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      Ferocious Oak Hill Daunts P.G.A. Championship Field, With More to Come

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      Birdies were at a premium for many of the 156 golfers vying for the Wanamaker Trophy at Oak Hill Country Club during the first round of the major tournament on Thursday.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Scottie Scheffler had, at least in the moment, a share of the P.G.A. Championship lead when he offered a foreboding prediction Thursday afternoon: Oak Hill Country Club, already playing to the point of menace in the first round, would only become more terrorizing.The winds are expected to bluster. Rain is coming. And, for good measure, the East Course has been recently restored to bring back the diabolical, century-old wizardry of the architect Donald J. Ross.“It’s just one of those places where you hit one shot maybe barely offline, and sometimes can you hit a good shot and end up in a place where it’s pretty penalizing,” said Scheffler, the 2022 Masters Tournament winner, who nevertheless had his first bogey-free round in a major championship Thursday. “There’s lots of tough holes out there.”The rough is showing itself to be ferociously retributive, the fairways so firm that balls are only so often staying in them — even after the frost that delayed Thursday’s start by nearly two hours had softened the turf. Rory McIlroy, the four-time major champion, hit two fairways all day as he dueled with crosswinds off the tees.But there was no parade of aggrieved players publicly fuming over the setup just outside Rochester, N.Y. Instead, as the tight leaderboard took shape before play was suspended because of darkness, a brand of begrudging, knowing admiration took hold, even as the likelihood of a runaway winner seemed distant.Sahith Theegala of the U.S. slammed his putter after missing a shot on the 18th hole.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesKeegan Bradley bogeyed on No. 7 but finished at two under par.Doug Mills/The New York Times“Very difficult golf course,” said Bryson DeChambeau, whose four-under-par 66 put him in second place, one shot behind the solo leader Eric Cole, who did not complete his round on Thursday night. “As I was looking at it throughout the week, I’m like, man, I don’t know how shooting under par is even possible out here on some of the golf holes.”“It’s playing tough,” said Kurt Kitayama, who was at even par. “I don’t think anyone’s really comfortable.”“It stacks up with some of the toughest major championship venues that I have ever played,” said Corey Conners, who has had three top-10 finishes at the Masters, after his three-under-par round.The sterling performance by DeChambeau, who has routinely sputtered since his 2020 U.S. Open victory in New York at Winged Foot, often seen as similar to the recharged Oak Hill, came after an early bogey on the 12th hole. (With a 156-man field, tournament organizers opted for a two-tee start. Because of the frost delay, the last group’s tee time was pushed back to 4:32 p.m., less than four hours before sunset.)He moved to under par for the first time on his seventh hole — No. 16 — and finished his front nine at one under. Three birdies on his back nine, including one at No. 6, the hole that the course restorer Andrew Green has judged as Oak Hill’s most threatening, brought him to four under. Afterward, having become “so used to hitting it everywhere,” he reveled in a day of straight drives that, he conceded, could be little more than a memory by Friday evening.“You always think you have it one day and then it just leaves the next,” DeChambeau said. “Just got to be careful.”Bryson DeChambeau overtook Scheffler for the lead but stood one shot behind Eric Cole once play was suspended due to darkness.Doug Mills/The New York TimesScheffler, only a week removed from a round near Dallas in which he made birdie or eagle on five of his first six holes, found something approximating a groove on the par-5 No. 4. His tee shot rocketed wayward and landed miserably near a tree. He ultimately saved par anyway.“We got a wind switch and had a really good up-and-down to keep the round going,” said Scheffler, who ended the day tied for third with Conners and Dustin Johnson, another Masters winner. “You would hate to bogey a par-5, especially when there’s only two of them around this place. That was good momentum.”Cole, 34, charged up the leaderboard late in the day, when three consecutive birdies brought his score to five under. He had played in one other major in his career, the 2021 U.S. Open, where he missed the cut.“When I did have an opportunity, I kind of felt like I happened to read it right and hit a good putt, and they went in today, so that was good,” Cole said Thursday night.The first round, with 11 groups scheduled to resume play Friday morning, was more boggling for others.There was Kazuki Higa, a Japanese golfer who missed the cut at the two other majors of his career, opening his day with birdies on four of his first five holes, only to end it with four consecutive bogeys or double bogeys. Jon Rahm, the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking and the winner of last month’s Masters Tournament, later finished at six over, the worst single-round showing at a P.G.A. Championship by a world No. 1 since 1987. And Brooks Koepka, who dueled with Rahm in the final round at the Masters but found himself with a two-over-par 72 on Thursday, said the first round “was the worst I’ve hit it in a long time.”Jordan Spieth, who withdrew from a tournament last week because of a wrist injury, played Thursday and signed for three over, tying him with the past major champions Shane Lowry and Gary Woodland. McIlroy, who has lately struggled and missed the Masters cut, ended his day at one over. But his outing included an uphill putt from nearly 37 feet to save par at No. 2, delivering the kind of jolt that he suggested could perhaps keep him a contender.“Depending on what happens over the next three days and what I go on to do, you know, I may look back at that shot as being the sort of turning point of the week,” he said.Corey Conners of Canada on the 18th hole.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesRory McIlroy after a chip shot on No. 2.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesThe rigors of an event like this week’s helped shape Green’s thinking when he began work on the course, which hosted P.G.A. Championships in 2003 and 2013, as well as a Ryder Cup and three U.S. Opens.“Knowing that the golf course has a wonderful major championship legacy, and knowing that was something the club wanted to continue to do, we had to blend the Donald Ross design elements with modern championship golf,” Green said in an interview this year.The greens took on unorthodox shapes again, bunkers assumed greater brutality and more so-called chocolate drops — the turf-shrouded mounds that were a Ross signature — appeared.“You play really well and hit fairways and greens, you can make some putts, you can shoot a few under par,” said Viktor Hovland, who finished at two under on Thursday. “But if you’re a little bit off, the rough is just so penal. If you are short or you make a couple bogeys, you want to attack the pin, and you hit it more in a bad spot and it’s just a never-ending cycle.”The cut is scheduled for Friday evening, daylight permitting, with the top 70 and ties advancing to the weekend. Then the rain will start. More

