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      Furious at LIV Golf Defections, British Open Could Change Entry Rules

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      The R&A’s chief executive issued a stark warning to the players and did little to disguise his disdain for the new Saudi-backed series.ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — The British Open’s organizer pointedly warned on Wednesday that it might change its entry rules for future tournaments — potentially complicating the claret jug prospects of players who defected to the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf series.Although the R&A, which runs the Open, has not made a decision about how players will be able to join the 156-man field in 2023 and beyond, the organization’s chief executive, Martin Slumbers, left open the possibility that the pathway to one of golf’s most hallowed tournaments could soon shift.“We will review our exemptions and qualifications criteria for the Open,” Slumbers said at a news conference at St. Andrews on the eve of the Open’s start on the Old Course. “We absolutely reserve the right to make changes” from past years, he added.“Players have to earn their place in the Open, and that is fundamental to its ethos and its unique global appeal,” said Slumbers, who did little to disguise his disdain for the LIV series, which he condemned as “entirely driven by money” and threatening to “the merit-based culture and the spirit of open competition that makes golf so special.”Still, he signaled that a wholesale ban of players was “not on our agenda.”Slumbers denied that the R&A was coordinating with the organizers of golf’s other major tournaments to potentially exclude LIV players, whose ranks include Brooks Koepka, Sergio García, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Patrick Reed. But the chief executive of the United States Golf Association, which controls the U.S. Open, said in June that the group would “re-evaluate” the criteria it uses to set that tournament’s field.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 5A new series. More

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      Tiger Woods Criticizes LIV Golf, Greg Norman at British Open

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      Two days before the Open’s start at golf’s oldest course, the 15-time major champion said he worried about young players defecting to the LIV Golf series.ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Tiger Woods, conspicuously enchanted by his improbable return to his sport’s oldest course, on Tuesday offered a forceful rebuke of the players, past and present, who have aligned themselves with the rebel Saudi-backed LIV Golf series.He chided Greg Norman, the major champion-turned-LIV chief executive, for pursuits that are not “in the best interest of our game” and backed his effective banishment from this year’s British Open at St. Andrews. He said young players who were defecting from the PGA Tour had “turned their back on what has allowed them to get to this position.” And he cast doubt on whether LIV’s model — 54-hole, no-cut tournaments for players making guaranteed money — would allow golf and its top players to thrive.“I can understand 54 holes is almost like a mandate when you get to the Senior Tour — the guys are a little bit older and a little more banged up — but when you’re at this young age and some of these kids — they really are kids who have gone from amateur golf into that organization — 72-hole tests are a part of it,” Woods, 46, said during a news conference two days before the Open’s scheduled start on Scotland’s coast.“I just don’t see how that move is positive in the long term for a lot of these players, especially if the LIV organization doesn’t get world-ranking points and the major championships change their criteria for entering the events,” he added.Woods avoided explicit condemnations of current players who have joined LIV in exchange for staggering sums, including Sergio García, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Patrick Reed, as well as an array of less prominent golfers.But he pointedly questioned Norman, who has grown so divisive in golf that the R&A, the Open’s organizer, acknowledged over the weekend that it had not invited him to Tuesday’s dinner for past Open champions.“I know Greg tried to do this back in the early ’90s,” Woods said of Norman’s quest to challenge golf’s long-established order. “It didn’t work then, and he’s trying to make it work now. I still don’t see how that’s in the best interests of the game.”Woods also embraced the R&A’s exile of Norman, who had previously called the decision “petty.”“Greg has done some things that I don’t think is in the best interest of our game, and we’re coming back to probably the most historic and traditional place in our sport,” Woods said. “I believe it’s the right thing.”Woods’s case against LIV came as he prepared for what he acknowledged Tuesday could very well be his final Open at his favorite course.“I’m not going to play a full schedule ever again,” said Woods, who has undergone an aggressive rehabilitation effort since a car wreck in February 2021 that led doctors to consider a leg amputation. “My body just won’t allow me to do that. I don’t know how many Open Championships I have left here at St. Andrews, but I wanted this one. It started here for me in ’95, and if it ends here in ’22, it does. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. If I get the chance to play one more, it would be great, but there’s no guarantee.” More

