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      The 5 Players to Watch at the Masters

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      An impressive Scottie Scheffler is in good position to repeat, and Tiger Woods is capable of making another run.The best players in the world will assemble again this week at Augusta National Golf Club for the first of the year’s four major championships.Will a marquee name come through and add to his legacy? Or will an unheralded player emerge? It’s happened before at the Masters Tournament and will likely happen again.Here are five players to watch.Scottie SchefflerScheffler, 26, the defending champion and No. 1 player in the world, is on quite a roll.He has ended up in the top four in four of his last five starts, including two victories. The one occasion he didn’t record a high finish was in February when he tied for 12th at the Genesis Invitational in Pacific Palisades, Calif.His performance in last month’s Players Championship was especially impressive. He seized a two-stroke advantage with a seven-under 65 on Saturday. On Sunday, Scheffler made five consecutive birdies starting at the eighth hole to pretty much put the tournament away.“I knew the conditions were going to get really hard late,” he said, “and I did a really good job of staying patient and not trying to force things.”Scheffler was in position for another win two weeks ago at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play in Texas before he fell to Sam Burns. If he were to prevail again at Augusta, he would become the first consecutive champion since Tiger Woods in 2002.Tiger WoodsRyan Kang/Associated PressTiger WoodsSpeaking of Woods, how can he possibly not be someone to keep a close eye on?As he’s made clear, from here on we’re likely to see him at only the four major championships and perhaps another tournament here and there. Which is similar to the type of limited playing schedule Ben Hogan maintained after his car accident in 1949. Woods, 47, has played in only one event, the Genesis Invitational. He tied for 45th.It might be easy to assume Woods won’t be a factor this week.It might also be a mistake.In 2019, he surprised the golfing world by winning his fifth green jacket, second to the six won by Jack Nicklaus. And if there is anyone who knows Augusta National, it would be Woods.One of the keys will be how the leg he injured in a car accident in 2021 holds up. He started last year’s Masters with a more than respectable 71 before ending up in a tie for 47th.However he fares, it will be fascinating to watch.Rory McIlroyMike Mulholland/Getty ImagesRory McIlroyEvery year, it becomes more difficult to comprehend how McIlroy, one of the most talented players in the game, has failed to pick up a major title since the 2014 P.G.A. Championship.The Irish star was 25 when he prevailed that year by a stroke over Phil Mickelson. The victory gave him four majors.He is now 33.It looked like the drought might end in last year’s British Open.Heading into the final round, he was tied with Viktor Hovland, both up by four over Cameron Smith. Except McIlroy recorded only two birdies on Sunday, while Smith had eight in firing a 64. McIlroy, who could manage no better than a 70, finished third, two shots back.A victory at Augusta would make him the sixth player to capture the career grand slam (winning all four majors) the others being Ben Hogan, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Gene Sarazen. He would also atone for what happened in the final round of the 2011 Masters. Up by four strokes entering the day, he fell apart with an 80.With his talent, McIlroy is destined to win another major sooner or later.Jordan SpiethDustin Safranek/USA Today Sports, via ReutersJordan SpiethSpieth, 29, is another star who has experienced a drought in the majors that wasn’t expected.Go back to the summer of 2017 when Spieth, 23 at the time, rallied to win the British Open. That gave him three majors.He’s still stuck at three.Each round seems to provide an assortment of errant shots and magical recoveries. How he will fare from day to day, from shot to shot, remains a mystery.Spieth has played some of his finest golf at Augusta National. Since he captured the title in 2015 with a record-tying score of 18-under 270, he has finished three times in the top three (2016, 2018 and 2021).He will also have the calendar working in his favor. On Easter Sunday in 2021, Spieth won the Texas Open. On Easter Sunday last year, he won the RBC Heritage in South Carolina.The final round of the Masters this year falls on Easter.Jason DayRichard Heathcote/Getty ImagesJason DayDay, from Australia, is looking more and more like his old self, and now he’s coming back to a course where he has enjoyed success.A former No. 1 player in the world, Day, 35, has finished in the top 10 in five of his last six starts. At the match play event, he defeated four opponents before Scheffler rallied to knock him out in the quarterfinals.Still, it was another encouraging week.“It was a great step in the right direction,” Day said. “It opens my eyes to the fact that I have a few things I need to work on, short-game-wise, putting-wise.”Day has been plagued by health issues over the years, and he has won one major, the P.G.A. Championship, in 2015. At the Masters, he tied for second in 2011 and finished third two years later.He is trying to become the second player from his country — the other was the 2013 champion, Adam Scott — to win at Augusta National. More

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      2023 Masters: Fred Couples Talks About Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy

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      Jordan Spieth is looking for his first major victory since 2017, and the weather forecast for the Masters Tournament is becoming less encouraging.AUGUSTA, Ga. — One of the pleasures of the Masters Tournament can be finding Fred Couples, the 1992 winner, in an expansive mood.And so it was on a particularly brisk Monday, after he had played part of the course with Tom Kim, Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods. Few players have had as many close looks at Woods in recent years: The men routinely play practice rounds together, with Couples filling a role approximating that of court jester. And even if his analyses sometimes prove off the mark, they can be telling glimpses of Woods’s potential.“He’s strong enough to hit it a mile,” Couples said of Woods. “He’s not hitting it as far as Rory — I don’t think many people are — but he’s hitting it really strong and solid, and he looks good.”Woods has played only four rounds of tournament golf this year, logging an average driving distance of 306.3 yards, about 20 yards behind McIlroy. But the challenge for Woods, as ever these days after the car wreck that nearly cost him a leg in February 2021, is walking 72 holes over four days of competition. Asked Monday whether Woods was moving differently from the way he had around this time last year, Couples replied, “Probably not.”“The leg — I guess this is what it is,” he continued. “I don’t know how much better it’s ever going to get.”Woods and Couples talk as they walk along the 14th fairway.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut Couples did not talk exclusively about Woods. In McIlroy, who is seeking a victory at Augusta to complete a career Grand Slam, he sees a player with all of the potential in the world to capture a green jacket.