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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

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      Jiyai Shin Won a British Open at Royal Liverpool. She’s Got Some Advice.

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      It is easy to forget, given just how thoroughly Jiyai Shin romped to victory at the 2012 Women’s British Open, that she did not lead from start to finish. But her triumph at Royal Liverpool, the English club often known simply as Hoylake, nevertheless stands as one of the most commanding performances in the tournament’s history.Her message to the world’s top men’s golfers, who will contest their British Open at Royal Liverpool beginning on Thursday, can be summed up in two words: Look out.“Royal Liverpool has a lot of small greens, as well as small, deep bunkers,” Shin, who also won the 2008 Open at Sunningdale, wrote in Korean in response to emailed questions.“There is also wind,” warned Shin, who still plays on the L.P.G.A. of Japan Tour and tied for second at this month’s U.S. Women’s Open. “You have to be patient against the constant toil of the wind.”Jiyai Shin celebrated her victory on the 18th green during the final round of the Women’s British Open at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in 2012.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesThe wind may not be the only menace, not at a club with a record of weather headaches at its recent Opens. In 2006, when Tiger Woods won, signs warned of the risk of fires. Eight years later, before Rory McIlroy’s victory, a forecast for thunderstorms led to a two-tee start for the first time in Open history. And when Shin played there in 2012, poor weather led to the third and fourth rounds being condensed into a single day. At the time, she said Hoylake had offered up the “worst conditions I think I’ve ever played.”The coming days could pose problems, too.“My worry is now what the forecast is for Saturday and Sunday, which there’s some uncertainty about which way it will go,” Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the tournament-organizing R&A, said on Wednesday. “But it’s going to be wet or it’s going to be very wet. We’ll see.”Weather notwithstanding, the course has a distinguished history: No club along the English shore, with the exception of Royal North Devon, is older than Royal Liverpool, which was founded in 1869 and first hosted a British Open in 1897, when the amateur Harold Hilton won. Its men’s Open champions later included Bobby Jones and Peter Thomson.The 151st Open, Shin predicted, “will be the beginning of another history.”No. 1: RoyalPar 4, 459 yardsThere are three bunkers near the green on the par 4 first hole at Royal Liverpool.David Cannon/R&A, via Getty ImagesMore often than not, Royal Liverpool’s first hole will play into the breeze, and there are fairway bunkers on both sides of the hole — right around the distances where many of this week’s players can drive their tee shots.Welcome to the British Open.“It is a dogleg hole that bends slightly to the left, and the width of the green is not wide, making it difficult to put the second shot on the green,” Shin said. “It is advantageous to aim a bit to the right to maintain the flow for the next shot when playing this hole.”There are three bunkers near the green, which hardly has Britain’s smoothest putting surface. Trouble on No. 1 does not necessarily doom a player, though: Shin had a triple bogey there during one round.No. 7: TelegraphPar 4, 481 yardsRory McIlroy on No. 7 during the final round of the British Open at Royal Liverpool in 2014.Ian Walton/R&A, via Getty ImagesWant to make it to the fairway? Hit the tee shot at least 250 yards into what could be a decidedly forbidding wind. Come up short, and you’re probably in the gorse that can be found all over Royal Liverpool. A successful tee shot, though, can position a player for an accommodating second shot toward the green, where two left bunkers lurk nearby.The green has been infused with more tricks since Shin and McIlroy won, but Shin suggested the wind was a greater challenge than the green.“It was difficult to adjust the distance from the second shot to the pin due to the back wind,” she remembered. “A strong wind had the biggest impact on the first bounce.”No. 13: AlpsPar 3, 194 yardsRickie Fowler on the 13th hole at Royal Liverpool in 2014.Stuart Franklin/Getty ImagesFew holes are more beloved among Royal Liverpool’s members than No. 13. Mounds obscure the green from the tee box, suggesting that there is not much of a green on the left side.But that’s not true, and there is actually more green on the left than the right.Shin counsels not to expect much bounce from the green, which is diagonal and runs left to right, and she remembers how she “aimed a bit harder at the back of the pin than the front.”And beware the right bunker.