins Masters, Surging Past Brooks Koepka

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      Rahm trailed Brooks Koepka by two strokes at the start of Sunday’s final round but surged as Koepka faltered to claim his second major tournament victory.AUGUSTA, Ga. — It was early for a debacle at the Masters Tournament — the first hole of the first round — but on Thursday morning, Jon Rahm’s internal speedometer had seemingly vanished. Accustomed to calibrating his putts just so, Rahm found his speed off, his ball sliding long and escaping right, before logging a double bogey.“Well,” Rahm thought as he headed to Augusta National Golf Club’s next tee, “I miss, I miss, I miss, I make,” paraphrasing Seve Ballesteros, the greatest Spanish golfer of all and himself a victim of a Masters putting misadventure. Rahm considered something else, too: Unlike Ballesteros, he had 71 holes to recover.He most certainly did.Rahm, the towering Spaniard who dominated the PGA Tour in 2023’s first months, won the Masters on Sunday, overcoming days of punishing humidity, plunging temperatures, green-saturating rains and tree-toppling winds, as well as that Thursday mess on No. 1, to claim his second career major championship. His victory, beneath an eggshell blue sky, came after he began the final round trailing Brooks Koepka, a four-time major winner who missed the Masters cut last April, by two strokes.Rahm ultimately won by four strokes, 12 under par for the tournament.“I’m looking at the scores, and I still think I have a couple more holes left to win,” Rahm said. “Can’t really say anything else. This one was for Seve. He was up there helping, and help he did.”Rahm, playing his shot from the fourth tee, had two birdies on the front nine in the final round.Rahm’s win kept at bay, at least for this month, a premier ambition of LIV Golf, the second-year league that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund bankrolled and then watched split men’s professional golf into embittered factions. Koepka has been one of the rebel circuit’s headliners and won a LIV event in Florida last week. Following it with a victory at Augusta National would have marked the first time a golfer had earned a major title as a LIV player. The league’s next chance will come in mid-May, at the P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, near Rochester, N.Y.But Rahm methodically extinguished the league’s 2023 bid in Augusta, where the 88-player field included 18 LIV golfers. Although the league had a robust showing behind Koepka and Phil Mickelson, whose sensational Sunday outing at seven under eventually vaulted him into a tie for second with Koepka, the tournament ended with Rahm, a PGA Tour stalwart, poised to select the menu for next year’s dinner of Masters champions.Mickelson, a three-time Masters winner, will presumably be there, too. Koepka will not, even after finishing the first three rounds with at least a share of a lead, showing a consistency — until it disappeared — that was all the more remarkable given the meteorological and scheduling turmoil.“I led for three rounds, and just didn’t do it on the last day,” Koepka said. “That’s it, plain and simple.”When Koepka made bogey on the sixth hole Sunday, after a drive past the green, a chip that zipped well past the pin and a par putt that scooted just past the hole, he also surrendered the lead.The par-5 eighth hole was a place where either man could gain ground: Both had made eagle there during the tournament. Koepka’s Sunday afternoon tee shot, though, came to rest on a stretch of pine straw, forcing a punch-out onto the fairway. Rahm guided his third shot onto the green, positioning him for a tap-in birdie that grew his advantage to two strokes.But there were charges toward the top of the leaderboard playing out elsewhere among the pines. When Koepka and Rahm each made bogey at No. 9, a cluster of aspiring contenders hovered much nearer than they had hours earlier. Rahm stood at 10 under, and Koepka at eight under, tied with Jordan Spieth, who started the round at one under. Another five players — Mickelson, Patrick Reed, Russell Henley, Cameron Young and Patrick Cantlay — were at six under or seven under.Rahm, left, and Koepka on the sixth green, where Koepka surrendered his lead with a bogey.The gap between Rahm and Koepka stayed at two strokes until the 12th