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      PGA Tour’s Fight With LIV Golf Reaches Justice Department

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      The Justice Department is investigating the PGA Tour for anticompetitive behavior in its dealings with the breakaway LIV Golf series.The conflict upending men’s professional golf spread to a new setting with the Justice Department investigating the PGA Tour for anticompetitive behavior in its dealings with the breakaway LIV Golf series, a tour spokeswoman confirmed Monday.The PGA Tour has suspended players who have defied tour regulations and participated in two recent LIV Golf events without the PGA Tour’s permission. Greg Norman, the chief executive of LIV Golf, whose major shareholder is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, has castigated the tour’s stance as an “illegal monopoly.”Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, has repeatedly countered that his organization’s policies will stand up to legal review, including if a lawsuit is filed by a suspended PGA Tour member, which is expected. The PGA Tour has pointed to a 1994 federal probe examining comparable disciplinary measures by the tour against golfers playing in a non-PGA Tour event without the commissioner’s permission. The tour received no federal sanctions at that time.“We went through this in 1994 and we are confident in a similar outcome,” Laura Neal, a PGA Tour executive vice president, wrote in an email Monday. Of the Justice Department inquiry, Neal said: “This was not unexpected.”A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment, citing the longstanding policy of neither confirming nor denying reports of continuing investigations.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 5A new series. More

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      The PGA and DP World Tours Allied. Then LIV Golf Happened.

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      The alliance made it easier for players to compete in more tournaments, but the new golf tour is testing the partnership.Fabrizio Zanotti had been waiting to hear where he’d be this week.Ranked 38th on the DP World Tour, he was on the cusp of getting into the Genesis Scottish Open. But as of last summer, an alliance between the PGA Tour and the DP tour means that he had a spot in the PGA Tour’s Barbasol Championship, nearly 4,000 miles away in Nicholasville, Ky., if he didn’t get into the Scottish Open.Zanotti, who is from Paraguay, wasn’t complaining. “It’s really good,” he said. “The partnership is nice for us here in Europe to have the opportunity to get there.”Just a few months ago, the PGA Tour and the European Tour, which oversees the DP World Tour, had an alliance that looked fruitful. After competing for players for several decades, the tours came together in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic and by November 2020 they had formalized a partnership.Last August, the tours announced that they were co-sanctioning three events: the Scottish Open and the Barbasol, which run Thursday through Sunday, and the Barracuda Championship next week in Reno, Nev., opposite the British Open.This meant players on the PGA and DP World Tours could compete in either event if their ranking was sufficient to get in. But mostly it meant if they didn’t get into the Scottish or British Opens, they had a great consolation prize in playing lesser tournaments on the more prestigious PGA Tour.Fabrizio Zanotti of Paraguay said an alliance between the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour should mean more opportunities for him to play and compete.Murad Sezer/ReutersWhen this deal was announced in August, it was heralded as a sign of the deepening cooperation between the tours and sold as a benefit to both tours’ members.