“It seems like the club members know a thing or two about golf if they love this difficult hole in particular,” Shin said.No. 17: Little EyePar 3, 136 yardsThere are many perils on the way to the 17th hole at Royal Liverpool.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesThe British Open has never been played in Wales, but the new 17th hole will bring the competition awfully close: just across Dee Estuary. The raised green awaits players after a spread of bunkers and other perils, so there is little room for error off the tee. There are not many favorable spots for a ball that rolls off the green, either, and the R&A is hoping the hole will infuse some drama as the tournament nears its end on Sunday.Perhaps this is the year of the par-3. At Los Angeles Country Club last month, the course included five par-3 holes for the first time at a U.S. Open since 1947.“Personally, I think par 3 makes the game more exciting,” Shin said. “I think it will be a great hole with a variety of new variables.”No. 18: DunPar 5, 609 yardsOne of five bunkers near the 18th green.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesShin arrived at the 18th tee box during the final round with virtually no chance of losing. The only question, really, was whether she’d win by a double-digit margin.“When I walked up to the hole looking at the grandstands surrounding the green,” she said, “I felt that it was my stage and that I was honored to be there.”It stands to reason that this year’s Open might not have such a runaway winner — the most recent player near Shin’s 2012 mark was Woods in 2000, when he won by eight strokes at St. Andrews — so No. 18 might be a bit more freighted. And it will assuredly be longer after the addition of a new tee, and it will also be narrower. The R&A itself is warning that the fairway can seem “just a handful of yards wide” in some spots off the tee.The hole, the 16th for members and a place where Open players have often used long irons in the past, will veer toward the right, by an extensive and expanded out-of-bounds area, for second shots. If a player can avoid the five bunkers around the green, including the three on the left side, eagle is a possibility.“Since the hole flows from the front to the back of the green, you can aim for the next shot without any worries even beyond the green,” Shin said.On Sunday, weather permitting, someone will stand on that green and hoist the claret jug freshly engraved with his name. More

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      Five Players to Watch at the British Open

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      Many of the best players in the world have gathered at Royal Liverpool for the last major of the year.It seems like only yesterday that the best golfers in the game were battling for a green jacket at the Masters Tournament, the season’s first major.With mid-July here, however, the stage is set for the final major, the British Open at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England, which begins on Thursday.It will be fascinating to see if Wyndham Clark, who was a surprise winner in the United States Open in June, can back it up at the British Open — and whether the world No. 1, Scottie Scheffler, whose name always seems to be on the leaderboard, will make enough putts to win his second major after taking the Masters last year.Here are five other players to watch this week.Koepka won the P.G.A. Championship this year.Charles Laberge/Liv Golf, via Associated PressBrooks KoepkaNo one has been more impressive in the majors this year than Koepka. He tied for second at the Masters and won the P.G.A. Championship.At 33, Koepka, with five major titles, is still in the prime of his career. With one more major, he’d join such greats as Lee Trevino, Nick Faldo and Phil Mickelson with six. Koepka said his goal was to reach double figures in majors, and it’s not out of the question.“I think sometimes majors are the easiest to win,” he once said. “Half the people shoot themselves out of it, and mentally I know I can beat most of them.”Koepka, who signed with the Saudi-financed LIV Golf tour in 2022, is healthy again. As knee and hip injuries took their toll in the last couple of years, his game suffered as did his confidence.Rory McIlroy won last week’s Genesis Scottish Open.Frank Franklin Ii/Associated PressRory McIlroyWith the arrival of each major championship, there’s the same question for McIlroy, 34: Will he win his fifth title? He has been stuck on four since he captured the 2014 P.G.A. Championship.He almost came through at the United States Open this year but failed to make a birdie on No. 8, the vulnerable par 5, and bogeyed No. 14, another par 5, to finish second by a stroke.McIlroy, who birdied the last two holes to win last week’s Genesis Scottish Open, still has time. Mickelson and Ben Hogan