“Is it surprising he’s never won this?” he said. “Of course it is, the way he plays and the way he putts and how high he hits it and how far he hits it. But it’s not that easy.”And not long after he had drawn headlines for bashing LIV players — Phil Mickelson was a “nut bag” and Sergio García a “clown” — Couples said he had merely wanted them to avoid criticizing the PGA Tour.“They don’t bother me,” he said. “They really don’t. They’re golfers. I’m a golfer. I respect them all. On my show, I’ve told everyone Sergio is one of the top 10 players I’ve ever seen hit a ball, but if he’s going to make comments about the tour that I play, I’m going to make a comment back — and if it’s offensive, I apologize, but they’re on another tour. Go play and have a good time.”Jabs aside, he was not bothered by their invitations to the Masters: “I think they deserve to be here.”— Blinder‘It’s definitely not going to be on any nutritionist’s plan.’Scottie Scheffler, the defending Masters champion and the world No. 1.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNearly all of the living Masters winners (as well as Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman) are expected to convene Tuesday evening for their annual dinner. Scottie Scheffler, the reigning champion, picked the menu and will pick up the tab.The appetizers include cheeseburger sliders and firecracker shrimp. A tortilla soup will be on offer, and guests can pick between a Texas rib-eye steak — Scheffler, after all, is essentially a product of Dallas — and blackened redfish. Side items include macaroni and cheese, jalapeño creamed corn and brussels sprouts, and the dessert will be chocolate-chip skillet cookies topped with milk-and-cookies ice cream.The menu’s development began with a conversation among Scheffler; his wife, Meredith; and Blake Smith, his agent. The trio kicked around Scheffler’s favorite foods and narrowed the list before consulting with an Augusta National chef to nail down the menu.“It’s definitely not going to be on any nutritionist’s plan,” Scheffler said last month. “But we’re going to have fun. We’re going to eat some good food.”The menu should appeal to plenty of former winners, a traditional bunch that has sometimes been alarmed by selections like haggis (Sandy Lyle) and kidney pie (Nick Faldo). Some were skeptical in 2001, when they arrived to a Vijay Singh-commissioned menu of Thai delicacies.“I’m sure Charlie Coody didn’t try anything,” Tommy Aaron, the 1973 winner, recalled of the 1971 victor. “I had never had Thai food, and it was fantastic.”But the dinners, Aaron said a few years ago, always feature one practice: “They pour that wine like it’s going out of style.”— BlinderEvery day is like Sunday.Jordan Spieth, a PGA Tour golfer who won the Masters in 2015.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFirst-time visitors at the Masters tournament are always obvious. For starters, they tend to walk slowly with their eyes wide. As famed as Augusta National Golf Club is, to a newcomer parading around the grounds, the landscape is a bevy of surprises that no television broadcast — however technologically advanced and exhaustingly thorough — can grasp.For example, every Masters first-timer is stunned that the vertical drop from the 10th tee to the 10th green is a stunning, and difficult to traverse, 85 feet. It’s one of many discoveries. And as Jordan Spieth, the 2015 Masters champion, said on Monday, even veteran players know that there may be another revelation awaiting them each time they arrive at the site of the tournament.Players fret and worry that their games may not be ready for the exacting test that awaits.Taking note of a packed practice range on Monday, Spieth waved a hand toward the scene and said: “Have you ever seen this many people practicing this hard on a Monday? Typically, you take Monday off.”Annual tweaks to the course, like the substantial lengthening of the 13th hole this year, only add to the tension. As Spieth added: “You know, you’re just anxious. More anxious than nervous.”Asked if the mental preparation for the tee shot on the pivotal first hole tended to change considerably from Thursday’s welcoming opening round to Sunday’s tense final, Spieth shook his head side to side. “I don’t feel that it changes,” he answered.He continued: “It’s one of the only places it doesn’t change for me, regardless of the position I’m in. It feels like it’s a Sunday — a first tee shot in contention each day.”— PenningtonCameron Smith arrived with trepidation.Cameron Smith, a LIV golfer and the 2022 British Open champion.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesIt’s not just golf fans and reporters who have been wondering how the stalwarts of the PGA Tour and the renegade LIV golfers would get along when having to mingle at the Masters tournament for the first time this week. Cameron Smith, who bolted for the Saudi-backed LIV circuit a month after winning last year’s British Open, conceded on Monday that he had approached the Augusta National Golf Club practice area with trepidation.“I really wasn’t sure what to expect walking onto the range, but it was good to see some familiar faces and a lot of smiles,” Smith said with a wide grin. “It was just a really nice experience.”But Smith, who is hardly known for pointed remarks, also insisted that the 18 LIV golfers in the 88-player 2023 Masters field were intent on having a visible presence at the top of the leaderboard when at the tournament’s conclusion. And, he said, the LIV cohort is aware of the shade that has been thrown its way by its one-time colleagues on the PGA Tour.“It’s just important for LIV guys to be up there, because I think we need to be up there,” Smith said on Monday. Referring to the occasional derisive comments directed at the LIV circuit by PGA Tour players, officials or members of the golf media, he added: “I think there’s a lot of chatter about how these guys don’t play real golf; these guys don’t play real golf courses. For sure, I’ll be the first one to say, the fields aren’t as strong. But we’ve still got a lot of guys up there that can play some really serious golf.“I think we just need a good, strong finish.”Smith was also asked about whether the LIV golfers had discussed having a joint celebration on the 18th green if one of them were to win this year’s Masters, which was suggested recently by Greg Norman, the LIV Golf Commissioner.“There definitely hasn’t been a conversation with me — I definitely got left out of that one,” he said, laughing. “I guess we’ll see how the week unfolds. For sure, I’d love to see one of us guys get up to the top of the leaderboard and really give it a nice shot.”Lastly, Smith, whose world golf ranking has slipped to sixth from second at the end of the 2022, reiterated that he had no regrets about joining LIV Golf.“I’ve made my bed, and I’m very, very happy where I am,” he said.— PenningtonKeep an eye on the weather.There’s a good chance for rain at Augusta National on the weekend.Doug Mills/The New York TimesYes, it is early in the week. Yes, weather forecasts can change. But no, the outlook for this week is not great. The team assembling forecasts for Augusta National has pegged the chances of rain at 60 percent or higher on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.“Shower and thunderstorm chances increase Thursday afternoon as a weak frontal boundary approaches,” the tournament said in one of its official forecasts on Monday. “The front is expected to stall to the south Friday into Saturday with a northeast wind pushing much colder air into Georgia. Waves of upper-level energy moving along the front are forecast to produce periods of rain that could be heavy at times through Sunday.”All of that scientific speak could make this Masters a delight for Rory McIlroy, who has sometimes thrived in abysmal weather at major tournaments, and a nightmare for the organizers.The Masters last had a Monday finish in 1983, when Seve Ballesteros won his second green jacket. That year, the second round — the Friday round — did not end until 8:30 a.m. on Sunday.But Augusta National is accustomed to dealing with poor weather more recently. If a round is upended in the coming days because of inclement conditions, this will be the fifth consecutive year in which tournament organizers have had to grapple so explicitly with meteorological misfortune.— Blinder More