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      How Oak Hill Was Returned to Its Roots

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      Oak Hill Country Club, near Rochester, N.Y., has been a familiar stop for men’s professional golf for decades: Since 1956, it has hosted three U.S. Opens, three P.G.A. Championships and a Ryder Cup.But when the P.G.A. Championship returns to Oak Hill on Thursday for the first time since 2013, the East Course will be different than it was for some of the elite tournaments it has hosted. In recent years, the club brought in Andrew Green to interpret and restore some of Donald J. Ross’s original design from the 1920s.Green, who has also worked on overhauls at other major championship courses — Congressional Country Club, Inverness Club and Scioto Country Club — can sometimes be seen as “fairly radical,” as Jack Nicklaus, who grew up playing at Scioto and won the 1980 P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill, put it recently.In an interview this spring, though, Green said he had regarded the Oak Hill project as an opportunity to reemphasize Ross’s approach, which includes unorthodox shapes for greens.“I took the most pride in being able to reestablish a few of the golf holes that had been lost to time,” said Green, who, to try to decipher the thinking of Ross, who died in 1948, studied his writings, pencil sketches and formalized drawings, as well as a selection of historical photographs.An archival map shows both the East and West courses at Oak Hill Country Club.Oak Hill Country ClubRoss’s influence at Oak Hill had faded over the decades, particularly with the work of the uncle-nephew duo George and Tom Fazio in the 1970s. Their changes, by Oak Hill’s own account, “created a more challenging layout for the several major championships that followed” but also promoted “significant criticism since they did not fit” in Ross’s original design. Hundreds of new and ultimately overgrown trees, the club also said, had shifted the course away from Ross’s vision.“As the evolution of the golf course had occurred, players and critics and the golf world had always felt there was a disconnect within the golf course itself,” Green said. “Really, the primary goal was to reinfuse Ross and make the entire course feel as if it had always been there.”No. 5: Little PoisonPar 3, 180 yardsNo. 5 emerges from a thicket of sand, rough and steep slopes. Evan Schiller, Oak Hill Country ClubThe par-70 course measures 7,394 yards, 231 yards more than the 2013 P.G.A. Championship but 151 yards less than how Augusta National Golf Club played during last month’s Masters Tournament. With the rough expected to be challenging and parts of Oak Hill strikingly narrow, even after many trees were removed, Green thinks the P.G.A. Championship could show “an interesting balance to see if the guys who can really bomb it and gouge it out have a leg up on everyone else, or if someone that really finesses it around the golf course will still be able to mount a good run.”An early glimpse at finesse will come at No. 5, where a long tee shot will all but stifle hopes for a birdie and could even make tapping in for par a formidable challenge. Positioned between the fourth hole and what was No. 15, the target emerges from a thicket of sand, rough and steep slopes. Green and his colleagues envisioned No. 5, where the green has two tiers, as a midiron test.Oak Hill Country Club“It will be a bit of a nervy shot, but aiming for the center of the green and trying to make a putt would be my suggestion,” Green said. “The whole vision for it was to play off of what Ross had on his original sixth hole.”No. 6: Double TroublePar 4, 503 yardsNo. 6 offers several hazards.Evan Schiller, Oak Hill Country ClubAfter an escape at No. 5, the hole Green believes is now the course’s most perilous awaits.Allen’s Creek runs alongside the right side from the start, forcing a player to choose between the risk of dropping his tee shot into the water — but perhaps also getting a better angle into the green if he avoids the hazard — or facing a longer second shot.