didn’t pick up their first major until they were in their early 30s. On the other hand, McIlroy, ranked No. 2, can’t keep letting these opportunities slip away. There are only so many.He has one big thing going for him this week. It was on the same course in 2014 that he captured his lone British Open, winning by two over Sergio Garcia and Rickie Fowler.Justin Rose will turn 43 at the end of the month.Julio Aguilar/Getty ImagesJustin RoseTime, however, is starting to become a factor for Rose, who will turn 43 at the end of the month, in his pursuit of a second major. His first was the 2013 U.S. Open. Since 2000, only Tiger Woods and Mickelson have won majors after their 43rd birthday.Rose, of England, has shown this year he still has plenty of game. In February, he won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am because of a 65 and 66 in his final two rounds. He tied for sixth at the Players Championship, tied for ninth at the P.G.A. Championship and came in eighth at the RBC Canadian Open.It’s hard to believe, but a quarter century has passed since, as a 17-year-old amateur, Rose holed out on the 72nd hole from 50 yards away to tie for fourth in the 1998 British Open. “It was something,” he said, “that was way beyond anything I could have ever imagined or experienced.”Cameron Smith is the defending champion.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesCameron SmithHoping to defend his title is Smith of Australia, who hit a final-round 64 last year to win by a stroke over Cameron Young. McIlroy finished third, two shots back. Smith, who made eight birdies, didn’t seem to miss a putt in the final round. Most memorable was the save he made on No. 17, the Road Hole, knocking in a 10-footer after an exquisite third shot that he navigated around the bunker.“I knew if I could get it somewhere in there,” said Smith, ranked No. 7, “that I’d be able to give it a pretty good run.”Smith, 29, who won a recent LIV Tour event in London, tied for 34th at the Masters, but tied for ninth at the P.G.A. and came in fourth at the U.S. Open, closing with a three-under 67. Unless his putter cools off, he should be in the hunt.Collin Morikawa is a two-time major champion.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesCollin MorikawaStill only 26, Morikawa, a two-time major champion, might have found something to turn his season around. Morikawa, ranked No. 19, closed with a 64 a few weeks ago at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, losing in a playoff to Fowler. It was his first top 10 finish since the Masters, most surprising for a player of his ability.His first major came in the 2020 P.G.A. Championship. Morikawa, who shot a final-round 64, made a memorable eagle on No. 16 after reaching the green with his tee shot. In 2021, he won the British Open by two shots over Jordan Spieth.Morikawa hasn’t won since, however, and it’s getting to him.“I mean frustrating, frustrating’s a word I can use,” he said in June.“It’s been a while, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to” win, he said. “It’s still there.” More

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      PGA Tour Wanted Greg Norman Ousted as Part of Saudi Deal

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      The American circuit’s efforts were made public in documents that Congress released on Tuesday.The PGA Tour sought the ouster of Greg Norman, the two-time British Open champion who became the commissioner of the insurgent LIV Golf league, as a condition of its alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, according to records that a Senate subcommittee released on Tuesday.The tour and the wealth fund did not ultimately agree to the proposal — crafted as a so-called side letter to a larger framework agreement — and, for now, Norman remains atop LIV. But the deliberations reflect an enmity forged over decades of hostilities between the tour and Norman, one of the most talented players in professional golf history who often chafed at the sport’s economic structure.And they underscore the tensions that could linger if the deal closes.The glimpse into the negotiations between the tour and the wealth fund came as the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations began its first hearing into the arrangement, which calls for the business ventures of the tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour to be brought into a new, for-profit company.The plan is facing significant scrutiny in Washington, where some lawmakers have castigated the tour, once willing to condemn Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses, for abruptly growing cozy with an arm of a coercive government. Beyond any congressional misgivings about the wealth fund’s ties to the Saudi government, Justice Department officials are also interested in whether the deal violates federal antitrust laws and whether they should try to block it.Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in his opening statement on Tuesday that his subcommittee’s hearing was about “much more than the game of golf.”“It is about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence — indeed even take over — a cherished American institution to cleanse its public image,” Blumenthal, the subcommittee’s chairman, added, citing the kingdom’s record of killing journalists, abusing dissidents and having “supported other terrorist activities, including the 9/11 attack on our nation.”“It is also about hypocrisy, how vast sums of money can induce individuals and institutions to betray their own values and supporters, or perhaps reveal a lack of values from the beginning,” he continued. “It’s about other sports and institutions that could fall prey, if their leaders let it be all about the money.”The proceeding, held in a crowded Capitol Hill room that previously hosted Supreme Court confirmation hearings and meetings of the 9/11 Commission, included two senior PGA Tour leaders: the chief operating officer, Ron Price, and a board member who was intimately involved in the negotiations that led to the tentative deal that was announced on June 6.In an opening statement, Price argued that the tour, faced with the threat of competing with one of the world’s mightiest sovereign wealth funds, had little choice but to seek some measure of coexistence after months of acrimony in court and in jockeying for the allegiances of the world’s best players.“It was very clear to us — and to all who love the PGA Tour and the game of golf as a whole — that the dispute was undermining growth of our sport and was threatening the very survival of the PGA Tour, and it was unsustainable,” Price said. “While we had significant wins in litigation, our players, our fans, our partners, our employees and the charities we support would lose.”Tour leaders have acknowledged that with negotiations for a final agreement still unfolding, board approval is no certainty. Over the weekend, one member of the board, the former AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson, resigned. In a letter about his exit, Stephenson said “the construct currently being negotiated by management is not one that I can objectively evaluate or in good conscience support.”Tour executives have been eager to show how the agreement leaves them positioned to run professional golf’s day-to-day operations. The tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, has been tabbed as the chief executive of the new company, expected to be called PGA Tour Enterprises, and the tour is expected to fill a majority of the company’s board seats.They have been far less keen to discuss how Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, will serve as the chairman of PGA Tour Enterprises and how the framework agreement envisions sweeping investment rights for a Riyadh-based fund whose power and value have swelled in recent years.Neither al-Rumayyan nor Norman agreed to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, citing scheduling conflicts. But documents released by the subcommittee suggest that both will be factors in an inquiry that could last months.The effort to remove Norman was underway by May 24, when the PGA Tour board’s chairman, Edward D. Herlihy, sent a proposed side letter to Michael Klein, a banker working with the wealth fund. The proposal called for Norman, as well as a British outfit central to developing LIV, to “cease” working on LIV within a month of “the management transition to the PGA Tour.”Although Norman’s long-term fate has been uncertain — he was not a part of the negotiations that led to the preliminary deal, stoking questions about his relevance — it was not until Tuesday that it became clear that his future had been a subject of the talks.LIV did not comment on Tuesday, but three people with knowledge of the negotiations, who requested anonymity to discuss private talks, said the wealth fund had rejected the tour’s proposal.The documents that the Senate released also detail the deliberations over when and how to announce the deal; Klein was among the figures who said the tour and the wealth fund should not wait for a final agreement to disclose their newfound peace.And the records show how a British businessman with ties to the wealth fund and its advisers reached out to James J. Dunne III, now a tour board member and one of Tuesday’s witnesses, in December. In an email, the businessman, Roger Devlin, suggested that there could be a pathway to an armistice between the tour and the wealth fund.Dunne, at least at first, declined to engage in a substantive way.Devlin re-emerged in April, warning Dunne that there was “a window of opportunity to unify the game over the next couple of months” before, he thought, “the Saudis will doubledown on their investment