“With us co-sanctioning three events this year, we are no longer competing for top players,” Keith Pelley, the European Tour commissioner, said in an interview earlier this year.“Everything changed after November 2020. It was a mind-set shift for both of our organizations to work as closely together as we could and share all facets of our businesses. We went from competitors to partners.”Those were the days. That alliance is being tested publicly and politically by the new Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour. The high-dollar invitational series has lured a group of PGA and DP World Tour players away and sent more established tours scrambling to make changes.In the first event, the winner took home $4 million, but there was guaranteed money for every player, including the last-place finisher, Andy Ogletree, who won the U.S. Amateur in 2019. (He didn’t make the field at the first LIV event in the United States, at Pumpkin Ridge in Oregon, throwing into doubt his professional future.)For golfers trying to play their way up the rankings and into tournaments, money surely matters, but it’s the Official World Golf Ranking points that matter the most. They’re what determines how much control players have over their schedules.“The playing opportunities with the merger are great,” said Maverick Antcliff, who played in college at Augusta State University in Georgia and is ranked 171st on the DP tour. “If you have a good week in that opposite field event, you have an opportunity to transfer to the U.S. That’s the avenue I want to go. That strategic alliance has given us a clearer pathway.”Before the alliance, the way players in Europe got invites onto the PGA Tour and into the majors was by being ranked in the top 50 in the world — not just on a particular tour — or by qualifying for the United States or British Opens through their qualifying process. The strategic alliance has given talented but lower-ranked players a chance to compete on the PGA Tour and possibly finish high enough to gain more control over their schedule.While it presents larger, existential questions for professional golf, it has more practical week-to-week consequences for players trying to get into tournaments like the Scottish Open. Will defectors to the LIV Golf being excluded from events give other players a chance to compete? And that’s another way of players on the cusp asking if they have a spot in events after remaining loyal to the tour where they’ve been playing.The answers aren’t clear. For one, the two tours are structured differently. The PGA Tour is a nonprofit. The European Tour is essentially a union of its members. So their punishments have differed because their members ostensibly have a say.Jay Monahan, commissioner of the PGA Tour, has threatened to suspend or bar players who go to the LIV tour (with a number of players like Dustin Johnson and Kevin Na resigning their memberships upon moving to LIV).The LIV Golf Invitational Series presents existential questions for professional golf and has also changed the week-to-week dynamics for players trying to get into tournaments like the Scottish Open.Troy Wayrynen/EPA, via ShutterstockPelley, the European Tour commissioner, had to take a different tact with his players: They were fined $120,000 for playing in the first LIV event in London and barred from playing in the three co-sanctioned events. Pablo Larrazabal and Oliver Bekker paid their fines and were back playing on the European Tour at the recent Horizon Irish Open.Yet the LIV Tour, which set out to challenge the existing tours, is doing so at the cost of upcoming players. Consider Ogletree, who has struggled on the PGA Tour but had his U.S. Amateur champion status to fall back on. Now the question remains what his defection to the LIV Tour means for his professional career.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 5A new series. More