hole, that wondrously botanical landmark in the heart of Amen Corner. The hole, a 155-yard par-3, is the shortest test at Augusta National. Koepka lifted his tee shot high, and then it plunged toward the turf just behind the green, though he avoided the bunker. His second shot did not quite reach the green, and his third cruised to the right and beyond the pin. He made a putt for bogey.That put Mickelson, 52, already done with his round, in a solo second place.Koepka birdied the 13th hole to pull even with Mickelson, but Rahm preserved his three-stroke advantage with a birdie, his first since No. 8.It did not last — because Rahm’s lead swelled to five strokes on the next hole. Rahm’s second shot, from near the tree line, plunked onto the green and then rolled in something approximating a semicircle until it stopped near the cup, setting up a putt for birdie. Koepka’s second shot also reached the green, but it rolled farther from the pin. A long try for birdie missed, and a much shorter one for par lipped out, sticking Koepka with a bogey, his fifth of the round.He came close to making a putt for eagle at the 15th before settling for a birdie there.Rahm led by four strokes with three holes to play. Koepka cut it to three with a majestic birdie after his tee shot cleared the water at No. 16, but his comeback possibilities were still narrowing quickly. It did not help that his ball, on his second shot at the 17th hole, went from a shadowed patch of east Georgia mud to where some spectators were sitting. He had made bogey on the hole near the end of the third round; he carded another as the tournament drew toward its conclusion, pushing Rahm’s advantage back to four strokes.Rahm and Koepka, on the eighth fairway, had each made eagle on the hole earlier in the tournament.Rahm, whose lone major victory had been at the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego, was virtually assured of a green jacket and, some months from now, a Masters trophy engraved with the signatures of every man he beat.Once he made his tournament-ending par putt on the 18th green surrounded by a thick, roaring gallery, he jubilantly lifted his arms skyward, clinched his fists and then briefly covered his face with his hands. He plucked his ball from the cup and tipped his hat.“Never thought I was going to cry by winning a golf tournament, but I got very close on that 18th hole,” he said.Even by the standards of a star who first reached the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking in 2020, Rahm has played especially well in recent months. In November, he won the DP World Tour Championship by two strokes. In January, he won two PGA Tour events, both with scores of 27 under par, and he captured the Genesis Invitational title in February.He stumbled in March, with a tie for 39th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational; a withdrawal from the Players Championship with a stomach illness; and a mediocre showing at a World Golf Championships match play tournament. But he insisted he was an unbothered “week-to-week guy,” content to play one event to the next without becoming all that mentally hemmed in by his booms or busts.“Every single tournament I go to, my plan is to win, and my mind-set doesn’t deviate from that,” he said last week.Until Sunday evening, he had never finished better than fourth at Augusta National. But for this year’s tournament, his seventh Masters appearance, he arrived with such a storehouse of knowledge of the course that he suggested it would be challenging to use in full.“I feel like it’s very difficult to apply everything you learn from each round here at Augusta National,” Rahm, on the sixth hole, said.“I feel like it’s very difficult to apply everything you learn from each round here at Augusta National,” he said.He added: “Obviously, the more you play, the more comfortable you get with a little bit of the lag putting out here, I would say. It can be very deceiving to understand some of the breaks and some of the speeds on the putts. You know, a little bit of learning and things like that, but at the end of the day, it’s a golf course where you have to come out here and play good golf, right? It’s plain and simple. There’s no trick to it. The best player wins, and that’s what you’ve got to do.”He did it, on what would have been Ballesteros’s 66th birthday. More