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      2023 Masters: Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson Are Back

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      Players set out for official practice rounds ahead of the first men’s golf major of the year although more than a few have tested the course recently.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Augusta National Golf Club will be thick with spectators Monday, as one player after another sets out for official practice rounds before the Masters Tournament, the year’s first men’s golf major.But plenty of them have tested the course recently, making special jaunts to Georgia to size up the grounds in advance of the crowds, cameras and ropes — practice rounds for the practice rounds, if you will.They have the potential to inspire confidence: Rory McIlroy made the trek and played 54 holes, and in one round, he apparently recorded an otherworldly 19 putts across 18 holes.“Look,” he said recently, “I had two good days.”More critically, the rounds before the clamor give players chances to take the measure of changes to the course under less stressful conditions. The 13th hole, for instance, will play 35 yards longer this year, so Scottie Scheffler, the 2022 champion, has been sketching how his strategy might change.“I used to hit 3-wood there because I can sling hook a 3-wood,” Scheffler said last month. “I can’t sling hook a driver on purpose. The ball just doesn’t spin enough. I can do it on accident, but I can’t quite sling it on purpose because I like to fade my driver more off the tee, and so when it comes to that tee shot and hitting a hard hook with the driver, it’s not really a shot that I’ll try just because it’s not worth the risk for me.”Scottie Scheffler, the 2022 Masters champion, waited to greet winners of the Drive, Chip and Putt competition on Sunday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesScheffler, appearing far more comfortable than he usually is before reporters, went deeper into overthinking No. 13.“That hole was one where I’d hit the same shot I hit on 10,” he said. “The 3-wood, it has enough spin where the ball can actually stay in the air. With the driver, when I hook it, the ball doesn’t have enough spin to where it can stay in the air and hook that much. It kind of nose-dives. But the 3-wood, I can sit up there and it will just be like a boomerang. But that’s really the biggest change for me. Now I’ll just hit driver kind of out toward the corner and try and use more of the contouring to get the ball that way versus before.”And for players making their Masters debuts, the spins through Augusta National can be a chance to stamp out at least some jitters.“I got the bug out,” Tom Kim, the 20-year-old PGA Tour player, said. “Once I get there, I can kind of just play.”Not that the veterans shun practice. Tiger Woods, ahead of his 25th Masters, was around the course on Sunday afternoon, striking balls and practicing his putting. He has not played a tournament round since February, when he tied for 45th at the Genesis Invitational. But everyone knew that he was largely using Riviera Country Club as a laboratory to prepare for the Masters.He essentially said as much himself: “After this event, we’ll analyze it and see what we need to do to get ready for Augusta.” He finished 47th here last year.Remember Phil Mickelson? He’s back, too.Phil Mickelson at the second tee during a LIV Golf event at Orange County National last week.Reinhold Matay/USA Today Sports, via ReutersPhil Mickelson’s Masters hiatus lasted only a year.Mickelson, a three-time winner at Augusta National, skipped the 2022 competition amid the international uproar that began after he acknowledged Saudi Arabia’s “horrible record on human rights” but said he was open to aiding LIV Golf, its emerging league, because it could force the PGA Tour to change its economic structure.“They execute people over there for being gay,” he told the journalist Alan Shipnuck. “Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”Mickelson soon after defected to LIV, which Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund bankrolls. He played in two major tournaments last year, missing the cuts at the U.S. Open and the British Open.Now, he will try his hand at the major course that has been more favorable to him than any other.“I don’t have any expectations,” he said in a brief interview last month in Arizona. “I’m grateful we get to play because we were told — or there was talk — a year ago that you might not be able to play the majors. And now we can play the Masters; we can play in all of the majors.”Pressed, though, on whether he is anticipating this week to carry the feel of the other Masters he has entered, he replied, “I do, yeah.”At the 2021 Masters, not long before his P.G.A. Championship victory made him the oldest major winner, he finished in a tie for 21st.From Winter Garden, Fla., to Augusta, Ga.Brooks Koepka won the LIV Golf Orlando event at Orange County National on Sunday.Doug Defelice/Liv Golf, via LIVGO, via Associated PressThe PGA Tour players who are most likely to contend at Augusta National were off last week, when the circuit spun through T.P.C. San Antonio for the Texas Open. LIV golfers had no such respite: They played a tournament in Winter Garden, Fla., near Orlando, over the weekend, when Brooks Koepka emerged as the class of the field.Whether the schedule will make a difference at the Masters is anyone’s guess, or simply in the eye of the beholder.Bubba Watson, who won at Augusta National in 2012 and 2014, said LIV’s calendar had thwarted the approach he had employed for years: arriving on Friday; attending the Augusta National Women’s Amateur on Saturday before practice on the driving range; and usually logging a round on Sunday afternoon.Ordinarily, he said, he avoided playing the week before a major so he could take a mental break before facing the challenges of elite competition. But maybe, he confessed, a pre-Masters tuneup would prove helpful: “Maybe I need to gear up for it and see where I need to work or where I don’t need to work.”Other LIV players insisted that their schedule was compatible with their customary preparations.Mickelson, for example, stuck with his custom of visiting Augusta for part of the week preceding the Masters. If anything, he said, LIV’s three-day format offered him the option of more practice time in Georgia.And take Dustin Johnson, a two-time major winner. He last played a tournament the week before the Masters in pandemic-disrupted 2020, when he tied for second at the Houston Open and then stormed into Augusta, posted the lowest score in Masters history and claimed his first green jacket. Although Orange County National Golf Center is hardly Augusta National — Johnson earned his PGA Tour card when he played a qualifying school event there in 2007 — he said that any competition is good to have before a Masters.