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      Mickelson and LIV Golf Attract Fans and Anger to Oregon

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      Participants in the Saudi-backed event “have turned their backs on the crime of murder,” one critic said. But spectators just wanted to see their favorite players.NORTH PLAINS, Ore. — Even as Phil Mickelson and other marquee players teed off to applause on Thursday in a Saudi government-backed tournament outside Portland, the golfers were excoriated in a protest and an affiliated television ad by family members and survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.It was a sign of the divisive nature of the start-up LIV Golf series, and a jarring contrast to the enthusiasm of the gallery that followed Mickelson around the course at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, chanting such encouragement as “Man of the people, Phil, man of the people.”The Sept. 11 family members held a news conference Thursday morning to express their vehement opposition to the first of five LIV tournaments being held this year in the United States. And they sponsored a television ad that pilloried the tournament and the involvement of such stars as Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau.The 30-second ad mentioned Saudi links to the terrorist attacks and noted that 15 of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. It also made reference to the death of Fallon Smart, a 15-year-old girl who was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing a street in Portland in 2016. A Saudi community college student facing charges disappeared before trial and was apparently spirited back home by the Saudi authorities.The ad showed photographs of Mickelson and other stars playing here, gave out the Pumpkin Ridge phone number and criticized the Saudis for using the tactic known as sportswashing to attempt to cleanse their dismal record on human rights.“We’ll never forgive Pumpkin Ridge or the players for helping Saudi Arabia cover up who they really are,” the ad said. It continued: “Don’t let the Saudi government try to clean up its image using American golf tournaments.”The family of Terrance Aiken, who was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, protested the Saudi-backed LIV Golf event on Thursday.Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian, via Associated PressTen Sept. 11 family members and one survivor of the attacks traveled to the Portland area to protest the tournament. They said they tried unsuccessfully to meet with some LIV golfers at a hotel on Thursday morning.Brett Eagleson, 36, whose father, Bruce, died in the collapse of the south tower of the World Trade Center, called the Saudi endeavor “shameful” and “disgraceful” and called on the LIV golfers to understand and acknowledge the kingdom’s links to the attacks, which took nearly 3,000 lives.He called on Mickelson to “be a man, step up, accept the truth of who you’re getting in bed with.”The Saudi government has long denied any involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sept. 11 Commission, in its 2004 report, found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” Al Qaeda, which carried out the attacks. But there has been speculation of involvement by other, lower-ranking officials, and an F.B.I. investigation discovered circumstantial evidence of such support, according to a 2020 report by The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica.Tim Frolich, a banker from Brooklyn who escaped from the 80th floor of the south tower but severely injured his left foot and ankle while running from the tower’s collapse, said the golfers had been “bought off” and were accepting “blood money” from the LIV series. The Saudi-sponsored tour offered signing bonuses, some reported to be in the nine figures, to lure some golfers like Mickelson from the PGA Tour.“This is nothing more than a group of very talented athletes who appear to have turned their backs on the crime of murder,” said Frolich, who will turn 58 this month.Mickelson was not made available to reporters on Thursday. In an interview published in February, he told his biographer, Alan Shipnuck, that the Saudis were “scary” and had a “horrible record on human rights,” including the 2018 killing and dismemberment of the Washington Post columnist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi. Mickelson later apologized for his remarks. He joined LIV Golf in June.No official attendance figures were given for the three-day tournament’s opening round, played under a cloudless sky with temperatures in the 70s. But the crowd to watch mostly aging players in decline was perhaps only a third of the daily attendance of 25,000 or so at a typical event on the rival PGA Tour. Mickelson, 52, finished the round at three over par, eight strokes behind the leader, Carlos Ortiz of Mexico. Still, Mickelson has a vocal and dedicated following.A number of spectators interviewed said they were simply interested in seeing a sporting event and avoiding geopolitics.“It’s messy, potentially, but I’m just here to watch golf and kind of block out all of that stuff,” said Stacy Wilson, 44, of Vancouver, Wash., a longtime fan of Mickelson’s who said she was taking advantage of an opportunity to watch him play in person. “I just choose to have tunnel vision about it and enjoy the game.”Some spectators noted that President Biden would be engaging with the Saudis in a trip there in mid-July. Others said they found it a double standard that golfers were being singled out when China has benefited from hosting two Olympics and from $10 billion in reported investments from N.B.A. team owners despite the country’s poor human rights record.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 5A new series. More

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      LIV Golf Is Drawing Big Names and Heavy Criticism in Oregon