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      Photographs From Sunday’s Final Round at the Masters

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      After days of rain and dark clouds, the final round was sunny and clear with nothing but blue skies and green fairways providing a brilliant backdrop for Jon Rahm’s win.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The weather on Saturday at the Masters Tournament threw the schedule into chaos as rain and wind drove golfers off the course at Augusta National Golf Club in mid-afternoon when conditions became too poor to continue play. That meant Sunday — usually the start of the final round — began with the finish of the third round before advancing to the big finish: Jon Rahm capturing his first green jacket and second major tournament win.The excellent weather on Sunday provided a crystal clear backdrop for the highs and lows of the final round at the Masters, the first men’s golf major tournament of the year.Viktor Hovland was tied for the lead after the first round and finished tied for seventh at six under par.Xander Schauffele shot below par in three of his four rounds, including one under on both Saturday and Sunday.The tournament calls its attendees patrons rather than fans.Tiger Woods made the cut but withdrew from the tournament before third-round play resumed on Sunday following its suspension Saturday.Russell Henley tied for fourth after shooting under par in each of his final three rounds.Rahm celebrated his win with his wife, Kelley Cahill, and oldest son, Kepa. More

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      Phil Mickelson Has Best Final Round in 30th Masters Appearance

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      Mickelson, who withdrew from last year’s Masters Tournament as he took criticism for joining LIV Golf, earned a measure of redemption from fans by finishing in a tie for second place.AUGUSTA, Ga. — When Phil Mickelson was introduced on the first tee Thursday to begin his 30th appearance at the Masters Tournament, he was greeted by muted, faint applause. All the members of the renegade, Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit in the field were being treated roughly the same during the opening round. Not shunned, just not welcomed.It was a form of the silent treatment and as Mickelson walked down the first fairway Thursday, he was surrounded by a corridor of fans who hardly made a sound.On the 18th green late Sunday afternoon in the final round of the 2023 Masters, Mickelson sank a twisting, downhill putt for birdie and twice pumped his left fist as he went to retrieve the ball. He was barking something to himself but it was inaudible because the thousands of fans enveloping the green were on their feet roaring their approval. Soon, the gallery was chanting: “Phil.”Mickelson, who would finish tied for second at eight under par, waved to the crowd and smiled broadly, perhaps understanding better than anyone how much had changed in four days.The palpable undercurrent to this year’s Masters, the sport’s most watched tournament and the initial men’s major of the year, was the first head-to-head match between the LIV rebels and the pros aligned with the entrenched PGA Tour at the venerable Augusta National Golf Club, which in every way epitomizes traditional golf. Mickelson has always been the headliner of the defectors, and he took the brunt of the heat for turning his back on the established golf world last year — so much so that he voluntarily withdrew from the 2022 Masters.Mickelson tied for second with Brooks Koepka, whom he plays with on the LIV Golf circuit.David J. Phillip/Associated PressAnd now, after his best final round ever at the tournament, Mickelson, the three-time Masters champion, was being feted as if nothing had changed, with delirious cheers.As his playing partner Sunday, Jordan Spieth, said afterward: “It felt very much like eight, nine or 10 years ago.”Spieth also played well on Sunday, shooting 66 to Mickelson’s 65, and he had firsthand experience of what it was like to play with Mickelson years ago.“I’ve played with him three or four times on Sunday here,” Spieth, who finished in a three-way tie for fourth at seven under par, said. “And I didn’t feel a whole lot different than those times.”That is the most meaningful takeaway of this year’s Masters. A LIV player may not have won during the four days at Augusta National but they did not lose, as many expected. The reception Mickelson received proved that many golf fans are not drawing lines in the sand over this golf feud.The LIV-affiliated golfers took three spots in the top 10, including Brooks Koepka matching Mickelson. Twelve of the 18 entrants made the cut. For a week at least, the embarrassingly low television ratings this year for LIV events in the United States seemed less significant. The conversation about LIV’s relevance was altered for a week, led by Mickelson. There will now be fewer assertions that LIV’s 54-hole events are merely exhibitions that do not prepare players for major competitions. Mickelson, 52, certainly showed plenty of stamina and panache for the final round on Sunday. Moreover, he predicted before the tournament that he was “about to go on a tear.”Since Mickelson had not played especially well during his LIV tenure, not many in the golf world took that prediction seriously.“It just reaffirms that I knew I was close and have been hitting quality shots,” Mickelson said after Sunday’s round. “This doesn’t feel like a fluke. I didn’t make loose swings at an inopportune time. I stayed very present and calm throughout, then executed and had a blast.”Mickelson was smiling, even beaming. He understood the moment as he stood in front of the Augusta National clubhouse wearing the logos of the LIV team he captains — the HyFlyers — on his hat and a breast of his black pullover.“Like this is so much fun,” he said. “Again, we’re all grateful that we’re able to play and compete here.”Mickelson, playing in the second round, had not played well on the LIV Golf tour, but said he was confident going into the Masters.Mike Blake/ReutersHe added a subtle, yet cheeky and revealing, comment — what else would you expect from a Phil Mickelson news conference? — that was made plainly accurate by his performance and those of others in LIV’s wing of professional golf.“I think it’s tremendous for this tournament to have all the best players in the world here,” he said with another grin. “It means a lot.”Mickelson is correct. For now at least, his performance and that of his brethren within LIV made a statement at the 2023 Masters. For one, the civil war on the fairways and greens that was envisioned didn’t materialize. The golfers from both tours got along. OK, maybe not every LIV representative was as welcome as the likable Cameron Smith, but some of those LIV guys weren’t well liked back when they were on the PGA Tour.In the end, what the four days at the Masters proved is that the LIV circuit is not going anywhere. That is not necessarily a positive development for the expanded community of golf fans because it means tournament fields, except at the majors (for now or until some exemptions for LIV golfers expire) will be diluted and missing some big names — on both sides.The cheers were real for Mickelson late Sunday, and understandable. But maybe in some subconscious way those ovations signaled what golf fans are missing — the whole gang back together again. More