“That’s really good preparation,” Johnson said in an interview. “Any time you’re playing going into a major, it’s always good to get some rounds under you.”Zhang wins the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.Rose Zhang after winning the Augusta National Women’s Amateur tournament in a playoff on Saturday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHow breathtaking was Rose Zhang’s play across the first 36 holes of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur? She shot four over par in Saturday’s final round and still won the tournament.It was not easy — she had to outlast Jenny Bae, whose Saturday scorecard had her two under on the day, in a sudden-death playoff, as well as a weather delay — but a grip change during the round allowed Zhang to unlock her swing just in time.“When things matter the most and you have a big lead but the job’s not done, it definitely puts a lot of things into perspective,” Zhang, 19, said. “I tried to stay as composed as possible, but at the same time, I was a little tight the first couple holes. I just felt like my swing wasn’t comfortable, and I really just tried to stay in the moment. I figured out a little trigger point in my golf swing, and from then on, it was kind of smooth sailing, grinding from there.”Zhang had arrived for Saturday’s final round, played at Augusta National, with a formidable cushion built up during the competition’s first two days at nearby Champions Retreat. Her first-round score there, a six-under-par 66, was a tournament record. The new standard lasted until the end of Zhang’s second round, when she signed for a 65.“I really, really do love this golf course,” she said of Augusta National. “Sometimes, it’s just interesting that I never really get my A-game when I’m out here. When I was out at Champions, it felt so easy to me. Everything just came to me. I was making putts. I was hitting greens.”Zhang teed off on the 13th hole during the final round of play.Doug Mills/The New York TimesA single mistake at Augusta National, though, “is magnified,” she said.“I think that just being able to kind of get back on track, that was my biggest feat” on Saturday, Zhang said. “I was able to have the outcome that I wanted while staying in the moment.”With her victory at Augusta National, Zhang, a Stanford sophomore, has achieved what amounts to a career Grand Slam for women’s amateur golf; she had won the U.S. Women’s Amateur, the U.S. Girls’ Junior and an individual N.C.A.A. championship. Another Stanford golfer recorded a similar feat.You’ve probably heard of him, since his name is Tiger Woods.Wise withdraws: ‘I need to take some time away.’Aaron Wise, the PGA Tour’s 2018 rookie of the year, will miss this year’s Masters.Douglas P. Defelice/Getty ImagesAaron Wise, the PGA Tour’s 2018 rookie of the year, has withdrawn from this year’s Masters.“Golf is just as much a mental game as it is one of physical skill, and the mental piece of it has been a struggle for me recently,” Wise, 26, wrote in an Instagram story on Friday. “I don’t take the significance of playing at Augusta lightly, but know that I need to take some time away to focus on my mental health so I can get back to competing at a level I am proud of.”Wise has appeared in seven tour events so far in 2023, with his best finish a tie for 18th at the Tournament of Champions in January. Since then, he has missed four cuts and did not advance beyond his group at the match play event in Texas last month. He competed in one previous Masters, taking 17th place in 2019. More

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      Forged After a Tumultuous Era, World Golf Championships Fade in Another

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      A match play event in Texas may be the last W.G.C. event, ending an international competition that preceded golf’s high-rolling present.AUSTIN, Texas — It was not all that long ago — Tom Kim, after all, is only 20 years old — but before Kim emerged as one of the PGA Tour’s wunderkinds-in-progress, he would watch the World Golf Championships.“For sure, 100 percent,” Kim cheerfully reminisced as he clacked along this week at Austin Country Club, the site of the championships’ match play event. “There was W.G.C. in China. There was Firestone before. You had Doral. You had this.”Had, because once one man wins on Sunday, the championships appear poised to fade away. An elite competition forged, in part, because of another era’s tumult has become a casualty of this one’s.“Everything runs its course and has its time,” said Adam Scott, who has twice won W.G.C. events. Barring a resuscitation, which seems improbable given the PGA Tour’s business strategy these days, the W.G.C.’s time was 24 years.The W.G.C. circuit was decaying before LIV Golf, the Greg Norman-fronted league that is cumulatively showering players with hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, cleaved men’s professional golf last year. Two W.G.C. events vanished after their 2021 iterations, and a third, always staged in China, has not been contested since 2019 because of the coronavirus pandemic.And as the PGA Tour has redesigned its model to diminish LIV’s appeal, even the Texas capital’s beloved match play competition has become vulnerable to contractual bickering and shifting priorities.“We’ve had great events and great champions, but the business evolves and it adapts,” Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, said this month, when the tour reinforced its decision to wager its future on “designated events” that should command elite fields and, in some cases beginning next year, be no-cut tournaments capped at 80 players or less. (LIV, whose tournaments always have 48-man fields and no cuts, responded with a wry tweet: “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Congratulations PGA Tour. Welcome to the future.”)With a $20 million purse, doubled in size from five years ago, the match play competition that began on Wednesday is a designated event under the 2023 model. Next year, though, it will not be on the calendar at all, winnowing the W.G.C. to one competition. And Monahan has said it would be “difficult to foresee” when his circuit’s schedule might again include the HSBC Champions, the W.G.C. event in China that will be the last remaining event formally existing in the series.The Chinese tournament’s website has had few updates in recent years, and an inquiry with the event’s organizers went unanswered. HSBC, the British banking powerhouse that is the tournament’s title sponsor, declined to comment.But the PGA Tour’s freshly calibrated distance from the Shanghai competition is fueling what looks to be an unceremonious end for the W.G.C., which were announced to immense fanfare in 1997, when the tour and its allies were smarting over Norman’s failed quest to start a global circuit for the sport’s finest players. The events, which debuted in 1999 with a match play event that sent some of the game’s best home after the first day, were intended to entice and reward the elite without challenging the prestige of the four major tournaments, as well as to give men’s professional golf a greater global footprint.It worked for a spell, and five continents hosted W.G.C. events, many of which Tiger Woods dominated. With the exception of the Chinese tournament, though, the circuit had lately been played in North America.