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      As golfers arrive for the $25 million Saudi-backed tournament, a mayor, some 9/11 families, a U.S. senator and some Pumpkin Ridge club members have expressed outrage.NORTH PLAINS, Ore. — The Saudi government-backed LIV Golf Invitational series arrives in the United States on Thursday as it continues to roil a genteel sport with a slogan that promises, “Golf, but louder.” Except this is probably not the kind of noise its supporters had in mind.There is vehement opposition by some to holding the three-day tournament at the Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, about 20 miles northwest of Portland. The disapproval has come from politicians, a group of 9/11 survivors and family members, club members who have resigned in protest and at least one outspoken club board member. Critics have decried what they describe as Saudi Arabia’s attempt to use sports to soften the perception in the West of its grim human rights record.Portland is the first of five LIV (a Roman numeral referring to the 54-hole format) tournaments to be held in the United States this year. The newly formed tour, with its lucrative prize money and eight-figure participation fees, has quickly become a threat to the long-established PGA Tour as marquee players such as Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka have joined the Saudi endeavor.The Portland tournament will take place as local fury still simmers from the 2016 death of Fallon Smart, a 15-year-old high school student who was killed while crossing a Portland street by a driver traveling nearly 60 miles an hour. A Saudi community college student, facing felony charges of manslaughter and hit and run for Smart’s death, removed a tracking device and disappeared before trial, returning home apparently with the assistance of Saudi officials.Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, has been insistently seeking justice for Smart and beseeching the White House to hold the Saudis more accountable. He has criticized the LIV golf tournament, which is backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, as an attempt to cleanse the country’s human rights reputation, a tactic known as sportswashing.Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said the Saudis could not have picked “a more insulting and painful place to hold a golf tournament.”Jason Andrew for The New York Times“No matter how much they cough up, they’re not going to be able to wash away” that reputation, Wyden said in an interview. Referring to Smart’s death, he added, “The Saudis could not have picked a more insulting and painful place to hold a golf tournament.”Teri Lenahan, the mayor of tiny North Plains, population 3,440, has signed a letter with 10 other mayors from the area objecting to the LIV tournament, though they acknowledge they cannot stop it. Some members of Pumpkin Ridge have resigned in protest.Some family members and survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks have planned a news conference for Thursday to discuss what they called the golfers’ “willing complicity” to take money from a country whose citizenry included 15 of the 19 hijackers.Critics of the tournament note that American intelligence officials concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, ordered the killing and dismemberment of the dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018; that 81 men were executed in Saudi Arabia in a single day in March, calling into question the fairness of its criminal justice system; and that Saudi women did not receive permission to drive until 2018 after a longstanding ban and still must receive permission from a male relative to make many decisions in their lives.“I really felt it was a moral obligation to speak out and say we cannot support this golf tournament because of where the funds are coming from to support it,” Lenahan said in an interview. “The issue is the Saudi government publicly executed people, oppresses women and considers them second-class citizens. And they killed a journalist and dismembered him. It’s disgusting.”Escalante Golf, a Texas firm that owns the Pumpkin Ridge course, did not respond to requests for comment.The LIV tournament will go on, playing out against a backdrop of realpolitik. As a candidate, President Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for the murder of Khashoggi. But Biden will travel to Saudi Arabia in mid-July, seeking, among other things, relief from the oil-rich kingdom for spiking gasoline prices in the United States.In truth, the issue of human rights frequently takes a back seat to financial and marketing concerns in the realm of international sports. China, for instance, was named to host the Winter Olympics in 2022 and the Summer Games in 2008. And the N.B.A. does robust business there. A recent ESPN report said the league’s principal team owners have more than $10 billion invested in China.Greg Norman, the golfing legend who is the face of the LIV series, recently claimed that the PGA Tour had 23 sponsors doing more than $40 billion worth of business in Saudi Arabia, saying in an interview on Fox News: “The hypocrisy in all this, it’s so loud. It’s deafening.”Greg Norman, above, chief executive and commissioner of LIV Golf, spoke at the LIV Golf Invitational welcome party, right, in Portland, Ore.Chris Trotman/LIV Golf, via Getty ImagesJoe Scarnici/LIV Golf via Getty ImagesThere have been clumsy moments in support of the Saudi involvement in golf. When asked about Khashoggi’s killing last month at a promotional event in the United Kingdom, Norman said, “Look, we’ve all made mistakes.”The creation of the LIV tour has resurfaced longstanding questions about athletes’ moral obligations and their desire to compete and earn money.Speaking generally, Wyden, who briefly played college basketball, said the Saudi approach is “really part of an autocratic playbook.” He continued: “They go in and try to buy everybody off, buy their silence,” figuring that “something somebody is going to be upset about on Tuesday, everybody’s going to forget about on Thursday.”The Portland tournament will feature $25 million in prize money, including $5 million for team play and $4 million to the individual winner.At news conferences here, golfers acknowledged the financial attraction of the LIV tour. And they said they respected various opinions about their involvement. Some played down human rights issues, while others, like Sergio García and Lee Westwood, said they felt golf could be a force for good.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 5A new series. More

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      Schauffele Holds Off Theegala to Win Travelers Championship