“The green allows for a ball to be run into the approach, if they need to with a longer club or if they get in trouble off the tee,” said Green, whose restored course has water in play on six holes. “The green itself, front hole locations are fairly accessible, but the back right location is very demanding, very tough to get to. My guess is they’ll probably put the hole back there and move the tees forward on a certain day during the championship.”Oak Hill Country ClubPart of the challenge is that the creek does not simply run in a straight line off the tee, or even away from it. Instead, it ultimately moves diagonally across the approach and then up to the left side of the green.No. 6, Green said, was naturally the trickiest hole, given its placement and the parcel of earth on which it sits. With the fourth, sixth, seventh and eighth holes slotted in a relatively narrow sliver of earth, he assumed that Ross had “tried to find the most unique way to set those golf holes kind of side by side, and the result of that differentiation from hole to hole was what we got on the sixth.”Green added: “He had four golf holes that, on a very flat piece of ground, would be potentially very much the same way, but the way he utilized the ground and the creek made them all night-and-day different, and he was a genius at that. It was a very awkward piece of property that he had to work with — it wasn’t just a giant rectangle — and so the way he created the variety he did is just mind-blowing to me.”No. 13: Hill of FamePar 5, 623 yardsThe longest hole on the East Course travels uphill.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesThe longest hole, No. 13, could be a showcase for the equipment that is helping top players drive the ball farther than ever. The hole goes uphill, bringing players toward the clubhouse, with Allen’s Creek making an appearance at around the 325-yard mark.The evolution of equipment, Green predicted, will entice top players to hit the ball over the creek, which has been a relatively rare occurrence through Oak Hill’s history.“We added a new tee, but I still think the golf course at times will be set up where players would be tempted to play over that and get home in two,” Green said.Water is not a threat beyond the creek, but the vicinity of the newly reshaped green has two of Oak Hill’s 78 bunkers.No. 15: The PlateauPar 3, 155 yardsIf the tournament moves to a playoff, No. 15 will be a part of it.Evan Schiller, Oak Hill Country ClubWhen Jason Dufner won the 2013 P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill, the 15th hole included a man-made pond stationed menacingly near the putting surface and a rock wall.“It was a very dramatic shot for major championship golf and TV,” Green said, “but it wasn’t very good for member play, and it didn’t represent anything Ross would have done.”So the pond is gone. Missing left will send a ball into a bunker that guards the left side. Missing right will have the ball moving away from the target in short grass, forcing a player to make a delicate shot onto the skinniest portion of the green, which is narrow left to right and deep front to back — maybe, Green said, a club-and-a-half difference, front-to-back.Oak Hill Country Club“It will be a very demanding shot in order to both control distance and spin to get close to the hole locations,” Green said.If the tournament moves to a playoff, No. 15 will be a part of it, along with the 14th and 18th holes.No. 18: Goin’ HomePar 4, 497 yardsThe green on No. 18 sits on the edge of a steep hill.Evan Schiller, Oak Hill Country ClubEyes always turn toward the 18th hole at any major championship. For Green, it was the one he fretted over most.“Unfortunately, that green really kind of stuck out a little bit in its shape as being very modern and out of character with the others,” Green said.Now the green, which sits on the edge of a steep hill that a player should look to carry with a second shot, has been extended on the right side and made deeper. The left side is shallower, front to back, and there are effectively three distinct surfaces within the green to place the hole.Oak Hill Country Club“Hitting a good drive is critical — absolutely critical,” Green said of the hole, where the fairway width can be as tight as 20 yards. “There are some very deep bunkers down the right-hand side that will make it very difficult to get home.”A player who successfully hits from the fairway to get his ball onto the zone of the green where the hole is will have a shot at a birdie. Otherwise, Green said, “it will be quite a dramatic putt to make that three.” More

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      Phil Mickelson Interviewed in Antitrust Inquiry Into Pro Golf

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

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      Inside the love life of Rory McIlroy and the whirlwind romance and story behind meeting wife Erica Stoll