“The ‘world’ part of the World Golf Championships wasn’t really in there,” Rory McIlroy, the four-time major tournament winner whose W.G.C. résumé includes a victory in the 2015 match play event, mused in an interview by the practice putting green.McIlroy, among the architects of the tour’s reimagining as Norman’s unfinished ambitions proved more fruitful this time around, said he had also worried that the W.G.C. events had come to lack “any real meaning,” even as they had been “lovely to be a part of, nice to play in and nice to win.” The tour’s emphasis on select tournaments, many executives and top players like McIlroy believe, will lend more consequence to its season and make it a more appealing, decipherable and concentrated product that can fend off the assault by a LIV circuit bent on simplifying — its critics say diluting — professional golf.“Your casual golf fan knows the majors, the Ryder Cup and maybe the events that are close to their hometown,” said McIlroy, who is among the players devising a new weeknight golf competition that is expected to start next year. “I get it: Professional golf is a very saturated market with a ton of stuff going on, and people have limited time to watch what they want to watch.”The Austin tournament’s end will, at least for now, reduce match play opportunities on the circuits that have been aligned with the W.G.C. Though the Austin event — which has three days of group-stage play, followed by single-elimination rounds — has a field of only 64 players, less than half of the size of last year’s British Open, it has been larger and more accessible than other signature match play tournaments.Rickie Fowler hits from the rough during the first round of W.G.C. match play.Eric Gay/Associated PressBut given the format’s popularity, it will linger, if a little less, on the international golf scene. The Presidents Cup, Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup will remain fixtures — the Solheim will be contested in Spain in September, with the Ryder decided soon after in Italy — and more modest events, such as the International Crown women’s tournament that will be played in May, still dot the calendar.Some players this week appeared more mournful than others about the erosion of the W.G.C. and the decline of match play. Scott said he hoped the tour’s new system would be able to accommodate the next generation of ready-for-stardom players from around the world, as the W.G.C. did, even as he said he was not insistent that match play be a staple.“We don’t play much match play, so the kind of logic in me questions its place in pro golf, but also we’ve got to entertain as well, and if people like to see it and sponsors want to see it, yep, I’m up for it,” Scott said.He grinned.“Maybe we should have some more, get a bit more head-to-head and see if guys like each other so much after,” he offered mischievously. “The year of match play!”The PGA Tour has not ruled out a return to the format, though it would assuredly be limited. LIV could also eventually try to tap into interest. At an event in Arizona last week, Phil Mickelson, a LIV team captain, said that match play was “certainly something that we are discussing as a possibility for the season-ending event.”But the W.G.C. appear effectively finished. Kim, the youngest player this week, was delighted that he had arrived just in time.“I played once before it all goes away,” said Kim, who has six top-10 finishes in his early tour career and expressed confidence in the circuit’s direction. “I played once in my life.”He wandered off to practice. A round against Scottie Scheffler, the reigning match play champion and the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking, loomed soon enough. More

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      USGA and R&A Propose Changes to Golf Balls to Limit Driving Distance

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      Driving distance has been steadily increasing, and a proposal on Tuesday by the U.S. Golf Association and the R&A could affect elite players within three years.Elite golfers, who have increasingly used head-turning distances on their drives to conquer courses, should be forced to start using new balls within three years, the sport’s top regulators said Tuesday, inflaming a debate that has been gathering force in recent decades.The U.S. Golf Association and the R&A, which together write golf’s rule book, estimated that their technical proposal could trim top golfers’ tee shots by an average of about 15 yards. Although golf’s rules usually apply broadly, the governing bodies are pursuing the change in a way that makes it improbable that it will affect recreational golfers, whose talent and power are generally well outpaced by many collegiate and top amateur players.But the measure, which would generally ban balls that travel more than 317 yards when struck at 127 miles per hour, among other testing conditions, could have far-reaching consequences on the men’s professional game. Dozens of balls that are currently used could become illegal on circuits such as the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, as the European Tour is now marketed, if they ultimately embrace the proposed policy change.That outcome is not guaranteed — on Tuesday, the PGA Tour stopped well short of a formal endorsement of the proposal — but the forces behind the recommendation insisted that the golf industry needed to act.“I believe very strongly that doing nothing is not an option,” Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, said in an interview. “We want the game to be more athletic. We want it to be more of an elite sport. I think it’s terrific that top players are stronger, better trained, more physically capable, so doing nothing is something that to me would be, if I was really honest, completely irresponsible for the future of the game.”The U.S.G.A.’s chief executive, Mike Whan, sounded a similar note in a statement: “Predictable, continued increases will become a significant issue for the next generation if not addressed soon.”In the 2003 season, PGA Tour players recorded an average driving distance of about 286 yards, with nine golfers typically hitting at least 300 yards off the tee. In the current season, drives are averaging 297.2 yards, and 83 players’ averages exceed 300 yards. The typical club head speed — how fast the club is traveling when it connects with the ball — for Rory McIlroy, the tour’s current driving distance leader at almost 327 yards, has been about 122.5 m.p.h, about 7 m.p.h. above this season’s tour average. Some of his counterparts, though, have logged speeds of at least 130 m.p.h.At the sport’s most recent major tournament, the British Open last July, every player who made the cut had an average driving distance of at least 299.8 yards on the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. When the Open, an R&A-administered tournament, had last been played at St. Andrews in 2015, only 29 of the 80 men who played on the weekend met that