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      Xander Schauffele nearly let a three-shot lead slip away, but a birdie on No. 18 gave him a two-stroke victory over Sahith Theegala and J.T. Poston.CROMWELL, Conn. — Before the first round of the Travelers Championship on Thursday, Sahith Theegala, a PGA Tour rookie, was asked if young players in the field were worried about the cluster of veterans spurning the tour to join the rival, Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit.“Actually, there’s a next man up mentality,” Theegala, 24, answered. “There are a ton of incredibly good players coming up. There’s not going to be an issue finding the next group of top golfers.”With one hole remaining in Sunday’s final round of the Travelers, it appeared that Theegala was going to be prophetic in the most personally satisfying way.Theegala held a one-stroke lead as he stood on the 18th tee after rallying to catch the third-round leader, Xander Schauffele, who began the day with a three-shot edge over Theegala. Reaching for a driver and needing to hit a left-to-right cut shot, Theegala, who had not bogeyed any of the previous 17 holes, felt confident.“A cut is my bread and butter,” he said later. “And I hit it well, it just didn’t cut. I don’t know why — adrenaline, maybe?”The shot came to rest in a fairway bunker, inches from an imposing, steep bank. Theegala needed two shots to escape the sand, which led to a double bogey and paved the way for Schauffele’s sixth career tour victory. He birdied the 18th hole to win the Travelers Championship by two strokes over Theegala and J.T. Poston.For Schauffele, who won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics last year, it was his first individual tour victory in three years. (He teamed with Patrick Cantlay to win the Zurich Classic in Louisiana in April.)“I’m happy because I was expecting to be in a playoff,” Schauffele, 28, said. “That was a really strong field, and Sahith just kept charging. It was a bit of a shock to see the way it played out at the end. I knew the finish would be tight.”Statistically, Schauffele has been having one of his best seasons, even if his efforts had not led to an individual victory, something Schauffele acknowledged Sunday evening.“I just hadn’t put four good consecutive rounds together, which is why mentally this is going to be such a boost for me,” he said. “I’m feeling like this could jump-start some things for me. At the end of the round, I felt really locked in.”Sahith Theegala missed a bogey putt on the 18th green Sunday.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesIt was the second time this year that Theegala had come close to earning his first tour victory. At the Phoenix Open in February, an unlucky bounce on the 17th hole of the final round led to a bogey that left him one shot short of qualifying for a playoff. That loss left Theegala in tears, but Sunday he was calm and measured in his analysis of the final sequences. He occasionally smiled, if wryly.“I played a lot of good golf all week, and I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing,” he said. “That’s the feeling I’m leaving with — a lot of positives.”Schauffele agreed with Theegala, in more ways than one.“He’s a really good player, and he just needs to keep knocking on the door until he breaks that thing down,” Schauffele said.He added: “There’s been a lot of talk about where golf is right now. Some say there’s a fracturing of our game, but the future’s bright.”With nine holes remaining on Sunday, Theegala was one of four golfers under 30 jockeying for the lead at the Travelers, one of the tour’s oldest events. The group included Michael Thorbjornsen, a 20-year-old amateur, and Poston, 29. Both were in contention to unseat Schauffele at the top of the leaderboard.Entering the closing holes, the duel between Schauffele and Theegala began to resemble match play, although Theegala was playing one group ahead of Schauffele, who was in the final group of the day.Theegala tied for the lead for the first time when he birdied the par-4 15th hole, and he took the lead outright by sinking an 11-foot birdie at the par-4 17th.As usual, the field at the Travelers was deep with top-ranked players, but this year was especially chock-full because the T.P.C. River Highlands golf course outside Hartford is only 105 miles from the Country Club outside Boston, which hosted last week’s U.S. Open.Poston, who entered the Travelers No. 162 in the men’s world rankings and has one career PGA Tour victory, in 2019, had a sparkling, six-under-par 64 on Sunday. Poston had three birdies on the front nine and three more on the back nine and did not have a bogey. It was his third top-10 finish in his last eight events.Thorbjornsen qualified for this year’s U.S. Open, which was held near his boyhood home of Wellesley, Mass., but he missed the cut last week. At the Travelers, he was sharp, with four rounds in the 60s, including a 65 in the second round. On Sunday, he eagled the par-5 sixth hole after knocking a fairway wood 260 yards to the green and leaving a tap-in putt for a three on the hole. Four birdies and two bogeys led to a four-under 66. More

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      Will LIV Golf Diminish PGA Tour Events Like the Travelers Championship?

