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    At the Hero Dubai Desert Classic, Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed Provide Drama

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    Last year’s event had a classic battle between Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed, players on opposite sides of the LIV Golf debate.Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed have a long history of dueling when it matters most. The rivalry has produced some epic golf matches, the most surprising of which may have been last year’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic, being played again starting on Thursday on the DP World Tour in the United Arab Emirates.At the 2016 Ryder Cup, held at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Minnesota, McIlroy and Reed were also pitted against each other on the final day of singles matches.The pair traded incredible shots on the front nine, but it was the interplay between them — finger wagging, shushing, cupping ears to rile up the crowd — that many remember. But in a sign of sportsmanship, the two fist-bumped walking off one green. Reed won the match on the 18th hole.Two years later at the Masters Tournament, it was Reed and McIlroy battling again. It’s the one major that McIlroy still needs to win to complete the career grand slam. (He has won the United States Open, the British Open and, twice, the P.G.A. Championship.)Reed had led the tournament since the halfway mark, and in the final round McIlroy was three shots back. Reed won by one shot, six ahead of McIlroy.Their rivalry had highly anticipated showdowns that were fierce and competitive.Then came LIV Golf, and the sport splintered into two rival groups: the ones who went to the Saudi Arabia-backed league and those who stayed loyal to the established professional golf tours, the PGA and DP World Tours.McIlroy became a player spokesman for the PGA Tour, while Reed went to LIV and became part of the 4Aces GC, a team captained by Dustin Johnson.Reed also began suing players and commentators on the PGA Tour who were critical of his decision to leave. In McIlroy’s case, he received a subpoena on Christmas Eve 2022 when he was at home with his family.At last year’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic, McIlroy wasn’t interested in chatting with Reed on the practice range. (Reed flicked a tee at McIlroy after Reed said McIlroy refused to acknowledge him on the driving range.)What was surprising was the intensity of the tournament, which came down to a duel between Reed and McIlroy.Reed’s decision to join LIV Golf made for some tense moments during last year’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic.Luke Walker/Getty ImagesLike its counterpart, the Sentry on the PGA Tour, the Hero is usually a collegial entry into the DP World Tour’s season. Dubai has created a family resort around the courses.As the week advanced, McIlroy and Reed were circling each other in the tournament, and it was clear that the competition had taken on a bigger significance for McIlroy than a regular victory.McIlroy had become the leading PGA Tour player voicing his anger against the players who had gone to LIV. In addition to Reed, McIlroy clashed with Greg Norman, the former world No. 1 who is LIV’s chief executive.“I think Greg needs to go,” McIlroy said before the Hero. “I think he just needs to exit stage left.”After the first three rounds of last year’s Hero, it looked like McIlroy was going to coast to victory. In the fourth round, with a four shot deficit, Reed got off to a hot start. At one point on the back nine he was briefly in the lead. McIlroy drew even after a birdie on the 17th hole.Stepping up to the tee of the 18th hole, McIlroy needed a birdie to win. Hitting his third shot close, he watched the ball roll into the hole before letting out a roar. Reed had mounted a final round charge, but finished one behind McIlroy.“Mentally, today was probably one of the toughest rounds I have ever had to play because it would be really easy to let your emotions get in the way,” McIlroy said at a news conference. “I just had to really focus on myself and forget who was up there on the leaderboard.”He added: “This is probably sweeter than it should be.”Rory McIlroy, left, and Patrick Reed established a rivalry during the 2016 Ryder Cup when the two played against each other on the final day of singles matches.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesThe victory had the heightened feel of their Ryder Cup duel. While LIV golfers had been stripped of their PGA Tour membership for joining the rival league, they were allowed to play while a court in England mulled whether the DP World Tour could ban them.A year later, McIlroy is striking a different tone about LIV and its defectors. The shift came after his Ryder Cup teammate Jon Rahm joined LIV Golf at the end of 2023.“Ultimately, you can say what you want and do what you want, but at the end of the day you’re not going to be able to change peoples’ minds,” McIlroy said on the “Stick to Football” podcast earlier this month. He continued, “I wouldn’t say I’ve lost the fight against LIV, but I’ve just accepted the fact that this is part of our sport now.”He said that he was concerned about what the continued division in professional golf would mean for the sport and that he hoped Rahm would still be able to compete in the Ryder Cup. He added that he had been too judgmental of the men leaving to go to LIV.“At the end of the day, we’re professional golfers and we play to make a living and make money, so I understand it,” he said. “But I think it’s just created this division that will hopefully stop soon.”McIlroy’s manager, Sean O’Flaherty, said McIlroy was preparing for the Hero and did not have anything additional to add beyond what he said on the podcast. Reed declined to comment through his LIV representatives.Reed won the Masters Tournament in 2018.David Cannon/Getty ImagesWhile one tournament does not dictate the tenor of a season, what made last year’s Hero interesting to watch was the battle between McIlroy and Reed coming down to the final hole. McIlroy is worried that such competitive battles will become rarer — confined to the majors — and hurt interest in the regular tour stops that rely on big names to draw fans.With many stars and fan favorites gone to LIV, there is less opportunity outside of the four majors for top players to compete. LIV, on the other hand, guarantees that its 48 players will be at every event.