and golf will be split asunder in perpetuity.”Although committee investigators told senators in a briefing memorandum that they did not know for certain how Devlin’s April message influenced Dunne, the tour board member contacted al-Rumayyan within days.Dunne, al-Rumayyan and a handful of others met in Britain soon after, starting negotiations that included a number of ideas that did not make it into the five-page text of the framework agreement. Those concepts, outlined in a presentation titled “The Best of Both Worlds,” included Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who had pledged fealty to the tour, owning LIV teams and a “large-scale superstar” team golf event that would feature the world’s top men’s and women’s players.Although the initial deal between the tour and the wealth fund did not include some of those proposals, the final agreement is still being hammered out, a process that could take months.At least as of April, according to documents the Senate released, there was even talk of a deal including memberships for al-Rumayyan at Augusta National Golf Club and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews — two of the most prestigious golf clubs in the world, but ones that are not controlled by the PGA Tour. More

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      Rory McIlroy Just Misses a Hollywood Ending at the U.S. Open

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      Despite briefly sharing the lead with the eventual champion, Wyndham Clark, McIlroy settled for second but vowed he would get a fifth major title.It might have been fitting if someone from Holywood won this year’s U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club. But Rory McIlroy, born in the Northern Ireland town of Holywood, is not having that kind of year.On Sunday, McIlroy was chasing his first major championship title in nine years, a drought that continues to shadow a luminous career that began with four major titles from 2011 to 2014. In April, he missed the cut at the Masters Tournament. A month later, he finished tied for seventh at the P.G.A. Championship.Then, on June 6, McIlroy, the most vociferous loyalist supporting the PGA Tour in its feud with the Saudi-back LIV Golf circuit, learned only a few hours before news broke that the two tours had shockingly formed a business partnership.McIlroy, like almost all of the PGA Tour’s players, felt blindsided.But on Sunday, a buoyant, smiling McIlroy, 34, was again enthusiastically chasing another major title, in the final round of the 123rd U.S. Open. He birdied the opening hole and for most of the next four hours seemed poised to reel in the eventual tournament winner, Wyndham Clark, the third-round co-leader with Rickie Fowler.McIlroy, however, never birdied another hole, and in the end, Clark, after some nervous closing moments, outlasted McIlroy by a stroke as both golfers shot even-par 70s. It was McIlroy’s third runner-up finish at a major and his 10th finish in the top five of a major since 2014.“I fought to the very end, and I’m getting closer,” McIlroy said Sunday of his chase for a fifth major title, adding: “I just got to keep putting myself in these positions and, you know, sooner or later it’s going to happen for me.”McIlroy said he felt a link between his performance on Sunday and his second-place finish at last year’s British Open at St. Andrews.“The last two real chances I’ve had at majors have been pretty similar performances,” he said. “Not doing a lot wrong.”McIlroy’s pursuit went down to the final strokes of the event, as Clark, playing in the final group of the day, was forced to execute a two-putt from 60 feet on the 18th green to clinch the championship.“I fought to the very end, and I’m getting closer,” McIlroy said of his chase for a fifth major championship.Michael Madrid/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConMcIlroy conceded that he was hoping for a miscue.“You don’t want to wish bad on anyone, but you’re really hoping for a three-putt,” he said. “You’re hoping to somehow get into a playoff to keep giving yourself a chance. You’re rooting for one guy, and that guy is yourself at that point. A mistake can give you a glimmer of hope.