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      ROCHESTER, New York has been good to Rory McIlroy.His first trip came in 2013, one year after winning the PGA Championship, where he was given a hero’s reception.
      Rory McIlroy celebrates winning the 2021 Wells Fargo Championship alongside wife Erica Stoll and their daughter PoppyCredit: Getty
      Stoll and McIlroy’s whirlwind romance began in Rochester, New York in 2015Credit: Getty
      His second in 2015 set tongues wagging in the local community, as he began dating local, Erica Stoll.
      The world No3 had just split from a high-profile romance with former tennis No1 Caroline Wozniacki.
      That break-up became a tabloid fodder for a man who didn’t feel comfortable in a celebrity couple.
      But this was a more intimate and quiet affair.
      Read more on golf
      They took in 2Vine, now known as Redd, for a dinner date. The new couple were also spotted at the Magpie Irish Pub grabbing a drink, as onlookers spotted them looking loved up.
      Within eight months, McIlroy and Stoll got engaged in Paris. The City of Love.
      In 2017, the pair walked down the aisle at the five-star Ashford Castle found on Ireland’s west coast.
      Stevie Wonder and Ed Sheeran provided the entertainment, according to E!
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      Three years later, McIlroy and Stoll welcomed daughter Poppy into the world at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida.
      SunSport goes inside their whirlwind romance, starting with how they met.
      She worked for the PGA
      Stoll was a keen tennis player at high school, and graduated with a marketing degree at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2008.
      She soon scored a job as the PGA’s manager of championship volunteer operations, and often interacted with players and told them where they needed to be.
      It was her awareness that saved McIlroy from missing his tee time at the 2012 Ryder Cup, after some confusion over the time zone.
      She alerted officials and a police escort was organised to make sure he got there on time.
      He was forever grateful and from firm friends they soon became much more.
      McIlroy’s romance with Stoll began as a friendship in 2012, when she saved him from missing tee time at the 2012 World CupCredit: Getty
      Two years after they met McIlroy and Stoll walked down the aisle togetherCredit: Getty
      ‘Down-to-earth’
      The buzz around town on their first date made it hard for McIlroy and Stoll to be discreet.
      A waitress told the Democrat and Chronicle as they left 2Vine: “Everybody in the restaurant was shouting, ‘Oh my God, that’s Rory McIlroy! That’s Rory McIlroy!’”
      But, what McIlroy loved about Stoll and their relationship was she was unaffected by that and was down-to-earth.
      He told the Irish Independent in 2017: “I can be myself around her.
      “I love that (she) knows everything about me, and there was no judgment there. There was no judgment from day one, which is huge, because that’s very hard to find for someone in my position.”
      McIlroy has revealed he feels at ease with StollCredit: Getty
      Stoll and McIlroy keep their relationship privateCredit: Getty
      Privacy is key
      All the while, as their romance blossomed, the two kept their relationship to themselves.
      To this day, Stoll’s Instagram is set to private.
      And there were plenty of stipulations producers had to agree to when filming McIlroy for Netflix documentary series Full Swing.
      He told the Golf Channel: “I made sure that the parameters were very much like, look, you can film me at — you’re not coming to my house, you’re not coming in my car, you’re not coming anywhere near my family, but you want to do some stuff with me at golf tournaments, totally fine.”
      When it came to announcing they were expectant parents, McIlroy made the big reveal just two days before Poppy arrived in the world.
      Speaking at the BMW Championship, he said: “We’re about to be parents very soon, so we’re obviously super excited. Yeah, we’ve been sharing the news with friends and family, obviously, but I didn’t think it was something that I really particularly needed to share out here.
      “It’s a private matter, but we’re really excited and can’t wait for her to get here.”
      Read More on The Sun
      McIlroy has got a lot to be thankful for when it comes to Rochester, New York.
      Maybe with the PGA Championship taking place there at Oak Hill, a tournament win would give him something else to be grateful for.
      McIlroy was keen to protect his family’s privacy during Netflix’s filming of Full SwingCredit: Getty
      McIlroy revealed he and Stoll were soon to become parents just two days before daughter Poppy was bornCredit: Getty More

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      Steven Alker Set To Make PGA Championship Debut