“I think what LIV and the Saudis have exposed is that you’re asking for millions of dollars to sponsor these events, and you’re not able to guarantee to the sponsors that the players are going to show up,” McIlroy said on the podcast. “I can’t believe the PGA Tour has done so well for so long.”Others agree. “I think if golf isn’t careful you get to the point where people say, I’m not that fired up to watch the Phoenix Open because Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Rahm are not there,” said Hughes Norton, the agent who negotiated Tiger Wood’s first deal with Nike and the author of the coming book, “Rainmaker: Superagent Hughes Norton and the Money-Grab Explosion of Golf From Tiger to LIV and Beyond.”Already, longtime sponsors, including Honda and Wells Fargo, have pulled out of PGA Tour tournaments. And other sponsors are questioning the increased costs if their tournament is one of the eight signature events, which offer higher purses and guarantee that more elite players attend, but at a cost of an additional $7 million on top of the $13 million sponsor fee, Norton said.“Maybe Wells Fargo said there are six big names who used to come to our events and now they’re not there,” he said. “Sponsors are restless now.”If that’s the case, the sport needs more battles like last year’s Hero showdown. More

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      Hero Dubai Desert Classic: Players to Watch

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      Here are five golfers to keep an eye on at this first Rolex Series tournament of the year.The DP World Tour’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic, which begins on Thursday at the Emirates Golf Club in the United Arab Emirates, has delivered big-name champions over the past 35 years, including Tiger Woods, Seve Ballesteros, Ernie Els, Fred Couples, Colin Montgomerie, Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy.Will another marquee player walk off with the trophy this time around? Or will someone less heralded emerge from the pack to make an early statement in 2024?Here are five noteworthy golfers:Brian Harman of the United States plays his shot from the 17th tee during the first round of the Hero World Challenge at Albany Golf Course last November in Nassau.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesBrian HarmanWe’ll find out in the coming months whether Harman’s surprising victory in last year’s British Open, winning by six strokes at Royal Liverpool, was a fluke or if he’s able to prove that he truly is one of the game’s top players.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      DP World Tour Winner May Have Barely Played the Tour at All

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      This will happen this year at the DP World Tour Championship and the Race to Dubai.The DP World Tour will end its season at the championship in Dubai, which starts on Thursday, as it has done for more than a decade. But like the past several seasons, the winner of the Race to Dubai championship will be someone who has played sparingly on the tour itself. In fact, this may be its most anti-climactic finale yet.This stands in stark contrast to the PGA Tour, where its FedEx Cup series funnels golfers into playing as many events on that tour as possible to accumulate points.It wasn’t always this way. The Race to Dubai is an honor that dates well-before the FedEx Cup. It began in 1937 as the Order of Merit. Charles Whitcombe won the inaugural one. Subsequent winners are a who’s who of European golfers, including multiple winners like the Ryder Cup stalwarts Colin Montgomerie with eight and Seve Ballesteros with six.But this year is another in which the closing event feels like a showcase for stars who have been largely absent from the tour. Rory McIlroy, a four-time winner of the Race to Dubai, and Jon Rahm, who won it in 2019, are in first and second place, but after last weekend’s Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa, no one can catch McIlroy.Of the 43 events on the tour, Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland, right, has played nine; Jon Rahm of Spain, left, has played seven.Gregory Shamus/Getty ImagesAnd that makes the disconnect with the season-ending race even starker. The two players are ranked second and third in the world golf rankings. And they’re stalwarts of the European Ryder Cup team. But McIlroy of Northern Ireland and Rahm of Spain have hardly played this season on the DP World Tour. And while McIlroy is set to play in the event, he could skip it and still be crowned the winner for the fifth time.Of the 43 events on the tour, McIlroy has played nine and is in first place in the Race To Dubai; Rahm has played seven to sit in second and the drama has turned to whether they will repeat as champion of the tournament itself. In third place is Adrian Meronk of Poland, who has played 23 tournaments on the DP World Tour.Meronk is a lock to win another prize: full membership on the PGA Tour. This goes to the top 10 finishers in the Race to Dubai who are not already on the PGA Tour, which has higher purses and earns more points for the world golf rankings; it also means Meronk will probably, like McIlroy and Rahm, play more on the PGA Tour than on the DP World Tour next season.Welcome to the new abnormal of golf, in which European Tour champions barely play on the tour. How did we get here? It’s complicated.In the scrambled world of professional golf, with the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour working together to stave off the threat from LIV Golf, the new Saudi Arabia-backed league, new incentives abound. And they’re upending the existing order.While there is