threshold.Jordan Spieth during a practice round at the Players Championship earlier this month. Dozens of golf balls currently in use could become illegal on the PGA Tour and other circuits.Cliff Hawkins/Getty ImagesThe yearslong escalation, spurred by advanced equipment and an intensifying focus among professional players on physical fitness, has unnerved the sport’s executives and course architects, who have found themselves redesigning holes while also sometimes fretting over the game’s potential environmental consequences.When the Masters Tournament is contested at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia next month, for instance, the par-5 13th hole will be 35 yards longer than it was last year. The hole, lined with azaleas and historically the course’s easiest, will now measure 545 yards; the full course will run 7,545 yards, up 110 yards from a decade ago.Faced with the distance scourge well beyond Augusta, golf’s rule makers considered a policy targeting club design. They concluded, though, that such a reworked standard would cause too many ripples, with multiple clubs potentially requiring changes if drivers had to conform to new guidelines.“If you don’t, you’ll end up with a 3-wood that could go further than a driver, and that was a very good point, and that could have affected three or four clubs in the bag,” Slumbers said. Instead, after years of study and debate, the U.S.G.A. and R&A settled on trying to urge changes to the balls that players hit.The rules currently permit balls that travel 317 yards, with a tolerance of an additional 3 yards, when they are struck at 120 m.p.h., among other testing conditions. The existing formula has been in place since 2004, and Whan has said it is not “representative of today’s game.”The proposal announced Tuesday is not final, and its authors will gather feedback about it into the summer. Although some members of the game’s old guard have openly complained about modern equipment and the governing bodies’ response to it — the nine-time major champion Gary Player fumed last year that “our leaders have allowed the ball to go too far” and predicted top players would drive balls 500 yards within 40 years — the executives are bracing for resistance that could prove pointed.“We have spoken to a lot of players, and as you can imagine, half of the world doesn’t want to do anything and half of the world thinks we need to do more,” Slumbers said.The PGA Tour, filled with figures who believe that fans are dazzled by gaudy statistics and remarkable displays of athleticism, did not immediately support the proposal. In a statement on Tuesday, the tour said it would “continue our own extensive independent analysis of the topic” and eventually submit feedback.The tour added that it was “committed to ensuring any future solutions identified benefit the game as a whole, without negatively impacting the tour, its fans or our fans’ enjoyment of our sport.”The debate may be more muted in some quarters than others, but the surges in distance have not been confined to the PGA Tour. Between 2003 and 2022, the R&A and the U.S.G.A. said Tuesday, there was a 4 percent increase in hitting distances across seven professional tours. Only two of the scrutinized circuits, the Japan Golf Tour and the L.P.G.A. Tour, posted year-over-year declines in driving distance in 2022. More

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      Power to Punish LIV Golfers Faces a Legal Test in Europe

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      An arbitration panel will meet next week to weigh whether the European Tour may penalize the men who played on the Saudi-backed circuit.DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Many of the golfers had wandered away one afternoon last week, seeking lunch or refuge from the Emirati sun or something besides the monotony of a driving range.Ian Poulter, though, kept swinging, the consistency nearly enough to disguise that there is almost no professional golfer in greater limbo.Poulter, who has competed on the European Tour for more than two decades, is among the players who defiantly joined LIV Golf, the breakaway circuit bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and faced punishment from the tour. Next week, almost eight months after the first rebel tournament, arbitrators in London will weigh the tour’s choice to discipline defectors.The case is a test for the golf establishment’s response to LIV, which has guaranteed certain players tens of millions of dollars to compete in a league that insists it is looking to revive golf but that skeptics view as a front to rehabilitate Saudi Arabia’s reputation. Executives and legal experts say, though, that the arbitrators’ decision could also ripple more broadly across global sports as athletes increasingly resist longstanding restrictions on where they compete and as wealthy Persian Gulf states look to use the world’s courses, fields and racetracks as avenues for their political and public-relations ambitions.“The impacts of this case are potentially tremendous across all of international sport,” said Jeffrey G. Benz, a sports arbitrator in London who is not involved in the golf case and noted how other leagues and federations have faced opposition to their efforts to stymie potential rivals.Although the issue that next week’s panel will consider is formally a narrow one, dealing only with the European Tour’s conflicting event policy, a ruling in favor of the players could embolden like-minded but wary athletes to plunge into the universe of cash-flush start-ups. A victory for the tour, marketed as the DP World Tour, would reinforce the kind of rules that marquee sports organizers have harnessed for decades to preserve market power. And whichever side prevails will assuredly tout victory as vindication for its approach to professional sports.“There’s the public opinion part, there’s the influence it might have on other athletes, there’s the influence it might have on other rich people who might think, ‘Hey, I’d really love to get into sports. Let’s put a group together and go attack name-the-sport,’” said Jill Pilgrim, a former general counsel for the L.P.G.A. who now teaches sports arbitration at Columbia Law School.“They’re watching all of this,” she added.Poulter has argued that playing with the new circuit was not all that different from the rest of a storied career dotted with appearances across tours.Lynne Sladky/Associated PressThe golf case began last June, when Poulter was among the European Tour players who played in a LIV Golf tournament without the tour’s permission. The tour, wary of undermining the rules that fortify its sponsorship and television-rights deals, responded with short suspensions and fines, modest penalties compared to the indefinite suspensions that the United States-based PGA Tour meted out.The players insist, though, that they are independent contractors and should have greater freedom to pick when, where and for whom they compete. An arbitrator paused the tour’s punishments last summer but did not rule on the substantive arguments that will go before this month’s panel. The arbitrators could announce their decision within weeks of the five-day, closed-door hearing, which will begin Monday.A Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 7A new series. More

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      Rory McIlroy Looks for the Magic He Conjured Last Year