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      THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Just past a Dairy Queen near Houston last month, Steven Alker’s new status was aloft: His name and face were on a lamppost banner.Steven Alker, the professional golfer who won almost nothing until after his 50th birthday, was there with the likes of Ernie Els, Jim Furyk, Darren Clarke and John Daly, who have combined for eight major tournament victories. Alker has not even played that many majors.On Thursday, though, he will step into a P.G.A. Championship tee box as the man who surged from nearly-never-in-first to toast of the PGA Tour Champions, as the senior circuit is known. He is not exactly the betting favorite, not in a field largely headlined by men in their 20s and 30s. He knows he may not even make the cut and finish the tournament, where a victory would make Alker, 51, the oldest major champion in history.But Alker has been defying the clock that has often been the etiology of agony for professional athletes. For Alker, age and patience are proving to be allies, because only in recent years has he unlocked the consistency that eluded him through decades of missed cuts, demotions and paltry paychecks for pro sports.In 304 starts on the PGA Tour’s developmental circuit, which Alker first played during the Clinton administration, he won four tournaments. He turned 50 on July 28, 2021, joined the senior tour and has since channeled a career’s worth of aggravations and knowledge into six victories, including one at last year’s Senior P.G.A. Championship.“You can say, ‘Well, why didn’t he do this earlier?’” said Hale Irwin, a three-time U.S. Open winner.“I haven’t had two years of consistently good golf, I think, ever,” Alker said.Ross Land/Getty Images“There are some things that God keeps secret, and this is one of them,” said Irwin, whose 45 senior tour victories are tied for the most on record. “I just know that over the last couple of years, he’s maybe been the pre-eminent player out here.”In the senior tour’s most recent full season, Alker made the cut in all 23 events he played. His four wins and four runner-up finishes helped him to earn more than $3.5 million in prize money. He had made about $2.3 million across 390 starts during his years on the PGA Tour and its developmental circuit.“I haven’t had two years of consistently good golf, I think, ever,” Alker said in a Woodlands Country Club weight room. “It’s a second chance, it’s a second career, and those don’t come along very often.”Perseverance, he said, was probably more to thank than stubbornness. His status as one of the more youthful players in the senior fields has helped, but his mindful approach, joined with a refined short game and exceptional wedge play, has also proved to be particularly well-suited to a circuit that Irwin calls “a temperament tour.”“I think this tour is more about precision, knowing where your ball is going, scoring, just getting the job done,” said Alker, whose mind has increasingly cleared as a result of his financial windfalls and aging children.With his patchwork of methods, he defended his Insperity Invitational title days later. This year and last, he beat Steve Stricker, a past American captain at the Ryder Cup, by four strokes.It is not unheard-of for the senior circuit in the United States to yield athletic reinvention or renewal. Much of Bernhard Langer’s pre-50 success played out in Europe, but at 65, he is a victory away from seizing Irwin’s record. And Gil Morgan claimed 25 senior tour titles despite never having won a major.But Langer finished atop the Masters Tournament leaderboard twice, and Morgan had eight top-10 finishes in majors, including two third-place P.G.A. Championship showings. Alker? He has never appeared in a Masters or, until now, a P.G.A. Championship, though he once managed a tie for 19th at a British Open.Alker joined the senior tour in 2021 and has since won six tournaments.Eakin Howard/Getty ImagesHis arrival on the senior tour had not exactly unnerved the circuit’s elite: “I had heard the name here and there,” Langer said, “but it wasn’t like an Ernie Els is coming on tour.”Then he saw Alker play.“He should have been winning tournaments left and right and all over the place because he seems to have it all,” Langer said. “He’s got a beautiful golf swing — I actually enjoy watching his golf swing — and he hits the ball long, straight. His short game is pretty spot on, and obviously he’s getting better with age, like red wine or something.”As a boy in New Zealand, Alker reveled in soccer, tennis and cricket since he had not been big enough, he lamented, to make much of a mark in rugby. But Alker’s father was a golfer, and the son took up the game seriously around the time he was 10.“I just got hooked on the small things, the discipline you needed,” he said. “It wasn’t just one thing you had to be good at. You had to be good at everything.”Around the middle of his teenage years, he recalled, he began to wonder whether he could make it as a professional. He was not built to be a ball-basher, but his short game was exemplary, and he seemed to have greater mental command over a round than his peers.A whirlwind of tours followed: the PGA Tour’s assorted circuits, as well as the European Tour, where the wildly variable conditions offered valuable experience, the Asian Tour, the Canadian Tour and the pre-eminent tour in Australia. He found only sporadic success and lost his PGA Tour card three times, kicking him back into American golf’s version of baseball’s minor leagues. He insists he never thought about quitting — some in his family wondered whether he should — but instead came to anticipate his 50th birthday and a tour he was not certain he would qualify to play long-term.He swiftly came to embody how golf, as Langer put it, has “a fine line between good and bad, or between very good and just good.”The whirlwind that has come with being very good has not ruffled Alker. He stays in snazzier hotels now, he said. Sometimes, he confessed reluctantly, he will fly first class. But he still lives in the home that his family bought for less than half of what Tiger Woods earned in his first professional season.Alker celebrated with the Charles Schwab Cup following his win at the tournament in November.Christian Petersen/Getty Images“I’ve dealt with it pretty good,” Alker said of the attention, “because I haven’t had a lot of it.”Oak Hill Country Club, where the P.G.A. Championship will be played, will pose a formidable test. He is entering with minimal expectations: “keep playing the way I’ve been playing and do the things I’ve been doing well and see how well it holds up and see what happens.”Irwin, who has played majors at Oak Hill, suggested the course could be favorable to Alker’s strengths.“He has length to handle most of those long holes,” Irwin said. “Can he get to the par-5s in two? Well, maybe. But you have to keep the ball in the fairway at Oak Hill — you just have to keep the ball out of the trees and keep it in play — and he does that extremely well.”The cut is expected on Friday, with the tournament scheduled to conclude on Sunday. Next week, Alker will try for another Senior P.G.A. Championship.“I’m just happy to be here and to still have this opportunity at 51, to still play for this amount of money, to play in this environment with these guys,” Alker said.“That’s been one of the amazing things about being out here,” he added, “just to get to know the Hall of Famers and major champions that I never really got to know.”They know him now, of course. If not, they can find him on a lamppost. More