“But Wyndham was pretty much rock solid all day, and that was a great two-putt at the last.”McIlroy’s fourth round began auspiciously as he reached the green on the par-5, 585-yard first hole with his second shot and two-putted for an opening birdie that briefly moved him into a tie for the tournament lead.But he struggled to capitalize on that early momentum even as he registered par after par — a streak of 12 in all. He showed nerve in sinking several tense four-foot par putts but failed to get his approach shots close enough for easier birdie attempts.McIlroy was hanging on but could not convert any putt longer than seven feet throughout the middle of his round. On the eighth green, he pulled an eight-foot birdie putt well left of the hole, a missed opportunity that McIlroy specifically mentioned in his post-round news conference.At the par-3 ninth hole, McIlroy’s towering approach shot with an iron came to rest 14 feet from the flag. As he walked onto the green, fans in two packed grandstands implored him to make a fairly straightforward putt that would have put him in a tie with Clark, but again McIlroy could not seize the moment.McIlroy’s run of consecutive pars ended at the par-5 14th hole after his tee shot bounded into the rough left of the fairway. He was forced to lay up short of the green with a second shot, although he then faced a short wedge shot to the green.McIlroy later said he was choosing between two clubs for the shot, but he felt a wind gust just before he began his swing, and that impeded the shot’s momentum.“I had the right club, but I might have just had to wait an extra 15 or 20 seconds to let that little gust settle,” he said.McIlroy caught a break on No. 14 when his ball embedded in a grassy bank.Richard Heathcote/Getty ImagesMcIlroy’s golf ball landed about a foot short of perfect and failed to clear a large bunker protecting the front of the 14th green. The ball embedded in a grassy bank between the sand and the green.He was granted free relief in the grass to the right of the bunker, but his dicey, downhill chip to the green rolled 26 feet from the hole. That led to bogey, and McIlroy fell to nine under par, which extended Clark’s lead to two strokes.McIlroy closed with four routine pars.He was asked at the conclusion of his Sunday news conference if he was growing weary of answering questions about the nine-year wait for a fifth major championship victory. He conceded that it was exhausting but added: “At the same time, when I do finally win this next major, it’s going to be really, really sweet. I would go through 100 Sundays like this to get my hands on another major championship.” More

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      Wyndham Clark Captures the U.S. Open

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      Clark, with only one PGA Tour victory to his name, seemed to come out of nowhere to dominate the field at Los Angeles Country Club.Two Tuesdays ago, as the golf world erupted into chaos and fury, Wyndham Clark did not rush to write a shock-and-awe Twitter post. He did not fume in a meeting with the PGA Tour commissioner about the surprise pact with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. He did not moralize or criticize or, really, do much of anything other than play golf.His chosen course that Tuesday was the Los Angeles Country Club, which would host the U.S. Open, its debut major tournament, nine days later. A member of the club was Clark’s caddie, a friend turned tutor who knew some of the secrets of a North Course that only a handful of the game’s biggest stars had ever seen: how a putt might break here, how the speed might vary there, how firm the fairways might become.The payoff came Sunday evening, when Clark, 29, outlasted Rory McIlroy at the U.S. Open by one stroke and lurched into the hallowed fraternity of major championship winners.”I’ve dreamed about this moment for so long.”Soak it all in, @Wyndham_Clark! #USOpen pic.twitter.com/0LO1hgyocV— U.S. Open (USGA) (@usopengolf) June 19, 2023
      Until Sunday, Clark’s best finish in a major had been a tie for 75th at a P.G.A. Championship. His two previous Open appearances were even worse, ending with missed cuts.But his mother, his “always there supporter” who died nearly a decade ago, used to offer an ambitious admonition: “Play big.”This tour season, he has, emerging as a perilous foe and suggesting that he, despite his major record, could soon be a power on the game’s greatest stages. With his irons adjusted a few degrees and his swing monitored and finessed not by a platoon of advisers but only by Clark and his caddie, he arrived in Los Angeles having won the Wells Fargo Championship and having earned four other top-10 finishes since early February.That Wells Fargo win, in May at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, N.C., had come against a foreboding list of rivals whose surnames — McIlroy and Spieth, Scott and Day — were bywords for golfing brilliance even before Clark finished college.The victory at Quail Hollow, a past and future P.G.A. Championship site, emboldened Clark. He had, he reasoned, beaten major champions on a major-tournament-caliber course.“I just feel like I can compete with the best players in the world,” he said last week, “and I think of myself as one of them.”Now he most certainly is.