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      Rory McIlroy’s ranking survived a weekend scare. With Scottie Scheffler close behind and Jon Rahm surging, his outing in Dubai might suggest a lot about how long it will last.DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Since Rory McIlroy arrived in the United Arab Emirates over the weekend, he has seen his No. 1 world ranking preserved by virtue of another man’s missed putt in California, been drawn into a driving-range drama over whether he ignored a defector to LIV Golf and had a tee thrown his way in retaliation, and mentioned how he was served a subpoena on Christmas Eve.But on Thursday, after one of the more bizarre tournament preludes in recent memory, McIlroy is expected to play a competitive round for the first time in 2023 and give his sport a glimpse at whether he has the form that last year rekindled some of the fever that followed him earlier in his career.“I’ve been obviously practicing at home and practicing well, but it’s always first tournament of the year, getting back on to the golf course, just trying to get comfortable again with shots on the course and visuals and all that sort of stuff,” McIlroy said Wednesday in Dubai, where he had a debacle last January but a good-enough showing in November to win the season points crown for the DP World Tour, as the European Tour is currently marketed.“I’m sure it will be a little bit of rust to start the week, but hopefully I can shake that off,” he continued.In some respects, the scrutiny has never been greater. When McIlroy last won a major championship, he was 25 years old and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund was not underwriting a splashy rival to the world’s top men’s golf tours. He is now 33, with a frustrating record of close calls but newfound stature as arguably the golf establishment’s pre-eminent spokesman against LIV.He has spent much of the past year publicly answering questions about the Saudi-backed circuit — in response to one on Wednesday, for instance, he effectively called Greg Norman, LIV’s chief executive, weak — and privately crafting a response to it. He played exceptional golf, nevertheless, winning the European Tour points title, capturing the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup and finishing no worse than eighth place in 2022’s majors. The price, he suggested Wednesday, was exhaustion and a decision to “sort of distance myself from the game of golf” for a spell.After he played an exhibition event with Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Tiger Woods on Dec. 10, he stashed his clubs and only picked them up again this year. Holding to his preference to start a calendar year’s competitions in the Middle East, he exercised his right to skip the PGA Tour’s Tournament of Champions in Hawaii. He has held the No. 1 ranking, which he reclaimed in October, anyway, but Scottie Scheffler nearly took it back on Sunday, and Jon Rahm is threatening, having won two tournaments this year, both of them at 27 under par. (Rahm could essentially seize the top ranking on Saturday, when the PGA Tour’s event at Torrey Pines, where he won the 2021 U.S. Open, will conclude.)A Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      Confidential Records Show a Saudi Golf Tour Built on Far-Fetched Assumptions

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      McKinsey documents suggest the Saudi league is far off-track for success. Experts say the analysis shows it was never just about profits.Early in 2021, consultants working for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund studied an audacious idea: The desert kingdom wanted to become the world leader in the hidebound realm of men’s professional golf.If the idea seemed unlikely, records show that the benchmarks for success bordered on the fantastical. A new Saudi league would need to sign each of the world’s top 12 golfers, attract sponsors to an unproven product and land television deals for a sport with declining viewership — all without significant retaliation from the PGA Tour it would be plundering.The proposal, code-named Project Wedge, came together as Saudi officials worked to repair the kingdom’s reputation abroad, which hit a low after the 2018 assassination of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. The plan was the foundation for what became LIV Golf, the series whose debut this year provoked accusations that Saudi Arabia was trying to sanitize its human rights record with its deep pockets, former President Donald J. Trump’s country clubs and a handful of big-name golfers. Some of those golfers have publicly played down Saudi abuses, as has Mr. Trump.The league’s promoters say they are trying to revitalize the sport and build a profitable league. But hundreds of pages of confidential documents obtained by The New York Times show that Saudi officials were told that they faced steep challenges. They were breaking into a sport with a dwindling, aging fan base — if one with plenty of wealthy and influential members — and even if they succeeded, the profits would be a relative pittance for one of the world’s richest sovereign wealth funds. Experts say that these make clear that Saudi Arabia, with a golf investment of least $2 billion, has aspirations beyond the financial.An unidentified man trying to hold back the press as Saudi investigators arrived at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in April 2019 amid a growing international backlash to the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi.Chris Mcgrath/Getty Images“The margins might be thin, but that doesn’t really matter,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economy at Skema Business School in Paris. “Because subsequently you’re establishing the legitimacy of Saudi Arabia — not just as an event host or a sporting powerhouse, but legitimate in the eyes of decision makers and governments around the world.”The documents represent the most complete account to date of the financial assumptions underpinning LIV Golf. One of the most significant was prepared by consultants with McKinsey & Company, which has advised the kingdom’s leaders since the 1970s. McKinsey, which has worked to raise the stature of authoritarian governments around the world, was key to Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy and turn it into a powerful global investor. Worldwide sports have become a pillar in that plan, with Saudi officials even discussing the possibility of someday hosting the World Cup.McKinsey, which declined to comment, analyzed the finances of a potential golf league, but pointedly said in its report that it was not examining whether it was a strategically viable idea. And many of Saudi Arabia’s rosy assumptions, McKinsey added, “have been taken for granted and not been challenged in our assessment.”Indeed, LIV Golf appears far from meeting the goals that the Project Wedge documents laid out. After an inaugural season that cost in excess of $750 million, the league has not announced major broadcasting or sponsorship deals. And its hopes for a surrender by, or an armistice with, the PGA Tour have instead collapsed into an acrimonious court battle.Mr. Trump with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, right, at a LIV tournament at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in July.Seth Wenig/Associated PressMoreover, the league is nowhere near having signed all of the elite players who Saudi advisers said were required for success. In one presentation slide, as McKinsey projected one of its more optimistic financial forecasts, the participation of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy — who have combined to win 25 major championships — was included under the headline “What you need to believe.”Of those stars, only Mr. Mickelson joined LIV, with a deal that is reportedly worth at least $200 million.Mr. Woods, with his ability to attract fans and sponsors, was seen as essential. Even though the league offered Mr. Woods a long-term plan that could have made him “in the neighborhood” of $700 million to $800 million, according to Greg Norman, LIV’s chief executive, the league has found Mr. Woods to be one of its greatest public antagonists.