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      A prized mainstay of Connecticut’s sporting calendar for 70 years, the Travelers has become more than just a golf tournament.CROMWELL, Conn. — The Travelers Championship in central Connecticut, contested on a golf course beside cornfields, is celebrating its 70th anniversary this week, which makes it one of the oldest continuously operated PGA Tour events. Through the decades, the tournament has changed names and venues, but in a small state lacking a professional franchise in one of the four leading North American sports (the N.H.L.’s Hartford Whalers left 25 years ago), the Travelers has been a prized mainstay of Connecticut’s sporting calendar.It has also been valuable to the PGA Tour, reliably drawing some of the biggest crowds of the tour season. It is beloved by golfers because of its homespun approach that showers players’ wives and children with personal attention, and that in turn has produced a host of marquee winners like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth and Bubba Watson.Xander Schauffele playing his shot from the first tee during the second round on Friday.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesThe 1995 winner was Greg Norman, then the No. 1-ranked men’s golfer worldwide. Norman is the chief executive of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series, which has roiled the PGA Tour by luring top golfers with guaranteed contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In the span of two months, the upstart circuit has threatened the primacy of the PGA Tour, and, potentially, the tour’s legacy events like the Travelers — which, in addition to entertaining southern New England golf fans, has attracted sponsorships that have led to more than $46 million in donations to 800 charities.The chief beneficiary most years has been a camp in northern Connecticut that helps about 20,000 seriously ill children and their families each year and was founded by a state resident, the actor Paul Newman.The focus of the intense showdown between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, whose major shareholder is the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, has been garish monetary offers to already wealthy golfers — along with a host of geopolitical underpinnings — but unseen in the struggle are other connected entities, like Connecticut’s treasured golf tournament.Could LIV Golf, which has planned eight events this year, including five in the United States, eventually upend or diminish the Travelers Championship and the other 30-plus PGA Tour events like it around the country? Already, Mickelson and Johnson, who were recently banned from the tour along with every other LIV Golf defector, are missing from this week’s field. Mickelson, 52, probably would not have played, but Johnson, the 2020 champion, had enthusiastically promised in February to return to Connecticut.Scott Halleran/Getty ImagesPGA TOUR Archive via Getty ImagesThree past champions, from top left, Phil Mickelson, Greg Norman, and Dustin Johnson, who are all involved with the LIV Golf series.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports, via ReutersStanding on a hillside in the fan gallery overlooking the 18th hole during the first round of the Travelers on Thursday, Jay Hibbard of Woodstock, Conn., said Johnson was missed, “but not that much.”“Dustin took the money and made a choice, but I don’t come here to root for any one golfer,” Hibbard, 39, said. “Most golf fans come for the atmosphere and to see great golfers up close. And there’s enough other major champions out here this week.”Standing nearby, Mike Stanley of Plainville, Conn., said: “It’s a little depressing to see things get split up because I think it’s natural to want all the best guys playing together. But there’s still a bunch of top guys — I was following Rory McIlroy today and then Scottie Scheffler.”Scheffler and McIlroy are first and second in the men’s world rankings and were joined in the Travelers field by four other top 15 golfers. By contrast, no player committed to the LIV Golf tour is ranked in the worldwide top 15.Inside the players’ locker room here this week, Sahith Theegala, a 24-year-old PGA Tour rookie, said the players his age are of a similar mind: Their loyalty is to the PGA Tour.“I come from a modest upbringing,” Theegala said, “and I feel like the value of money has been kind of lost. It just seems like a million dollars, which a lot of guys earn on this tour, gets thrown around like it’s nothing, right?”Sahith Theegala lined up a putt on the seventh hole during the first round on Thursday.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesAsked if he was worried about the future of PGA Tour events like the Travelers, Theegala shook his head.“There’s a history and legacy of this tour that the young guys have longed to be a part of,” Theegala said. “A new tour has no standing; you’re literally just playing for money.”A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More