a tentative agreement with LIV to pause litigation between it and the tours, one of their big concerns is players being lured away with more lucrative LIV contracts. But at the heart of the current agreement between the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour is a system for the highest-ranked players in Europe to play in the United States on the PGA Tour.The leaderboard for the Race to Dubai is the result of two factors: how certain events, like the four majors, are sanctioned by the two tours and thus earn more points; and the higher number of points awarded to other elevated events. Because dominant players like McIlroy and Rahm compete in events with stronger fields, they end up earning more points by playing well in fewer events.In McIlroy’s case, only four of his nine events that got credited toward the Race to Dubai were DP World Tour events; the others were on or sanctioned by the PGA Tour. With Rahm, it was fewer: only two of his seven tournaments.It’s not the first time this has happened. Last year, McIlroy won the Race to Dubai (and Rahm won the DP World Tour Championship) with a similar amount of play on the DP World Tour.In 2021, Collin Morikawa, a full member of the PGA Tour, became the first American to win the Race to Dubai. He also won the British Open, but only played in two other events outside the United States: the Scottish Open (which is also sanctioned by the PGA Tour) and the Omega Dubai Desert Classic. In neither event did he finish inside the top 50.By contrast, this year Meronk played the four majors and the other 19 events on the DP World. While he is third in the Race to Dubai, he is ranked only 46th in the world because he earned fewer points from the European events.Victor Hovland of Norway is ranked 14th in the Race to Dubai, but is the fourth-best player in the world rankings. Again, it’s the value of the points. He is credited with seven DP World Tour events, but all but one, the BMW PGA Championship, are also sanctioned by the PGA Tour.At its core, the list of contenders for the Race to Dubai is a mix of players who did well in DP World Tour events and will move up to the PGA Tour, and players who have played well at the majors and other co-sanctioned events. The result is a season-ending tournament and season-long prize that could be more confusing than climactic.Joost Luiten of the Netherlands is close to winning the opportunity to play more on the PGA Tour and thus play less on the DP World tour.Lorraine Osullivan/ReutersIn fact, the real drama may lie with the final player on the P.G.A. promotion list, Rasmus Hojgaard of Denmark, who jumped five spots into 16th place.That spot had been held until the last tournament by Joost Luiten of the Netherlands, who dropped five spots after last week and is now in 22nd place. Both Hojgaard and Luiten have played over 20 events each on the DP World Tour to get an opportunity to play more on the PGA Tour and thus less on the DP tour next season.On the flip side, current PGA Tour players who finish outside the top 125 on the money list get full membership on the DP World Tour, for numbers 126 to 200.When this was announced last month, David Howell, chairman of the DP World Tour’s Tournament Committee, categorized the demotion to that tour as a positive for players. “When we announced our strategic alliance with the PGA Tour in November 2021, one of the prime objectives was to give as many opportunities as possible to members of both tours,” he said. “This is another perfect example of how this is working.”An agent who represents players on the DP World Tour and LIV Golf said that elevating one group to the PGA Tour and demoting another group onto the DP World Tour was further dividing professional golf ranks. It has made it more difficult, the agent said, for many players to gain the world golf ranking points to get them into the majors and other marquee tournaments.“All these PGA Tour events sit way above the European Tour in world golf ranking points,” said the agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid the ramifications of speaking publicly about the Tour. “They had an argument that the depth on the PGA Tour was better than anywhere else, so how could you be top 100 on PGA Tour and 300th in the world. I get it. But that pushed the European Tour into a corner. It made it into this feeder tour.”Next year the format will change and be more like the FedEx Cup, where players qualify for an event and then the field shrinks with each tournament. So it will be 70 players at the Abu Dhabi Championship and 50 players at the final DP World Tour Championship in 2024.What it comes down to is getting the sport’s stars to play in those final European Tour events, regardless of how much they have played on the tour during the season.“The season-long narrative is for the die-hard golf geeks,” the agent said. “The average sports enthusiast just wants to see superstars. The commercial product lives and dies by it.” More

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      A the DP World Tour Championship, Years of Suspense

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      Here are five tournaments where the margin of victory was one.The DP World Tour Championship, which gets underway on Thursday at the Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, has provided its share of suspense since its inaugural event in 2009.It’s no surprise given the caliber of the 50-player field. This year will feature seven of the top 15 in the world rankings, including No. 2 Rory McIlroy, who clinched his fifth Race to Dubai title on Sunday, and No. 3 Jon Rahm.Below, in chronological order, are five tournaments that came down to the last hole.Ian Poulter was assessed a one-stroke penalty in the 2010 playoff for dropping his ball on his marker, causing it to move.Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images2010Robert Karlsson of Sweden was the winner, but what happened to Ian Poulter of England also stood out.On the second playoff hole, Poulter was assessed a one-stroke penalty for dropping his ball on his marker, causing it to move. He finished with a bogey on the hole, while Karlsson, who picked up his 11th DP World Tour victory, made a birdie.Poulter had missed a birdie putt to win it in regulation.