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      With the PGA Championship’s Move to Spring, a Club Scrambled to Get Ready

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      The event, long played in the summer, is being held near Rochester, N.Y., known for its harsh winters. The Oak Hill Country Club had to start early to prepare.Chilly raindrops were falling early this May when Jeff Corcoran walked Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Pittsford, N.Y., near Rochester. Corcoran, Oak Hill’s manager of golf courses and grounds for about the last 20 years, was cautiously confident in its lustrous condition.An unusually warm Western New York winter — only 50 inches of snow fell in the Rochester area instead of what is usually around 100 — was fortuitous for Oak Hill. The course preparations were ahead of schedule to host the 105th P.G.A. Championship, which runs from Thursday to Sunday.Once called “Glory’s Last Shot,” the championship, held in August, went from afterthought, as the fourth and final major of the year, to the second spot when golf moved the tournament to May in 2019.The move was prompted after golf returned to the Olympics in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, creating a conflict with the P.G.A. Championship. That forced the P.G.A. of America to move the tournament to July. Officials didn’t want to have to adjust the schedule every four years for the Olympics, so they decided on a permanent date in May.There were other advantages for the sport, too. By moving the P.G.A. Championship to May, the FedEx Cup Playoffs could end in August to avoid competing against the juggernaut of the N.F.L.The P.G.A. Championship’s move didn’t seem like much of a gamble when the other host sites were in the South. But this year’s northern venue — its signature oak trees have not quite bloomed in full — calls attention to the calendar switch. The extreme preparations Oak Hill and the P.G.A. of America, which oversees the event, took to mitigate the area’s notoriously harsh winters and late springs offer a master class in course management.Whether the weather cooperates is out of their control.Justin Thomas on the eighth tee during practice on Monday at Oak Hill Country Club.Andy Lyons/Getty Images“Mother Nature rules all,” Corcoran said. “She’s undefeated. If she decides there’s going to be five inches of snow, there will be five inches of snow. Or she could decide it’s going to be 70.”This will be the earliest of any of the 13 major men’s golf events held at Oak Hill, including three previous P.G.A. Championships. The club was picked to host the 2023 event eight years ago and learned of the impending May move in 2017. They found a way to make the date work.Golf officials still agree that despite the weather worries, moving to second place in the season has improved the event’s visibility coming after the most-watched golf tournament in the world, the Masters. It also eliminated what had been a two-month gap from the Masters to the United States Open.“It gave a nice progression to have a major event every month,” said Kerry Haigh, chief championships officer of the P.G.A. of America.Consider that playing in the beach days of August prompted officials to invent catchy marketing slogans to make “a problem seem like an opportunity,” Seth Waugh, the chief executive of the P.G.A. of America, said in an interview.“I think we have a better audience,” he said. “I think we have a better story to tell. And I think we’re more front and center.”He can thank the behind-the-scenes work for that. For the major championships, golf organizers usually erect infrastructure at local clubs — stands and corporate tents — three months in advance. In Pittsford, a suburb about eight miles southeast of Rochester, however, the ground is usually frozen in February.According to Bryan Karns, the championship director for the 2023 P.G.A. at Oak Hill, the crews put beams into the ground by November, building the floors and steel walls of the tents six feet high to withstand the worst snowfall.The course closed to members in October. By then, Corcoran had directed the necessary agronomy practices, including aerification, treating the greens with a sand mixture and putting down chemical applications for snowmold.Memories of previously chilly May tournaments at Oak Hill contribute to the anxiety. The Senior P.G.A. Championships there in 2008 and 2019 — held a few days later in May — were marked by rain and gusty winds, which made the thick rough even more snarling. In 2008, there were frost delays in the practice rounds and sleet in the first round, sending some of the seniors packing. Jay Haas won with 7-over-par; there were just a total of 12 rounds of under-par golf that week.“It was definitely a cold week; the weather was challenging, and the scores sort of reflected it,” Haigh said.A lot has changed at Oak Hill since then. Immediately after the Senior P.G.A. Championship in 2019, the course underwent a redesign by the architect Andrew Green. Corcoran called it a “sympathetic restoration” to the original 1926 Donald Ross design.Green removed hundreds of overhanging oak trees, making more shots available for golfers to play from the rough, and improving the sightlines for spectators. Now the club’s giant American flag on the right side of the 13th green will be visible from most of the front nine.Green redesigned three holes that didn’t seem to fit the Ross mold. He removed one altogether — the par-3 sixth that was the scene of four holes in one in the second round of the 1989 U.S. Open. That’s now a par 4, combined with the former fifth hole. Green built a new par-3 fifth. By restoring the greens to their original size, Oak Hill has been able to increase and add hole locations, giving professionals a new golf course.“Our aim is that it’s tough and challenging and fair,” Haigh said. “It puts a premium on driving and hitting the fairway.”Those fairways will be sparkling, even if the trees lining them might not be as lush. “I’m not in control of that,” Corcoran said. “But they don’t play the major championship from the tops of trees, do they?” More