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      At the Masters, Brooks Koepka Holds the Lead and Tiger Woods Withdraws

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      Woods exited the tournament during the third round that finished around noon on Sunday. Koepka held a two-stroke lead over Jon Rahm head into the final round.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods withdrew on Sunday from the Masters Tournament, where he was in last place and openly struggling to overcome the agony of years of injuries.Augusta National Golf Club announced Woods’s withdrawal 75 minutes before the resumption of the third round, which was suspended Saturday because of bad weather. Woods had completed seven holes of the round and was six over par, bringing his tournament score to nine over after he had made his 23rd consecutive Masters cut, tying a record shared by Fred Couples and Gary Player.In a post on Twitter on Sunday morning, after Augusta National’s announcement, Woods attributed his withdrawal to “reaggravating my plantar fasciitis,” a condition he has dealt with for months. In November, it led Woods to skip competing in an event in the Bahamas that he hosts.Woods’s decision at the Masters came on a far more prominent stage, and it marked the second time in less than a year that he withdrew from a major tournament. Last May, he left the P.G.A. Championship after the third round, when he had shot a nine-over-par 79. He skipped the U.S. Open and then missed the cut at the British Open.Although Woods, 47, has long grappled with injuries, he has especially struggled since a car wreck in February 2021 that nearly cost him a leg. He made his return to tournament golf at the Masters last April, when he finished 47th, and has repeatedly said he expects to enter only a handful of events each year.“It has been tough and will always be tough,” Woods said on Tuesday at Augusta National, where he has won the Masters five times, most recently in 2019. “The ability and endurance of what my leg will do going forward will never be the same. I understand that. That’s why I can’t prepare and play as many tournaments as I like, but that’s my future and that’s OK. I’m OK with that.”For Woods, whose wreck left him with open fractures of the tibia and fibula of his right leg, the challenge of the last year in golf has been less about his swing and more about the rigors of walking 72 holes over four days, especially at a notoriously hilly course like Augusta National. After he missed the cut at St. Andrews in July, he said it had been “hard just to walk and play 18 holes.”“People have no idea what I have to go through and the hours of the work on the body, pre and post, each and every single day to do what I just did,” he said after his British Open ended. Later in 2022, he said, without disclosing more details, that his year had included undergoing “a few more procedures because of playing.”The next major tournament is scheduled to start on May 18, when the P.G.A. Championship will be played at Oak Hill Country Club, near Rochester, N.Y. Woods did not say on Sunday whether he intended to be in the field; in February, he said he would “hopefully” appear in all four majors this year.Although poor weather had forced three suspensions of play during this Masters, tournament officials appeared confident that the competition would end, as long planned, on Sunday. When the third round concluded shortly before noon on Sunday, with the Masters field down to 53 players, Brooks Koepka had a two-stroke lead over Jon Rahm.Koepka, who was 11 under par, sputtered slightly on the back nine in the third round, including at No. 17, where he three-putted for the first time during this tournament. Rahm also encountered trouble on the back nine, making bogey on two holes.Viktor Hovland, who barely missed a birdie putt on the 18th green at the end of his third round, was at eight under. More

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      Sunday’s Masters Plan: End the Third Round, Play the Fourth, Crown a Winner. Maybe Dry Out, Too.