“Six inches short of the hole, I would have probably put my house on it,” he said afterward, “but it slows down and takes a little bit of grain and misses. Obviously a little disappointed, and it was a shame it’s just ended the way it has.”McIlroy had a two-stroke lead going into the last two holes.Andrew Redington/Getty Images2015Leading by two strokes with two holes to go, the tournament, in all likelihood, belonged to McIlroy.Until he found the water with his tee shot on 17 and soon faced a 35-foot putt for a bogey. Still, he knocked it in and parred 18 for a one-shot victory over Andy Sullivan.“The tee shot was 40 yards off line,” McIlroy said at the time. “It was just a horrendous golf shot. I didn’t like the shot, and I wasn’t very happy with myself, but I was able to get over it quick enough to hole that putt. It seems like the more pressure I’m under or the more it means, the better I putt, which is a nice thing to have.”When he had arrived on the final tee, Matt Fitzpatrick trailed Tyrrell Hatton by a shot.Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images2016Four feet must have seemed as long as 40 feet for Matt Fitzpatrick, who needed to make the birdie putt for the win.No problem.“The 18th green was the most nervous I’ve been over a four-foot putt,” he told reporters. “You need to pull it off, and fortunately, so far so good. It won’t always work out that way.”Late in the final round, Fitzpatrick trailed Tyrrell Hatton by a shot. Hatton, however, found the water with his drive on 18, leading to a bogey that paved the way for Fitzpatrick, who hit his second shot on the par 5 into a bunker and chipped up close to set up the winning putt.Jon Rahm needed a birdie on the last hole to win in 2019.Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images2019At one stage in the final round, Tommy Fleetwood was eight strokes behind Rahm.It looked over, but it wasn’t.Fleetwood made six birdies from then on to shoot a seven-under 65 while Rahm was, all of a sudden, off his game. He needed a birdie at 18 to put Fleetwood away.After a huge drive, he hit his four-iron approach into the bunker. He chipped it to within four feet and made the putt.“Those first seven holes, I felt like I couldn’t miss a shot. My putting was unbelievable. Then just one errant tee shot and a three-putt kind of took everything in the wrong direction,” Rahm said afterward. “It made me show some determination and grit and heart just to win,” he added.Fitzpatrick prevailed for a second time, by a shot over Lee Westwood, in 2020.Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images2020Fitzpatrick prevailed for a second time, by a shot over Lee Westwood, knocking in a three-footer for par on the 72nd hole. After hitting his drive into the rough, Fitzpatrick chipped back onto the fairway and found the putting surface with his third.Westwood, who was 47 years old at the time, also had reason to celebrate, securing the Race to Dubai. He won the European money title in 2000 — it was known then as the Order of Merit — and again in 2009.“It was a great finish,” Westwood told reporters. “I sat there watching it — it’s always exciting this tournament, coming down the stretch and there’s always thrills and spills.” More

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      Rory McIlroy Resigns From PGA Tour Board

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      The decision came about five months after the tour struck an agreement with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to create a joint company.Rory McIlroy, the esteemed golfer who was among the most outspoken opponents of his sport’s swelling ties to Saudi Arabia, has resigned from the PGA Tour’s board.The tour confirmed his departure in a statement on Tuesday night.“Given the extraordinary time and effort that Rory — and all of his fellow player directors — have invested in the tour during this unprecedented, transformational period in our history, we certainly understand and respect his decision to step down in order to focus on his game and his family,” Commissioner Jay Monahan and Edward D. Herlihy, the board’s chairman, said in the statement.Mr. McIlroy, the men said, was “instrumental in helping shape the success of the tour, and his willingness to thoughtfully voice his opinions has been especially impactful.”Mr. McIlroy’s agent did not respond to a message seeking comment.The decision by Mr. McIlroy came about five months after the tour, following secret negotiations, struck an agreement with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to try to create a joint company that would end golf’s money-fueled war for supremacy. Most board members, including Mr. McIlroy, had no knowledge of the agreement or the talks that led to it until shortly before it was announced in June and upended the duel between the tour and LIV Golf, the league Saudi Arabia built with a blend of billions of dollars and marquee defections from the PGA Tour.Mr. McIlroy soon expressed a pragmatic fatalism about the agreement — which calls for the tour and the wealth fund to combine their commercial golf businesses — and the proposed partnership with Saudi Arabia, which has been expanding its investments in sports.“If you’re thinking about one of the biggest sovereign wealth funds in the world, would you rather have them as a partner or an enemy?” Mr. McIlroy asked on June 7, the day after the tour announced the transaction, which has still not closed. “At the end of the day, money talks, and you would rather have them as a partner.”But he also made no secret that the tour’s machinations had blindsided and stung him. Few golfers had been more strident critics of LIV and the players who joined it, and the PGA Tour had benefited from the credibility of a four-time major tournament winner’s serving, in effect, as its leading public champion.