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      PGA Championship: Why Doesn’t Oak Hill Produce Bigger Champions?

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      Golf clubs often gain fame when top players win there. That hasn’t happened much lately at this club, this year’s P.G.A. Championship host. The reason is complicated.The Oak Hill Country Club in northwestern New York, the site of the P.G.A. Championship that begins on Thursday, has hosted a dozen major or national championships, including United States Opens, previous P.G.A. Championships, and a Ryder Cup.It’s a classic course that was designed by Donald Ross, a revered Golden Age architect, and recently restored by Andrew Green, a top architect whose work has revived other championship venues, including Congressional Country Club, the site of last year’s KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship.On paper, Oak Hill looks great. But it’s dogged by a somewhat academic question in golf: Why hasn’t it produced better champions in recent years? The players who have won on the course are not a who’s who of hall-of-fame players.Shaun Micheel won the P.G.A. Championship there in 2003, for his only PGA Tour victory. Jason Dufner, who set the course record in winning the P.G.A. there in 2013, has won five PGA Tour events, but has a reputation for being ultra relaxed during play. The term “Dufnering” was coined to describe his demeanor, during both tournaments and the off-season.The course, in Pittsford, N.Y., near Rochester, has also hosted two Senior P.G.A. Championships, won in 2008 by the journeyman pro Jay Haas and in 2019 by Ken Tanigawa, a former amateur who qualified for the Champions Tour the year before after turning 50.So what gives?It’s complicated.The fourth hole on the course at the Oak Hill Country Club. Like many championship venues, the club added more trees in the 1960s and ’70s, believing that would create a tougher course.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesThe United States hosts three of golf’s major championships, with two of them rotating from course to course every year. (The Masters Tournament is always held at Augusta National Golf Club.) By comparison, only the British Open, the fourth major, rotates around Britain.But the United States Golf Association has laid claim to a series of classic, stout tests of golf to host the U.S. Open. In doing so, it has created a de facto rota of courses, including Winged Foot Golf Club in New York, Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina and Pebble Beach Golf Links in California, along with a mix of other prewar courses, including the Country Club in Massachusetts and Merion Golf Club in Pennsylvania. The governing body has embraced a schedule where some venues are locked in decades in advance, under the guise that where you win your U.S. Open championship matters to players as much as the win itself does.“The U.S.G.A. has said you have to be 100-plus years old to host a U.S. Open, and they’re going to the finest golf courses in the world, and it’s a short rota,” said Ran Morrissett, a founder of Golf Club Atlas, which analyzes course architecture. “Who’s to argue the governing body is making a mistake going to the finest courses in the world?”But the U.S.G.A laying claim to great courses decades in advance — Merion, for instance, is already set to host the 2030 and the 2050 U.S. Opens — has created a division of sorts: A club is either a venue where the U.S.G.A. hosts the U.S. Open, or it’s a P.G.A. of America site, playing host to such events as the men’s and women’s P.G.A. Championships, and, sometimes, the Ryder Cup competition.Has the P.G.A. been left with weaker venues? Some golf historians say that it has, while others argue that the picture is more complicated than that, given that older courses are being revamped, and challenging new courses are being built all the time.