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      Plus, Fred Couples sets a Masters record.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Sometime on Sunday evening — weather permitting, because everything during this Masters Tournament seems to be like that — Brooks Koepka or Jon Rahm or one of 52 other players will get to wear the jacket they actually want to during this trip to Augusta National Golf Club.It’s green.Saturday’s weather threw the tournament into carefully managed havoc, with the third round scheduled to resume at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Sunday. Koepka, Rahm and Sam Bennett were to try to finish the seventh hole, which they were playing in the 3 p.m. hour on Saturday when conditions became too poor to continue. If all goes according to Augusta National’s plan, the final round will tee off at 12:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, with the 54 players paired up and playing from the first and 10th tees.Augusta National, seeking to avoid its first Monday Masters finish since 1983, used a similar approach in 2019’s fourth round, when weather led groups of three to start from two tees.Tee times, of course, are only part of Augusta’s weather war plan. The club also has a highly sophisticated, sort-of-secret weapon: a vast, subterranean system known as SubAir that draws moisture away from the golf course’s greens and fairways. The system has many functions, including pumping fresh air to assist with the root structure of the grass. But when heavy rainfall strikes, it can siphon rainwater away from the central areas of the course to places on the property that are more likely to be out of play.Players love the SubAir system because it can keep the speed of a course’s devilish greens consistent despite a downpour, as well as make fairways drier, which leads to harder landing surfaces and longer drives off the tee. The system emits a low hum, a sound the top players have come to appreciate.“They just turn it on,” Viktor Hovland marveled last year, “and overnight it’s a completely different golf course.”Fred Couples — yes, 63-year-old Fred Couples — made the cut.Fred Couples acknowledged the crowd on the 18th green during the continuation of the weather-delayed second round on Saturday.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesLet’s be honest: It is virtually certain that Fred Couples will not win the Masters this year. He might even finish last, or close to it. But Fred Couples, the 1992 champion, is still in the field, which is more than some of his (much) younger counterparts can say.At 63, he is the oldest player ever to make the Masters cut.“There really isn’t a secret,” Couples said. “Everyone loves this place. That doesn’t mean you’re going to play well. If I hit it really solid, I’m a good iron player.”Couples, who has lifetime playing privileges at the Masters thanks to his 1992 win, last played the third and fourth rounds in 2018, when he finished in a tie for 38th. His last top-10 finish came in 2010, when he placed sixth.“I am excited to make the cut,” he said. “That’s why I come here. The last four years have been really mediocre golf — maybe one year I was semi-close to making the cut — but that’s my objective, and I did it. It’s not like, ‘Ha, ha, ha. Now I can screw around and play 36 holes for fun.’ I’m going to try and compete. Play a good pairing with some younger guys and watch them play.”Indeed, he knows he will compete only so much. He is fine with that.“I can’t compete with Viktor Hovland or Jon Rahm or anybody, but I can compete with myself, and that’s really why I come,” he said.A few notable scores so far in the interrupted third round.Brooks Koepka hit a bunker shot to the second green on Saturday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThere is still plenty of third-round golf to play, but the round has not delivered as much of the movement that players want: Only 11 improved their scores. Three — Patrick Cantlay, Matt Fitzpatrick and Sungjae Im — picked up three strokes. Scottie Scheffler, the defending champion, improved by two, and Koepka brightened his score by one.Phil Mickelson remains at four under par for the tournament after bogeying two of the last three holes before play was suspended on Saturday. Justin Rose started the round at four under, got to six under and was back to four under when everyone headed indoors.Dustin Johnson, who won the tournament in 2020 with the lowest score in the competition’s history, is six over for the round, putting him in a tie for 51st at five over. More