“It’s hard for me to not sit up here and feel somewhat like a sacrificial lamb and feeling like I’ve put myself out there and this is what happens,” Mr. McIlroy, who was also among the tour’s leaders during the pandemic, said at the same news conference in Toronto.Although he soldiered on, he signaled this week that he had tired of the role. Asked in the United Arab Emirates whether he was enjoying his board tenure, Mr. McIlroy replied: “Not particularly, no. Not what I signed up for whenever I went on the board. But yeah, the game of professional golf has been in flux for the last two years.”He gave no hint that an exit was in the offing.On Monday, the 12-member board finished a meeting at the tour’s headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., where it heard about a handful of bids for minority stakes that could usurp or come alongside any money from the Saudis. In a memo to players on Tuesday, Mr. Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, said the board had “agreed to continue the negotiation process in order to select the final minority investor(s) in a timely manner.”Mr. Monahan said in his memo that the tour had heard from “dozens” of prospects about potential investments and winnowed the candidates to a smaller group for board review. For the tour, which has faced blowback from Congress and the Justice Department over its evolving approach to working with Saudi Arabia, there are stakes beyond money.Some players and executives believe that a role for influential American investors could diminish Washington’s criticism of — and possible efforts to block — the transaction.“Even if a deal does get done, it’s not a sure thing,” Mr. McIlroy said this week. “So yeah, we are just going to have to wait and see. But in my opinion, the faster something gets done, the better.”Mr. McIlroy is the second person to resign from the tour’s board since the summer. In July, Randall Stephenson, the former AT&T chief executive, quit the seat he had occupied for a dozen years, citing his “serious concerns with how this framework agreement came to fruition without board oversight.” At the time, Mr. Stephenson wrote that he could not “objectively evaluate or in good conscience support” the agreement, especially given the conclusion of U.S. intelligence services that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.Mr. Stephenson’s departure turned heads on Wall Street and in golf’s inner sanctums. But the decision by Mr. McIlroy is a particularly public blow to the tour and its board. Although the group still includes figures like Tiger Woods and Patrick Cantlay, Mr. McIlroy, 34, has long been one of golf’s most amiable stars.When the time came, though, for the tour to engage in negotiations with the wealth fund, he was among the board members left out of the talks.Only two members, Mr. Herlihy, a partner at the Wall Street law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and James J. Dunne III, vice chairman of the investment bank Piper Sandler, were involved. The secrecy infuriated other board members and helped stir a player uprising that led to the summertime installation of Mr. Woods as a director.Hours before the tour acknowledged Mr. McIlroy’s resignation, it announced a replacement for Mr. Stephenson, Joseph W. Gorder, the executive chairman of Valero’s board. More

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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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      Brian Harman Romps to British Open Victory at Royal Liverpool

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      Harman, a 36-year-old American, came close to winning the 2017 U.S. Open, but his triumph on Sunday gave him his first major title.Brian Harman knew Saturday evening that sleep might be hard to come by, as much as he knew he needed it. He had been in this situation — the 54-hole leader at a major tournament — six years ago and knew the agonizing cost of a fitful night: a runner-up finish, months and then years of what-ifs, a career not on the margins but not among the ultra-elite.He slept well enough this time. Harman, nestled atop the leaderboard at Royal Liverpool Golf Club since Friday, made a methodical march on Sunday to win the British Open by six strokes, finishing at 13 under par. With a final round defined more by get-it-done grit than star-turn splash, Harman held off a band of challengers whose tournament scores wound up swarmed around each other’s instead of close to his.It was the largest margin of victory at a men’s golf major tournament since Bryson DeChambeau’s six-stroke win at the 2020 U.S. Open.“I’ve always had a self-belief that I could do something like this,” Harman said. “It’s just when it takes so much time, it’s hard not to let your mind falter, like maybe I’m not winning again.”“I’m 36 years old,” he added. “Game is getting younger. All these young guys coming out hit it a mile, and they’re all ready to win. Like, when is it going to be my turn again? It’s been hard to deal with.”Sunday ended those doubts.As the first pairing went off on Sunday, Harman had a five-stroke lead, a comfortable gap but not an insurmountable one, especially not at a tournament that in 1999 saw Paul Lawrie overcome a 10-shot, final-round deficit to win at Carnoustie in Scotland. That history aside, the greatest mystery for most of Sunday at a decidedly soggy Royal Liverpool seemed to be not whether Harman would win, but by how much.Unlike Carnoustie, Royal Liverpool, hosting the British Open for the 13th time, has long been kind to the men who climbed the leaderboard early. With his victory, Harman became the seventh player to win an Open at the course after having led after two rounds.