“It’s almost impossible for the P.G.A. Championship to compete,” said Connor T. Lewis, chief executive of the Society of Golf Historians. “Oakmont is a U.S.G.A. anchor site now. They’ve had the U.S. Open nine times.”While Oakmont had hosted the P.G.A. Championship three times, he added, now that the course has become a U.S.G.A. anchor, hosting the P.G.A. Championship is “off the table.”Still, he’s optimistic that the changes made to this year’s P.G.A. Championship venue are going to present golfers with different challenges from the last time, when the P.G.A. was played at a very different Oak Hill. “This year we’re going to see Oak Hill at its very best,” he said. “It’s going to be way more a Donald Ross course.”Like many great championship venues, Oak Hill added nonoriginal features in the 1960s and 1970s under the belief that more trees equated to a tougher course. It worked for a while, but as those trees grew, they narrowed the fairways and limited the shotmaking options.Other courses also followed this path, including Baltusrol Golf Club in New Jersey, which will host the P.G.A. Championship in 2029. After Phil Mickelson, who has now won a total of six majors, won the P.G.A. there in 2005, Jimmy Walker won the 2016 P.G.A. there, his only major. The course has since been restored by Gil Hanse to open it up and bring back the original A.W. Tillinghast design.Like other classic courses that have recently hosted major championships, Oak Hill underwent an extensive restoration that undid many modern changes. The restoration of the course by Green, who removed trees and opened up the course, could broaden the number of possible champions this year.Morrissett, the Golf Club Atlas founder, said the changes could make a difference in the quality of the champion this time. “Given that Oak Hill is more a classic Donald Ross course now, it could produce a Ben Hogan-like winner,” he said, referring to one of the best players of the 1950s. “I like the fact that a thoughtful player could win.”Kerry Haigh, the chief championships officer at the P.G.A. of America — whose job it is to set up the courses for a major like this — concedes that recent P.G.A. champions at Oak Hill benefited from the course conditions then.Phil Mickelson on the 18th green of the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Golf Resort, at the 2021 P.G.A. Championship. Mickelson held off Brooks Koepka and Louis Oosthuizen to win.Sam Greenwood/Getty ImagesBefore its restoration, there was “certainly a premium on driving accuracy, as the fairways are fairly narrow and the rough is usually pretty tough,” he said. “With the trees playing an important part of the challenge, the past two winners were not particularly long hitters, but were able to control their game and keep their ball in play.”Haigh said that the course setup is what matters most. The P.G.A. has put its stamp on tough, but fair, setups that allow for some exciting charges on Sunday. (This stands in contrast to the U.S.G.A. It sets up each course to be a stern — some players contend, brutal — test of golf. When Bryson DeChambeau won the U.S. Open in 2020 at Winged Foot, one of the anchor sites, he was the only player to break par for the four days.)Some historians argue that even going to these classic courses is a mistake for the P.G.A. Morrissett said with the U.S.G.A.’s lock on older courses, the P.G.A. should look to great courses built after 1960, to showcase the variety of golf in America. He points to the 2021 P.G.A. Championship at the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island in South Carolina, a Pete and Alice Dye design that opened in 1991, as one of the more exciting and watchable Sunday finishes in recent major history, when Mickelson held off Brooks Koepka and Louis Oosthuizen at the 2021 P.G.A. Championship to become the oldest major champion.“I loved the finish,” Morrissett said. “A par 5 you could eagle or double bogey? That’s exciting.”He ticked off modern courses like Erin Hills in Wisconsin, Chambers Bay in Washington State, and the newly opened P.G.A. Frisco course in Texas, which is set to be a hub for the P.G.A. “I think there’s a nice symmetry to watching these guys play courses that were designed for today’s equipment,” he said.Haigh, the chief championships officer, said that including those newer courses had been part of the P.G.A.’s plan. “That’s been our philosophy to mix classic courses with more modern courses,” he said, ticking off Bellerive in Missouri and Valhalla in Kentucky, in addition to Kiawah. “It’s been our philosophy for the 30 years I’ve been here, and I expect it will continue.”Still, his focus is on this week, and he’s optimistic that Oak Hill will produce a deserving champion. “It seems there may be more options for players who do miss the fairways, but they are still the same width as in previous years,” he said. “We shall see.” More

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

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