“There’s been so many times I’ve visualized being here in front of you guys and winning this championship, and I just feel like it was my time,” Clark said during the trophy presentation near the stately clubhouse.By the time Clark waited on Sunday afternoon in the first tee box with Rickie Fowler, the other half of the Open’s final pairing and a prince of golf’s close-but-not-quite club, he had been adhering to his mother’s creed all week. He had fired a six-under-par 64 on Thursday, better than many major champions in the 156-man field, and followed it with a 67 and a 69.It was good enough for a share of the lead heading into the final round, with Fowler and Clark both at 10 under. McIlroy, a four-time major victor mired in a nine-year drought, trailed by a shot at sunrise on Sunday. Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player, was three back from Clark and Fowler.Clark after sinking his final putt on No. 18.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockClark required only four strokes to assume the lead. The first hole, with its wide fairway and a view toward the Beverly Hilton, had been one of his favored spots all through the tournament, ever since he started his Open with a putt of nearly 33 feet for eagle. He did not achieve the same feat on Sunday, but his birdie was enough to take lone control of first place after a McIlroy birdie had allowed him to snatch briefly a share of the lead.Clark’s time on top ended swiftly, when he bogeyed the second hole for the second time this week. Fowler also slipped with a bogey, the beginning of a flameout for a player who on Thursday shot a 62, a single-round record for an Open.Clark made a birdie on the fourth hole, the first of five par-3 tests on the course along Wilshire Boulevard, to take him to 11 under. McIlroy was at 10 under, and Fowler at 9. Scheffler, steady but not spectacular, had not changed his score in either direction.The sixth hole had unnerved players for days, a par-4 concoction with a blind tee shot and demanding terrain. Clark had managed a birdie there on Thursday, before making par on Friday and Saturday.On Sunday afternoon, seeking a slightly larger gap between himself and everyone else, Clark stood at the tee and sent his shot soaring 266 yards. It came to rest in grass that was thick but, by the standards of some other locales on the course, not prohibitive. He cocked his head to the left, peered toward the pin about 54 feet away, looked down and swung. The ball crashed onto the green, rolling past the cup but setting up a short putt for birdie and a two-stroke lead.It took Clark two attempts to get his ball out of a tangle of foliage on No. 8.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockIt was on the eighth hole where Clark’s advantage could have fully unraveled, when his second shot landed in green-vicinity foliage that looked more receptive to a scythe than a club. Clark’s first escape attempt went all of eight inches, according to tournament officials — a sum that seemed about eight inches too high. He escaped by lifting a shot over the green into the right rough and ultimately saved bogey, his lead shaved to a stroke.Clark and McIlroy both played the front nine to 34, one under. For both, though, the back nine had typically been more bruising. Their positions on the leaderboard were static until the 14th hole, when McIlroy’s wedge shot sent his ball thumping into the side of a bunker. Granted free relief, he dropped into the fescue near the hole but could do no better than departing the green with a bogey.Clark’s experience was far more comfortable, his second shot leaving him less than two dozen feet from the par-5 hole’s pin, setting up an eagle opportunity. Clark’s putt went just to the right of the cup, but a subsequent birdie attempt dropped, building his margin to three strokes.It was brief. Clark missed a par chance on the 15th hole when his putt did not sufficiently break, and then his tee shot on No. 16 wound up in a bunker. Despite dazzling wedge play with his third shot, a short putt soon enough lipped out for Clark’s second consecutive bogey.Down by a stroke, McIlroy, who struggled on the greens for much of the day, barely missed a birdie putt on the 17th hole, his familiar anguish reappearing.“I’m right there,” he would say in a television interview afterward. “It’s such fine margins at this level, and I just got to keep putting myself in these positions and, you know, sooner or later it’s going to happen for me.”Finishing at nine under, McIlroy recorded a par on the final hole, where Clark had made par or birdie during each of the first three rounds. If Clark could stick to that history, the galleries knew, he would be a major champion — just as he concluded last month he was all but ready to be.Par, to stay at 10 under, to finish at 10 under. His eyes glistened.“Your mom was with you,” Fowler soon told him. “She’d be very proud.”He had played big.Clark said his mother, who died 10 years ago, always told him to “play big.”Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images More