“He won by six, so there’s nothing really any of us could have done,” said Jon Rahm, one of four players to tie for second.Harman, who played in college at Georgia and turned professional in 2009, has been a reliably talented player on the PGA Tour, mustering 50 top-10 finishes before the Open. But despite having nearly $29 million in career earnings coming into Sunday at Royal Liverpool, where his performance won him $3 million, Harman was hardly seen as a headliner.He had two career victories, the John Deere Classic in 2014 and the Wells Fargo Championship in 2017. The next month, in what had been his best showing at a major, he tied for second at the U.S. Open at Erin Hills in Wisconsin, where he lost to Brooks Koepka by four strokes. Ranked 26th in the world (and never higher than 20th) before his Royal Liverpool victory, he said he did not consider himself underrated.Asked over the weekend what he considered, before Sunday, his greatest achievement in the sport, he leaned back in his seat, crossed his arms and turned his eyes away, a subdued tour stalwart turned Open contender thinking through professional golf’s version of a workaday résumé.“This year will be the 12th straight year that I’ve made the FedEx Cup playoffs,” he replied after about five seconds.His record in this year’s majors is enormously mixed, though he has now risen to the No. 10 ranking. He missed the cut at the Masters Tournament and at the P.G.A. Championship, and tied for 43rd at the U.S. Open. Then came Royal Liverpool, the course where he played his first British Open in 2014. Back then, Rory McIlroy won, and Harman tied for 26th.He proceeded to miss the cut during his next four Opens. Coming into this one, before returning to the course in northwest England that had also found champions in players like Bobby Jones, Peter Thomson and Tiger Woods, he finished tied for 12th at the Scottish Open.Harman’s odyssey through this Open began on Thursday, when his 67 put him in fourth. On Friday, he birdied the first four holes and made eagle on the last for a 65 that gave him sole command of the leaderboard. After a pair of early bogeys, his 69 on Saturday brought him into Sunday with a five-stroke lead over Cameron Young, and a six-shot advantage over Rahm, whose Saturday round was the best at any Open at Royal Liverpool.Harman watched his shot on the 13th green on Sunday as the crowd watched him run away with the lead.Paul Childs/ReutersThe course had been overrun with hazards. Scores of bunkers that, as the 2022 Open champion Cameron Smith said, were effectively one-shot penalties. A newly crafted par-3 17th hole that so punished a U.S. Open winner that he suggested it be redesigned again. Sunday brought the most bitter dose of British Open weather: gusting winds and drenching rains, the course feeling at once like a sauna and a shower.But a five-shot lead at sunrise, visibility of the sun notwithstanding, helps.“He’s a very tough, experienced character,” Padraig Harrington, a two-time Open winner, said before Harman’s final round began. “Sometimes we see somebody leading a tournament and you kind of go, ‘Oh, is he going to hang on?’ I don’t think that’s the case with Brian Harman. Nearly every day he goes out on the golf course he’s like playing with a chip on his shoulder, like he’s fighting something. I think this is ideal for him.”The raindrops were still plummeting when Harman stepped up to the tee. With his back to the nearby claret jug, he steadied himself, took one glance after another down the fairway and unleashed his left-handed swing. He would make par on the hole, avoiding a repeat of Saturday’s bogey. But he barely missed a par putt at No. 2, where even a police officer had turned away from the crowd to watch, to shrivel his lead. Young failed to convert a 14-foot birdie putt that would have narrowed it by another stroke.Seven groups ahead, though, McIlroy was surging. He had begun the day at three under. After five holes, he was at six under and suddenly tied for second. Rahm was making pars, and Young, paired with Harman, had already bogeyed the first. By the time Harman’s ball was rolling across the third green, there were five players — McIlroy, Rahm, Young, Tommy Fleetwood and Sepp Straka — tied for second. But Harman’s margin remained as much as it was at the start.Other potential rivals were nowhere near, not after the cut had sapped the leaderboard of much of its prospective star power. Most of those who remained did not pose severe threats. Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player, finished the Open at even par. Wyndham Clark, the victor at last month’s U.S. Open, left Hoylake at one over, as did Smith. Koepka, who won this year’s P.G.A. Championship and was the runner-up at the Masters, was eight over.At the fifth hole, a par-5 that had been the week’s easiest test, Harman’s tee shot flew 249 yards and crashed into bushes, positioning him just more than halfway to the pin.That pin was where Rahm, the reigning Masters champion, began to make headway, tapping his ball for his first Sunday birdie. Once Harman made it to the green, an eventual 12-foot try for par failed, and when the fifth hole closed for the tournament, Harman’s lead was down to three strokes.The suspense did not exactly linger.Harman, with the claret jug.Gregory Shamus/Getty ImagesHe nudged it upward again on the par-3 sixth hole, where he holed a birdie putt from about 14 feet, and then again at No. 7, where he made a birdie from 24 feet.Steadiness returned until Harman made a bogey on the par-3 13th hole that is a favorite of Royal Liverpool members. But the players closest to Harman were fast approaching the 18th green, and running out of time. McIlroy, who was looking for his first major tournament victory since 2014, missed a birdie putt there to finish at six under. Tom Kim soon left the last green, still stuck at seven under, just like Rahm, Straka and Jason Day would be, too.Elsewhere on the course, Harman himself was edging toward turning the probable into the inevitable. He birdied the 14th hole with a putt that raced about 40 feet downhill into the cup. Another birdie followed on No. 15, moving his lead to six shots.The rain kept coming. Harman maintained his march. A parade of defeated players headed toward the clubhouse. The claret jug’s engraver prepared.It would soon be time to add Harman’s name. More

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      Jon Rahm Roars Up The British Open Leaderboard To Contend On Sunday