“I don’t know what their end game is,” Mr. Woods said of LIV last month in the Bahamas, where he was hosting a tournament on the PGA Tour schedule. Mr. Woods acknowledged that the PGA Tour “can’t compete dollar for dollar” with the Saudis, but he said that “an endless pit of money” was not a surefire means to “create legacies.”Saudi soccer fans celebrating during a World Cup match against Argentina in Qatar last month. Worldwide sports have become a pillar in the plan to raise Saudi Arabia’s global stature.Tasneem Alsultan for The New York TimesNot long after Mr. Woods spoke, LIV announced details for several of the 14 tournaments it expects to be the proving grounds for $405 million in prize money next year, in addition to the guaranteed payouts it has promised players. It has said it will release its full schedule “in the coming weeks.”The season will unfold as LIV’s business evolves toward its planned franchise model. Although professional golf has some signature team events like the Ryder Cup, the PGA Tour generally relies on players competing for themselves. LIV, whose music-blasting gatherings feel little like traditional tournaments, is betting that fans will prefer to watch a dozen four-player teams competing against each other.“LIV has repeatedly made clear that our stakeholders take a long-term approach to our business model,” Jonathan Grella, a spokesman for LIV, said in a statement. “Despite the many obstacles put in our path by the PGA Tour, we’re delighted with the success of our beta test year. And we’re confident that over the next few seasons, the remaining pieces of our business model will come to fruition as planned. Our business plan is built upon a path to profitability. We have a nice, long runway and we’re taking off.”Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s 37-year-old de facto ruler, often gravitates toward splashy ventures and has repeatedly said that he sets sky-high targets in hopes of motivating officials to achieve a fraction of them. In its analysis, McKinsey called the golf league “a high-risk high-reward endeavor.”The consultants detailed three possible outcomes for a franchise-driven league: languishing as a start-up; realizing a “coexistence” with the PGA Tour; or, most ambitiously, seizing the mantle of dominance.In the most successful scenario, McKinsey predicted revenues of at least $1.4 billion a year in 2028, with earnings before interest and taxes of $320 million or more. (Federal records show that the PGA Tour, a tax-exempt nonprofit, logged about $1.5 billion in revenue and posted a net income of almost $73 million for 2019.)By contrast, a league mired in start-up status — defined as attracting less than half of the world’s top 12 players, navigating a “lack of excitement from fans,” reeling from limited sponsorships and confronting “severe response from golf society” — stood to lose $355 million, before interest and taxes, in 2028.The American golfer Phil Mickelson, right, at LIV Golf’s inaugural event in St. Albans, England, in June.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor now, LIV’s standing tilts sharply that way. Its tournaments have not commanded large crowds, and its broadcasts are largely limited to YouTube. The PGA Tour suspended players who defected, and it is not yet clear whether the organizers of the four major men’s tournaments will allow LIV golfers to participate.Of the top 12 players on a roster in the McKinsey report, LIV has attracted four: Sergio Garcia, Dustin Johnson, Mr. Mickelson and Henrik Stenson.McKinsey’s work on the golf project is part of a longstanding pattern of foreign consultants providing rationales for Gulf States’ multibillion-dollar projects, some of which become white elephants. When the crown prince announced plans to build a futuristic city called Neom, McKinsey was among the companies that helped envision proposals for robotic dinosaurs, flying taxis and a ski resort that officials say will host the Asian Winter Games in 2029.The Project Wedge analysis was conducted for Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, which is led day to day by its governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan. Mr. al-Rumayyan, a longtime golf enthusiast, is also chairman of the Saudi Arabian Golf Federation. In 2019, he hosted a “Golf Means Business” tournament at the crown prince’s annual investment conference in Riyadh. The PGA Tour describes Mr. al-Rumayyan in court documents as a micromanager whose “daily involvement and influence bears on everything from LIV’s global strategy to the tiniest detail.”Tiger Woods at the Hero World Challenge at Albany Golf Course in Nassau, Bahamas, this month.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesOne document obtained by The Times shows that LIV organizers considered assembling an all-star board of business, sports, legal and political titans. But nine of the people who were identified as possible board members, including Ginni Rometty, the former IBM chief executive, and Randall Stephenson, the former AT&T chairman, said they had never been approached about joining.“I didn’t know I was on the list, and I have never been approached,” Mr. Stephenson, who is a member of the PGA Tour’s board, said in an interview. If asked, he said, he would decline. “It would be a quick conversation,” he said.Most others listed in the document, including the basketball legend Michael Jordan; former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Mark Parker, the executive chairman of Nike, did not respond to requests for comment. McKinsey did not appear to prepare the document, which carries the logo of Golf Saudi, which Mr. al-Rumayyan leads.Mr. Grella, the LIV spokesman, did not answer inquiries about the current composition of a board, which a player handbook said would initially have up to 10 members, including Mr. al-Rumayyan and Mr. Norman.Despite its struggles, LIV is making plans for tournament venues years into the future and is trying to sign more stars. Mr. Norman said in November that a television deal was “a priority,” and as the new season nears, golf fans and executives alike have debated what boost the new league might get if one of its players captured a major championship in 2023.That, Mr. Norman has suggested, would be proof of “how we work within the ecosystem.”It would also be a sign that an outright ban of LIV players from the sport’s biggest stages, one of the gravest hazards that McKinsey flagged, had so far been avoided.Greg Norman, center, the chief executive of LIV Golf, has said that a television deal is “a priority.”Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKevin Draper More