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      Jon Rahm’s 63 was a record for an Open at Royal Liverpool, but Brian Harman will enter Sunday with a five-shot lead.Every major tournament has the cruel, curt power to humble golf’s stars. Rory McIlroy at the Masters. Justin Thomas at the P.G.A. Championship. Phil Mickelson at the U.S. Open (OK, make that a lot of them).This British Open was seeming awful vengeful, more hostile and taunting to the sport’s powers than most recent majors — until Jon Rahm mounted the sort of Saturday stampede that propels a player into the record books and closer to contention.The world’s third-ranked player had stumbled to a three-over-par 74 on Thursday at Royal Liverpool Golf Club, good for all of 89th place. A 70 on Friday moved him 50 places forward. He arrived at the course a dozen shots off Brian Harman’s lead. But when Rahm finished his Saturday round with a birdie, just after Harman made a solitary, silent walk to the first tee to begin his, the gap between the men, one a two-time major winner, the other an also-ran, was down to four.Before nightfall on England’s western coast, where downpours and winds were sporadic menaces on Saturday, Harman had pushed his margin over Rahm up to six, edging him toward hoisting the freshly engraved claret jug on Sunday evening. Cameron Young was nearest to Harman, five strokes back.But Rahm’s Saturday 63 was, by two shots, a record for an Open at Royal Liverpool, which is hosting the tournament for the 13th time. It was also a forceful answer to two days of largely ho-hum play by many of the world’s marquee golfers at the Open, where the leaderboard had often felt like a glimpse into the game’s depths.“I gave up the shots at major championships that are very costly, and that’s mainly it,” Rahm said on Saturday. “That’s what I was feeling. I knew I was playing better, and I knew my swing and my game felt better than the scores I was shooting.”Saturday, a feast for imaginative shotmaking, was different.Often, Rahm noted, the world’s best visualize what they would like to happen with this shot or that one. Often, he noted, reality intrudes. But his Saturday, he suggested, had been marked by the feeling of seeing “everything the way it’s supposed to happen unfold.” On Saturday, he said at one point in Spanish, he had “felt invincible.”He made his day’s debut birdie on the fifth hole, and added another on the ninth. Another came on the 10th, and it was around then, he recalled later, that his shots started hurtling downwind. He picked up more birdies on the 11th and 12th holes, two more at Nos. 15 and 16 and the last on the 18th, the crowd worked into a thunder.On Saturday, Rahm said had the feeling of seeing “everything the way it’s supposed to happen unfold.”Jon Super/Associated PressUntil Rahm’s Saturday surge, disappointment had been running close to endemic among the sport’s top players, not because many stars would not win but because they would not even come close.The first five pairings on Saturday — the players who came nearest to missing the cut — included Scottie Scheffler (the current world No. 1), a five-time major champion (Brooks Koepka) and one of the game’s most chronically popular figures (Rickie Fowler).The last five pairings on Saturday? The players most clearly positioned to contend? Koepka alone had more major titles than the entirety of the group, which entered Saturday with an average world ranking of 59th, 40 spots lower than the mean for last summer’s third round at St. Andrews.The top of the leaderboard was soon speckled with headliners, and headliners-in-waiting. Young, who finished second at last year’s Open, finished at seven under, a stroke ahead of Rahm. Jason Day, a former world No. 1, Tommy Fleetwood and Viktor Hovland were among the players at five under. McIlroy, currently ranked second in the world, put together a 69 to go to three under.But it has still been a weird week, after a Friday cut that knocked out a head-turning array of recent major champions, including Mickelson, Thomas, Dustin Johnson and Collin Morikawa. Other top-tier players, including Scheffler, Koepka, Fowler and Patrick Cantlay, barely got to stay for the weekend.“Maybe everyone is just not quite on their stuff this week,” said Cameron Smith, the winner of last year’s Open, who brought his score to one under on Saturday when he shot a 68. “I’m not really sure of the answer there. But those bunkers, I think if you’re trying to be aggressive — and generally major winners are aggressive players — it can bite you in the bum.”Cameron Smith, who won last year’s British Open, watched his drive off the tee on No. 1 on Saturday.Phil Noble/ReutersAll many players could do was look to get through Sunday.“Win?” said Scheffler, who would be 16 strokes off the lead at the end of the third round.“A hurricane and then some I think is what it’s going to take for me,” he added on one of the few major Saturdays where he was done before the leaders even stepped up to the first tee. “I’m just going to go out tomorrow and do my best and move my way up the leaderboard and try and have a good day.”Robert MacIntyre, the runner-up at last weekend’s Scottish Open, was similarly resigned. On Saturday afternoon, his mind was already wandering toward the hours after the tournament.“Know that you’ve got 18 holes before you put your feet up,” he said.Rahm, revived, was in a far different place.“I’ve done what I’ve needed,” he said, “which is give myself an opportunity.” More

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      Harman Charges to British Open Lead as McIlroy Seeks Elusive Magic

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      Brian Harman has never won a major tournament but led the field at 10 under heading into the weekend, with Rory McIlroy nine back.It was nearly noon on Friday when the name appeared on the British Open leaderboard.Rory McIlroy was six strokes back, with 48 holes to settle whether his nine-year melodrama of major tournament heartache would last until at least next spring. By the time he walked off Royal Liverpool Golf Club’s 18th green on Friday afternoon, he trailed by nine, well behind a man without a major victory.A comeback of such scale would not be without precedent at the Open. But with every putt that rolls away a near miss instead of for birdie, the world sees another McIlroy grimace, another ambition slipping a bit farther away.“I might be nine back, but I don’t think there’s going to be a ton of players between me and the lead going into the weekend,” McIlroy said bravely after his round, which left him at one under par for the tournament.“Right now it’s not quite out of my hands,” he added. “But at the same time, I think if I can get to 3-, 4-, 5-under par tomorrow going into Sunday, I’ll have a really good chance.”There is a thicket of talent ahead of him, though, a field of contenders that took shape as England’s coastal winds strengthened and the course at Royal Liverpool toughened. Brian Harman recorded four consecutive birdies, beginning with the second hole, before turning a measure more ordinary. He made par on every hole until the 18th, where an eagle secured a 65 for the day and a tournament score of 10 under.Brian Harman made par on every hole until the 18th, where an eagle secured a 65 for the day and a tournament score of 10 under.Peter Powell/EPA, via Shutterstock“I’m around the lead a bunch,” said Harman, who last won a PGA Tour event in 2017. “It’s been hard to stay patient. I felt that after I won the tournament and had the really good chance at the U.S. Open in 2017 that I would probably pop a few more off, and it just hasn’t happened.”With a resurgent short game, though, Harman’s 36-hole score of 132 matched an Open record. Until Friday, it had belonged to Tiger Woods and McIlroy, dating to their 2006 and 2014 victories at Royal Liverpool. That 2014 tournament was Harman’s first Open, which occurred weeks before McIlroy won the P.G.A. Championship that so improbably remains his most recent major victory.In the seven majors since the start of last year, McIlroy has finished in the top eight all but once. He was the runner-up twice, and he wound up in third at last year’s Open at St. Andrews, the pressure perpetually mounting for something more than a close finish.Less than a week after a win at the Scottish Open, McIlroy arrived Friday thinking he required a second-round score in the 60s to have a chance of ending his misery. He recorded a 33 on the front nine, after beginning with a birdie on No. 1, the par-4 hole that includes a few of Royal Liverpool’s perilous bunkers. Even par on the back would be enough.That, it turned out, was too much: McIlroy bogeyed two holes, among the most forgiving at the course known as Hoylake, and finished with a 70. For the second consecutive day, he saw short birdie putts escape the cup by the narrowest of margins.“I don’t think I have to do anything differently,” McIlroy said. “I’m hitting the ball well from tee to green. I’ve missed a couple of chances on the greens. The wind got me today. It’s hard sometimes in two minds whether to play the wind or not to play the wind.”Tommy Fleetwood started Friday with a share of the lead and will go into the weekend in second place at five under.Peter Morrison/Associated PressThe conditions will not be pristine throughout the weekend. Although the Met Office, Britain’s weather service, is expecting lower wind gusts, rain is expected on Saturday. The outlook for Sunday is unclear, with the potential for “heavier bursts” of rain.That is expected to tax the 76 players remaining after the cut, which barely spared Brooks Koepka, Patrick Cantlay, Rickie Fowler and Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player. But it still claimed a collection of stars, including the past major champions Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas, who won last year’s P.G.A. Championship but missed three of four major cuts this year.“Everybody has their waves, their kind of momentum and rides and rock bottoms, whatever you want to call it,” said Thomas, whose best major finish this year was a tie for 65th at the P.G.A. Championship in May. “I just keep telling myself, ‘This is it, I’m coming out of it,’ and I unfortunately have surprised myself a couple times with some bad rounds.”Instead, far less familiar players were far closer to Harman. Shubhankar Sharma, who has never finished higher at a major than a tie for 51st, quietly assembled two rounds of par or better to stand at three under, just like Min Woo Lee. Jason Day, a former world No. 1, was tied with them after shooting a 67 on Friday.Just ahead of them was Sepp Straka, who also carded a 67.Tommy Fleetwood, the son of nearby Southport who began play on Friday with a share of the lead, finished at even par, putting him in second place and five shots behind Harman.But the others who had led at sunrise faded. Emiliano Grillo made a double-bogey on the second hole and a bogey on the third. A meager recovery on the back nine collapsed when he bogeyed the 16th and 17th holes, leaving him with a 74 for the day and eight shots off the lead. Christo Lamprecht, a 22-year-old amateur from Georgia Tech, bogeyed five of the first seven holes on Friday, shoving him so far down the leaderboard that it was not entirely certain during his round that he would make the cut.The theatrics were not limited to the golfers.Just Stop Oil protesters set off a smoke flare and spread orange powder on part of the green during play on Friday.Ross Kinnaird/Getty ImagesJust Stop Oil protesters, whose demonstrations disrupted Wimbledon earlier this month, surfaced on the 17th hole on Friday, setting off a smoke flare and spreading orange powder on part of the green. The R&A, which organizes the Open, said four people had been arrested, but that play had not been disrupted. In a separate statement, the police warned that “antisocial, criminal behavior or disorder will not be tolerated and will be dealt with robustly.”The disruption did not unfold when anyone near the tournament’s lead was on No. 17. They were elsewhere, trying to conjure enough brilliance on the links to catch Harman.McIlroy knows there are two factors at hand. The weather is one, perhaps the more predictable of the two.The other, he said, is Harman. More